“Who are you?” Drift breathed, staring into the deep polish of his Great Sword.  The war was over, and though he'd used this blade only once in combat, it was a symbol of so much: his change, his power, who he was, his only link to Wing.

The face reflected, warped by the glyphs his past insured he couldn't read looked back at him, earnest and intense. A face that needed an answer, had always needed answers. A face that had lived too long in darkness, craving light.

He could still see himself from so long ago, though his mouth had long ago lost the scowl, his optics their wild desperation. He could still see the vagrant he had been, careless of life, wanting anything to escape the gutters, even death. He saw Deadlock, fueled by an almost eternal anger and wounded justice, so certain he knew the way that he’d closed his optics.  He could see grief, loss, anger, despair, an entire spectrum of dark emotions: a hundred different shades of darkness; things he had put aside, or tried to: emotions he had tried to master or put behind him.

And he could see, like a limning light, the optimism he had taken up since the end of the war—an almost grim determination to see the bright side, to move forward, away from that grimy past. A sheen that hid, but maybe didn’t alter.

The core was still dark, a gritty, hard, grey flame, needing channel, focus, direction, threatening to overwhelm him, like a wave of darkness pulling him under, like a conflagration jumping a last firebreak of control. He could feel it, surging and flaring inside him, malevolent and dark, like all the shadows of the gutters whipped into a maelstrom of frustrated stillness.

“Who are you?” he asked again, feeling his control stretch and break, staring with a need beyond words at the blue optics reflected in the blade’s flatness, “Who are you without your war?”

The face in the blade still wanted answers, optics hungry, forever burning.