FIVE.
the trade!
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Zoya's eyes flutter open. Every muscle aches. She groans, trying not to move too much. There's a dull, faint grinding sound that sounds like gears moving. A chittering of noise comes from all around her, and bit by bit, her memories seep back in, along with a wave of pain that trembles within every corner of her body.
That nightmare.
Chained to the ship.
Fucking Jawas.
Electric rod.
She squints in the darkness, unable to see much until a lamp is lit, a small, dancing flame that somehow manages to illuminate the entire space. Rows of hoods stand in front of her, backlighted by the tiny pinprick of fire.
"Where is he?" she groans, still half-asleep, trying to push herself up onto her elbows. One responds in their language, but Zoya can't understand them. When they realize this, they erupt into cacophonous, devious laughter that grates her ears. "Where the hell am I?" she snaps, anger bubbling in her chest. "What's going on?"
They explode into another fit of gremlin-like giggles, chattering amongst themselves, no doubt making fun of her for not comprehending their language. Her temper starts to crack, and something red-hot froths up before her tongue, and Zoya has to clench her teeth together in order to restrain herself from saying something she'll regret, reminding herself that she's technically their prisoner, and they could do anything they wanted to her if she offends them.
She bites her tongue again as one prods her leg with the end of one of their electric rods. Thankfully, there's no blue electricity crackling at the tip this time.
Zoya tries to move again but realizes she's locked down. Heavy chains hook her ankles together, and her hands are cuffed, but not with the same ones the Mandalorian had put her in. These are thick, impenetrable metal, and they pull at her skin like live things, dragging her towards the floor. The familiarity of the situation wraps a suffocating hand across her mouth, and she tries to relax, telling herself that it's just Jawas, just little harmless creatures that wouldn't do anything, not the prison guards with their greedy hands or cellmates with crazed gleams in their eyes.
Swallowing her pride, she says, voice hoarse and choked, "Please—please, just let me—let me go, I, I didn't, I don't know where, I didn't—" Zoya cuts herself off, inhaling shuddering breaths that rattle against her ribs as if her bones are coming loose.
The Jawas don't laugh this time, as if they can sense something's wrong. The group backs off, huddling in a murky corner ten feet or so away while Zoya struggles to breathe. Their quiet conversation makes its way over to her, and even though she cannot understand the words they say, their tone is different from before, when they'd been gathered around her body curled up on the floor, mocking and giggling and watching her struggle.
In her surge of terror, Zoya can't help but think of the Mandalorian and his stoic silence and masked face and the way he'd said her name so gently and wonder if he's found out they've taken her, or whether he even cares.
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"They fucking took her and destroyed half of my ship. I'm trapped here," Mando mutters, the child standing behind him and looking around with wide eyes, as if he's never seen the world before in his fifty years of life.
He had woken up from the long fall, body aching from both the impact and the buzz of the electricity shooting through his veins and immediately returned to his ship, wondering if by chance Zoya could still be there. There was a slight hope in his head that perhaps she simply hadn't heard him call out to her when the sandcrawler moved away or she was just unconscious and left behind, alive.
He'd returned to inspect the Razor Crest, finding the majority of the ship and its parts scavenged, wires sparking and panels missing from the walls. He'd checked the cockpit first, and of course, Zoya had been missing. The Jawas had taken so much from the ship that it hadn't even worked when he tried flipping a few switches, so, gurgling child in tow, he'd made his way slowly back across the desert as the sun sank in the sky, walking until he reached Kuiil's home once more.
Now, Kuiil moves to a table of parts. "Stripped," he corrects. "Not destroyed. The Jawas steal. They don't destroy." He offers up a tool to help Mando fix his armor, buzzing with fizzing electricity. "Which means your woman is alive."
"She's not—" Mando cuts himself off, taking the tool. "Stolen or destroyed, makes no difference to me." The child coos from behind him, playing with a little frog. "They're protected by their crawling fortress. I don't know how to recover the parts. Or Zoya," he adds more quietly at the end.
"You can trade," Kuiil says, as if it should be obvious.
"With Jawas? Are you out of your mind?"
"I will take you to them," he states. "I have spoken."
Silenced, Mando casts a glance back towards the child, who now has the frog in his mouth, burbling as if it's a fun game. "Hey—spit that out," he calls, but the little creature doesn't obey, swallowing it instead. He grimaces beneath his helmet and shakes his head. Kids.
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Kuiil somehow directs them straight to where the Jawas have set up camp. Sitting on the hover that the old Ugnaught's Blurrg pulls, pulse rifle strewn across his lap and at the ready, Mando looks up to the top of the sandcrawler, outlined against the pastel sky. As the Jawas notice them, they begin to yell and talk amongst themselves. Kuiil calls out something that must be a greeting. In response, some of the Jawas draw their blasters.
"They really don't like you for some reason," Kuiil observes.
"Well, I did disintegrate a few of them," the Mandalorian mutters above the clamor of the Jawas, watching panels in the side of the crawler slide open for more to glare down upon him, eyes glowing in the darkness.
As Mando and Kuiil approach, one shouts at them. "You need to drop your rifle," Kuiil translates.
The bounty hunter stiffens. "I'm a Mandalorian. Weapons are part of my religion."
"Then you are not getting your parts back, and your woman is staying inside that sandcrawler until they find someone to trade her to," Kuiil points out irritably, and this time, Mando doesn't try to correct him.
Underneath the helmet, Mando's jaw clenches. Picturing Zoya somewhere in the crawler makes something turn in his stomach. Aloud, he sighs. "Fine." His voice is brittle, making it clear that he doesn't think this is a good idea. Carefully, he places the rifle down on the hover, dismounting next to Kuiil.
Immediately, a Jawa jabs a finger towards him, speaking quickly. Kuiil looks back to him, gesturing to the holster at his hip. "And the blaster."
Mando looks down at him incredulously, but Kuiil doesn't budge, and he knows that the Jawas won't, either. Nonplussed, he leaves the blaster on the cart, walking forward to join Kuiil as he sits down with the creatures, wrapped in brown robes and speaking words that sound like gibberish to Mando's ears. He sinks down onto the ground before them, lounging as if at ease with one forearm balanced across a raised knee.
After a moment, Kuiil says in his deep, gravelly sounding voice, "They will trade all the parts and the woman for the beskar."
"I'm not gonna trade anything," Mando cuts, already annoyed. "These are my parts. They stole them—and her—from me." At their defensive reply, he tries to speak Jawa: "They, they . . . belong . . . to me!" All they do in response is cackle at his broken pronunciation, making fun of him and comparing him to a Wookiee, which incenses the Mandalorian even further. "You understand this?" he yells, raising his wrist to shoot a column of burning fire towards the creatures.
They erupt into screams, diving towards the ground, and Kuiil rushes to calm him down, holding up his hands as if approaching a wild animal as he extinguishes the flamethrower. "Woah! Easy, easy."
Once they're settled down, Kuiil speaks in Jawa again, trying to find something else they'll take.
Trade the beskar, Mando scoffs internally. As if.
One of the creatures points towards the cart they'd arrived on, and he whips around, spotting a few of them reaching for the child. "Get away from it!" he growls, anger building within his chest. He's ready to burn them all and cut his losses, but Kuiil's presence is curbing his temper. But only slightly.
The Ugnaught says something to the Jawas that make them move away a few feet to gather in a huddle. One word they say rings a familiar bell, and his brow creases as he stares towards them and their peculiarly glowing eyes.
"The egg? What egg?" he asks as Kuiil presses his forehead to his fingers.
"An enormous, horned beast," Kuiil responds. "They want its egg in exchange."
"I'll do it," he says. Anything but the child or the beskar. "They'll take us there?"
Kuiil checks with the Jawas, then confirms. "They will."
"I want to see Zoya."
"We can arrange that, I'm sure."
Watching him suspiciously, the Jawas allow Mando to follow Kuiil as he boards the sandcrawler. He ensures the child is tucked safely behind him, schooled away from the Jawas' grabbing fingers. A couple disappear immediately, to retrieve what they call 'Tattoo' in their language, a word that Mando happens to recognize.
"Tattoo?" he asks lowly. "What about a tattoo?"
Kuiil's eyes narrow as the Jawas lead them further up into the sandcrawler. "I assumed it's your woman they're speaking about." He pauses, then adds, "You said she was in prison for a time, yes? I suppose they've seen her prison tattoos."
Mando glances at the Ugnaught, realizing that of course Zoya would have a mark forever embedded into her skin for the time she'd spent locked up. He finds himself wondering why she wouldn't have mentioned it. A beat later, he kicks himself mentally, a sharp reminder that she hates him and has no reason to tell him anything personal of the like. She'd probably rather shoot him in his helmeted face.
The Jawas lead Kuiil and Mando up to the room where the controls for the sandcrawler are. He halts in front of a couple large panels of switches that he wouldn't have expected them to be smart enough to know how to use. They set it forward into motion, the movement so jerky that he lurches forward, helmet banging against the ceiling. They snicker at him, and Mando clenches his teeth together, holding himself back from doing something that will ruin the tentative agreement they've formed.
The crawler begins to slide across the desert, creaking and fumbling over bumps, and still, they haven't brought Zoya forward. Turning to Kuiil, he voices as much, speaking loudly enough that the Jawas around can hear him.
"Relax. Don't worry so much about her," Kuiil says calmingly. "I will remind them of their promise."
The Jawas don't seem to like hearing what they'd said they'd do before the Mandalorian retrieves them the beast's egg, as they scrabble back and forth with Kuiil for a few minutes, saying a few words here and there that Mando recognizes (tattoo, egg, no), before the Ugnaught finally turns back to the bounty hunter, face drawn.
"They want the egg first. Then they'll bring her to you."
Mando's hands curl into fists. "That's not what they said earlier," he spits, scowling at the Jawas despite the fact that they can't see his face.
Kuiil looks at the creatures. "She's your 'incentive,'" he says, pulling quotes into the air with his thick, wrinkled fingers, framing the word. The Jawas must've used it in their argument. "Her and the parts for your ship. Steal the egg, and you'll get them both."
"Fine," Mando snaps. "I'll do it."