Vibrant Eyes | Din Djarin

19: good,

The building they were in exploded as they left and Venus led the way into the tunnels, striding forward into the darkness as if it were light.

He didn't know how she knew, but soon after they rounded a corner, the light from his helmet landed on a familiar trio. She probably used that... sight of hers. She'd certainly predicted stranger things before so he shouldn't have been surprised. She always managed to surprise him anyway and he had a sneaking suspicion that she always would.

As Din hobbled closer at IG-11's side, Cara rushed forward with the child in hand, grinning. 

She strode right past Venus and checked him over before handing the Child to the IG unit and wrapping his arm around her shoulders instead. Din was still unstable on his feet and gripped at her tightly, allowing her to bear a majority of his weight. Karga followed just at his back as they wandered further into the dark tunnels. The IG with the kid, and likely Venus at its side, clacked with each step at the rear of the group.

They wandered the unfamiliar tunnels until they found something familiar to him. At that point he stood on his own two feet, leading the way and scanning for prints. But what they found froze him in his tracks.

In the dark of the tunnels where his covert once lived in hiding, but lived nonetheless, lay a pile of armor. Not just armor. Helmets. Countless of them with cracked visors and smoke stained paint upon precious beskar lit under the glare of his light. 

The remnants of a lost battle upon each and every piece and a testament to the lives ended. As long as they lived, as long as they breathed, they lived their creed. Their helmet would only be removed in death. And this was... there were so many...

He flicked the light off with a numbing feeling coursing through his veins and each step towards the pile felt like it would be his last. He lowered himself to kneel before the pile and gently lifted a helmet in his gloved hands. The warm light pouring from openings and vents high on the walls of the tunnel glowed against the golden paint of its lower half and he turned it to examine it. 

Looking into the cracked visor, he thought he saw specks of blood and... he remembered this helmet. A woman, one he'd pass as she guided scores of foundlings down the halls.

He really didn't want to think about all the others he knew that lay there, the equivalence of flesh and bone left behind. 

As haunting as any corpse.

Someone walked up beside him, and a shadow fell over that glow, dimming it into nothing. "We should go," Cara said softly.

He could hardly stomach leaving their armor laying here like this.

"You go. Take the ship. I can't leave it this way." Suddenly remembering the man that stood with him, the man he was beginning to trust, Din turned his head sharply behind him. When he spoke, it was with harsh edges and a grieving rage. "Did you know about this? Is this the work of your bounty hunters?"

Karga didn't hesitate, daring to act like he was the one being irrational when they were all gone because of—"No! When you left the system and took the prize, the fighting ended and the hunters just melted away!"

Din looked back into the shattered remains of the helmet in his hands. It began as something tight in his chest, something that tried to suffocate him under its wrath. Then it began to change into something worse. 

A living thing under his skin, like the souls of the dead crying out through him.

"You know how it is. They're mercenaries, they're not zealots!"

He let go of her helmet, her remains, and spun around as he stood. "Did you do this? Did you?!" he barked, begging for an answer, for a reason to this madness, and advanced on the man he called a friend.

"No!"

Then a calm voice, with the familiar manipulation of a modulator, called, "It was not his fault."

Din turned, hope at the familiar drawling tone lightening the hold of anger on his control. The Armorer strode from the darkness of another tunnel, the golden hue of her helmet glimmering under the light just as the helmet laying before them. He'd never before felt so relieved to see her, or any other Mandalorian for that matter.

"We revealed ourselves. We knew what could happen if we left the covert. The Imperials arrived shortly thereafter. This is what resulted."

Din shifted his weight. "Did any survive?"

"I hope so. Some may have escaped off-world."

He hesitated a moment. "Come with us."

The woman continued to collect the fallen armor into the floating crates at her side. "No. I will not abandon this place until I have salvaged what remains."

Then she strode off and, after a moment, Din followed.