Fae thought that if she relaxed her body, she'd fall apart. She had lived that way for most of her life, and it was the only way she knew how to keep on living. If she relaxed for a second, she was afraid she'd never find her way back. She would shatter into pieces, and the pieces would be blown away.
Why couldn't people see that?
Eventually Fae became fatigued of way the entire village looked at her. Word had gotten around, likely due to Omera, about what had happened, and had led to every solitary soul treating her like fine china. Which had, in turn, led Fae to avoid them whenever the opportunity presented itself. Each sympathetic, what-a-shame, glance, and every whisper behind cupped hands, meant more to Fae than the people actually intended. All in all, they treated her as though she was weak — needed protecting. But Fae wasn't allowed to be weak; wouldn't dare settle for being regarded as something that needs protecting. So, she stayed away from them. After all, they can't stare at her if she's never there to be perceived in the first place.
"I'm tired," Fae muttered, her gaze unmoving from where they attempted to make shapes out of the clouds far above her head. "These people make me feel like I have a hole in the middle of me. And not even just in the way that they stare as if I'm missing a limb — it's as if they all having something I don't, and simply by being around them has finally made me notice it's absence. Like when you can't feel a wound until you look at it."
The breeze rustling the leaves was the only thing to fill the silence which followed for the next few seconds; it was perfectly peaceful. And then-
"What are you...talking about?"
When Mando had began his mission of seeking out Fae, he had very much expected it to be a one way conversation — well, at the beginning anyway. In fact, he hadn't heard her talk for as long as she just had in weeks, and especially nothing that personal.
"What we would eventually circle around to, no matter what I tried," She drawled out matter of factly from where she lay, "You would ask what I was doing, I'd say nothing; you would ask what was wrong, I'd say nothing; you would get angry and try to force it out of me, and then I'd start talking simply to shut you up. And honestly, I just wanted to get it over with — so here we are."
It was quiet again, Fae running the fingers of her right hand through the overgrown grass of the clearing she had discovered. As for the fingers on her left hand — we don't talk about them. It was so quiet that Fae would have presumed Mando had left, although he was not often a light footed man where it was not necessary, so she would have heard him if he had.
Eventually he moved, to sit down beside her. When he didn't talk even then, Fae could've sworn she physically felt his gaze on her injured hand — and the guilt which radiated from him immediately afterwards. As nonchalantly as possible, she took that hand and placed it behind her head to rest on, and where it couldn't be seen.
"And what do they have that you don't?" He asked carefully, like he was trying not to scare off a small creature.
Fae sighed, features taken over by a hint of sadness, before weakly replying, "I don't even know. They just seem so...happy. Not even just happy, they're emotional in general. All of them...feel things, so easily. Why can't I?" Her eyes found his visor, pleading and fearful. "Half the time I don't feel anything at all...and whenever I do it's always so...painful. Even happiness, it's painful and it burns my brain and all I want is for it to stop. Why don't they feel the same?"
She wasn't crying, surprisingly — her voice did not crack once. It wasn't sadness she was feeling, it was confusion and exhaustion and absolute desperation. Fae didn't want tears, she wanted answers and reassurance.
"Fae, you're probably just shaken up from what happened-"
"No," She snapped, quickly sitting up and running both hands through her curls, "This is not that. Stop blaming every little thing on that fucking raider, okay? Incase you didn't realise, Mando, I wasn't exactly a ray of fucking sunshine beforehand. It's been kriff knows how long — maybe forever — and it's...it's as if everyone else is just better at living than I am."
Mando was quiet. Perhaps too quiet — maybe he should have responded faster. But internally he was just trying to make sure that he didn't fuck it all up. He was leaving, and he had to make this last moment go as smooth as possible. Not even for Fae; after all, he was a selfish man, and he was mostly doing so for his own conscience.
"So you...don't care about the raider anymore?" He shouldn't have asked, he knew that. There was a high chance that Fae was just avoiding the feelings she didn't want to face — at least, that was what he was hoping for. If she suddenly turned around after such a horrific event and didn't care, that would be concerning.
She shrugged, eyebrows furrowing, and said, "Men go off to war, kill people every day, then come back and get on with their lives. His life is over, not mine."
Mando would probably never admit to the fear that gnawed at his gut after what the young girl said so plainly. She was lying, she had to be. He had been there, had seen the terror in her eyes; and had comforted her after the nightmares which followed. Yes, of course she was lying. Of course.
"You don't mean that," Sunlight bounced off of his visor as he shook his head pointedly.
Fae then sighed herself; strongly through her nose, which could also have been interpreted as a scoff of sorts. The type of scoff which rather successfully got across her opinion of, 'you don't know what you're on about, old man'.
"Why are you here?" She finally spoke after a period of silence — silence save for the constant ruckus of nature, emitting from every nook and cranny of the surrounding area. Eyes downcast to fix on the blade of grass her nimble fingers picked apart, Fae didn't look at him. Out of the corner of her eye, she couldn't help but notice the way his body tensed — somehow even more than usual. She discarded the grass, raising her head to look at his visor once again, to say, "What?"
The tension, almost awkward, which enveloped to two, could have been cut with a knife. Fae's reflection stared back at her, Mando's eyes hidden away behind the opaque black. His shoulders rose and fell as he took several deep breaths. Mando had naively believed that this moment would have been far easier than it turned out to be. Fae couldn't see, but he was desperately trying to speak; the words simply dying in his throat before they could be made known. Admittedly, he was getting frustrated with himself — he wanted to get it over with. So, with one last deep breath, he finally spoke.
"I'm leaving," The words were strained, like his lungs were reluctant to allow him the necessary air to say such words. Half of his brain frantically begging him to stop, to change his mind. After all, he still could. The point of no return was simultaneously a dot in the distance, and on the tips of his fingers — both twists of fate separated by one simple sentence he was yet to utter.
Fae, on the other hand, immediately radiated an intense feeling of relief as her face lit up more than Mando thought he had ever seen, "Oh, finally," Quickly standing up as she spoke, Mando following just as fast, she began to walk towards the village, "I'm so sick of this place."
"Ugh- where are you going?" He asked hastily.
Fae scoffed once again, "To go pack, so we can leave sooner. I'll get the Child, too."
Mando could have, very easily, just not corrected her. But he had to, for all of their sakes. For safety, that was the bottom line — she and the Child would be safe.
"You aren't coming," He was still standing in the spot which they had been sat; head hung with shame like a coward. He heard her stop walking, the snapping of branches underneath her feet suddenly ceased. "Neither is the Child," He continued — deciding to just succumb to the inevitable, and allow the last nail in the coffin to take its rightful place.
It was silent again, like it often is between the pair. Mando finally looked up once he realised that the screaming match he had previously predicted had not ensued — yet.
Both of Fae's hands were clenched tightly by her sides; the left was noticeably trembling, the fingers not completely screwed up — as if they were struggling to do what her reflexes willed them to. The girl hadn't turned, her flaming hair facing him instead, and her gaze lowered slightly to the ground.
"It will be safer for you here, Fae," Mando said, attempting some broken form of damage control, "You can have a life, a proper life, and so can the Child. It's better this way-"
The knife was snatched from Fae's thigh and imbedded into the bark of the tree behind Mando before he could say another word. Obviously the motion of doing so had forced the girl to turn around, the look which had taken control of her features sent a menacing shiver down Mando's spine. It wasn't just the one emotion; and whatever it was, it was hard to read. She looked...betrayed, but also angry, and upset, and grieving — almost. Her jaw ticked as it clenched firmly shut, eyes blazing and dangerous.
Mando whipped his head around to asses the knife, before turning back around and scolding with a pointed finger, "What the fuck, Fae? That was dangerous-"
"You gave me hope and then you took it away, that's enough to make anyone dangerous, Mando — god knows what it will do to me," It was almost unbelievable how such a small girl could produce such a venomous tone; but somehow Fae managed it.
Her eyes looked him up and down in disgust once more before she span on her heel and forcefully walked away. In all honesty, the plan was being formed in her head as she went along — but so far in her life, those plans had turned out fairly well. However half of those plans didn't require a Mandalorian to be factored into it.
"What- Fae, where are you going?" Said Mandalorian demanded from behind her, struggling embarrassingly to keep up with the young girl's haste.
She shrugged, "Anywhere away from here. With the Child too, I suppose." By that point, the village was just barely beginning to be visible through the trees —- chattering and laughing heard along with it.
"And how do you plan on doing that?" He could easily grab her and force her to stop, after all, his legs were significantly longer than hers, but he didn't imagine that would help the situation very much.
"There must be someone on this planet willing to provide a lift — providing they aren't all spineless cowards like you, of course," Mando couldn't tell whether her voice was strained due to her pace, or because she was forcefully restraining herself from saying certain things.
"Do you have a death wish?" He asked incredulously. Maybe she had been shielded from the general population for most of her life, but he hadn't. Mando knew what the average person was like, what they are willing to do. And a teenage girl asking for a ride from a random stranger had a terrifyingly large chance of being a disaster.
Do you have a death wish? That was the sentence which scared Fae — because maybe she did. It wasn't that she didn't feel things, which had been a common assumption throughout her life. Sure, half of time she barely felt a thing — not sadness, simply nothing; so unbearably numb for months on end, so much so that sadness would have been preferable. But the other half of the time, Fae would have sworn she felt things stronger than anyone else in the universe. It was always so disgustingly intense and uncomfortable, burning Fae's brain like a forest set ablaze. The girl couldn't tell which state of being she preferred. And at that moment, storming through the forest with fire in her veins, she simultaneously felt the flames caressing the inside of her scalp as it scolded her mind.
By that point they had broken through the tree line, and Fae showed no sign of stopping. A few nearby villagers paused their work on the ponds, trying their best to nonchalantly eye up the situation unfolding in front of them. Mando, not wanting to cause a scene in the middle of town, finally lunged forward to grab Fae by the forearm and bring her to a stop. As much as he despised the way she now looked at him, he still forced her to face him nonetheless.
"Do you?" He repeated.
"Why do you care, Mando?! I'm not your problem anymore! Congratulations, you finally got what you wanted!" She tried to rip herself from his grasp, but doing so simply served as a reminder of how overpowering he was in comparison to Fae.
"I'm doing this for you, Fae-"
"No, Mando, you're doing this for yourself," As she spoke, she suddenly stopped struggling — instead actually stepping forward, voice lowering threateningly, "You saved me, us, for yourself. And now that you've crossed that off of your conscience, you don't need us around anymore for your endlessly selfish self. So, if you don't mind, I'll be on my way." She concluded her speech with a sickly sweet smile which didn't quite reach her eyes, and, using Mando's shocked state to her advantage, successfully pulled herself away from him so she could start walking again.
He did retort, or he began to, but it was overpowered by the booming sound of a blaster bolt ripping through the air. Mid step, Fae was harshly yanked backwards and behind Mando as he faced the tree line in front of her, blaster out. Naturally, what seemed like, every member of the village instantaneously began screaming and scurrying around — as if that would deflect an impending shot.
Without turning around in the slightest, Mando pushed Fae even further backwards as he ordered, "Go find the kid."
"Oh, so now you care-"
"Fae just do as I fucking say," He practically shouted, helmet whipping around to stare right at her.
Fae's jaw clenched tightly for the second time that day, holding her gaze on the ice cold visor; but in the end she decided that potentially harming the Child due to her and Mando's complications simply wasn't fair. So, she wordlessly sighed and did as she was told — running off towards the village centre.
~☾~
A bounty hunter.
It had been a bounty hunter — and a frankly terrible one at that. But apparently the fobs said bounty hunter carried, for both Fae and the Child, was enough to scare Mando into going back on his original plan.
Safe to say, Fae wasn't best pleased. The main reason being that her abused mind did not comprehend the fact that the only reason Mando had wanted to leave them there in the first place was for them — her. The fact somebody cared about her just wasn't a recognised behaviour in her brain. It was not coded into it.
So it did take some convincing — mostly from Cara, who, unlike Mando, was able to have the necessary conversation without getting angry — but eventually Fae did agree to leave with Mando and the Child instead of going off on her own.
However, this did not change her opinion of the Mandalorian in the slightest. In fact, she didn't even look at him as they packed up all of their belongings.
The goodbye wasn't hard. After all, Fae had grown to despise that fucking town — and the planet to an extent. Nor did she have any personal feelings towards any of the villagers; so, while Mando said his farewell to Omera, Fae spoke to the only person in the universe she actually liked at that point apart from the child.
Cara Dune.
They had grown to be friends over the time they had known each other — Fae enjoying the presence of another female in her life for once. And she found herself not wanting to say goodbye, a feeling the girl had only felt two other times in her whole life.
"I don't really know how these sort of things are supposed to go," Fae admitted with a small chuckle, leading the older woman to laugh herself.
"Like this," Cara said simply, before suddenly wrapping her arms tightly around the teenager in a crushing hug.
Fae was shocked at first, but did slowly adjust and wrap her own arms around to complete the gesture.
"I'll miss you, Cara," She said softly, as if terrified somebody nearby would hear her.
"Me too, kid," Cara replied as she finally released Fae from her hold, "But we'll see each other again, I promise. And, in the meantime, stay out of trouble."
The young girl laughed slightly, smiling properly for the first time in a long time, and said "Yeah, yeah, as long as you do the same." Cara gave a mock salute.
With one last smile towards one another, Fae began to step away and towards the trailer. But Cara speaking up once again stopped her in her tracks.
"Fae," She called, waiting for the teenager to turn back before she continued, "Don't be so hard on him." Along with her words, Cara nodded towards Mando, who was just about done talking to Omera and the villagers.
Fae's face immediately froze up in a look of pure reluctance, but after the pointed look Cara sent back, she simply rolled her eyes and continued on her way to the trailer.
Once she sat down, the Child got himself comfortable in her lap for the upcoming journey, and Mando soon joined them. With Fae sat at one end, and he at the other, neither of them spoke a word the entire time.
{ i wrote half of this with a hangover so if half of it is shit, that is why :)
also peep me mirroring my own mental health with fae's. maybe i do need therapy, what's your point? ಠ_ಠ
hope it was good?
thank you all for 6.6k!!
p.s - look out for high!fae in the upcoming chapters ;) }