Death of a Legend
I can't really describe to you the events of the past few days. Terrifying is a good way to describe it, but somehow, it isn't a strong enough word. No word in English can describe the horrors that I've now witnessed. I saw a man decapitated, leaving a lost, orphan in -my- care! Me: who doesn't like children. Me: who never saw myself as a mother figure. Me: who's been completely taken by this child and would gladly do what his father did to save him from the slightest pain.
Me: who will become his mother.
We stood there, my arm resting around his slender, pre-pubescent shoulders, my hand wound in the cloth of his shirt and his own, dark eyes, reflective pools like his father's, stared at the ensuing carnage on the ground of the coliseum. He watched with a glee I could only define as wicked, a glee I would have gladly shared had I not previously known the consequences. If I had not known what was to come when his father entered the fray.
Please don't let this happen, I prayed silently, urging what ever force that controlled fate to keep the inevitable from happening. "Please." Oh no, I had said it aloud...
"What did you say?" Boba turned his eyes away from his father to ask me, but his eyes came right back to the fight as the Jedi Master known as Mace Windu closed in, his violet lightsabre blade humming light an avenging angel.
He swung with the force of all the souls Jango had condemned, all those whom he had led to their doom in one way or another and I felt a sickness rise in me. I couldn't feel anything, I sunk to my knees but I didn't feel their hard impact on the ground. I didn't feel Boba run from me, hear him cry out. I willfully refused to look at his young face, tormented with the death of his father; I willfully blinded myself to the pain I knew I couldn't withstand.
Boba ran down the stairs, pausing at the edge of the fight and looking on in horror as his father's body fell into the sand, his head stuck in a dune and the helmet rolling to the side. I caught up with him and put a hand on his shoulder, which he pushed away. Something fundamental was gone in the boy now. I hoped it would return as I restrained him from running into the fight.
"I can do it!" he screamed as I hoisted him from the ground, receiving a tight elbow to the stomach for my troubles. I wasn't as fit as I should have been and winded I became as he hit me repeatedly in the same spot. I dropped him and into the cloud of dust, droids and Jedi he ran.
"Boba, no!" I called after him, gasping to reclaim vital breath as the child fled from me. I soon caught my air and came after him, my long legs eating the distance between us quickly enough to snatch him from the doom of a wayward droid blaster shot.
He hit me again, this time a square shot to the face which knocked my glasses to the side and my nose to bleed. I snatched the lenses as fast as I could to prevent them from falling under the feet of anyone travelling through and then took off, again, after Boba.
When I found him he was cradling the empty helmet of his dead father, the body lying fifty feet to one side and the head another ten away at a ninety-degree angle. I can't help but shed a tear, even as I'm shedding blood, for the boy. I walk over to where he's crouched and wrap an arm around him, putting my lips to his temple and brushing away matted brown hair.
I don't say anything; there's nothing to say. His father had just died a gruesome death and he had witnessed the whole thing. I can say no words of comfort, nothing that will ease the pain of his tiny heart. I offer physical compassion and lend emotional strength to the child through touch, but to little avail as he stares blankly, his once reflective, lively eyes, now dull and already starting to decay under the knowledge of death and mortality.
I don't know how long we stayed like that. How long I held him, how long I let silent tears dampen the boy's hair as he held his father's lifeless helmet. It could have been seconds, minutes or hours, time stopped for us. Ten year old son, eighteen year old guardian, left to survive in a world that was harsh, brutal and cold.
I finally managed to stood up and I crossed to a point in the sand near a large rock and began to dig. Without asking, already knowing, Boba joined in. His small hands cupping out soft sand and my own sweeping more aside with each paddle. We dug for Jango a grave, not suited for a hero, but one suited for a man cut down in battle, a man who fought with honour.
When the time came, Boba said something in their native language, which I would have to learn, and I carried the body into the pit. Boba carried the head. We buried him together, leaving the helmet to the side.
Once his body, with the head placed at the top, positioned right to the stump of his neck, was in the pit, Boba did an odd thing. He took a silver chain from his wrist and tossed it in, explaining to me that it was for Jango to take with him to the after life, so that he would always remember his son. He instructed me to do the same, so he would remember that Boba was being looked after. I was wearing no jewelry, bearing no charms.
I thought for a second and took the vibro blade from Boba's belt and cut off my hair above the pony tail and tossed the braid in. Two feet of silky auburn hair fell atop the corpse in the sand, accompanied by a silver chain.
He taught me my first words there, and I spoke them. A translation turns into something of the lines: "Your child is my child, though no labour brought him from my, I will raise him as if I carried him." Boba told me his father had said it was something women of their culture would say to their husbands if he had children that they were going to raise from a previous marriage. That aside, it was suitable for the moment.
We pushed the sand back into the pit, covering the lost father's body. When we were finished, I held my newly appointed charge, I would never in our years to follow call him my son. He aged faster than I did, my own age quickly lapped by his own due to a retard on my aging.
Every year we return, separate, meeting on this day at the spot we buried his father. Fifteen years have past, he is a man now and followed fine in his father's steps, and I have aged but five. Now twenty-five by his measure, me only twenty-three; he's become the guardian to me in a sense, his arm wrapped around my shoulder as we stand, watching the sun set on another time together. When next I see him, I will still look as I do now, but only the stars know what change a year will bring him.
He takes his helmet off for me, a kindness he has always shown me. His eyes, reflective pools like his father's, shine into mine. His helmet held in his one hand, my waist in the other, we look at each other and remember that day fifteen years in the past.
"I was only a child, and now I am older than you," he speaks with a voice of a man, but the heart of a child.
"Age is not a gauge for wisdom, or maturity," I counter, always wise with wit and compassion for the man who I will always see as a lost orphan.
"Why did you take care of me?"
"Because you needed me to. Why do you keep coming back with me?"
"Because you need me to. Why do you always kiss me on the forehead before we part?"
"Because you need to know you're loved. Why do you always look at me like that?"
"Because you need to know you're beautiful. Why did he have to die?"
"Because fated needed him to."
I press my lips to his forehead, as I always do and he looks at me like I'm the most beautiful gem in the word like he always does and we embrace. I rest my head on his shoulder, he rests his hand on the small of my back. For both of us, this is as close to love as we can come.
As we part, standing side by side, I look at the spot where we buried his father and I say, in their native tongue: "Your child is a man, proud and strong. I raised him as my son, as if I carried him, as my own. Be proud of him."
Then he says: "No longer her charge, I am a man. She raised me as if she carried me, but showed more compassion than any mother. Be proud of her."
Once more we hold each other, I kiss his forehead and he looks at me. We part a final time and set about our own ways. We will meet again in a year and do the same thing. It will always be the same, with him aging faster than I, and I always kissing his forehead, and he always starring at me with wonder.
Our legacy to a father.