Vibrant Eyes | Din Djarin

4: full

He was still thinking about his slip-up as he stood before the gathered village after he and Cara went to scout the woods and found the tracks of an AT-ST.

"Bad news," he said. "You can't live here anymore."

Many of them began to murmur uneasily.

"What?"

"Why?"

Cara muttered, "Nice bedside manner."

"You think you can do better?"

She nodded. "Can't do much worse."

Yeah, so it was a bit of a rough approach. He could recognize that.

He stepped back as she strode to the front of the wooden porch they stood upon. "I know this is not the news you wanna hear, but there are no other options."

One of the men that he first met called out, "You took the job!"

"Yeah!"

"That was before we knew about the AT-ST."

The same man asked, "What is that?"

"The armored walker with two enormous guns that you knew about and didn't tell us."

After quite a lot of pleading from the people and no sign of remorse, Cara brought up the point that there were only two of them against a walker.

"No there's not. There's—at least 20!"

"I mean fighters. Be realistic!"

"We can learn!"

"We can!"

Then someone called out, "Ira can fight! I've seen her do it!"

The shouts began to quiet down and that was when he saw her. Wandering slowly around the edges of the crowd, the aforementioned woman held her head high and slowed to a halt. All eyes sought her out with hope as she turned to face them, head tilted in thought. 

He'd never before seen someone so... out of it.

"Hmm," she hummed, raising a hand to trace the material of the hut beside her. "If I need to."

Though their respect for her was obvious, their disappointment in her soft, absent answer was even more so. Din stifled a chuckle when she grimaced the moment they turned away. Even as she continued wandering away.

"Just... give us a chance!"

"Please."

"I've seen that thing take out entire companies of soldiers in a matter of minutes."

The unrest continued to rise until Omera looked at Cara and said, "We're not leaving."

They all quieted down.

"You cannot fight that thing."

Din almost sighed and looked at Cara. "Unless we show them how," he told her.

So, they did. 

When asked, Omera was the only one who knew how to use a blaster. Even when Cara approached Ira at his request (he needed to keep his distance from her), she must have said something truly absurd because the shock trooper just walked back chuckling, shaking her head when he asked about it. In the end, their plans turned out successful. The AT-ST sunk into the mud, the villagers fought off the raiders themselves, and the casualties were limited to a building and a nasty scratch or two.

Din didn't see Ira through the entirety of it. 

Not until he followed as the parents rushed to check on their children. When they stood in the open door of the hut they'd hidden in, a surprising sight greeted them. Every child in the village lay piled on the ground and at its center sat Ira, both hands gently stroking heads of hair in a soothing motion. 

And laying on the ground just inside was a sole raider with a broken neck. 

After the initial scare of seeing the raider, the children all rushed up to hug their parents. After whispered thanks to Ira from each of them, they filed out until it was just the two of them left.

Ira shifted into a cross-legged stance and tilted her head at him with a dreamy smile. The Child smiled up at him from her lap.

Din glanced at the raider lying dead at his feet. When he crouched to feel his skin, it was still warm. And she had been buried in the limbs of all the children.

"How did you do it?" he asked.

Ira hummed. "Kill a man from here?"

He stood up and towered over her, but she didn't seem to mind nor notice. "Yes."

"Easily."

He tried to ask her for more, but she wouldn't answer him, simply staring at him with that beautiful gaze.

So he switched topics. "You saw."

Ira's lip twitched up, briefly. "What did I see?"

"I took my helmet off. You saw."

Ira frowned and looked behind him. "I did?"

He checked over his shoulder just in case. "Yes."

She hummed again. "No, I didn't."

Din huffed, fighting against the now-familiar warmth of his anger and frustration on the back of his neck. "Yes, you did. You watched and you did not look away."

"Apologies, then."

"So you saw."

Ira chuckled to herself. "I am not apologizing for something I did not see," she clarified. "Keep your helmet on."

He wasn't sure what to make of that statement. Was she trying to be funny? Because he didn't find this funny at all.

Regardless, the Child babbled something at her.

He did his best to ignore him. "If you saw, I can never put this back on again."

"I didn't see your face, dreamy as I'm sure it is. Keep it on," she drawled.

Some of the airiness left her tone and when she blinked at him, expression pulled the tiniest bit tighter, he realized this was the most lucid he'd seen her. There was a solidity to her words that didn't float as they often did, and he tilted his head to study her once more. 

This woman made no sense.

"How did you not?"

She only shrugged and the lucid woman faded away in an instant.

So, Din took the Child into his arms and left with a frustrated huff, more confused than ever.