Chapter Text
She is born on the first day of month of July, taking her first breaths just as the sun began its rise towards the sky.
She does not remember her time in the womb nor her subsequent birth, but she remembers feeling her lungs protest from her incessant screaming, the cold bite of the air and the warmth of the hands that soon cradled her upon a soft, feathery bosom.
She remembers soft murmurs, a light kiss pressed upon her brow, and the brightness of the world when she first opened her eyes.
She remembers words being spoken, the only coherent ones she will hear for next few months.
"What shall we name her?"
It felt as if the world held its breath in those few moments of silence before the name she is given was uttered in a soft voice.
"Heiwa. For peace."
When she is a year old, her parents throw a small celebration for it. Nothing that big, in her opinion.
What surprises her is the amount of people that attend.
What's more surprising is the fact that these are all cousins of hers, and that the ones attending weren't even all of them.
They younger ones coo at her, claiming her to be a little genius when she speaks to them in lisped sentences and tries to imitate the way they walk.
Itachi, her very distant cousin, is the one she spends the most time with. Joined at the hip, the others would say with a calculating glance that she doesn't yet know how to interpret.
Heiwa learns that her parents are known and loved within their very big family, everyone having been raised to enjoy the delight that is the senbei her parents make. She has tried one before, and she agrees that it is the greatest food she's ever tasted.
Uchiha Mikoto comes and goes to pick up Itachi and deposit him back to their home, always leaving with a bag of senbei fresh off the oven as a parting gift from her parents.
Heiwa doesn't know why her parents look so grim whenever Mikoto comes to leave Itachi with them, but before she can contemplate it, her attention is caught by other trivial things.
It takes her an embarrassingly long time to figure out that Uchiha Mikoto is Itachi's mother, which in hindsight should have been plenty obvious for her. And she only realizes it when Mikoto comes back and Itachi calls her mother.
After that, though, she notices more things, like how much Itachi looks like his mother and how battered she looks whenever she comes to pick up Itachi after weeks have gone by.
Heiwa does note that she has never met Itachi's father, but she soon learns that he is apparently the leader of their family—their clan, which means he's always busy.
She thinks she can understand why Itachi is such a solemn child, so she does her best to cheer him up whenever he's around.
Heiwa is two when she finally finds out why Itachi spends so much time with her and her parents.
There is a war, she once hears the adults speaking in hushed tones.
It brings a mix of fear and apprehension in her gut when she finds out that not only are both of Itachi's parents fighting in the war, but also several of her family—clansmen—are fighting too.
Heiwa looks at her parents and sees the lines in their faces showcasing their age and assumes that's why they aren't fighting in the war like so many others.
When she hesitantly broaches the subject with her parents, they quickly dismiss her and say that the shinobi are already doing their duty.
She pauses at the unfamiliar word.
Shinobi?
Heiwa finds out that shinobi are the soldiers for the village, Konohagakure no Sato.
She also learns more about their village that is lead by the Hokage, the strongest shinobi in the village.
She learns that children as young as six are being sent out to fight in this war by adults who should have known better.
She sees the face of Sarutobi Hiruzen carved on the mountainside and does not see the benevolent leader some say he is; she sees a man who would willingly send children out to die in a pointless war.
War is caused by men in power yet it is the innocent people who suffer.
Heiwa doesn't remember where she hears that line, but she thinks it's fitting.
"Obito-nii!"
Heiwa races up to the front of her house to where her teenage cousin is walking with a bright grin and a confident gait.
"Heiwa-chan!" He beams, getting down on one knee and laughing in delight as she barrels right into him, arms encircling his shoulders in a tight hug.
Obito is one of her many cousins, though arguably her favorite cousin simply because of how much he encourages her pranks and even helps out with his little shinobi tricks. It helps that he always puffs his chest out in pride when she turns an amazed smile at him for doing what he dubs is "basic shinobi things" such as walking on walls and spewing out fire from his mouth. The latter one, she absolutely loves, because magic!
He was often by her house when she was a baby, helping out her mother and father in babysitting whenever he's free, though she's not supposed to remember such a thing because, well, she was a baby. And Heiwa's mother adores him along with all the older ladies in the clan, says he's such a little gentleman before pinching Itachi's little cheek and telling him they hope he grows up to be like Obito.
"Are you going on a mission?" She peers up at him, shifting a bit in his arms to get comfortable when he rises from his crouch and settles her on his hip, carrying her the way he always did when she was still a toddling little thing.
Her cousin is already shinobi and a chūnin at thirteen. She hadn't quite known what to feel when she found out the missions he'd been getting sent to were less like his embellished tales of "saving princesses and defeating evil bandits" and more like getting sent to the war front and killing people. She doesn't know how he can still smile so freely despite the horridness of his situation, but ever since, she's resolved to make him laugh at least once whenever she sees him.
Obito grins, standing a little taller than he did before. Then, conspiratorially, he leans in and tells her, "It's a super secret top mission, something that's going to change the tides in favor of Konoha in the war."
Heiwa's eyes widen, partly out of surprise and partly because she isn't sure if he's even allowed to tell her such a thing. She grabs onto the lapels of his coat, worry bleeding into her face.
"But that means you'll be in more danger than before," she frowns.
He pinches her cheek. "Don't worry too much. Your nii-chan is strong, you know?"
"The strongest," she agrees with a nod, confident in her cousin's ability.
It's not until he's putting her down that she realizes they've reached the compound's gates. Obito pats the top of her head, smiling reassuringly.
"I'll treat you to some dango when I get back. Maybe I'll even introduce you to my team, you'll have lots of fun pranking Bakashi," he snickers.
"Okay! Be safe, Obito-nii!"
She waves her arm in the air, watching him disappear around the corner.
It's the last time she sees him with a smile.
"You don't want to become a shinobi?"
Heiwa nods at Itachi's confused look. She keeps her gaze in front of her, watching the rapidly shrinking rays of the sun dip below the horizon.
"But why?" Itachi sounds lost, as if he couldn't fathom why she wouldn't desire to be a killer.
But she shouldn't hold it against him. He grew up surrounded by shinobi and how it was expected of him to become one. Heiwa doesn't think he truly understood what that entails. She thinks of Obito, remembers hearing the news of his death and how they didn't even have a body to bury. Crushed by boulders. Unable to retrieve. I'm sorry, Uchiha-san.
"I don't like violence," she simply says, knowing he'll pester her until she gives him an answer he deems acceptable.
"Violence isn't everything that a shinobi is," he retorts as if he was reading a line from a book, still trying to convince her that enlisting herself to become another one of the village's pawns was a good idea.
"No, it isn't, but it's a constant part of their life," Heiwa answers solemnly, looking him in the eyes to let him see how serious she is about her decision. "I don't want to kill anyone."
Itachi quiets after that, realizing the depth of her feelings towards the subject. She watches him, this mature and frighteningly smart boy. He was already so intelligent, his eyes showing an awareness no three year old should have.
It makes her wonder if he was not also like her...
"Do you want to be a shinobi?" Heiwa asks him.
"I am the clan heir, I have to be a shinobi." His reply is almost immediate, like he was reciting something memorized.
"Yeah, I get that, but do you want to?"
He doesn't reply to her question, and she lets the subject go.
She yawns, running her fingers through her hair idly as she walks up the stairs.
She jumps in surprise when she opens the door to her room and sees a figure standing by the window.
"Itachi," Heiwa calls out once she realizes that the back facing her belongs to Itachi.
He continues to stand unmoving, still as a statue. It's then that she notices the rumpled state of his clothes and the layer of dirt and dust covering him.
"Itachi?"
Her hand reaches out to lightly touch his shoulder. She can feel him stiffening under her touch, his whole body going taut as if an enemy was about to attack.
What happened? She wants to ask, but she knows better than to dredge up memories that would only serve to have him become more unresponsive.
"Hey," she says, gently placing both hands on his shoulders and attempting to get him to face her. "You're safe. I'm here. You're in my house, Heiwa's house, in the Uchiha district with the senbei shop at the front—the one we always go to steal snacks from, remember?"
Heiwa coaxes him with reassurance of where he is and reminding him of the antics they went up to growing up in her home.
Slowly, ever so slowly, he relaxes, limbs losing their tension and his shoulder's dropping with every word she speaks. She manages to shift him so that he's facing her, but his head is hung low and his bangs cover his eyes from sight.
"Hey, Itachi," she breathes out softly, trying to get him to look up at her. "You're a bit dirty. How about you go take a bath later, I think you still have some clothes here that you forgot to take with you last month."
She hesitantly goes to remove her hands from his shoulders, but freezes when Itachi looks up and meets her eyes.
It's not the black that's so common within their clan, no. It's red, with a single tomoe on each eye.
Heiwa has seen it in passing before, but it's different seeing it up close and personal. The bloodline limit of their clan, the—
"Sharingan," she chokes out, stunned at the sight of it on Itachi's face.
Itachi flinches at her voice, the red in his gaze vanishing, leaving only an inky black canvas.
"Itachi, how—" She quickly cuts herself off, cursing inside at her stupidity because how else would he have gotten it. The only way to activate the sharingan was if they experienced a traumatic event, and Itachi... he...
She pulls him in a crushing hug, uncaring of the dirt still clinging to him. She places her hand on the back of his head, carding her fingers through his hair as he rests his head on her shoulder.
His arms don't come up to embrace her back, but that was okay, Heiwa can do all the hugging for them both.
Itachi sleeps over that night.
Heiwa doesn't let him out of her sight for the rest of it, pushing their futons together and pulling him to rest against her chest. Arms tightening around him protectively despite his silent protests.
And when he wakes up trembling with a fearful look on his face, she holds him closer and sings a lullaby from her old world.
She doesn't get anymore sleep after that.
Heiwa learns that Itachi's father had taken him to the frontlines.
It takes everything in her hold herself back from marching up to their home and yelling at Uchiha Fugaku how stupid he is, knowing he won't listen to a four year old like her.
Instead, she focuses on Itachi, picking up on how withdrawn he's gotten and how much quieter he's become.
She tries to be there for him, but their time together starts to shorten as they grow older. Him with his training and her... well, there wasn't much she could do, what with her decision to stay as a civilian.
They find time to hang out though, and if she didn't look too closely, it would almost seem as if nothing's changed.
But it's difficult not to notice the changes in him.
Every day, he loses that wide eyed innocence he used to have. His replies become shorter and more curt, his tone bland and impassive, face closed off and unexpressive.
She always manages to bring him back, though. A smile here, a soft laugh there. Heiwa begins treasuring those moments, worried when the time comes that they become a rare occurrence.
"Hey, let's prank Fugaku oji-sama."
"Are you crazy, Heiwa?" he hisses in her ear, making sure to keep quiet from where they're hiding up on a tree branch.
"I thought you already knew that," she replies cheekily, earning her a deadpan look that has her laughing behind her hand.
"Now shush. He's about to come out."
Itachi's claim proves right because as soon as he says that, a man in his late-fifties walks out of his front door—and immediately triggers the tripwire that connects to a balloon filled with pink paint and glitter. It makes a wet splashing sound as it pops open, and the old man is left covered in head to toe with glitter, pink paint dripping off of him.
Heiwa can't stop the giggle that comes out of her lips. The man clearly hears it because his head whips to the tree that they're hiding in.
She and Itachi look at each other and have a shared moment of 'oh shit' before they're leaping out of the tree and into a nearby roof, ignoring the angry calls of the Uchiha elder they've just pissed off.
She lets out a breathless laugh once they reach the safety of her home, glowing in the aftermath of a successful prank.
"We're going to get punished for that," he warns her, but the effect of the words are ruined by the smile on his face.
She only grins brightly at him.
They do get punished for it, but Heiwa thinks it was totally worth it.
They're sitting on top of the roof of her house, watching the sun set through the horizon.
"Do you want to be a shinobi?"
It's the same question she had asked him a year ago.
"No," he says quietly.
"But you have to," she states softly.
"Yes," he agrees, gaze fixed on the dying sun, "I have to."
They say nothing more.