Vibrant Eyes | Din Djarin

8: constant

Din wasn't at all surprised to find Cara in the middle of a fight.

But he was in for a surprise when, just as he'd managed to convince her towards their cause, a shadow fell over them and a soft voice hummed familiarly, "Your command of his strength was admirable."

Din looked up and met Venus's piercing lavender eyes.

She was looking at him like she did when they first met, like she could see past the barriers of his helmet straight to his own eyes. She did it with such little effort he wouldn't be too shocked to know it was true. Violated, maybe dishonored, yes, but never shocked. Not with how odd she already proved to be.

Then she looked away to Cara, though not as directly, which he found as strange as the rest of her.

Cara's expression of bewilderment quickly morphed into a proud grin. "It was, wasn't it?"

"Hmm." Venus paused and tilted her head. "His identity changed your mind."

Cara paused and frowned. "What?"

"The Imperial Warlord's."

Of course she'd been listening in.

"Yeah?"

Venus stayed silent but she did purse her lips into a confused smile.

Din and Cara both glanced at the band around her bicep, clear as day as she flaunted it. Anyone who knew anything would recognize what it marked her as. So how did Venus not know?

"Look," Cara said, tapping at the band of ink on her bicep. Venus's brows furrowed heavily in what seemed to be concentration as she seemed to wrestle with her gaze, forcing it to that spot on Cara's arm. But she still didn't look at it fully, a little far off to the right. "Shock trooper."

"Hmm, of course." It sounded oddly like an apology.

Din fiddled with his fingers and shifted in his seat in the silence that followed. She was just as he remembered her. Beautiful, haunting, and infuriating.

"Sorry—" Cara began.

He cut her off. "What did you want?"

Venus blinked at him. "To leave with you."

"Why?"

"Need I have a reason to leave?"

He guessed not. So, he asked instead, "Why would I take you?"

She seemed to think for a moment, and he almost missed the subtle shift in her. The way her shoulders inched back, her chin held itself a little higher, and her eyes seemed to clear of a self-imposed fog. She focused on him entirely with such intention that he fought the urge to tense.

His skin crawled and a shiver crept up his spine under her all-seeing eyes.

"I will watch the Child," she said.

Din exchanged a glance with Cara and when she shrugged with a nod, that was when he sealed his fate with the most confusing woman he ever met.

It brought him to a cramped cockpit. He sat in the pilot's seat with his hands on the controls and messing with the settings of the flight path, Cara leaned against the wall in the back corner behind him, and Venus sat curled up in the other seat. Every time he looked back at her she was still staring out the window, the passing stars reflecting in her eyes as if within her veins lived an entire cosmos and they were permitted a glance of it through the color of her gaze.

She seemed absolutely transfixed in awe, as she had since the moment they left Sorgan behind. So transfixed it became hard to ignore the sheen to her eyes and the single path of a tear that shone against her skin when it fell. All the while, a gentle hand caressed the Child's head and ears.

Din felt a prick of something unfamiliar, a rotten and sour thing curdling in his gut, as he watched the Child babble quietly under her touch as its eyes drooped. Venus would mumble something in return here and there but he never caught exactly what she said. What one-sided conversation she was making with a baby.

But they seemed comfortable enough together that he led Cara down to give her a weapon and left Venus alone with the child, assuming someone was watching him.

Then the ship began to jolt. With each jolt, they were sent flying and he just managed to grab a hold of the ladder and heave himself into the cockpit. As he entered and alarms blared in his ears, red lights flashing across the screens at the helm, it wasn't hard to identify the problem.

Seated practically wrapped around the steering, since he was so small, the child gripped it with both arms and babbled happily as he jerked the ship to and fro. 

Venus was still seated in her seat but at least she looked as alarmed as he felt, hands gripping onto anything she could find with a grip that paled her knuckles. Din narrowly avoided knocking into her as he entered when he was thrown towards the opposite side of the ship, slamming into the window. Cara exclaimed behind him and he rushed forward, plucking the kid from the controls.

As he sat back into his seat and handed it off to Cara, he got to work in righting all of the controls back to normal, marveling at how much he was able to disrupt in such a short time frame. In no time at all, they were floating calmly through the stars once more and he heard the Child babble something to Venus.

Venus who, as the alarms died off and they caught their breath, breathed, "I meant to get you."

Cara, who now stood at the back of his chair, turned around slowly just as he did, to stare at the other woman. His skin began to prickle and heat crawled its way up the back of his neck, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Both stared at her to let her know how insane she sounded.

Get them? Get them? Was she not the one to offer to watch the Child?

Cara huffed. "Weren't you supposed to, I don't know, stop it?"

Venus tilted her head and then she was shooting a sharp look in the Child's direction. It only babbled once more, distracting Din from the first sign of anything but dreaminess that he'd seen in the woman. The first sign of something real.

"He does not take advice well."

"Advice? It's a child," Cara drawled.

Venus's face drew tighter but she said nothing.

Din turned back to the controls. "You still didn't stop him," he said. "Why?"

"I can't fly."

"Can't fly?"

"I bear no wings of my own," she seemed to hum to herself.

There was a moment of silence, of complete incredulity, from Din and Cara. He'd known he would regret her company. The woman was not only infuriatingly vague with every word, but she was also, most definitely, certifiably insane. 

She couldn't even pick the Child up and away from the controls? It would have been as simple as pressing the blinking buttons and holding the steering still until he returned.

But she brought up wings?

"Remind me why you're here again?" Cara asked.

"I wanted to come."

Then the shock trooper sighed and her voice calmed, changing pitches as she faced him again. "We need someone to watch that thing."

Someone else, she meant.

But she was right. "Yeah."

"You got anyone you can trust?"

Someone that wasn't bat-shit crazy? Yeah... Din thought on it for a moment, head tilted, and then set the coordinates for a familiar desert planet. Way too familiar, if you asked him.

But no one did.