Chapter 5: Decisions

I don't own Star Wars. This is all for funsies.

A/N: No, I have not abandoned this fic. Sorry it took so long to get out. I got writer's block pretty bad while writing this chapter. It's mostly an in-between chapter with a lot of introspection on Mission's part as she has to decide whether to stay or go with Janus and company, and I struggled with writing her inner conflict. Those of you who played the game can probably see where this is going, but I wanted it to be Mission's choice.

Anyways, this story isn't beta-read, so we die like Trask Ulgo.

Carth and Big Z were visibly relieved to see me. Bastila was also relieved, but she hid hers a lot better.

Janus patted me on the back and said, "Good work, Mission."

I beamed.

Janus pressed the comlink. It buzzed five or six times before Canderous finally picked up. Javyar's house music pounded through the link.

"Yeah, what do you want?" His voice came through gruff and a little slurred.

"It's Janus. We got 'em."

"Oh! Hold up. Sorry, ladies, it's a work call."

"Awww," came a chorus of female voices.

"Come back and see me, Candy," another voice said, low and breathy.

"'Course, doll."

Bastila raised her eyebrows. Janus and I tried not to laugh.

After a moment, we heard the sound of a door closing, and the music faded to a dull thud. "We can talk now," Canderous said.

"Of course, Candy," Janus said, a smile tugging at his lips.

There was a pause. Then we heard him mumble something under his breath that had to be swearing, but I didn't know the words.

He cleared his throat loudly. "So you got the codes? That was fast."

"Mission's the one who got them," Janus said, looking at me.

"Whatever. I'm not, uh… I don't…" He groaned sharply and mumbled something under his breath in a language I didn't recognize.

And then Janus cleared his throat and started speaking that language, too! Carth's eyes flew open wide, but Canderous' voice rose in excitement. It was unlike any language I had heard before. It was rhythmic, like a song, not at all choppy like Huttese or squeaky like Rodian. They spoke like this for a few moments before hanging up.

"You speak Mandalorian?" Carth said accusingly.

"Yeah, I know Mando'a," said Janus. Then he deliberately turned his body to Carth (the three of us were sitting at the table). "Oh, I see. Now you're gonna accuse me of being a secret Mandalorian. A spy. Is that it?"

"Well, it's certainly a possibility. Just how do you know Mandalorian?"

"Picked it up during the last war."

"Right, right. So while the Mandos were dropping bombs overhead, you were what? Practicing your verbs?"

Janus stood up slowly. His face was cold and hard. "You know what, Carth? I am getting sick of you questioning me and accusing me of being a traitor when I have done nothing but help you! What is wrong with you?"

I started scooting my chair back as sneakily as I could.

Carth took a step towards Janus. "My problem, Janus, is you. You an-and your prying, your suspiciously convenient set of skills-"

"Skills that have come in handy!"

"Handy? You charm Hutts out of their money and convince strangers to trust you with their lives!"

Janus spread his arms out and smirked. "What can I say? People like the sound of my voice."

"Yeah, and I wonder what else that silver tongue of yours has done."

Janus cocked his eyebrow at that. "Oh?" A smile grew on his face, and he laughed. "You wanna find out, Carth?"

Carth's face turned fire red in embarrassment. Then he jumped on Janus and tackled him to the ground. Big Z just watched them, cool as you please.

I don't remember what Bastila was doing, but about fifteen seconds after the fight started, Bastila finally grabbed Carth by the shoulder and pulled him off of Janus.

"Enough of this, both of you!" she hissed. "Carth, I specifically requested Janus to come on the Endar Spire. Why would I possibly invite a spy in our midst?"

Carth's face said he wanted to argue, but he kept his mouth shut.

"And you, Janus, acting like a child!"

Janus rolled his eyes.

"Now, it is one in the morning! I suggest we all get some sleep before we meet Canderous."

"He said to meet him at ten," Janus said. Then he gave Carth a sidelong look. "He also said he was getting too drunk to remember his Basic, so he was really glad I could speak to him in his first language."

Carth scowled.

As we settled in for the night, Janus pulled Carth outside the hideout to talk in private. But since I'm an expert at overhearing, that didn't stop me.

"I am sorry, Carth," Janus said in a quiet voice.

Carth sighed. "I know. And I-I shouldn't be punishing you for my own… uh…"

"Paranoia?"

Carth huffed. "I'm trying to apologize, and you-"

"I'm sorry," he said, a smile in his voice. "I love to tease."

"Yeah, I figured that out."

"I may have gone too far."

"May have?"

"Did. Did go too far. But so did you."

There was silence for a moment.

"Carth, we don't have to be best friends, but you do have to quit expecting me to betray you."

"Hmm," Carth said, which wasn't a yes and wasn't a no, but it was all Janus would get for the time being.

When they came back in, I was innocently playing a game on my datapad.

"You should get some sleep, Mission," Janus said.

I was worried he had caught me eavesdropping, but when I looked up, I saw that his concern was genuine. "You were gone for a while," he continued. "Are you sure you didn't run into any trouble?"

It took me a second to realize he was talking about my stealth mission. I smiled. "I already told you what happened."

But when his expression didn't change, I added, "Well, I may have gotten turned around in there. Who knew the base would be so big?"

Carth chuckled, as if to hide his own worry. But Janus looked at me for a moment longer before turning away.

Bastila and I shared one bed while Carth and Janus slept in the other (Carth grumbled a little about that). Big Z snored on the floor.

But while everyone slept, I lay awake and thought about a life with Janice Nall. I thought about waking up every morning in her apartment. Eating breakfast with her. Helping her in the shop. She would teach me how to build and repair droids, and I would help her fight if any gangsters came to mess up her shop.

She probably wouldn't let me go to the Lower City anymore. Or sneak around the Black Vulkars and steal their stuff. But then again, I wouldn't need to steal anymore. I would have a job, a home.

A mother.

Would Janice let me call her mom? I didn't remember my own mom, or my dad. I mean, I knew they must've been blue like me and Griff, but that was it. Griff had never wanted to talk about them, even when I asked him point blank. I used to think that he wanted to shield me, that he thought I was too little to handle it, but now I think that he was afraid of his own pain.

Would it be a good life, I wondered, with Janice Nall? A better life? Did I even want Janice to be my mother?

I didn't know, and that made me angry. Only a child would have trouble with this decision! An adult would do whatever they wanted.

And what I wanted was to be happy, but I didn't know which choice would give me that.

I listened to Bastila's soft, slow breathing beside me, not at all like Big Z's swoop engine roars.

And since the princess was really asleep, that meant I didn't have to worry about her reading my mind, and I was free to think about the one thing I hadn't allowed myself to think of yet.

He said my daughter would be beautiful like me.

Of course, he also thought I was his dead girlfriend. But… the Jedi could see the future, right? So a Dark Jedi or Sith or whatever, could too, right?

And as skeptical as I should have been, I felt excited, too. It didn't matter that he was a Sith: he saw my future! He said my daughter would be beautiful.

I tried to imagine what she would look like. Blue like me, of course, but just like with my parents, I hit a wall. What did beautiful even look like for a Twi'lek?

I mean, actually beautiful.

Not like that whore Lena.

I had another strange dream that night.

I was in Javyar's, looking for my daughter. The cantina was huge, with maze-like hallways and hundreds of dark, smoky rooms. It was so crowded that I had to fight my way through every room.

I finally found a break in the crowd in a large, open space that I vaguely knew to be Zax the Hutt's room, except instead of seeing the Hutt or any of his bounty hunters, I saw Canderous and the Sith governor. They were lounging on a gigantic red couch in mirrored positions: one foot on the couch, the other stretched out across the floor. They were both leaning against opposite armrests, a bottle in their free hands. Twi'lek and human girls surrounded them.

"Have you seen my daughter?" I asked.

Canderous chugged the rest of his bottle, burped, and shouted at me in gibberish.

"I don't speak Mando'a," I said.

The Sith governor beckoned me over. "She's in the music room," he said once I got closer.

"Thank you," I said. I was about to leave when he grabbed my shoulder and leaned in very close to my ear.

"Be careful, Mission Vao," he whispered in a honeyed voice, "or they'll devour you, too."

He pushed back so I could see his face. Golden eyes glared at me from metal-gray sockets. "They'll devour us all." And then he laughed.

I turned away and walked into the music room, and I didn't have to look around for long to see her. She was dancing around a pole on a raised platform. Her skin was the dark blue of twilight, and in the smoky atmosphere of Javyar's Cantina, she had a halo of hot white light all around her body. I got closer and saw that every inch of her lekku was covered in multicolored beads.

And I was terrified.

When she saw me, she folded her body down to the floor so we could see each other eye-to-eye. She smiled at me.

"Momma, do you know that I love you?" Her voice reminded me of Janice's.

"Yes, of course I do," I whispered. The light from her skin was blinding when seen from this close. I had to look down.

"Then leave this place," she said.

"No, I came to take you away from here," I said, still staring at the floor.

She reached out and pulled my chin up so that I was facing her again. Her rainbow-colored eyes filled my vision. "You need to leave, Momma," she whispered.

When I didn't respond, she laughed and said, "Go, Momma. Have fun. Just please, leave this place."

Then the dream faded, and I woke up in the dark.

I got up from bed and crept over to the apartment door. After a few moments, the door slid open silently. Once out, I closed it again. Wouldn't want my friends to wake up and see our hideout exposed.

That was the second nightmare I'd had in less than a week. Well, not so much a nightmare as a strange and disturbing dream. I felt like I needed to drink something to get rid of the feeling of it, but I wasn't going back in just yet.

I hadn't had dreams like that since Lena stole my brother.

I had to remind myself, over and over, that I didn't really see my daughter. I didn't even have one! It was just a dream.

It was just a dream.

I leaned against the wall and slid into a sitting position. I just needed to calm down and shake out the last pieces of that creepy dream, and then I could go back inside.

Just then, I heard footsteps coming from the hideout. I stiffened, even though I knew whose steps they were. No matter how hard Big Z tried, he could never sneak up on me.

The door opened and closed without a sound, and there stood Big Z, looking even more like a giant than normal.

"What's wrong, Mission?" he said as softly as he could.

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not. I always know when you're lying."

"Really?" I asked sarcastically.

"You love talking, but whenever you lie, you always cut the conversation short. You've been doing that lately."

Huh. So he did know.

"Well, you hate talking," I said. "Maybe you've rubbed off on me."

Big Z sat down. "Maybe. But I am a good listener."

"Fine, you caught me," I groaned.

So I told him about my conversation with Janice yesterday and about my bad dream. But I didn't tell him about what the Sith governor told me, and instead of telling him about my daughter in my dream, I lied. I told him I saw my mom.

Well, lie isn't the right word. It wouldn't be the first time I ever withheld something from Big Z, and it's not like Big Z ever told me all his secrets. It just felt like something I wanted to keep for myself. Something special that was all my own.

"Do you want to stay with Janice?" he asked.

"I don't know! I mean I do, but… I don't know. I'm such an idiot."

Big Z was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Sometimes, our dreams show us what we believe is true. And yours told you to leave."

I looked at the floor. "I barely remember anything before coming to Taris. I don't know what's out there."

"I know. But I'll be there for you. Just like you were for me."

I fiddled with the hem of my pants. Then I looked up at Big Z, at his big brown eyes and his always sad-looking face, and I finally let myself imagine a life without him.

And I felt such a terrible and sudden ache inside me at the thought of never seeing him again that I burst into tears, despite all my efforts not to.

I had already lost my family. I didn't want to lose my best friend, too.

Big Z pulled me into a hug, and I let him. It'd been a wild few days, so I figured I had earned it.