Turning Tides

Turning Tides: Chapter 1

Uh, hi. I'm here. Am I one of the only people who thinks that Heinkel and Kimblee is an interesting dynamic and is currently in the process of writing a whole ass AU for it? Yes.

Just a warning, since the first chapter has a lot of just, general overview, there are a lot of small footnotes and explanations at the bottom. Not mandatory to read but hey, they might be fun. Helps with world-building.

Unlike other fics I write though, there will be more skips and breaks in the lines because I just felt as if it was better this way. OCs for unnamed Citizens met in Kanama and headcanon heavy for Kimblee and the others, since there wasn't as much flushed out for them and now they're in my sandbox.

Anyways. Don't own FMA. HeinKim rare-pair.

Enjoy

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Solf Josiah Kimblee had never once considered himself a "good person". In his pre-military days, perhaps, he could have been considered a person who did good, but he was born a child with blood already on his hands.

Then again, nearly anyone in the Araunya Slum community got blood on their hands eventually. There was very little one could do in getting around that fact. Either you were born with blood on your hands because you brought your own mother's death, or you became desperate enough to kill— be it for food, money, or something else.

So, yes, Solf J. Kimblee came into the world with blood on his hands and learned from a young age that simply living was a victory in and of itself. And that killing was a fact of life, something normal and an everyday occurrence— until he started venturing from Araunya.

He was eight when he first made it to Kanama, running from his bastard of a father out of fear. They didn't kill their own in Kanama. They protected and cared for them.

He was thirteen when he snuck into Central, wearing dirty clothes and sticking to the back alleys— he stole some nicer, though not fitting, clothing in order to sneak into the Central Library.

He was fourteen when he discovered Alchemy.

He was seventeen when he killed his own father— blew him to bits out of a mix of anger and fear when the man was strangling him for running off to Kanama again. James Waller Kimblee never bothered anyone ever again. No one bothered with the body, his son burned the sad excuse for a house down because the Araunya citizens didn't care.

Twenty when he joined the Military as a State Alchemist.

Solf J. Kimblee grew up with blood on his hands long before joining the military. He grew up with half a mind rooted deep in Araunya's kill-or-be-killed mentality and the other half in Kanama's care-and-be-kind mentality— all wrapped up in the guise of a polite albeit unnerving genius. He grew up and grew detached, accepting orders from a route that he deemed the most interesting. The one that gave him the most freedom.

But after six years sitting and wasting away in prison, he found that side of the oncoming battle... boring.

Or perhaps it wasn't that. Perhaps it had to do with his mind coming out of the fog of madness as his mentality assimilated with the Philosopher's Stone's loud wailing.

Perhaps it was his Araunya-bred nature giving away to the Kanama-nurtured side.

But the fact still stood, Envy was an idiot. They all were.

Why did people assume that when they left another alone for six years and then return, the person would be the same as when they were left?

What idiot gave that same person a tool of mass destruction and sent him off on his own without even asking where his loyalty still was?