Wrest Pin | The Mandalorian

Chapter Two: The Ship

Evangeline realized something was wrong, despite the Mandalorian not giving her an explicit answer.

She had been instructed to remain in the cockpit, staring out at the stars as they drifted silently through void space. Her mind kept falling to the sharp stop they had made, only seconds after jumping into hyperspace and from what she could gather, something must have happened to the hyperdrive in response to the hits from the TIE that had been pursuing them – pursuing them because of her. She looked down at her hands, where they were scraped from the escape they had made. Her face ached from how tightly the Mandalorian had held his hand over her mouth, but from what she could tell, there was no bruising.

The Mandalorian had been down below for some time, leaving her to the silence. Leaving her to the stars and to her mind. She tried to focus on the present situation – afraid of what thoughts from the past could bring. Of her mother and father and grandmother. Her mother's gentle hands running through her dark hair and shushing her as each nightmare came each night, each vision tearing into her as she came of age – just as they had done her mother and grandmother before her. Evangeline glanced back at the door. It was closed – and she was almost afraid to even move a muscle.

"Stay here," The Mandalorian had ordered, "Don't. Move."

She felt like a child, almost frustrated. She supposed if his plan was to kill her, he would have done it already. But he had said that he had wanted the help of a witch, and had called her of the sort. Just as the troopers had referred to her as such and her mind struggled to wrap around this concept that they had. She was no witch, they knew nothing of her, or her mother and grandmother and yet – and yet – they wanted things from them. Without asking if their assumptions were true, and it almost seemed cruel.

Evangeline looked into the sky. Or lack-there-of. She wanted to get out of her nightgown. There was something almost exposing being in one's sleepwear, as if she had been yanked from her most vulnerable state – her sleep. And she had, by her hair, been dragged from her bed as her family was slaughtered for no reason at all.

Only for existing.

And she supposed – well...how dare they exist?

She wrapped her cloak around herself and stood, moving to the door with careful steps. She pressed the button that caused it to open with a slight hiss, revealing the ladder that led down to the belly of the ship where they had entered earlier. The Mandalorian had spoken very little to her – it seemed as if he was pouting because she wouldn't admit to his assumptions of her. But he was wrong, and he was terrifying, and she couldn't tell if he knew that of himself or if he was attempting to play it to his advantage. But if he wanted admittance, she would hardly give it to someone who was frightening to her.

Evangeline made her way down the ladder, the metal cold on her hands and feet before then touching down to even colder metal. She listened, and heard nothing, though she assumed the Mandalorian was elsewhere attempting to fix whatever had happened to them. She stood, staring ahead, considering the climb back to the cockpit in order to avoid any retaliation for her moving from her seat against his orders. She chewed the inside of her mouth, uneasy as it felt as if they were swaying in their gentle drift through emptiness.

Then it opened.

To her left, there was a sound similar to the door above in the cockpit. Evangeline jumped, letting out a small sound as she whirled to face whatever had made the noise. A hole in the wall had opened, some kind of nook. It took her mind a few moments to process what her eyes were seeing in front of her. There was a light within the nook, a bit of bedding, and standing upon the bedding was...a small...something.