This is a somewhat specialized fic. It doesn't really have any canon characters in it, but it is set within the canon parameters of FMA Manga/Brotherhood. I had mentioned in "The Day The Circus Came To Town" that my OC Dejan Shua had written a book about how he got out Ishval with a group of kids who would eventually become his musical ensemble. I am not going to try to write his entire book, mainly because I'm a little too lazy and I have other projects going, but I'm going to present these chapters as "excerpts." I hope you like it.


1901-1908, or thereabouts…

They say time heals all wounds. Like of lot of old sayings that "they" say, it's true sometimes. The only reason I can even bear to look back on those dark times is because of where I'm looking back at them from. I got here by means of a long, plodding journey that I wasn't sure would end. If I'd had no one left to live for, I would have run up to the first bluecoat and invited him to shoot me.

When the war started in 1901, my family and I managed to keep out of the way. We lived in a part of Ishval that nobody, even the Amestrians, cared that much about. That's what we hoped, anyway. A few of our neighbors, other vatrishi, took up arms against the Amestrian military and wound up dead for their efforts and possibly diverted the attention of the bluecoats our way. They already knew we were here because many of them had patronized Vashto's tavern. But unlike similar establishments in Ishval Proper (minus the "extra" services, if you catch my drift), Vashto's wasn't a meeting place for political dissenters and the like. Men came there to drink and get laid. Nothing else. Vashto didn't allow politics to walk through his door. He was high-minded like that.

Still, I was worried about repercussions. This wasn't just some kind of little family squabble. If the Amestrians won, which they probably would, they could take it out on all our hides. Dad told me to stop worrying.

At one point we were approached by a couple of stalwart fellows from the Ishvalan resistance to help run guns up from Aerugo. Dad told them to piss off. They called him a coward and a traitor (which he was not) and a few worse things besides (which he might have been). He told them that if the only time they stopped looking down their noses at us was to talk us into doing their dirty work for them, they might as well talk to the moon. Then he cracked their heads together.

Not all of the "proper" Ishvalans looked down on us, of course. Andakar Ruhad, a fresh young priest and my first ever friend, was a frequent visitor to the vatrishi . He didn't try to change us, didn't make us feel small because of who we were, didn't make us feel beholden to him for his charity. He treated us like equals even though he was one of the quality.

But as the war dragged on, we began to see less of him. His bright, luminous conviction went grim. I knew that he and his fellow priests had been called upon to practice the fiercer side of their vocation. When he did come by, he didn't talk about it.

Even through all this, life went on. Sometimes the fighting would lull enough for us to make a little cash, playing at weddings and the like. People still fell in love and got married and had kids. Other people, like us, didn't always do those things in that order.

Dad and I managed to slap on another room to our little house and Katri laid claim to it. Even so, we were still at fairly close quarters. She entered adulthood with a wild beauty and a mean right hook for a little thing. She sometimes had some nasty mood swings, poor lass. I loved her, in my way. We'd grown up together and were used to each other.

Shua could be a patient man, and he was very protective of Katri, but sometimes he just had to throw his hands up. He was generally too busy anyway, making halmi and playing the fiddle or trying to work some sort of scheme with Vashto to make a few extra cenz. So I was the one who was there to buffer Katri against whatever demons she was battling, whether she needed someone to scream at or a shoulder to cry on. I did what I could to give her what she needed.

Well, that's kind of how things happened. She didn't actually like me, but somehow I caught her in a rare tender moment—not on purpose, mind you! I never took advantage!—and nature just sort of took over. Sweet Ishvala, but she was a fierce one! Not like either of us had had any previous experience to compare each other to.

Shortly thereafter, though, she chased me out her room. I stumbled into the front room and practically straight into my dad, who had just come home. A moment later, as Dad and I stood staring at each other, Katri tossed my clothes out after me. I thought Dad would be furious, but he just kinked up an eyebrow, gave a little snort of a laugh and shook his head.

"Congratulations," was all he said.

Things went on like this for a few years, not changing much. As far as the war was concerned, things would get tense for a while, then simmer down, then flare up again. Katri was much the same. Some days she wanted me and some days she couldn't stand the sight of me. Then she got pregnant. She had consulted with the falshaii, one of whom was her mother, and they seemed to have come to a consensus of opinion. Katri cried at first, then hit me, then cried some more.

"Look what you done to me, Dejan!" she sobbed. "You stupid yaakhtai!"

Shua rolled his eyes. "Seems to me you're as much at fault as he is, laleh!"

"Shut up!" Katri shrieked back at him.

"Don't you back sass me!"

"Dad, don't!" I pleaded. I was twenty by this time and nearly as tall as my dad now. He tended to listen to me a little more. Not much, but sometimes. I stepped up to Katri and put my hands on her shoulders. She yanked herself away but I wouldn't give up. I took her arms again and she just stood there glaring at me, her face and her hair wet with tears. "Listen to me, Katri," I said, keeping my voice low and calm. "I'm gonna take care of you, just like I always have. Everything's gonna be all right!"

She looked up at me and I was surprised to see real sorrow along with that anger. "How's it gonna be all right, Dejan!" Her lower lip shook. "This—this ain't no world to bring a baby into!"

Part of me couldn't argue with that. Since she wasn't in as much of a pugnacious mood at the moment, I pulled her close to me and held her. "The world's been like this for a long time, laleh," I said, talking softly into her hair. "We've just gotta hope that our baby's gonna grow up to be someone who can help change things. We've gotta have faith."

Katri gave an ungraceful snort. "You sound like Andakar!" she grumbled into my shirt. She didn't like Andakar, but when she spoke, she didn't sound so upset anymore.

Shua chuckled and tousled my hair. "He could do worse," he said before leaving us to ourselves.


Andakar got that look. All I could do was shrug.

"We're not the quality," I told him.

He let out a huff. "That makes no difference!" he retorted. "There are no grades of quality! We are all—"

"—the same in the eyes of God," I finished for him, then grinned. "I'm not really all that worried about what Ishvala thinks." Andakar looked a little scandalized and I went on. "I've got enough faith to see this for the blessing it is."

He smiled a little, which was good to see, because he didn't do it so much anymore. "Well, if there is anything I can do, you only have to ask." He considered me a little wryly. "I don't suppose there's any point in talking you two into getting married, is there?"

I sighed. "I haven't even tried to ask her," I said. "She's not talking to me right now."

"But you would consider it?"

"Oh, hell, yes!"

"I would be honored to offer my services."

"I'd be honored to have them," I replied. "If she does actually say yes, I hope you can get here quick because she could change her mind the next minute."

I broached the subject a couple of times. Katri looked at me like I had a tree growing out of my head. I supposed she had too much else on her mind.

Some months later, our daughter was born. A few of the falshaii came to do the necessary, chasing me and Shua out of the house. I could hear Katri shrieking and cursing me, my ancestors, my body parts, and the very air I breathed. Shua gave up and went to find solace at Vashto's. I stuck close by as a dutiful father ought to.

I wanted to call our baby Maya, after my mother, but Dad wasn't ready for that. Katri was the one who actually came up with Mika. It just popped into her head and I liked it. Oh, but she was a sweet baby. Sure, she was a lusty crier, but that just meant her lungs worked fine.

Katri was a distracted sort of mother. Not a bad one, mind you. She loved our baby as much as I did, but I think she was a little scared of her. She fed Mika just fine and held her sometimes, but left much of the rest of the work to me. I didn't mind at all. I took to it like a bee to nectar. If Mika got sick, I would take her either to baata Nifaa or even all the way to the Kanda temple to Saahad Uvar, who remembered me kindly. He even weighed and measured Mika for me, keeping a record to see how well she was growing, which she did like a little weed.

The subject of asking for Ishvala's blessing on our union would still come up now and again. I had to play a high card and told Katri that if we were married, Mika could have a proper chuvai, something that she would be old enough for quite soon, when she turned three. Didn't she want that for our little girl? She could marry some nice fellow who had a proper craft and have a decent life. Katri scoffed, saying that the decent fellows with proper crafts were all getting killed by the bluecoats. But I could tell the idea stuck with her.

Finally, one day, she came and punched me in the arm. "Fine!" she growled. "I'll do it for Mika!"

It took me a minute to figure out what she was talking about, coming out of the blue as it did, but not wanting to irritate her by acting stupid, I fled to the Kanda temple and told Andakar.

He was pleased and said that he had anticipated it would happen. He was a man of strong faith, after all. But what he meant was that he had asked his Aunt Zoya to make a chuva for Mika, just in case. He also had her make one for me, if Shua was willing,

I stood agape for a couple of moments. "Can you do that? I mean, you do know that my parents weren't married."

Andakar, who was generally a stickler for this sort of thing, replied, "That's true, but as your mother is now in Ishvala's bosom, that point can be…stretched."

Now my mouth dropped a little more, but this time from mocking astonishment. Andakar had to chuckle a little. "I asked Saahad Bozidar a while ago, just in case. It's not entirely without precedent."

I let out a laugh and hugged him.

So I set about the preparations as quickly as I could. It wasn't going to be a grand affair by any means, but it was the sort of thing that drew out our neighbors—the ones who were still alive—to join us. Ishvala knows we had little else to celebrate.

Andakar came to do the honors, and, much to our surprise, so did some of his family. Not his parents, of course, but his brother, Mattas, and his cousins, Damyan, Naisha, and Vesya. We had met them several times at festivities that Dad and I had played at, but I didn't expect them to take such an interest in us. But that's Ishvalan's for you. Good fortune is meant to be shared, and we had precious little of it back in those days. Also, Andakar's cousins were the ones who delivered the chuvas that their mother had made. They also brought food to share, which was a real treat.

So first came my chuvai. I didn't think I would be nervous, but I was. I didn't think it would affect my dad as much as it would, but it did. We both teared up when he set that sash over my shoulder and spoke the prayer.

"I claim this child as mine in the name of the Creator Ishvala!"

We hugged as everyone around us cheered. This was not a common occurrence in our neck of the woods.

I now had the right to take on a family name. Since Dad only had the one, that's the one I took, and I became Dejan Shua. Now I could bestow that name on my wife and on my little girl, and she could wear her chuva with as much pride as I did mine.

We played and sang and danced. Mika, a spunky toddler, joined right in on everything. She really wanted to pound away on my drum, and Dad told me that I may as well start teaching her now. It was a family tradition after all.

Katri wasn't exactly a blushing bride, but nobody expected her to be. She didn't exactly enjoy herself, and at one point she burst into tears, unable to explain why. Andakar's cousins, Naisha and Vesya, scooped her into their arms and fussed over her and comforted her, and she didn't seem to mind.

I guess it was a pretty grand celebration after all.

It wasn't too long after that that all hell broke loose. It was 1908, and the little family that we had worked so hard to keep together got torn apart.