Shards

Polishing Pt. 1

Shard doesn't say anything as he enters the cell with lunch. The periwinkle in his watchful eyes swirl.

Shard and Octavia eat in silence. His eyes continue to swirl like a projector at a planetarium. Focusing on and wondering about his strange eyes is easier than letting thoughts of the interview and haunting voice of the propaganda bounce in endless circles. The dragging silence tempts her mind to transfix on them.

Octavia swallows her last bite of carrot. "Why?" she asks.

Something sparkles in Shard eyes. "Why what?"

"Why do your eyes..." Octavia searches for the right words. "...do these weird things?"

Shard sighs. The sparkle and swirl stop, but his eyes assume a mischievous squint. "Are you actually asking me a question? A question about me?" He snatches Octavia's hand. "We could be buddies yet!" Shard holds and swings it. "Look at you being all concerned for me!"

"No!" Octavia snatches her hand back. "Will you ever stop touching me?" She huffs. "I just want to know why your eyes are weird."

A silent laugh bounces Shard's shoulders for a moment. "There's nothing else you want to know about?" he asks when he stops. He cranes his neck to the side. His eyes grow wider than Octavia had ever seen them go before. "Absolutely nothing else?"

"No. Only your freaky eyes," Octavia says.

Shard's allusions to what she has been forced to watch couldn't be more obvious, but questions would lead to further manipulation from Shard. He is already messing with her head. She refuses to open a door to let him walk right in.

"Hurtful," Shard says. He wipes an imaginary tear away. "But not inaccurate." He shrugs and shifts in his chair. "Ya see, a long time ago..." Shard's gaze moves to the distance past Octavia. His jaw shifts. A wave of darkness comes over his irises. They turn chocolate. His hair appears to start getting darker, too, until he jumps in his chair and frames his face in his hands. Periwinkle returns in a blink. "I did work in the cosmetic field. And they chose quite the model, didn't they?" He strikes a few poses - putting his hand behind his head, whipping his head to the side, pointing gun fingers, winking.

Moaning, Octavia buries her face in her hands.

"Not that I had much of a choice to, but I was quite the cute kid," Shard says. He flutters his eyes. "Until there was the incident with the acid," he taps his chin, "and I had to have a career change. Or at least the circumstances surrounding the incident strongly influenced a career change. Anyways, the cosmetic folks wanted to up the ante with the newly premiered - at the time - EyeDye and make MooDyes, EyeDye that changes colors with your mood. I was one of the first few to try it out." He glances to the side. "And one of the last. The MooDyes didn't quite work the way it was intended. "The colors and effects were not the desired ones," he holds a finger up for each thing he lists, "it didn't wear off, it gave some of us night vision accompanied by glow-in-the-dark eyes, injections were excruciatingly pa-"

Sharp beep beeps cut off Shard.

"Shit," he mutters. He shoots out of his chair and whips a small, square, plastic object from his jacket sleeve. Pressing a button on it with his thumb, he holds it to his ear. Audio crackles out of it.

Through its distance and low quality, Octavia overhears something about the Tarnished and hostages.

"Shit!" Shard shouts. "Tarnished are at it big this time," he tells Tam and Marque.

Shard fiddles with the plastic piece when a group of a couple men and a few women rush up to the cell. All are armed with pistols except for one man with a shotgun in hand.