AUgust 24 02 Colorless (Irina, Sharon)
a/n: Sharon helps Irina with a lost item. They fail to get lunch.
Sharon plucked the object from Irina's palm before the other woman realized she was there. It was unfair; Irina had been so deep in contemplation that evan a clumsy idiot like Gwin could have managed to swipe it. "You always were one for cheap sentimentality," Sharon laughed, holding her prize smugly.
"Give it back," Irina said flatly. Her eyes shone a silver brighter than the shabby plating on the object in Sharon's hand. Sharon paused to examine it herself. It was a holo-locket, a slim rectangular slab the size of a comm device. Two small rings pressed into the cover. Sharon didn't want to look too closely at the shabby thing, instinctively not wanting its cheapness to contaminate her, but she noted the vaguely floral decorations on the intertwined rings.
"Give it back," Irina repeated, emotion as hidden as a round in a chamber. "I have to return it to its owner."
That tracked; Irina would always defend someone else's toy before she'd protect her own trash. Sharon didn't respond any faster than she had when they were kids. "Who cares? The metal is already flaking and they didn't even bother with colored glass chips. That would have at least livened it up a bit." Irina's hand hung in mid air, unwavering. Sharon huffed and slapped the memento in her palm. "Those aren't even real wedding rings on the cover," she informed Irina. "Just embossed shapes on a cheap generic model. I bet whoever lost it doesn't even care."
"It belongs to someone on my team. Our people care," Irina replied.
"Interceptors aren't that deep, just unimaginative," Sharon snapped back. "So who's the lucky girl?"
"I don't know. It was stuck behind a locker." Irina's cheeks flushed, a sign of her uncertainty. "I found it when we were renovating the Interceptor station."
"Open it up and find out."
"I can't."
"Don't be such a goody-goody. No one cares if you take a quick look." Sharon's voice shifted from impatient to sly. "Unless you're worried that you'll see something naughty."
Irina's blush deepened, but Sharon was immediately disappointed by reason. "I can't. It's locked."
"Hand it over," Sharon demanded. "I'll fix it." She didn't wait for Irina's slow response, once again lifting it from her hand. "I don't even need to pry it open, if that's what you're worried about. Cheap models like this, you can override the fingerpad sensor with a little extra heat." She was waving her lighter beneath it before Irina could protest. The lid popped open just as Irina grabbed it back. "You're welcome."
Irina was examining the inner lid. On the holo-pad, a wire-frame model of black and white triangles struggled to rise into a roughly human shape. "Move your fingers," Sharon told Irina. "You're blocking the picture."
"The engraving is scratched out," Irina said dully. She finally moved her fingers clear of the projection base, but the image didn't resolve into anything more than a flickering placeholder.
"This is a totally generic model," sniffed Sharon. "The face is the only part they personalize, after you buy it, and it must not have been put it in yet."
"Maybe it got corrupted," Irina said.
"Or maybe it got erased. Let me see the engraving."
"It's unreadable," Irina insisted.
"I'm a Curator, sweetie. Let me do my job." Sharon held out her hand, promising herself this was the last time she'd touch the worthless thing. She flicked her comm device over it. "Look, it's pretty clear under magnification. T... a ... t," she spelled out. "How many 'T's does this chick need in her name?"
"Oh," Irina said with sudden realization. "I never thought of her. She resigned from BLADE within the first month."
"Loser."
"She works for Sakuraba now. That's why she never saw the lost-and-found ads I put in the BLADE Bulletin."
"You can drop it off and take me out to lunch as a reward." She was talking to empty air.
Sharon waited outside the entrance to the Industrialist Complex. She'd give Irina 5 minutes and then she'd head to the Commercial District, making trouble for every Interceptor she met along the way. Luckily for that pathetic division, Irina returned in 3 minutes, looking troubled.
"She didn't want it," Irina explained. "A sort-of-friend gave it to her out of the blue and things got awkward. She never wanted it." Irina held the thing like it was a dead bird.
"Great. Now we have to track down the original chump."
"We took a lot of casualties around then," Irina said quietly. She looked at Sharon, her eyes as dull as the case. "I'm not in the mood for lunch. You can have a rain check."
"Nah, give me the piece of junk and we'll call it even," Sharon said, stifling her disappointment. She was hungry and wanted to move on from all this. At Irina's suspicious glance. Sharon smiled with all her teeth. "A little jewelry polish and I bet I can make a quick credit if I use some sob story. Suckers are easy to fool and don't you forget it," she advised Irina.
Sure enough, the memento was almost pretty after a good cleaning. Sharon opened the pad and watched the vague outline of a young woman rise, arms reaching for an unseen partner. Black and white and shades of grey, flickering but never condensing. She stared at it too long, then snapped it shut when the model's eyes flickered silver.
a/n: I'm proud I managed not to name the OCs.
Next up: It has to be shorter. Dark Academia. I don't know what that is but I am eager to learn.