tritanopia | The Mandalorian

eight

To Fae, it was as though she was dreaming.

Not just at that moment, heaving herself across yet another expanse of pure sand, but all the moments.

Since collapsing.
Since being captured.
Since escaping her life.
Since being born.

All of it was wrong.

It all felt as fabricated as the mirage of water in a desert.
As fictional as folklore.
As synthetically constructed as a dream.

It was just one of those dreams where you're loosing all your teeth.

But the strangest factor was that she wasn't dreaming, not at all. In fact, she was very much alive. Life clung to her like a disease — but in the end, that's what being alive is.

Life, clinging and grasping onto you in every single way, and at every opportunity, until one day it just slips. Releases the chokehold it has you in. And then it's gone.

And it wasn't just that Fae felt like she was dreaming, she looked that way, too. Mando couldn't help but notice the distant look in her eyes from the very start, from the moment he met her. Not that she wasn't alert, because she was, but almost as if she was in the passenger seat half the time and someone else was driving her. Controlling her. Her actions weren't her own, and she just had to deal with whatever happened due to that. Due to something else. Someone else.

And such a theory was not all too far from the truth in all honesty.

Her life was not her own.

Fae had been caught up in her own world for practically the entire walk and although Mando usually didn't mind silence in most situations, something about it this time unnerved him. And it takes a lot to unnerve a man like him. He had been watching her out of the corner of his eye; watching the way her eyes were glued to the floor, blinks far apart as if she had forgotten how to properly, one hand playing with the few rings on the other, her lips occasionally moving but producing no sound.

He only noticed he had been looking at her in concern, for possibly too long to continue with the idea he didn't care, when she suddenly looked up at him.

"What colour is your helmet?" She asked.

There it was, the strange questions she asked. First the helmet, then politely asking to be caught, then the Jawas, and then back to the helmet. Mando almost stopped walking due to the fact he was just that puzzled over this girl.

"Silver," He answered firmly, "Why do you keep asking that?" Fae nodded, as if to herself, and then moved on without acknowledging his question at all.

"What about him?" Her hand stretched out to point to the other side of the Mandalorian, uncomfortably with both hands, at the Child. "What colour is he?" That time, Mando did stop walking.

"Are you mentally deficient?" He asked bluntly. Fae's face crumpled slightly, almost unnoticeably, before returning to its usual place — one or two levels above a resting bitch face.

"If I was mentally deficient, I wouldn't have been able to put you on your ass so easily," She replied in an equal tone.

Mando just looked at her, or, Fae assumed he was looking at her — hard to tell with the helmet, before he kept walking like their conversation had never happened.

"Hey!" Fae spoke up as she jogged to be beside him, "You could at least answer the question!"

He scoffed and didn't stop, "Why? You're clearly just...being dumb and trying to annoy me."