tritanopia | The Mandalorian

thirty-six

There is an unspoken difference between a father and a dad. A difference that somebody may never quiet grasp until they have experienced it for them self. Any man can naturally be a father, but to be dad is an entirely different thing. It actually requires care, and patience, and the need to protect -- for the right reasons. A dad is not created purely through blood, but could instead be through the connection of two souls in one form or another.

Not every biological father is a dad -- and not every dad is a biological father.

The thing about Fae is that she met her father before she met her dad...twice...well, that was what she believed. It could be argued that Fae's view of her biological father should have been nothing but positive -- seeing as, to her, he died in order to protect her -- but it was hard for her, especially as time went on, to preserve that opinion. It was practically an impossible thing, seeing as she had lived with Imperial propaganda being forced down her throat since she had been a toddler. So, as her few memories of the man faded, that image of her father was replaced by a new one. A present one. One that promised her security, and power, and praise -- things that her real father could no longer do. What else was she supposed to do, as a young girl in need of dad, other than just let it happen? And, to be fair to Gideon, it did almost completely work. Maybe if Fae had stayed for a few more years...she would have been utterly converted to his side of things. But, like he had said himself, she was insufferably stubborn, far too much for her own good sometimes, and she did leave. Maybe that was a good thing, or maybe it wasn't...it was hard for Fae to tell when she looked in the mirror and saw what the outside word had done to her.

But, just as her mind finally connected who the man stood in front of her actually was, every version of her biological father that she had stored away in her memory were all simultaneously eradicated -- the bad, and especially the good. One of the few favourable features that still remained of him was the way he cared about her so deeply that he, along with Fae's mother, was willing to die before he let her go. Yet there he was, mere feet away, just as alive and breathing as she herself was. And that was the short story of how Fae came to the realisation that she had no dad, perhaps never did, and the closest thing she ever had was an Imperial warlord.

"Aren't you going to give me a hug, sweetheart?" The man, whose name Fae had forgotten a lifetime ago, asked condescendingly as he stretched out his arms. "Aren't you glad to see me?"

The sound of gravel beneath boots was the result of pure instinct. All four of Fae's limbs had become phantoms; completely transparent in feeling and impossible to consciously move. The lightsaber still in her hand barely hanging from her fingers; most likely staying in place due to the sudden clamminess of her palm. It was a miracle that she did not trip over her own feet as they dragged tracks in the dust where they merely managed to lift themselves from the ground in order to take a step.

She stopped short, just out of arms reach of him, and the pair simply studied each other for an amount of time that neither of them would ever be able to measure. To Fae, it felt as though it was only the two of them left in the galaxy -- as though it had only ever been the two of them. But not in the comforting way that you may hear described in books or movies; where it's just the two of them and neither had ever felt so connected to the other. No...they felt like the only two people in the galaxy, and that caused Fae to feel such an overwhelming sense of loneliness that she feared would never go away. Because, if he was the only other person left, then Fae really had nobody at all.

"Who are you?"

The three words seethed from Fae's lips, barely audible as her clenched jaw refused to move, and hung firmly in the tense space between them. The man's arms dropped but his face did not.