I'll Do The Same { Din Djarin x OC}

Chapter Eighteen: Signal

This was beginning to happen a lot.

Waking up suddenly in strange places, surrounded by new things.

But for once, it was calm.

Thell looked around first without moving her head, letting her eyes scan the room. She was in some circular hut made of wooden posts and composed of straw and branches. There was a single window above her head, letting in wisps of fresh air that soothed her soul.

Her mind was still foggy, the events of the past week muddling into one. When she was barely conscious, she could see kind brown eyes hovering over her, pouring water onto her lips. Sometimes, when she could barely see in the night, she heard tromping around in the hut and heard soft talking. But it wasn't English, and Thell didn't recognize any of the words.

It felt like that lasted that way for days, falling in and out of consciousness before waking up in pain all over again. Sometimes she felt soft caresses on her head, like Din used to do, before realizing that the gnarled hands were brown and wrinkled, and the woman tending to her was the one who found her, half dead in the woods. The pain would last for hours, trickling up and down her body like a virus. When it finally did go away, she was too exhausted to do anything but pass out.

It felt like she had lived a lifetime before she could finally wake up properly, and feel able enough to sit up. Thell only hurt when she rose, her bones cracking as she pushed herself to sit up. Her body felt heavy and as if she had been sleeping for years. A course blanket covered her legs on the straw mat she had been sleeping on, and tan bandages wrapped on her upper arm where she had been shot. There was one on her wrist, too, where the drug had been injected. Where her vambrace had been-

She shot up, throwing the blanket off and stumbling off the bed, crashing to the wooden floor immediately. She grunted, hissing in pain while trying to stand up sideways.

The doorway, covered by a small blanket, waved open, and in walked a woman just a few years older than her, black hair streaming to her waist and soft brown eyes. Thell looked up at her from the floor, hair hanging in front of her eyes.

"... where am I?" Thell croaked. She flinched subconsciously as the woman neared her, and she seemed to notice immediately, drawing away and opening her hands.

"I... I'm sorry, I feel so out of sorts," Thell mumbled, pressing a hand to her head. "Everything's so muddled right now... my vambraces, where are they?"

But when she looked back at the woman, she was only staring blankly at her. Thell groaned and pointed to her arm.

"My armor. Do you know where my armor is?" She asked, patting her forearms.

The woman put a finger up, saying something softly before rushing back out of the house. Thell sighed, leaning back on her hands.

There wasn't much in the small house beside the mat she had been sleeping on, and shelves lined with other baskets and herbs. Medicinal supplies, it looked like.

From her spot on the floor, she could see her tunic and outerwear crumpled in a heap on the top shelf. Whoever had dressed her wounds had left her in her undershirt, a simple black shirt without sleeves that hung loose across her hips. Her brown pants seemed unharmed, except for the small charred spot where the electrocution rod had stung her. The memory surged through her like it was happening all over again, and Thell squeezed her eyes shut, trying to slow her breath before she freaked out again.

Turning sideways, Thell clung to the mat as she pushed herself to her feet, lazily grabbing her belongings from the shelf. She had just found her vambraces, to her greatest relief, when the curtain moved out of the corner of her vision.