The Thing About Fools

0 BBY

Alderaan

Jar-Jar wasn't sure when exactly the visions first started.

They hadn't even really been visions at first. Back then they had hardly been flashes, flickers of a foreboding fate. As a child on Otoh Gunga the elders had long tried to convince him that all his visions were just fantasies, delusions of an overactive imagination. For a long time he tried to believe them, went about living his life the way every Gungan should: serving his tribe, fighting for his tribe, getting banished from his tribe... multiple times.

Soon though, the inevitable became too hard to ignore. Soon the fate of those visions came reeling forcibly into focus, their hellish flames searing his every waking moment.

Jar-Jar didn't know how, he didn't know why, but he was certain that Alderaan would burn.

It was the only thing he had ever truly been certain of. The only thing people never seemed to care to listen to. Who would want to listen to such a thing? Entertain the thought than an entire planet could crumple beneath the star forge of a metal moon?

For a time, he didn't care to entertain the idea much himself. The visions weren't so hard to run away from. The Gungan had already spent most of his life running from less. He had ran from his tribe when they grew tired of his tall tales, ran from his planet, ran from his sole duty to the galaxy. He ran because only bad things ever seemed to happen when he decided to stay. Battles had been lost, people had been killed, Empires had been forged.

Hell, that last fact was all Jar-Jar seemed to be known for these days. He had become little more than a footnote in the history holos. Just another pawn in the elaborate game that had been played by the galaxy's Emperor. An Emperor that he had unwittingly first brought to power. If there was one thing Jar-Jar had grown more certain of, it was that entering politics had been a mistake.

Another mistake seemed to be looming ahead of him now. A mistake that would prove more deadly than all the rest if he didn't set out to correct it posthaste. Jar-Jar had always seemed to have a knack for seeing things before they happened. Now reacting to them in time? That had been the hard part.

Here though, after all these years of failing, he had a chance. A real chance. An opportunity to rewrite the footnote about him in those same history tomes.

When he first set out to warn Alderaan it hadn't come without sacrifice. His journey costed him the last of the money he had saved up from his time working as a Senator. Now he had nothing. Now he only had a message for those willing to listen. He spent his days roaming the street plazas, spreading the news of doomsday to anyone who cared to lend him an ear.

Nobody ever bothered to take him seriously, though. Not once. Who would? Why bother listening to the Gungan that could barely speak Basic? Why listen to the fool that had already set their plight into motion so long ago?

No, there was no sense listening to someone like that. They just laughed in his face. Some would spit at him occasionally, others would kick him down when he wasn't looking.

It was only towards the end that Jar-Jar finally started to realize the truth. No number of visions would ever make him a prophet. They couldn't. Not when he had already been labelled a fool all his life. The thing about fools was that when they finally had something worth saying no one cared much about listening.

And really, who could blame them? A long time ago, an old friend had tried to convince him that the ability to speak didn't make him intelligent. It was only after so desperately trying to prove that old friend wrong that Jar-Jar finally came to terms with the fact that he wasn't here to tell people of their world's demise. He was here to distract them from it when it finally arrived.

After all, he had already played the fool his entire life, what was a few more days? He wanted those last days to be spent spreading joy instead. He roamed the streets dancing and making silly faces, teaching kids how to juggle glombo shells and shoot water through their noses.

When the Death Star finally came lumbering into orbit most of the children that huddled around him were still convinced it was a solar eclipse. The battlestation's hulking sphere all but wafted out the evening skies above them, bringing a stillness to the once bustling street plaza. Jar-Jar hardly bothered to acknowledge the sight at all, he had already witnessed its approach a million times over in his visions.

For once, he found a certain level of peace at the moon's sight. So many sleepless nights had been spent with a blaster pressed against his head, a wrack of guilt pleading with him to pull the trigger. But now there was no need.

Now the weight of the galaxy was pulling the trigger for him.

End