You're wondering if it's honorable to kill me like this

triggers: spinal injury, paralysis, child abuse/attempted murder of a minor, defecation/urination (medical side effect)

also: spoilers for the acolyte, a little.

The boy is dead. The boy is dying.

Sour urine stank up the air, but he cannot smell it anymore under the eerily savory smell of roasted flesh. He defecated too, he thinks; anatomy studies taught him the names of Hutt bones, the average measure of Twi'lek organs. The meaning of dead weight in each of his legs. Numb from toe up. Folded under him where he fell, crooked, like a knurly paper bird. Made and unmade. So much soiled garbage.

She didn't even bother to kill him right.

He is a little offended. Mostly because it's easier than being hurt. He hides in this imaginary insult like a soft grub inside a carcass. He is both the grub and the carcass. Eyeless, so small that he is beneath the scorn ... and the life sense, of the Jedi. He shouldn't be able to see dawn, then, its bleak promise breaking through the haze of morning on a planet that isn't dear Coruscant, the only home he's ever known. This is bullshit. He is sixteen-years-old and has—had—the hubris to match.

It's fucking taking forever. It won't be long enough.

He feels absolutely nothing. He is absolutely terrified.

Something rustles the ashy grass. Something approaching. Predator, he thinks. Danger. He lifts his head, but his neck buckles immediately. Takes out half his vision with it. His wound had instantly cauterized, but dehydration will tank the blood volume in a human body as violently as any arterial wound. It just takes a little longer. (It's fucking taking forever, but it was never going to be long enough.)

A silhouette steps in above him.

The shadow that falls across his face feels longer than trees, than training swords, than the citadel that was home. The shadow of a Muun. The boy has seen many 'aliens,' but never this one, before. A face moonsick pale, noseless and gaunt. Bones so long, that every move carries the deceptive slowness of a space station parallaxing in the stars. His robe is black. The boy knows what this creature is, even before he knows what this creature is. Sith. Bones of a nightmare. Fatal portent.

He takes a swing. Right fist. Knuckles out. It's not courage. He hopes this asshole will end him. Always better to go out fighting. This fails utterly. The Muun is very tall; no part of them is even in reach. The Muun does touch him, though, right after. When the grasp arrives, those impossibly long, hairless fingers seize the boy by the silly little fist he made.

(It won't be until he's much older, that he thinks differently; finds other techniques, ways to win a fight.)

The Muun flips him over with the cavalier efficiency of a butcher—and just as inured to the stink of dying things. The bottom half of the boy's body fails to cooperate, ragdolling, twisting like a windchime, a malformed noodle, broken hinges on an uprooted door. Grass catches in his teeth. Lurid green spots eat acid holes in his vision—just dehydration. Maybe panic. He thought he was better than panic, after all his training, all his faith. Turns out, he is not much better than anything on this fine morning.

Not better than screaming, once the pain starts—and oh, does it start. Life hits like needles in his spine, splitting his blood with reserves of adrenaline he didn't know he had. Every pain gate opens. Nerves reach toward each other again, answering the call of the Force, intertwining. He cries, piddling snot; his hands star the grass. Dirt fills his mouth, soft clods to salve the raw layer that skins off his throat from his long, long cry. He may just never stop screaming.

The boy is dying. The boy dies. He will be someone else when he awakens to the night.