Ignorance is Bliss
By Henrika
Henrika- Yeah, I know I'm horrible at actually updating chaptered stories. Forgive me. I have quite a few short FMA fics in my notebook that I hope to get typed soon, along with a mid-length CSI fic. Be on the look-out and don't hesitate to bug me about them.
As for the fic Research Journal, I actually hadn't thought about doing another chapter, but two people mentioned it, so I might give it a try. Don't expect anything too soon.
Anyways, here is another short fic. Enjoy!
There were so many warnings he should have paid attention to in his life, little bit of hard-earned advice that would have prevented some of his worst mistakes. But he was stubborn and hadn't listened and he had paid the price. He had rationalized that human transmutation was taboo just because people wanted to feel better about their failure. He'd lost two limbs and his brother's body because he had been reckless and ignored the forbidden label.
The most important bit of wisdom he had taken for granted was that ignorance was bliss. Before, he had been an innocent child who had lost his mother. Afterwards, all traces of innocence had been gone, his blood and his brother's staining his hands. More people would die in his wake as he began seeking a myth that would ultimately bring destruction and despair to all who sought it.
It would be as he joined the military and began investigating assigned cases that he realized just how sick and sordid the world truly was. People manipulated him for their own purposes, using the secret of their forbidden act against them, to make him follow orders. Others tried to kill him just because he was a State Alchemist or because he had foiled their plans. People slaughtered others without question, sometimes sacrificing family members for the sake of power and alchemy experiments. (All for a power they couldn't define.) Some tried to murder him simply because they loved the sight of blood.
And as he got closer to the Philosopher's Stone, he began to realize just how little he really knew and how much he wished he had never discovered. They had warned him, called it the "Devil's Research", but he sacrificed the meaning of the warning in order to have a chance to fix the mistake his ignorance had caused in the first place.
He finally obtained the truth of the Philosopher's Stone, the truth behind all truths. He would have to sacrifice living human beings, murder them in cold blood, to create the red stone that could beat equivalent exchange. Here was his answer, the final knowledge beyond all the warnings and advice.
And all he wanted was to forget it.
Because ignorance is bliss.
Henrika- Poor Ed. I enjoy torturing him way too much. ;)