Thanks for reading my first fanfic! x3
Disclaimer: I don't own FMA or it's characters. But the plotline idea is mine.
It wasn't really all that long ago that I was born; twelve or thirteen short years laden with the kind of mysteries that are all-too-common in a warzone. I don't remember anything of a biological mother or father, for instance, and where I came from is beyond my reasoning. My adoptive mother, an Ishbal widow named Vanessa, had lost her husband to alchemic destruction only days before when she'd stumbled across a small infant wrapped in secondhand cloth and cradled in a basket. With the wailing package was a small folded piece of paper and a small note written across its length: 'please, take care of Sara.' In her story she lifted me from the small basket and held my tiny form in her dirtied, war-stricken hands and gazed down curiously at me. My fiery amber eyes, the stubble of baby hair that was already showing hints of a pretty bronze. I could pass for an Ishbalan, no matter where I'd come from. That evening, with the approaching raids and thunderous bombs at her heels, Vanessa had taken me home.
Not that I remember any of this, because I don't. My earliest memories were at only a few years of age as I played with the neighboring boys. We'd play tag and make mud pies until another raid came and we'd be hastily ushered back indoors. Mother had always been adamant about hiding the violence from me, and I spent most of the time during these moments in her room and under her thin makeshift sheets as she cooed comforting words to be from the door. Then it would all be over, and I would be allowed back out again to continue where we'd left off.
It wasn't tragic, though. All of us counted our blessings and prayed to Ishbala for our splendor. After all, we lived in a smaller settlement, where attacks were fewer than in the larger cities of our kin. The military were horrible, though, and no matter where you lived you were raised to fear them. For this spawned dislike, which grew to distrust and soon outright hatred. But it was too late to keep a child's innocence with him. The world was too cruel for a child to possibly keep any sort of love for their tormentors.
My next sharpest memory was the weeping cries of a funeral that could not be held. I was about four now, and had been over at the shelter of a friend when there was a shattering explosion. Immediately we were thrown into a dark corner to be kept hidden and safe. But even from our safety we could hear the dark laugh of a man as he strutted by as if we weren't there. It was an alchemist, as the adults whispered while we eavesdropped, the man who make men explode with his hands and unholy magic. It had been the building just next door to my own that had fallen, killing the family that had lived inside. I can still remember the figure who tried to crawl shaken from the debris, a mangled figure of my fellow Ishbalan – it was my best friend. They had to hold me back when I tried to escape and run to his side. They knew it was a trick. Before my very eyes he exploded like a bomb, etching the bloody sight permanently into my memory.
It was only a few years after that that a new program was implemented for the Ishbal war. Military soldiers marched into our town with orders to escort us in sorted groups to refugee camps, where we would be 'taken care of'. Nobody believed that. But it wasn't a choice we could make, and over the next two months we were slowly rounded up and led away from our homes.
After that and for a long time after everything was a blur. The trip was long and slow, and the desert unrelenting, but we eventually made it. The place was an old abandoned Ishbal town reconstructed into a makeshift town. There were no more spontaneous explosions here, no more raids or innocent killing, but things were still hard and our supplies were meager. Still, we kept our faith and prayed.
We stayed there until I was nearly fourteen, an adolescent with the heart of a true Ishbal. If there were any doubts that had surfaced when I was first taken home as a pathetic orphan, they had long since dissipated. My eyes may not have held that striking red that my friends had, but the bright amber that they did blaze was close enough. The soft bronze of my hair, chopped short with only the lightest curl at the ends, was native enough. Not to mention that the skin that was once easily considered fair or pale compared to those here was now tanned quite nicely by the unrelenting sun. And besides, I had shared so much with these people already; now was no time to try to set me apart. I was truly one of them.
