Lilo & Stitch's Star Trek
Chapter 63: Lilo's Decision

"So, then, we're finally going home," said 426 slowly as he stumbled along one of Dakana's hallways upon his crutches.

"Yes, home," replied 419.

The ship had been restored to full working order at the Utopia Planitia shipyards orbiting Mars, by a team led by Jumba and using Jameston's keen sense as a historian to make sure they didn't accidentally take back any future technology. Now it ran as smooth as ever, which is to say every now and then a deep groaning sound could be heard from the depths of the ship, and odd clanking noises echoed through every now and then.

Everyone had said their goodbyes, exchanged hugs, handshakes and pats on the back (Jameston had hugged Lilo for an unusually long period of time, earning her odd looks from both Ensign Grey and Jumba), and been transported back to their respective ships. Jumba had then promptly set a course for the wormhole that had brought them here, now firmly planted in the Alpha Quadrant, and therefore, back to their own time.

419 glanced at 426, trying to gauge his expression. He had a rather solemn look on his face, but he was scratching his chin, as if he was mulling something over.

"It's been a month since we left," he said suddenly. "Who knows how much things have changed?"

419 laughed. "Silly, we're using the space anomaly to return. Only a few hours will have passed – a day, tops. Everything will be the same."

426 paused for a moment. "We won't."

419 nodded. She knew it wouldn't be easy. They could repair the ship all they wanted. Even the physical injuries would heal with time. But the Little Girl and 626-

She couldn't imagine how it must feel, to have your personality ripped apart. Every time she tried to, a cold chill ran down her spine, and she got the feeling she was only grasping at glimpses of the horror it must be. It was like imagining the emptiness that occurs after life – like trying to imagine how it feels to feel nothing.

It was some time before the pair reached the door for astrometrics – the same door that she had been flung into weeks before, beyond which lay the same room in which she had seen her first sight of a Borg drone. The same room in which, in a time that now seemed like an age away, they had been laughing and joking about the 'mission' Jumba had planned ahead, one that they'd been sure would have been a routine asteroid mining excursion.

An age away, when monsters and demons hadn't scarred them all…

"I-I'll think I'll… go and review the security footage," 419 muttered, gesturing towards the astrometrics lab door. Anything to keep her mind away from the considerings of the could-bes and could-have-beens.

"Alright," replied 426. "I'll see how Little Girl and 626 are holding up."

"Good idea, 426," replied 419 as she opened the door. "Good idea."

The Little Girl, as it turned out, was waiting in front of a malfunctioning lift door. Every few seconds she'd press the button, and the door would slide ajar slightly, and then fall back into place. Every time that happened, the girl would robotically press the button again - no frustration, and no attempt to try a different route. Just pressing the button, and watching the door fail.

After standing beside her watching this take place for nearly a minute, 426 finally screwed up his courage and spoke

"Uh, a-allow me," said 426, and, awkwardly leaning on one of his crutches, he pulled the door open with his strong arm.

"Thank you," Little Girl murmured, almost too soft to hear, as she stepped inside. 426 followed.

"S-so," stammered 426 as the doors closed and the lift began to move up. "H-how are you, and h-how are th-things?"

When the Little Girl did not answer, and instead looked away, a thousand things began to run through his mind. Oh, crud, I've said the wrong thing. What if I've offended her? Maybe it's the way I'm standing-

He decided to take a different tact. "So, we won, eh? Smooth sailings from here on out, right?"

Immediately after those words slipped out of his mouth, he wished he could gobble them back. If at all possible, the Little Girl now looked even more dejected, and was now staring intently at her feet.

A few awkward moments passed before the elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. Lilo motioned to sidle out into the bridge beyond.

"Wait!"

Little Girl paused, and looked back at 426.

He sighed, and tried one last time. "I really admire you. You're… you're so incredibly brave, it's… it's unbelievable. I wish I was like you."

426 thought he saw a flicker of a smile as the Little Girl turned back towards the bridge and exited the lift. And as the doors closed, he let out a sigh of relief.

At least he'd been able to make her day a little brighter.

About an hour had past, and 426 had been sitting on a box in some odd room or another, reading a book. It had been one he'd always intended to read but never quite got around to it. Finally, with some time ahead of him and all this behind, especially after having been faced with near death, he had decided he might as well get it done,

He was around a quarter-way through his book when the doors slid open, and in walked 419.

"Hiya!" said 426 nonchalantly, not taking his eyes off his book.

But 419 didn't return the salutation.

"Uh, 419? I said- gah!"

He had looked up from the pages, and what he saw startled him – 419's eyebrows were slanted, her forehead furled, and her mouth forming a very angry frown. 426 had never seen her angry – frustrated, yes, but angry?

"How dare you!" she shouted, inching closer towards him. "How could you say such a thing?"

426 stumbled backwards in his rush to get behind the box. "What? What did I say?"

"After you kidnapped the ship! I saw it on the security tapes! You know exactly what you said!"

426 would have slanted his eyebrow had he not been scrambling backwards from 419's advancing anger - well, at least, as fast as he could while trying to balance on one leg . "Okay, uh, for the sake of argument, let's say I, um, forgot."

"Urrgh!" she groaned, frustratedly throwing her arms in the air. "Right after Pleakley's flu comment! You said, 'Kila wa nai!' How could you?"

426 was now pressed against the window.

"Wait, you mean..."

A panicked look formed on his face, and he shook his head and waved his arms. "Sh! Shh! She'll hear you!" he whispered, hurriedly glancing back at the starfield beyond, almost as if he was sure there was someone else there listening.

419 put her hands on her hips. "What on Earth are you'll babbling about?" She then shook her head. "Never mind that, you know how much I like Hawaiian legend!"

"…and then she'll- wait, what?"

"You know quite plainly 'what'. You said that Kila, third son of King Mo'ikiha of Kaua'i, doesn't exist!"

"I- uh- wha?"

"You know, I've told you about him before! 'Kila of the Uplands, Kila of the Lowlands, Kila-pa-Wahineikamalanai!' Ring a bell?"

It had now become clear that what 426 had meant and what 419 thought he meant were two very different things, 426 mopped his brow and relaxed his shoulders,

"And in fact, as I've discussed with you before, there is multiple documentary evidence to his exist-"

"You're perfectly right, my bad, slip of the tongue, and for that I'm very sorry!" he said very quickly, still glancing at the window.

"Actually," he continued, suddenly remembering one of those long rants 419 was prone to having, "I was making an analogy – 'kila' means 'a high place', and, uh… Pleakley was referring to a very low time in Jumba's life. Thus, 'a high', that is, dignified, 'place doesn't exist' for Jumba."

"I, uh…"

419 scratched her chin for about a minute, and 426 could see the gears whirring in her head, attempting to make sense of his explanation.

"Well then," she finally said, "you mangled two languages to get to that phrasing. Although, considering your… experience with Tantalog, I guess that's only logical."

"What's wrong with my Tantalog?"

"Uh, nothing, nothing!" She sighed. "Alright, whatchya doing?"

"Reading," said 426, pointing to the upturned book.

"You, reading?"

"Oh, shush." He picked the book up. "It's just… well, with everything that's happened, I wanted to get this one read. I've been putting it off for so long, and… well, no-one lives forever, right?"

"Right." She frowned. "But it seems such a shame – all those things I'll never see."

"Yeah." 426 nodded slowly. "But perhaps it's for the best, you know? Perhaps it's so people don't get too cynical."

"Oh, I don't think I could ever get that cynical," 419 said. "The universe is full of such wonder that I can't help but think that everyone, deep down, has a little bit of an optimist inside them."

Grey clouds hovered over the skies of Kauai, shrouding the skies as if they were omens in a crystal ball, of futures yet to come. Thunder cackled and lightning glistened on the horizon. And, to the obvious annoyance of Jumba, a rather heavy rain had begun to fall, sending streams of blurry water pulsing across the ship's windows

"Chuuta," he growled as he alternated between peering through rain-swept glass and consulting his instruments. "Why did weather systems choose today to be giving us rainstorm?"

Lilo shrugged half-heartedly. She didn't care about the rain. To be honest, she didn't care much about anything anymore.

Pleakley attempted to squint through the mess.

"Something's not right," he murmured.

"What are you meaning?"

"I'm not sure – I can't quite put my tongues on it," Pleakley replied.

On any other day, Lilo would have laughed at Pleakley's mondegreen. But not today.

She had done it. She had killed people.

No, it was worse. She had enslaved people – innocent people. people who had lives and voices. Voices and lives that she had shut down.

And, she had realised, those people were now scattered in millions of pieces across the depths of space. And it was all because of her.

And no matter how many times she tried to tell herself differently, that it was all the Borg's doing, she couldn't escape the sick, demented, alien joy she had felt, or the voice that was her own harshly setting the facts straight. It was her, it had all been her…

"Well," continued Jumba, seemingly uncaring of her internal plight, "according to sensors, there are being no technologies alien to Earth in the vicinity, so if there is an ambush, they are being very good at cloaking."

"That's not what I mean" said Pleakley. "There's something very off, y'know, about… well, everything."

"We were being in future," Jumba replied. "Cannot affect anything in present, you know-"

"I know that. I don't mean that."

Heh. Time travel. She'd given everything, once, to undo her life, to have her parents back. And now, she wished it again, never more strongly than now – whatever the laws of time might say.

She would rip them apart if she had to, to see them even once more.

If she had them back, none of this would have happened. Mertle wouldn't be cruel and sadistic. Her family would not be battered and bruised. Those people she had, for all intents and purposes, murdered, would still have lives, have dreams, have desires and hopes.

But would she have met Stitch?

"Er- uh, Jumba, I think - that is, if I'm right-"

Pleakley's stammers pulled her from her thoughts. She was probably better for it; better to think about something else. Anything else. She needed to keep her mind busy, least it fall on the subject again.

"-I mean. there's certainly a possibility that I'm not, but… was it raining when we left?"

Jumba seemed to think about this for a moment before replying

"Is possible our path through the chronovortex caused us to be coming out a few days before or after original fissure," he muttered. "Should be checking, just in case we are needing to lay low for a few days – or needing alibi for why we are to have been missing."

He quickly tapped out a few commands on his console, and the computer beeped its acceptance.

"Just running x-ray signal survey of sky to determine stellar positions," he exposited unnecessarily. "From simulations, I can be determining current da-."

A beeping sound sounded; with an "Ah!", Jumba glanced at the screen.

What he saw there caused his eyes to widen incredulously.

"What is it?" asked Pleakley, a hint of worry in his voice.

"Pleakley, take a look at this. Keep your voice low," he instructed, glancing at Lilo as he did.

Lilo watched as they muttered between each other, Pleakley looking increasingly more concerned as they did. Although she couldn't hear what they were saying, they didn't need to – she was pretty sure she knew what it was.

First, it was definitely about her – the way Jumba kept looking to her, almost as a reflex, made that much clear. And second, there was only one date that she knew of that made people act like that.

"It's… it's my parents, isn't it," she said. It wasn't a question.

Jumba and Pleakley both look taken aback at this prompt.

"W-well, you see, it is being the same day," stuttered Jumba. "Am remembering from last... well, you are seeing, I wasn't being sure of year-"

Lilo slipped off of the chair she was sitting on and walked over to the console.

"That's the year," she confirmed, looking away.

"Oh!" exclaimed Pleakley, and crouching down, he drew Lilo into a tight hug. It didn't make her feel any better.

Jumba, on the other hand, stood aside, a rather awkward look on his face.

"U-uh- w-we must have been p-placed off course by cross-path chronov-vortex," he said, probably attempting to regain some sense of scientific normality to this emotional uncertainty that lay before him. "Should be s-simple to reroute back to original stream-"

"I want to see them," she interrupted abruptly.

She began to feel a buzzing sensation well up inside her, and spread throughout her body. Here was her chance to make it right, her one chance to save them-

"Really, truly sorry, Little Girl," said Jumba, "but cannot be doing that. Risk of damage to timeline far too-"

"I'm not going to do anything," she lied. "I just want to see them."

Jumba sighed. "Fine, but just for few seconds."

A plan had begun to form in her head, one of how she could fix everything. But first, she needed to prepare.

"I'm going to think about some things," she announced. "Tell me when you're ready."

She closed the door to the bridge behind her, and looked for a closet. If she recalled correctly-

Ah, here it was. With a palm-press, the door slid open; she grabbed an object that looked like a backpack and closed it again.

She then chose a corner visible from the door, sat down, and tried to think of waterfalls and flowers.

She was drawn from her quiet musings from the sound of the door clanking open.

"Alright, they're… well, they're visible," Pleakley said. Lilo nodded, got up, and walked through the door with him.

The holographic screen was active, and upon it was the image of a small blue car on a rain-lashed cliffside road. And there in the back seat of the car, clearly discernable, was a little girl in a small red dress.

"Do you think she can see us?" whispered Pleakley, and it was not hard to see why – the girl seemed to be looking straight at them.

"Is impossible, visibility at this distance from the cliff is practically nil," replied Jumba – but the somewhat concerned look on his face remained.

He pressed a few buttons, and the ship seemed to speed up slightly; now, the front of the car was visible, and in it sat a spiky-haired American man, driving and humming along to unheard music, and a Hawaiian with long, curly brown hair, staring out the window.

Lilo nodded, and then, suddenly, ran to the door.

"Lilo, what are you doing?" Jumba yelled.

"I'm going to get her," she replied, pointing at the ripcords on the backpack on her back, tears choking her voice. "I'm going to get her before she gets my parents."

"You- I- what?"

"I don't care if you're not going to stop her, but I am," she continued.

"The effects on the timestream could be being catastrophic," Jumba exclaimed. "I understand how painful it is-"

"No you don't!" she yelled, and began to twist the handle.

"But you could tear time and space seam from seam! Or failing that-"

"We might never meet," said Pleakley, eyelid wavering.

"But-"

She looked from Jumba to Pleakley, and then to Stitch.

And then she clamped her eyes shut.

"No, I don't care!"

She willed herself to open the door.

But she just couldn't do it.

"I've got to do it!"

Her hand didn't move at all – but this time, it wasn't an outside force blocking her movement. It was herself.

A shuffling noise entered her ear, and she opened her eyes – Stitch had slid from his seat, and was now walking up to her.

"No, Stitch, I have to-"

But, quite unexpectantly, Stitch embraced her in quite the biggest hug he had ever given her.

"You… can… go," he stuttered in his broken English. "But I'll… remember you. I remember… everyone… who leaves."

He heard me?

Tears filled her eyes, and a welling feeling of emotion spilled into her stomach, flooding away the buzzing completely. She let go of the handle, and placed her hand on his back.

"Don't leave me, okay?" she whispered.

"Okay," Stitch murmured in reply.

And once they let go, Lilo stared at the screen, taking in every detail, getting the opportunity that had been robbed from her the first time – the memory of their faces in the time she knew would be the last time she would see them again.

She turned away, closing her eyes as she did.

"Jumba… let's go home," she said, her voice filled with bitterness.

Not looking her in the eye, Jumba nodded, tapped out a few commands, and piloted the ship back towards the wormhole.