EIGHT.
freedom is tempting!
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Zoya doesn't wait for a full minute to pass after the Mandalorian leaves to retrieve the child before she resumes her quest for the knife in her boot, straining and pulling at her muscles until her shoulder pops, and the handle snaps into her fingers. Grimacing at the pain now throbbing in her joint, she flips the knife in her fingers, digging the blade's tip into the tiny electric panel which links to the device on the Mandalorian's arm, giving him an easy way to lock and unlock the cuffs.

            The smooth metal cover pops open after she manages to dig the knife's point into the small gap where it closes. Her heart leaps, but the cuffs aren't released yet. Her eyes scan the myriad of tiny, colorful wires.

            "Shit," she mutters.

            Her gaze darts around the tiny chip, unsure of what to do. After a few minutes of fruitlessly staring at the wires with no clue of which ones to cut, Zoya comes to the realization that she has only one option.

            "Please don't electrocute me," she says.

            Without another moment's hesitation, Zoya stabs the knife as hard as she can into the panel with her wrists twisted around each other. Sparks fly, and a jolt zaps through the blade and its handle to shock her hand. Zoya flings it impulsively across the cockpit with a sharp curse. The cuffs spring open and fall from her wrists at the same moment that the weapon clatters to the floor.

            She stares at the restraints for a moment, shell-shocked and unable to move. Then, recognizing her newly regained freedom, Zoya springs to her feet, nearly falling forward onto her face with the force of her momentum. She glances around the cockpit with new eyes, hunting for anything that might be of use to her. There's nothing detachable of importance; he hadn't left any weapons in view for obvious reasons, and she can't take the controls. Zoya also doubts that there's a removeable speeder just glued to the side and waiting for her to claim it.

            "Dammit," Zoya hisses.

            If she wants to be long gone before he returns with the child, she has to move quickly. Thinking of the little creature makes her heart squeeze for a moment, and she wonders if she should wait for the Mandalorian to return, if only to see the child again. Before the foolish idea takes root, Zoya crushes it as if it's a fragile flower in her fist. Her nails dig into her palms, flattening the soft petals.

            She steps out of the cockpit and moves to the top of the ramp. At that moment, her brain decides to illuminate the moment where he'd turned to her when she'd mentioned that she'd thought he was going to go back and deliver her to the Guild, where in his body language, obvious even though she could not see his face, Zoya had seen something that reminded her of a guardian angel. She closes her eyes for a moment, leaning her hip against the opening.

            "I'm not leaving you, either."

            The ghost of the bounty hunter's response rises up around her like a misty, dark shadow, wrapping around her shoulders and pulling a veil around her eyelids, still closed tightly. She recalls how it felt like he looked straight into her eyes through his helmet. Her quiet intuition of this had sent her into a deep silence that he'd mimicked, remaining in place, body angled her way, the broad outline of his armored shoulders silhouetted against the window in front of the Razor Crest's pilot seat.

            Zoya grits her teeth, opening her eyes. "I'm leaving," she snaps aloud, almost as if she's trying to convince herself. A little voice comes into the back of her head, tugging at her brain, pulling at her heels as she tries to take a step forward.

            Fitting, after he said he wouldn't leave you.

            The line of her jaw hardens. "Fuck him," Zoya mumbles, but it comes out weaker than she'd meant it to. She presses her fingers into her temples, slipping away from the ramp to the wall just beside it, pushing her back flat against its surface. She can't comprehend why this moment, the moment she's been waiting for, is becoming so difficult to go through with.

            After a moment, she takes a step away from the wall, back towards the cockpit and, before she can second guess herself, lowers herself into the pilot's seat, feeling the comfortable cushion soften easily against the curve of her spine. Zoya spins to face the control panel, eyeing the switches and levers and buttons his fingers had effortlessly flown across earlier. She attempts to remember the exact order Mando had pressed and flipped them in, but her brain short-circuits. She's never flown a ship of the Razor Crest's magnitude before, so other than what she's seen him do, Zoya has no idea where to start.

            Huffing out a frustrated breath, she throws herself back against the headrest, mind spinning in circles with no real direction.

            If I can't even fly his goddamned ship, what the hell am I supposed to do?

            Zoya's fingers curl over the edges of the armrest, mirroring the dozens of times she's seen the Mandalorian do the same thing. Just the mimicry of his familiar actions whilst in the pilot seat almost sends her back into thinking of the last thing he'd said to her and the tone in his voice that almost sounded like a teasing playfulness, but Zoya bites her lip and hardens her heart, the atriums and blood vessels solidifying into stone.

            She spins in the chair, standing resolutely. Putting Mando—the bounty hunter into the back of her mind, Zoya snatches her knife from the floor and moves out of the cockpit and towards the top of the ramp. This time, she doesn't let herself hesitate; she strides down with purpose. Though Zoya's steps are certain, her teeth bite at the inside of her cheek, a telltale sign of her rapidly beating heart.

            Though she feels it's a good thing, the farther she gets from the Razor Crest the stronger the tug in her chest becomes. Zoya ignores it and directs her footsteps away from the stone arch entrance to the town, skirting around the edge of the buildings as to hide from the Mandalorian when he returns with the child. He'll most likely beeline straight for the open ramp, and once he notices she's gone, he'll leave.

            She tells this to herself repeatedly as she hides, ducking behind crumbling walls and old brick buildings, pointedly refusing to remember one of the last things he'd told her before he went back for the child. Zoya's fingers tighten around the hilt of the knife as something that sounds like blaster fire begins to erupt from the main stretch of the town. The sudden explosion of noise makes her startle back into the stone wall she's beside.

            "Shit!"

            Her brain whirrs, then freezes. Mando. It has to be him. They're trying to kill him, whoever he'd given the child to.

            "Shit, shit, shit."

            The sounds of blasters pause for a few beats, and panic surges within her chest. The only way Mando would stop fighting is if he's dead. Her heart races so fast it thunders into her throat, but the distant sounds of fighting resume, and Zoya relaxes a fraction.

            She begins to move towards where the noise comes from on instinct, then halts, torn. If she goes back and helps him, chances are he'll lock her up again. Zoya's fingers itch for freedom, for a weapon, for an answer. Though she doesn't want her only true choice to be so obvious, it is, and her feet pound against the ground in a familiar, reassuring rhythm as she sprints towards where Mando must be pinned by blaster fire. The only weapon in her hands is the knife she'd used to escape the cuffs he'd left her in, but she runs forward anyway, thinking only of the bounty hunter she'd wanted to badly to leave behind.

             Zoya soon reaches the end of an alleyway that spills out into the main stretch of the town's marketplace. Bolts of red plasma fly across the empty space towards her, all directed at a little droid-operated transport stuck against a wall. Her eyes search the darkened vehicle and spot movement. He has to be there.

            She moves forward without thinking, and someone shoots at her immediately. Luckily, their aim is off slightly, and it only grazes her upper arm. Wrenching herself back with a muffled grunt of pain, Zoya tucks herself against the wall, lowering into a crouch. She comes nearly face to face with a lifeless corpse and almost screams.

            Swallowing her fear, Zoya raids the body, finding a blaster inches away from the fallen man's hand. Wielding that and her knife, she inches out once more from the alley's mouth, heart beating along in time with the blaster fire. The woman crawls, snakelike, over the dirt, keeping low to avoid being seen. It works until she's a few feet away from the dead transport.

            A man dashes forward, raising his blaster. Within the split second that he hesitates in shooting her, Zoya rolls onto her side and pitches her knife through the air as hard as she can. The blade twirls smoothly forward like a dancer underneath a spotlight and strikes its target: the center of the man's forehead. Almost as if in slow motion, he stays upright for a moment, then gradually teeters, slamming to the ground with a thump.

            Zoya stares at the unnatural way the man's body clumps on the ground, already dead. It's not the first time she's killed, but it's the first time she's killed purposefully. Without any time to linger on the moment, she flips onto her stomach again and scrambles forward, quicker than before, shoving herself behind the hover and the wall it's pushed up against. A flurry of movement inside, and there's a blaster to her face before she has time to speak.

            "Zoya?" It's Mando, and his deep voice is filled to the brim with incredulousness. His helmet glints in the moonlight, and even though battle explodes around them, something like peace unfolds across her body, something she's been missing since he left the ship. "What the hell are you doing here?"

            "Saving your ass," she replies, bursting up onto one knee to fire her scavenged blaster over his head. Another goes down. Her eyes fall upon the child, safely cocooned underneath his body. It gurgles at her, irises full and expressive as ever. "Hi, buddy."

            He stares. "Where'd you get that?"

            Zoya levels her eyes at him. "Really. That's your concern? Not the question of 'how the fuck are we gonna get out of this?'"

            As if on cue, one of the shooters on the roof is hit with what looks like a rocket. It catapults into his chest, and he plummets off the edge, striking the ground. Before either of them can react, a collection of figures rise in the cloud-darkened sky, armed with blasters that begin to rain hell down upon the people trying to kill Mando.

            When they reach the ground, Zoya notices the familiar design of the armor. They're Mandalorians. With new vigor, Mando resumes firing as their backup annihilates the swarm that had had him pinned. Zoya assists as much as she can with her shaky aim, but it's the Mandalorians that do most of the work—Mando included, as he rolls from the transport to crouch beside her, so close that their shoulders brush as they fire upon the enemy.

            One with a heavy, rapid-fire type blaster aiming from his hip calls over to them, "Get out of here! We'll hold them off."

            "You're going to have to relocate the covert," Mando says back over the noise. Zoya looks between them, confused.

            "This is the Way," the other says.

            Mando's head dips. "This is the Way."

            Despite her having no idea what they're talking about, the simple phrase sends a chill down Zoya's spine. The way the two speak the words has a certain gravity that catches her attention.

            Mando gathers the child in his arms and reaches out, touching her shoulder. "Let's move," he says.

            She nods. "Ready when you are, captain."

            With a look that might be wry if she could see his face, Mando says, "Now."

            They burst from behind the transport, and the Mandalorian who'd spoken a moment ago increases his fire, fanning his weapon back and forth, spraying bolts in a thick enough blanket that the return fire lessens for a moment, enough time for Mando and Zoya to sprint through the stone archway and towards the Razor Crest.

            Mando keeps the child close to his body as they run, and Zoya keeps tabs on the scene behind them, making sure that no one emerges to shoot at them or the young creature. They reach the ramp unhindered, and Mando tucks his blaster away in the holster at his right hip, putting a hand on Zoya's lower back to guide her inside in front of him. She complies to the pressure without thinking about it, as if the contact is natural and rehearsed.

            "Hold it, Mando," a voice commands from behind them.

            The two freeze, and the child makes a whimpering sound. Before he turns around, the bounty hunter lifts the child over Zoya's shoulder to press him against her torso, arms encircling her for a brief moment. "Take him," he whispers, quiet enough that whoever had been hiding in the ship waiting for them doesn't hear.

            "But—" she begins.

            "I didn't want it to come to this."

            Mando turns, and Zoya throws a quick look over her shoulder, hiding the child with her body. It's Greef Karga. Confusion veils her. Isn't Mando in the Guild? Was it the Guild firing upon him the whole time?

            "But then you broke the Code," Greef says, confirming her thoughts.

            The fingers of Mando's left hand twitch behind his back, and it's all the warning she gets. As he fires at something that spews a thick, white smoke into the corridor, Zoya leaps away from Greef Karga, forward and around the corner right as he fires desperately into the fog. She holds the child tight to her chest, safely around the bend, and its fingers brush her chin.

            "We're okay," she whispers. "We're okay."

            One more blaster shot goes off, a groan of pain, then silence. Her fingers tremble, and she pulls the child closer.

            Then: "Zoya?"

            She releases an exhale that shudders on its way out. "Here," she calls, ducking back around the corner. Mando steps forward, re-holstering his blaster. He reaches out as if on instinct, then pulls back. "We're okay."

            "Good," he says, and again, Zoya gets the feeling that he's looking right into her eyes, though she has no way to confirm the notion.

            Without another word, he moves past her towards the cockpit, and within moments, the Razor Crest is lifting off. Freedom dances tauntingly at her fingers and spins away as the ship hurtles into the sky, away from the battle still taking place between the Mandalorians and the Guild. Zoya swallows, still standing in place with the child tucked against her chest, then moves resignedly towards where he sits.

            He's staring at the broken restraints on the floor. "You escaped the cuffs," he says without looking up.

            Zoya swallows. "I did."

            "But you came back. To help me." Now, Mando does tilt his head up, the lights of the cabin glinting off the metal of his helmet.

            "Don't get all mushy on me now," she mutters, setting the child down. "Just . . . don't lock me up again."

            With one long, final look, he returns his gaze to the window before the controls, right as one of the Mandalorians from before flies up alongside the ship, saluting Mando before dropping away into the clouds. He shakes his head. "I gotta get one of those."

            Zoya settles down into her seat with a snort that he doesn't hear, watching as he unscrews the metal sphere from the thruster that had triggered him into returning for the child, dropping it wearily into the creature's upstretched hand.

            As he pulls the ship up into the galaxy's black, endless space embroidered with millions of white pinpricks, she tilts her head, watching him. "You're softer than you want to admit," she observes as the child begins to play with the metal orb. He shakes his head, but Zoya leans forward, elbows on her knees, bangs falling across her forehead. "You are."

            "I'm not," he insists gruffly.

            She grins. "Sure."

            The woman settles back into her seat leisurely, oblivious to the warmth that plants itself in the Mandalorian's heart as he pilots the Razor Crest, unfurling tentative petals that blossom at the sound of her laugh as she watches the child.

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zoya heard all that fighting & fuckery and was like yeah,,,,, this little knife will do. she's a dumbass but she's my dumbass