tritanopia | The Mandalorian

thirty-two

Most likely being hardly even two seconds away from beating their face in as an interrogation method, Mando was unexpectantly snapped out of his tunnel vision when a trembling face appeared through the red haze that impaired his vision -- the haze which he wasn't completely sure on whether was a result of the lighting, or his blinding fury. A face he was undeniably certain he had to have been blessed by his Maker to allow him to see alive again.

And it was only then that he felt as though he could breath properly once again for the first time in what felt like days, but he knew could only have realistically been hours.

Although, 'alive' may have been somewhat of an overstatement on his part.

It was a terrifying thing to only ever see jigsaw pieces of her face due to the flashing of the lights. It meant Mando was never fully able to comprehend what Fae actually looked like -- having to piece together the general idea from the short snippets of vision he was granted.

Perhaps it was the threatening red hue of the surrounding light, but Fae truly appeared to be separated from death itself by merely a hair's width.

He was talking before he even knew what to say.

"Fae? Oh my- I'm sorry, I didn't know it was-"  As a reflex to the seemingly endless amount of blood that the girl was drenched in, Mando began to release his bruising hold on her arms. But he was forced to tense once again when he felt her begin to slip.

"Don't let go of me...please," Fae whimpered despite the bloody saliva overflowing from her lips as she spoke. And it was almost as if the warm droplets landing on Mando's boots finally caused his deadlocked brain to complete the puzzle and begin to work overdrive once again.

"Fae...what...what the fuck happened!?" His chest was heaving as he looked her up and down, for once in his life finding himself lost for words. Even in the red light he could still see the copious amount of blood. There was so much that it dripped onto the floor where the pair of them stood, but Mando truly couldn't have cared less about the possible staining of his clothes at that point in time.

"Let's say I'm...a little on the dead end of being alive," She paused, but Mando didn't speak, far too preoccupied with the task of hyperventilating under his helmet. She added, "I don't think I can stand, I've...never been in so much pain...frankly I'm struggling to even say this sentence."

There had been times in the past, on Sorgan being just one example, when Fae had been so infuriatingly unaware of the fact that someone cared about her that it made Mando want to yell at her as loud as he possibly could. Even back when he didn't know more than two things about the girl, when she had willingly allowed Mando to press the barrel of his blaster against her forehead, part of him wanted to scold her for being so bloody reckless with her life. So very nonchalant about the prospect of nonexistence. And that exact moment, in some random corridor of a New Republic prison ship with the unmissable scent of fresh iron lingering in the air, was no different.

If Mando wasn't now fighting against the clock with even more pressure than before...he would have lost it.

But he supposed that would have to wait for a later date — perhaps one where Fae wasn't bleeding out would be preferable.

The next fifteen minutes or so would, over time, become a hopeless mirage of red, and worry. Almost some torturous form of jamais vu. Flashes of stone still images that he knew he was supposed to remember, that would project onto Mando's eyelids when he was trying to sleep in a hopeless attempt to forget it all completely.

But despite this, despite managing to let the dead weight of the trauma slip away like blood slowly diluting into water, there was one aspect of it all that Mando would be unlikely to ever subside. Because, although that trauma may have been heavy...nothing is heavier than the body of someone you loved.