Eulogy
Not all martyrs see divinity,
But at least you tried…
Eulogy // Tool
***
If you had ever informed Fritz that he wasn't human, he would have responded with "Of course not, I'm a Hutt." and walked away with that half-crooked smile that made it very damnably difficult to decide whether he was laughing with or at you.
He knows this much: he has all the physical characteristics of a human. Four limbs; two used mainly for locomotion and two used for a variety of other purposes. Opposable thumbs (but only one on each hand). A pair of eyes that could see quite excellently in the visible spectrum but failed in all others, and didn't serve him quite as well in the dark. Hair. Skin that was not water-permeable. Internalized respiratory structures. A closed circulatory system. A vertebral column.
By all accounts, he had no reason to believe he was other than a human.
Except that he wasn't.
***
He knows this much: he has no conscious memory of his childhood other than The Farm. The youngest sibling, the seventh son of a seventh son, he suffered greatly at the hands of his brothers and sisters but knew they took great personal offense if someone other than they decided to lay the same sort of torture on him. He remembers waking up when it was dark, and falling asleep when it was dark. His education was simple – his mother insisted that he knew how to read and write and count for she would not suffer an ignorant child, but his greatest lessons were those he learned in the field: punctuality. Fortitude. Patience. Kindness. Keeping your mouth shut and your ears open. And if he ever momentarily forgot any of said lessons, the flat of his father's palm was always ready to remind him.
His world extended no further than the distant pastures and warm meals, and he was content.
And the Jedi came.
***
He knows this much: the briefest of recollections of hugging his parents goodbye, then the cold, unwelcoming interior of a spacecraft and the vast nothingness of space. If he tries to recall any more it slips between his fingers like sand, or the remnants of a long-forgotten dream. His new parental figures and his adopted siblings frightened him – there was no wildness in their movements, no peaks or abysses of emotion in their eyes. For the boy that grew up in a household where noise was expected and continuous movement was the norm, staying quiet and being still was like death, and doubly as bad for the simple fact that unlike death, it was neverending.
For all his impatience, for all his frustration, for all his lack of control of the Force and his inability to make it purr willingly into his hands like Revan could, he thought he'd never be a Jedi.
It was just as much of a surprise to him as it was being born when he managed it.
***
This is what he knows; this is why he'll swear up and down that he's human: he knows nothing else. He has known the dizzying heights of joy and the deepest crevices of sorrow. He has known fury and, in its blindness, that entire worlds can be destroyed. He has known peace, he has known war. He has known friendship, in the form of an arrogant smile and the desire to save the galaxy, and he has known temptation, in the form of blizzard-blue eyes and a conversation that goes as such:
"He leaves because he loves the galaxy."
"He leaves because he loves glory, all the while saying that he loves me. Is that love? If you understand it so, show me. Show me what this love is."
He has known fear, he has known courage. In that moment, he knew both.
He has known dread, he has known pain. He has known friendship, and felt it grow into something far greater within him. He has known lust, he has known love. He has laid with a woman, and known the touch that only those who give unconditionally can feel.
But he has not known the consequences: he has never felt the beat of an infant's heart, nor known of its existence. What he does know are the clinging tendrils that are the grief of a woman long-denied, a weight he carries with him to this day.
And for all his time living the human experience, he does not know this: he is not human.
Humanoid. But not human.
***
He has forgotten this much: there was a planet that hosted a people that were fierce and proud, but for all their viciousness they cannot stop this – a prophecy that spoke of the downfall of a man by one of their kind. This man felt fear; he wanted to live forever – and thus the planet was torn apart, its people butchered, their male-children strangled in their cribs with their own birth-cords.
But prophecies, once spoken, are not necessarily heard by their intended alone.
A defiant mother had placed her son in a capsule and sent him to a world she had never set eyes on, and would not live to visit. One might say it was out of love for her child that she did such a thing; but if you knew the people of this planet well enough, you might come to the conclusion that it was done out of spite, if nothing else – true affection was rarer than pity to come by on this planet, and pity did not arrive until peace did, and peace did not arrive until death did.
And arrive death did, but not to one infant that floated alone, asleep.
***
He has forgotten this much: when placed in stasis, his body shuts down. His heartrate slows, as does his metabolism. He cannot feel the rough fabric of the blanket he is wrapped in. His breathing slows, stills. He had wailed his hunger and discontent before, sporting a set of lungs that would shame the loudest Ithorian, but all of his instincts are now secondary to sleep. He feels the sensation of floating, and then nothing.
And then light.
It is very similar to being born, and much as he did during that event, he screams his displeasure.
***
His parents never tell him this: that they find his capsule, half-buried on one of the far fields. They don't know how many days he's laid there, completely unaware of the world moving and shaking around him, but they do know this: when he opens his eyes they shimmer silver as does the water over the nearby lake on a cloudy night, and he is almost frighteningly strong – he bellows loud enough to send the six children standing a half-mile away scrambling in fright, and the strength in his grip belongs to a child three times his age.
The make of the capsule is foreign; something the farmer and his wife have never witnessed in their lives. They know this infant is not of their species.
They take him in and make him their son.
***
He knows this much: sometimes when he sleeps, he dreams of a world he has never set foot on. It is burning, forever burning, and the souls of an entire people murdered rise and fall over the planet's surface like the ebb and flow of the Manaan tides. He imagines that he walks this dead world, branded by the dust and death, and he feels the collective fury and grief of this extinct nation wrap around him, slide down his nostrils and throat, choking him, invading him – becoming him.
On those nights he awakens with a shudder, his eyes flashing in the dark… and for a moment, it is almost like he can see through the blackness, everything as clear as the day, or a betrayal.
On one particular night as he sits up and tries to choke out the weight of countless dead resting within him, he spots Visas standing in front of the closed door, looking directly at him.
***
He knows this much: he should know better, but it is almost like staring through a mirror.