Title: Neverland
Author: S J Smith
Rating: Teen
Summary: What if Kimblee didn't die in the Promised Day battle? What if Grumman wasn't available to step in and take control of the country? What if the alchemists were suddenly considered Enemy Number One by the military?
Warnings: This is an alternate reality, and as such, things do not happen quite the way they did in the manga; people live, people die, people remain alchemists… There will be violence, deaths, sex, and other stuff. I've stolen Frank Archer from the 2003 anime, however, you probably won't recognize him.
Disclaimer: Arakawa's world is hers. This is a tribute to her incredible work, and as such, I make absolutely no money. Likewise, I do not own any of the lyrics listed in this story as chapter headings. As I'm unsure who wrote most of the songs, the lyrics are attributed to the artist(s) who sang them.

Prologue: Death
…if you think Peace
Is a common goal
That goes to show
How little you know
- The Smiths, "Death of a Disco Dancer"

The battlefield lay covered in dust, a haze still hanging in the air. Somewhere, an armored alchemist stalked across the land, but Zolf J. Kimblee sank into the dirt, choking on his own blood.

A creature that resembled a child stood above him, licking its lips. Kimblee knew Pride would take his life. The power within him would heal Pride before the homunculus ventured into Central City, to play the part that had been written for it since Father conceived of the idea of the Promised Day. As its enormous maw snapped up Kimblee, he considered his life. Beyond the pain he'd felt, he didn't regret the things he'd done. He'd wanted to see what would happen, if the homunculi would survive, or the humans. Now, he'd know for sure. And with such a ringside seat, inside the smallest of the homunculi, he knew he'd be in for a good show. Despite the blood-red interior, it was almost cozy. Certainly a place for a sinner like himself. What surprised Kimblee was there was no one else within the homunculus. Even though there were souls there, making up Pride's Philopher's Stone, none of them seemed even the slightest bit coherent. Whatever they had been, they existed only as their memories now, providing energy for Pride. Just as his life had been taken from him to bolster Pride's Philosopher's Stone, these souls remained to give Pride power.

Kimblee wondered at that, briefly, but decided it was no concern of his. Whatever happened now, it was in the hands of Pride, and the other homunculi. He was a bystander for as long as he retained his own consciousness, unable to take part in the final battle that lay ahead.

The only thing he could do was sit back, figuratively, and watch.

X X X

Winry woke, the cold, hard surface she lay on sapping at her body's warmth. From the way she wheezed, her lungs didn't seem to be working right. Her vision blurred, cleared somewhat, then blurred again, until she realized her eyes and nose were running. Fumbling with her apron, she tried to clear her eyes, at least. She wiped her nose a couple of times before giving up. It was just going to run. Whatever had happened, her sinuses were affected.

She tried to think past the headache pounding through her skull, worse than any blacksmith's hammers. For a few seconds, the recent past remained a blur, then, suddenly, her memories returned.

Her stomach protested the memory, and Winry swallowed hard to keep from puking. Pressing her fingers to her mouth, she tried to forget the horrid sensation. Her own soul had been sucked from her body, only to wind up trapped, along with millions of other souls, within a container that seemed dark and dangerous. She didn't know what'd prompted their escape, only that it had happened; the container had cracked like a too-full jar, releasing all those within from their captivity.

Hands covering her mouth, a name still escaped amidst the coughing, one that might've been deciphered as, "Ed," if there had been anyone to care. Winry clutched at her aching chest, all thoughts of Edward Elric and his little brother, Alphonse, driven from her head as she coughed again. Her head pounded in time to her pulse, beating rapidly, as if to make up for – something. Adrenaline rush, she thought, trying to push up; her elbows wouldn't lock for a second and nearly pitched her back down to the cold cement floor. Still coughing, she pushed up to a sitting position through sheer force of will.

Winry shook her head slightly, trying to clear the buzzing from her ears. Basement, she thought, she'd been hiding in the basement after she'd finally gotten back home to Risembool. Coughing again, she groaned, her hand moving up to her forehead, as if she could push the headache out of her skull that way.

Glancing around the room, her eyes lit on her grandmother's form, still sprawled on her side. Winry's heart twisted. "Granny?" She crawled across the floor, ignoring the way the concrete scraped her knees. "Granny?" A cough racked her body but she kept moving, finally reaching her grandmother. Winry laid her hand on Pinako's shoulder, giving it a gentle shake. "Granny, come on, please," she said, turning the old woman onto her back.

Half-lidded eyes stared up at the ceiling, one of Pinako's hands knotted in the blouse of her dress. Winry gulped air, fingers fumbling at the pulse point. "No, no, no, no…"

"Miss Rockbell!" She heard Sergeant Michelson scrambling across the floor.

"Granny, you have to wake up," Winry said, pressing her fingers harder into Pinako's neck. "Please, Granny."

Sergeant Michelson elbowed her out of the way, tilting Pinako's head back and clearing her airway. He blew a puff of air into her mouth, tilting his head to listen closely, then blew three more puffs. "Do you know how to breathe for someone, Winry?" She nodded jerkily as he moved down Pinako's form, starting chest compressions. "Then you'll need to give her air."

Winry bent down over Pinako, inhaling deeply as Sergeant Michelson counted out his compressions. She blew into her grandmother's mouth, wondering if the tears she tasted were her own, or Granny's.

X X X

Alphonse woke with a snort, blinking a few times. The smell inside the room struck him first, antiseptics and soap and, underneath it all, a hint of death. He licked his dry lips, his fingers fumbling along until he found the reason for the bite of pain in his elbow. Taped in place, an I.V. needle transported liquids from a bag hanging from a pole. He remembered when he'd arrived at the hospital, the doctors and nurses congregating around him like a flock of buzzards. He'd heard whispers about how lucky he was to even be alive. He wondered if they had any idea that they were the lucky ones. Their souls had been returned to them; they'd survived the Promised Day. Alphonse didn't have any idea what Father had planned on doing with his chosen sacrifices after he'd created his Philosopher's Stone and captured the Truth. Whatever it had been, Alphonse was pretty sure the chosen sacrifices would have been allowed to live, if only to prove how useless they were. Father might have eventually even ground them down into the next batch of Sins to help him take over the world.

"So, you're awake," a raspy voice greeted him.

Alphonse gasped, reveling at the sensation. "Brother!"

Swathed in bandages, his brother lay in the next bed. Edward looked lopsided with his right arm missing, but a huge smile, not his usual scary one, wreathed his face. "Yeah. In the flesh. Just like you!" Somehow, his grin grew at the stupid joke.

Alphonse blinked, feeling tears stinging his eyes. "You didn't get your arm back."

Edward waved him off. "It's okay. Winry needs something to bitch about; an arm and a leg isn't a bad price to pay."

"What else did you have to pay to bring me home?" The question hung between them for a few seconds. Alphonse found he had time to marvel over the vision of his brother, not filtered through a red haze for the first time in literally years. "Ed?"

"I'm fine, Al." The smile faded somewhat, but Edward met his eyes, and wasn't glaring, so Alphonse knew he wasn't lying. "Truth said we paid enough."

"Really?" It didn't seem like the Truth and its strange sense of propriety. "Why?"

Edward shrugged; a peculiar sort of motion with only one arm to flap. "How the hell should I know how Truth thinks?" He turned on his side so he could meet Alphonse's eyes more readily. "Let it go. We're here, together. That's what's important. And soon," his smile began warming again, "we'll be going home."

"And we'll see Winry and Granny's smiles," Alphonse agreed, and, despite how his arm trembled, he managed to reach across the gap between their beds to bump his fist into Edward's.

X X X

Winry wanted to scream at the woman on the other end of the line. "Edward Elric," she repeated, again. "Major. Edward. Elric."

"I'm sorry, miss," the woman interrupted. Again. "I'm afraid I cannot give out any information at this time."

"I don't care if you can't give out any information!" Winry only just refrained from shrieking. "I need to get a message to him!" Reining her temper in, she asked, "Is he alive? Please." Her breath caught in her throat, and she had to bite her lip to keep from sobbing. "Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist. His little brother, Alphonse."

"I'm sorry, miss." The voice on the other end didn't sound apologetic at all. "I cannot take messages at this time."

Fury seemed to tinge everything red. Winry opened her mouth to blast out a response when Sergeant Michelson plucked the receiver from her hand. "Good afternoon," he said, holding up a finger to keep Winry quiet. "This is Sergeant Michelson. The code is," and he rattled off a bunch of nonsense with a straight face. "The Fullmetal Alchemist is needed in Risembool for a family emergency. There has been a death – yes." He frowned slightly. "Yes…I understand. Thank you for your time." Replacing the receiver in its cradle, Michelson turned to Winry. "I'm sorry, Miss Rockbell. No one's getting through to H.Q. right now, not even with the proper codes."

Winry wanted to pick up the receiver, no, the whole telephone kit, and throw it across the room. Instead, she nodded stiffly. "All right," she said, "all right. Thank you for trying." She'd hold the funeral alone, without the boys, because Granny and Den couldn't wait any more. Turning away from Sergeant Michelson, she walked to the stairs, heading for her room. "You two better be alive," she whispered, her voice shaking. "Granny won't forgive you for this if you aren't."

X X X

A child, more the size of an embryo than a newborn, supped rich goat's milk from an eye dropper. The older woman who fed it wiped its mouth and chin with a soft cloth before sucking up more warm milk in the dropper. They were in a small room, decorated in the ways of baby's rooms everywhere, with soft colors and cute animals decorating various surfaces.

The being who had been known Pride, or its alias, Selim Bradley, had controlled this body. Pride, though, had been beaten by a boy, a young man, an alchemist, who had cracked through the homunculus's outer shell, had crawled into the ether inside the Philosopher's Stone that made up Pride's self. That boy had reduced the homunculus to nothing more than this embryonic creature, something barely in control of its bowels, much less its body. This child's form housed the soul and mind of a man who had retained his personality and sense of self, beyond any other person whom Pride had swallowed up.

Now, the man thought, now was the time to act.

Kimblee opened the eyes of his new, tiny body. He heard a delighted coo from the old woman, and smiled. Her delighted reaction turned to horror when his maw widened impossibly huge, larger even than the body itself. His tongue spun out of his mouth to loop around the woman like a lasso. She didn't even have time to scream before his jaws chomped twice, breaking muscle and bone and soul down to component parts. As that fuel spread through his miniscule form, Kimblee used it to stretch the body, making it conform to one he knew all too well – his own figure.

Sitting up, Kimblee picked up the hand towel to wipe his mouth of the flecks of blood and splinters of bone. A movement at the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he turned toward it, recognizing his own reflection. He was naked, but no scars remained of his previous adventures. Reformed, his skin retained a youthful elasticity, with no wrinkles to mar it. His hair hung loose and thick almost to his mid-back, no stray gray hairs to dull its appearance. Kimblee smiled at the mirror. "Welcome back."

Transmuting what was left of the bedding into suitable clothes took no time at all. Kimblee found a brush on the dresser and made use of it, a tie gathering up his hair into a ponytail. Sadly, he found nothing of wool or felt, to make himself a hat, but surely he'd locate something appropriate if he kept looking. Besides, it wasn't often that a man was given a second chance at life. Kimblee planned on making the most of it.

He nodded at his reflection, and made his way out of the house, using the back door. It wouldn't do to announce his presence too early, after all, not until he'd found out what had happened while he'd been sleeping.

X X X