Title: Home Sweet Home
Genre: Drama
Main Character(s): Mission Vao
Rating: K/G
Disclaimer: Hey! Yeah! These characters, and this plot? They're not mine. They're LucasArts and BioWare's. Go them! Go KotOR! Yay!
Date written: September 13, 2005

Home Sweet Home

"Come on! Quicker! We don't want to die do we?"

It was loud with all the explosions around me. I couldn't see, though that might've been the tears stinging in my eyes. Every beam that hit the planet felt like it was hitting me. It was a strange effect and it hurt… it tore at my heart as I ran towards the Ebon Hawk.

I ran inside, following by Zaalbar. In front of me was Bastila Shan, the Jedi Alaanis had recruited me to help find. And look where that got me. It destroyed my home planet.

I heard the explosions still inside the ship as Alaanis' still body was carried by Canderous Ordo, the Mandalorian, into the med bay. Bastila Shan was running around and about and the small astromech droid, T3-M4, was beeping rapidly. Carth Onasi had already made his way to the cockpit and we heard his voice on the ship's comm. system saying we were lifting off.

Something inside me snapped. I turned around and tried to move past Zaalbar to get to the loading ramp. I wasn't going to leave Taris behind… it was my home! Carth told me it wasn't much of a home for a 'kid' like me. After yelling at him for calling me a kid, I yelled at him for insulting my homeplanet. Well… maybe I wasn't born on Taris, but it was still my home.

And I would save my home, no matter what.

Zaalbar began growling at me and I heard the words but didn't understand them through my screams of protest.

"Let me through, Zaalbar!" I yelled. "Let me go back! Let me have Taris! I don't want to leave it behind! Please Zaalbar! Let me through! I'm not giving Taris up! I'm not leaving it behind!"

":The Sith will kill you if you go back:" Zaalbar said rationally.

I ignored the truth of his words and kept on crying and screaming. I didn't care that Bastila was looking at me with disgust, like I was a child throwing a temper tantrum. Like she knew what leaving a home behind was like, she was a Jedi. But I didn't want to leave Taris behind.

At first Taris was only home because Griff was there and I was there and we couldn't leave. Then it became home because the Hidden Beks were there. My throat clogged up suddenly. What if the Beks died? What if they didn't survive? My tears came more rapidly. Memories of Taris plagued my mind and my fists began to hurt as they kept hitting Zaalbar who showed no sign of moving for me.

"Let me through!" I shrieked again and again. I finally collapsed onto the ground, crying. Zaalbar reached down to grab me, to tell me something comforting. But there were no words that could comfort me. None at all.

I ran from the main area of the ship and found my way through it to a dormitory with a lock. I could hear Zaalbar calling after me and following me. I saw Canderous look up from Alaanis' still stiff body and give me a strange look. I could hear Bastila yelling at me to come back.

But the most significant sound was the explosions that I couldn't hear anymore. We had left Taris. We had left it to burn… to die.

How could they do that? How could they leave a planet behind to die like that? It was a home, it was MY home! I fell down onto a bed after locking the door. Zaalbar began pounding his furry fists against it and I kept sobbing, ignoring him.

I felt snapped in half. Taris was a part of me… a part of me that had died. That my so-called friends had let die. I didn't want to go wherever we were going. I wanted to go back to Taris. I wanted to go home.

Over the next few days I cried to myself, muttered angry words about the Sith and Alaanis, Bastila, Zaalbar and the rest who had let Taris die. I recalled memories that made me cry more, and I kept the door locked until I fell asleep. I sometimes only pretended I was asleep when Bastila would walk in to sleep herself, when dreams of the lasers hitting Taris haunted my dreams.

It was so difficult to just survive those few days. They were the worst in my entire life. But then Alaanis woke up… and Carth came to talk to me.

I had just woken up, so my door was unlocked. I had been holding in my hand a datapad with a picture the Beks had taken about six years ago of me and Griff. They never liked Griff, but they loved me and accepted him despite all his problems they said he had. The datapad was beaten up and I had been carrying it around with me everywhere since Griff left.

Carth walked in then. I didn't want him in my room. I didn't want to talk to anybody. All I wanted was to fly straight back to Taris, because no matter what condition it was in, it was still my home.

"Why haven't you come out of here, Mission?" he asked me, standing in the doorway.

I didn't answer him, only cried out in rage, threw the datapad down onto the floor and tried to push him out of the room. It was none of his business, and he didn't care nor understand what it was like to have to leave behind your homeplanet after it's been ground into the dirt.

"Get out!" I screamed. "Get out!"

He didn't comply and I began beating my fists against his chest like I had to Zaalbar a few days ago. He had continued to try and get me out of the dormitory for a while, but I never left, except when I went to the 'fresher, and those times I went invisibly so that no one knew I was there.

"Mission!" Carth exclaimed, grabbing my shoulders and holding me away from him. I stopped crying and stopping trying to beat him. I simply remember the words that had echoed in my head for days: He let Taris die.

"You didn't care at all!" I yelled at him. "You didn't care about Taris! You don't care about me! You just let it burn and die! You let the Sith kill Taris! You made me leave Taris behind! You don't even get what it feels like!"

"I understand more than you think I do," Carth said solemnly. I examined him and he looked like he had just taken a beating, verbally, but not by me. Somebody else had gotten to him.

"What do you know?" I cried out. "You're just an old geezer! You didn't lose your home!"

Carth shook his head and took his hands off my shoulders. "I lost my home too, Mission," he said, his eyes darkening as he spoke. "Telos. Revan and Malak bombed it four years ago. That was my home. And they killed my wife and my son." He looked at me. "He would've been just a little bit older than you. Sixteen, I think."

I suddenly felt horrible. I felt like a child. I had assumed without knowing that Carth didn't understand, but he knew better than I did what it felt like to leave your home behind, to watch it be murdered before your eyes. I sat down on my bunk and started sobbing again.

"I'm… I'm sorry Carth," I told him. "But I want to have Taris back. I want to have it back more than anything I ever wanted, even more than I want having Griff back."

"'Griff'?" Carth repeated.

"My brother," I told him. "He left Taris and me behind a few years ago… his evil girlfriend made him go and ditch me. I hate her."

I couldn't stop crying again and Carth tried to calm me like he would a child who tripped and skinned their knee. I think the fact that I wasn't alone was the thing that helped me the most. When Alaanis and Bastila told us we were going to Dantooine next it didn't hurt as much. I wished they would've said we were going back to Taris, but after my talk with Carth, I accepted it a little more. Not completely, but a little more.

We spent two months on Dantooine. Alaanis had been accepted for Jedi training and Bastila trained with her. Carth mulled around the ship and Canderous seemed to come and go as he pleased. Zaalbar and I found ourselves wandering the plains. He often compared the planet to Kashyyyk, except with many less trees.

"Hey Zaalbar, why did you leave Kashyyyk? You never told me."

We were lying in the shade of a tree around midday. We had just eaten lunch at the Jedi enclave and now were simply relaxing. It was a beautiful day. There was a light breeze, and it wasn't too hot nor too cold to be outside. My head rested on Zaalbar's shoulder as he was fiddling with his bowcaster and I was trying to urge a bug on the ground to walk onto a small stick I was holding.

":What makes you so interested in that:" Zaalbar asked me, stiffening slightly.

"Alaanis asked me about it once back on…" It was still hard to say Taris, even after all that time. It was hard to remember that Taris was gone. "Anyways, I couldn't give her an answer, and I wanted to know, you know, since we're best friends and everything."

Zaalbar seemed to sigh slightly, at least he took a deep breath. ":It's a bit complicated, but since you and I are friends, I should tell you.:" He shrugged me off his shoulder and we both sat up. I looked at him and waited to hear the story.

":My brother was selling us Wookiees as slaves:" Zaalbar began and at the first statement, I felt a small twinge of shock. ":He sold us to Czerka and I found out. I was so angry with him, that I used my claws and attacked. It is against our ways to use our claws for weapons; they are our tools. I was deemed a madclaw, and my brother and I both pleaded our case to our father, the chieftain of our village. He didn't want to believe me, a madclaw, and I was exiled.:"

I considered the story for a moment before reaching forward and putting my arms around Zaalbar in a hug. "I don't know why you never told me," I told him. "Your brother sounds like bantha poodoo." Zaalbar smiled at this.

":Thank you Mission:' he told me. ":I hope it makes you feel less alone.:"

For a moment I wasn't sure what he was talking about. We relaxed again, and he leaned back against the tree and me against him as the Dantooine sun began its descent from its highest point in the sky. Then I saw what Zaalbar had meant.

When Taris had been destroyed I felt like I was leaving behind a piece of me, a vital piece of me, and that I was the only one. But really, everyone leaves behind a piece of them. Carth had lost Telos and Zaalbar had lost Kashyyk like I had lost Taris. I felt much more comfortable, not just because I was leaning against a Wookiee that happened to be my best friend, but because I had finally let it go. I had finally given Taris up.