he air simmered, dust particles swirling through the air as a figure dragged himself through the heat. Pieces of blackened metal littered the ground, craters denting the once soft surface. The figure stumbled, falling to the ground as he spread his fingers against the cracked earth. He breathed in heavily, inhaling the dry air greedily as he stared at his bloody hands. His mouth curved into a sad smile, the split lip stretching in a way that must have hurt. He didn't seem to notice that his skin was covered in bruises and burns, cuts and blood, or that his eyes were dark with exhaustion. He just stared at his hands, watching as thin streams of scarlet ran down his fingers and into the ground.
Without a sound, he pulled himself back up to his feet and continued to stumble toward a large rock, pulling off his tattered suit jacket as he went. He tripped and fell, one, two, three times, but each time he forced himself back to his feet, not sparing a glance at his hands that were now dripping with red. His eyes flicked from one scrap of metal to the next, growing darker with grief and sorrow and regret each time they found confirmation of his guilt. Sagging against a rock, he stared up at the sun beating down mercilessly on the wasteland.
"'Don't waste your life.'" he murmured, his voice raspy and cracked, but the words belonged to someone else. His fingers fumbled to undo the buttons of his shirt. A soft blue glow immediately shone outward, but he had no admiration for the beauty and fitted his fingers around the device to lift it from his chest with a click and a hiss. He let the battery fall without looking at it, bouncing off his sternum and into a small pile of sand with a soft thud.
"Did I, Yinsen?" His breaths became short and irregular, his chest rising with a jolt every time he breathed in. He wrenched a jagged piece of metal out of the sand, ignoring his bloody fingerprints on the surface, and swiped a thumb over the slight curve of the steel. He knew what it was. His father's name, his name, stared back at him, but he did not want to claim what had caused so many people pain. He dropped it next to the battery, and turned his eyes to the sky, alight with intelligence one last time as if he knew all the secrets of the universe (and maybe he did).
"I don't know."