THREE.
face of darkness!
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Silence fills the ship, and Zoya's heartbeat seems loud in her own ears, a hummingbird's fluttering wings. Her wrists are sore from twisting and yanking at her chains, but since the Mandalorian's threat of carbon freezing, she's long since abandoned that path and now sits silently, saying every hateful thing she can imagine about the bounty hunter within her mind.

            Finally, she can take the silence no longer. "Where are we going?" she says, careful of her tone.

            He stays silent for so long that she's not sure he'll even answer. "I have a mark."

            "Where?" Zoya asks too quickly, over-excited at the prospect of having an actual conversation after long hours of silence. At her instant reply, she can almost feel his annoyance radiating through the air.

            "Arvala-7."

            Zoya wracks her brain. She can't remember having been to the planet before. "This'll be fun," she says. "Who are we going to go round up?"

            "We?" he says flatly.

            "We," she confirms. "I'll help."

            "There is no we."

            Zoya grins. "There is now."

            "No. There's not."

            She thinks for a moment. "Who is it?"

            He seems to sigh. "Private."

            "What's your name?" Zoya asks. "Can I at least know that?" She twiddles her fingers above her head, trying to keep the blood flowing. "I want to be able to call you something other than 'asshole' in my head." He snorts at that, though the sound is barely loud enough for her to hear through his helmet. Encouraged, she adds, "My name is Zoya. That might help you remember how you got me thrown in jail." He doesn't relay to her aloud that he already has went back through everything that happened within his head, but she doesn't know that. She sighs. "Stop pretending to be mute."

            "I'm not."

            "No?"

            "Just not interested in talking."

            Slightly offended that he must think she's not entertaining enough to talk to, Zoya slumps back against the wall, resolving herself to another long trip with this man with no talking whatsoever. She might go insane. "Fine. At least let me come with you when we land, though. My fingers are going numb."

            "No," he emphasizes.

            Surprisingly, he seems to be keeping his cool well enough, but Zoya feels she can crack him if she keeps at it and opens her mouth to speak once more.

            "Don't." The bounty hunter turns in his seat to level his gaze on her—or at least Zoya thinks that's what he's doing. It's very confusing trying to make eye contact with someone who wears a helmet constantly. "You were going to shoot me. You're not helping."

            "That was a misunderstanding."

            He scoffs, turning back around. "Right."

            "You sound bitter," Zoya says as condescendingly as she possibly can, sounding as if she's talking to a small child deprived of a new toy.

            He doesn't dignify her with an answer. She shifts a little against the wall, feeling the cold blade of her knife within her boot and the thin sheath at her back pressing into her skin. There has to be some way to reach them and get out of here. If his plan is to send her back to jail, there's no way Zoya will let that happen. As long as she can do something about it, she'll never see the inside of a cell again for the rest of her life.

            As the silence in the ship becomes deafening, she thinks back to the inside of the cell. To the darkness that wrapped her in its quiet susurration, feeding her nightmares of her alienation of the world, of her future, rotting away from the world, never again destined to taste a fresh breeze combing through her hair and down the streets of a lonesome village, to feel the warmth of the sunlight as it soaks into her skin, to speed through the galaxy on freedom's wings, to leap off cliffs into deep pools of sapphire-stained water, and a familiar feeling of dread surges, beating against her temples and curling itself around her throat until she feels as if she cannot breathe. A sheen of sweat rises on her forehead, gleaming in the starlight beaming through the window.

            A shuddering exhale pries itself from her mouth, and she whimpers involuntarily, twisting within the cuffs. Unbeknownst to her, the bounty hunter hears the small sounds of distress and moves slowly as to not alert her, finding a cloak-and-dagger way of looking back at her so that she won't notice.

            He notes the perspiration on her forehead, the ghosts surfacing in her irises, and his brow creases beneath the helmet. "Zoya," he says, and his voice is level, quiet, just loud enough to pull her from the shadows unearthing themselves in her eyes.

            Immediately, her gaze flicks up to his. For a few moments, time pauses its never-ending trek, and she anchors herself looking upon the sculpted design of his helmet, finding solace within the quiet utterance of her name.

            "Sorry," she whispers.

            He doesn't answer, but he doesn't need to. All Zoya needs for a brief moment is the relief of his gaze, knowing that he's there, even beneath the helmet, that the pictures in her head aren't real and not things that can threaten her any longer. When she looks away, taking a deep breath, he returns his own gaze to the window, and all he can wonder is what stygian memories plagued her so relentlessly to cause the panicked reaction sketched across her face.

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The motion of the ship changes suddenly, jolting her out of a restless slumber. Zoya's cuffs yank at her wrists with a painful jerk. "Ouch," she mutters indignantly. "Maybe I do want the carbon freezing."

            "It can be arranged," he says, catching her mumbled comment. Zoya freezes, and he turns to look at her again. "If that's what you desire."

            She bites her tongue and says, trying to play off the automatic anxiety that his low voice induces, "I was joking. Ever heard of a joke? Mr. Tight-Ass Bounty Hunter? God." Zoya feels that if she could see his face, he would be rolling his eyes. His body language closes off, and he just stares at her in silence. His previous support during her terrified state earlier is completely forgotten. "Don't carbon freeze me." She swallows. "Please."

            He doesn't turn back around to look through the window in front of the pilot chair, examining the apprehension scrawled hastily across her tensed features. "I won't if you behave," he replies lowly, voice deepening perceptibly as he speaks.

            Zoya bristles. "Excuse m—"

            His head tilts in a way that can only be described as predatory. "Respect goes both ways," he reminds her coolly, and with that, he turns back around. Zoya makes a face at his back that he doesn't catch. Why so goddamned serious?

            She strains to look out the window, realizing they must have gone into the planet's orbit for the change in the ship's momentum. Arvala-7 is a planet of brown and orange and reddish-gold; mountainous ranges erupt from the dust-covered surface of the planet, their sharp peaks and crests speeding by beneath the ship, now flying low. Though she's never loved the bleak, minimalistic scenery of the desert, something about the planet's simple beauty catches Zoya's eye. Perhaps it's the absolute tranquility of the world, how there's no civilization anywhere to be seen. It's unlike the other planets she's been on.

            The Mandalorian lands the ship smoothly on level ground, hands moving deftly over the controls. One of his gloves rides up for a brief moment, exposing a thin stretch of tanned skin on his wrist. Zoya's eyes go to the spot, but he adjusts his clothing almost immediately, hiding himself once again.

            He stands, grabbing his Amban rifle from where it rests beside the pilot's chair. Zoya watches him carefully as he checks to ensure it's loaded, studying the effortless, predatory grace in everything he does. It's no wonder the Mandalorian chose to become a bounty hunter: he moves like a wraith.

            "You're leaving," she says, and it's not a question, but the inflection of her voice changes, her pitch rising at the end to make it seem so.

            "I'll come back," he replies, holding the rifle with its nose pointed towards the floor, away from her body.

            "And if you don't?" Zoya asks in sudden irritation, still chained to the damn wall, hands locked above her head. She flexes her fingers, trying to rid herself of the feeling that a dozen tiny needles are poking into her fingertips. "What do I do then? Daydream about your faceless body until I die of starvation?"

            He moves towards the entrance to the cockpit. "You'll die of dehydration before it comes to that" is all he says before he disappears.

            Zoya stares at the place he'd stood for a second, taken aback by his sudden desertion. "Asshole," she mutters, tugging hard at the cuffs and noticing the dryness of her mouth. "Could've at least given me some fucking water. Or some crackers."

            Despite his standoffish nature, and his charming ability to avoid any sort of conversation he wishes to, Zoya finds herself missing his company as she sits there, alone in the ship, thirsty and sullen and pissed at being left behind while he gets to go off and explore the breathtaking new planet on his own.

            Fucking bounty hunters.

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am i updating this too much? yes