Two Memories as One

Posted on Mon Jun 22nd, 2026 @ 5:28pm by Bomoor Thort & Darth Serus

4,132 words; about a 21 minute read

Chapter: Chapter IX: The First Verse
Location: Central Dunio Rainforest, Öetrago
Timeline: Day Ten, Late Morning (After "A Clash of Plasma"))

The mountainside rose like a broken green tusk erupting from the jungle below, its flanks draped in sheets of moss and slick stone that glistened beneath the late morning haze. Vines clung to every crevice, their roots drinking from the constant mist that drifted up from the canopy. Far beneath them, the rainforest breathed. It was a rolling, endless sea of emerald, its surface broken only by the pale spires of strangler trees and the occasional plume of bright pollen drifting skyward.

Across the valley, on the shoulder of a neighbouring peak, a temple stood half hidden by cloud. Its stepped terraces and carved wooden eaves emerged and vanished as the vapour shifted, the settlement around it little more than a scattering of roofs and walkways woven into the mountainside. That was where they had begun their ascent at dawn, with some simple guidance by the Kalco herd members that resided around the sacred site.

The climb had been long, but Serus had taken to it with a quiet determination. His respirator hissed steadily, the filters labouring against the heavy, oxygen rich air, but his body held. The strain was there; Bomoor could hear it in the faint metallic undertone of each breath, yet Serus moved with a steadiness that spoke of discipline rather than pain. The mountain did not defeat him. It merely reminded him that he was still learning the limits of the body he now inhabited.

Bomoor, by contrast, felt the climb settle into him like a long forgotten rhythm. The humid air filled all four of his lungs with a cool, invigorating weight, and for the first time in many weeks he felt as though he was relying on his own strength rather than the Force to carry him. A vast array of life surrounded them, bathing them in a perpetual glow of Living Force or, as many here believed, the essence of the Mother Jungle. It was in the soil, in the leaves, in the quiet pulse of invisible activity that threaded through the stone beneath their feet. It pressed in on them from every direction; impossible to ignore.

They had spoken little on the way up. Words felt unnecessary here.

Now, on a narrow plateau just below the peak, they rested. The wind carried the scent of wet bark and distant blossoms. A small pool had formed in a hollow of the rock, fed by a thin ribbon of water that trickled down from above. Serus sat cross legged beside it, his posture rigid at first, then slowly easing as the silence settled around them.

Bomoor lowered himself opposite, his large frame casting a broad shadow across the stone. For a time, neither moved. The jungle murmured below. The mountain breathed.

Then Bomoor spoke. Softly, but with a weight that came from long familiarity.

“This place,” he said, voice soft yet low like a chant echoing from the temple yonder, “If there was ever a place to begin again, it is here where my ancestors found new life after Ithor. You have reclaimed yourself as Serus and I have remembered the man I once hoped to be.”

He drew in a long, steady breath, the mountain air filling all four lungs.

“But rebirth is never free...” he lingered for a moment before continuing, “The peace we feel in this moment... it was bought at a terrible price. Perhaps not a lie, as the Sith code would have it, but nonetheless fragile, fleeting and all too often carved out of passion and pain.”

He opened his eyes toward Serus, not prying but just being present with him.

“You carry more of that cost than I do.”

For a time, Darth Serus simply watched the clouds move across the valley.

The mountain was alive in ways many planets had never been. Moisture clung to every surface and water threaded its way through stone. The jungle below shifted and breathed as though it possessed a pulse of its own - in many ways, it did, through the Force. Even through the respirator Serus should be able to detect fragments of it all; damp earth, vegetation, pollen, mineral-rich water and countless other scents the filters would struggle to catalogue. Yet it would remain exactly that: catolgue. It would be classification - recognition without experience.

"I can tell what is there," he said eventually. "The mask feeds me enough of it, through my ravaged face. Rain. Moss. Soil. Flowers. Rot. The mountain is saturated with life." His gaze remained fixed on the rainforest below. "But I do not smell it as I once would have. It arrives in pieces now, filtered and distant. It is like reading a description of some beauty without seeing it."

One ungloved finger traced absent circles against the damp stone beside him. There was not much bitterness in the observation, as it was more the quiet acknowledgement of another thing lost - another sense ruined and changed.

"The last scents I remember clearly are not ones I would choose to keep. Chemicals and metal. Burning flesh." A faint breath escaped him, distorted by machinery, the Human clearly compelled to speak on the subject. "Those survived. Strange, isn't it? Of all the things the mind might preserve, it clings to the factory." He paused, watching a bank of mist swallow part of the distant temple before slowly releasing it again. "I try to remember Caanus sometimes, like I used to tell you of. The jade grass fields beyond Vaarthul, of the rain on old cobbled stone... Lavender skies burnt by fresh lightning... I know those memories are still there, but they feel increasingly borrowed, as though they belong to someone else - or an idea of someone."

Silence settled between them once more. The wind shifted. Somewhere below, something cried out from within the canopy before disappearing again into the endless murmur of the rainforest.

"Before Sleheyron, I never thought much about scent. It was simply there, like breathing. Like gravity. You only notice its absence once it has been taken away." His hand closed slightly against the stone. "The last thing I truly remember smelling was... salt... tears..."

At that, the bond stirred, a memory summoned and shared.

The taste of blood and the heat of the factory came to the fore, as did tears mixing with sweat and chemical vapour. The impossible weight of a dying body collapsing into one's arms became plain, as well as the desperate certainty that if Ventul could be reached quickly enough, if one could say the right thing, do something, then perhaps-

Serus lowered his gaze.

One large marble-like Ithorian eye opened to observe his friend and then, carefully, another as Bomoor slowly let his meditative posture slip away as the bond to Serus pulled him back.

"They are still your memories," he spoke solemnly, but with softness, "Serus was not born in a vacuum, but rather from the foundation, the roots of Thane. All that history, that learning and that pain - it may not be the identity you hold now, but it still informs how you sense the galaxy around you."

The distant chatter of a cackling bird rang out from nearby, answered shortly by another cry from the other side of the valley. Bomoor shuffled his legs to relax his stance further, his heavy legs squeezing small droplets of moisture that clung to the moss beneath him up into the heavy air.

"Your senses have changed and sights, sounds and smells may not be as Thane remembers, but that does not make them any less valid. Of course, it cannot bring back those things now lost to us..." he grew quieter, "The people lost to us."

The birdsong grew stiller, as though the planet was allowing them a moment for words to settle as Bomoor addressed an uncomfortable truth that had been left mostly untouched since Sleheyron.

"Your brother, Ventul," he began, "You have spoken little on what really transpired. I would like to know, if you feel you can speak on it now."

Serus did not answer immediately as his focus remained fixed upon the valley whilst the mist continued its slow migration between the mountains, swallowing entire stretches of rainforest before revealing them again moments later. From this height, the jungle resembled an ocean more than a forest, its endless canopy shifting in subtle currents as wind passed through the upper branches. Somewhere far below, hidden entirely from sight, water struck stone with a distant, rhythmic force that rose and fell beneath the cries of unseen animals. The mountain seemed content to continue existing without any concern for the conversation taking place upon its slopes, and for a time Serus allowed it to do exactly that.

The respirator hissed steadily as it processed the thick air around him, drawing in fragments of Öetrago and presenting them to him in the reduced, sanitised form to which he had become accustomed. Places like this reminded him how much of the galaxy had once existed beneath his notice. He found himself wondering whether the jungle was as beautiful as he remembered such places being, or whether memory itself had begun embellishing things that no longer truly belonged to him.

Only then did he look toward Bomoor. The movement was unhurried, thoughtful rather than reactive, and for several seconds he simply studied the Ithorian in silence. There were very few beings left in the galaxy capable of asking him a question like that and receiving an honest answer. Fewer still who he felt had earned one. Bomoor had stood beside every version of him that had existed since childhood; the frightened boy taken from Caanus, the eager padawan desperate to prove himself, the increasingly disillusioned Jedi Knight, the fugitive chasing shadows through the galaxy and, now, the Sith who sat upon a mountainside with machinery replacing portions of his face and spine.

As he regarded his friend, something subtle seemed to shift within his remaining eye. The corruption did not vanish, nor retreat entirely, but the molten amber that had become so familiar softened around the edges as traces of blue emerged once more beneath the darkness. It lasted only a moment, less a transformation than a reminder that the boundary between Thane and Serus was neither as clean nor as simple as outsiders might imagine. The distinction mattered greatly to Serus himself, yet sitting here amongst the mountains and rain, with Bomoor opposite him and nobody else to impress or deceive, the separation seemed less important than it usually did.

The wind shifted again, carrying a fresh wave of mist across the plateau. Tiny droplets gathered upon his robes, respirator and the exposed metal of his partially-prosthetic hand, neither of which seemed to concern him in the slightest.

"The more I think about it, the more I find myself questioning whether words are capable of carrying certain truths at all." He settled once more upon Bomoor, steady and unwavering. "We have spent many months pretending this bond exists only at the edges of our lives. We acknowledge it when it intrudes, we react to it when circumstances force us to, and then we often retreat from it as quickly as possible. I am particularly guilty of that. Almost every glimpse has been accidental; every shared feeling largely unwanted or uncontrolled - only occasionally have we deemed it useful or a boon, and more as something to manage. Yet, despite all of that, there has never been another person in the galaxy who has understood me as completely as you do, nor another whom I understand in quite the same way. Even when we disagreed and even when we disappointed one another. Even now." For a moment he fell silent again, the thought apparently carrying further than he had intended. "When I was Th... before... I concealed things because I was uncertain of them myself. Every answer seemed incomplete. Every conviction carried a shadow of doubt. I spent so much time deciding what I should reveal that eventually I became exhausted by the process. Darth Serus has many flaws, Bomoor, but uncertainty is no longer among them."

His hand settled flat against the damp stone again, fingers splayed slightly against the moss. Somewhere deep within the bond, something shifted quite deliberately, like a gate that had remained closed for so long that both men had forgotten it existed.

"It is only right that you know," he said quietly. "Not the version reduced to a report, or a summary, or whatever fragments I've mumbled. You deserve better than that, Bomoor, and if this bond is ours indefinitely, then perhaps it is time we truly took advantage of it."

The mountain air passed through the respirator in a slow, measured intake as he continued to hold Bomoor's eyes. There was no hesitation left in him now, no instinctive desire to shield the ugliest parts from view, just as in the copse, when he had handed Loren's lightsaber to the Ithorian. Now, the hope, the fear, the shame, the grief, the desperate certainty that he could still save his brother if only he reached him in time was to be revealed; all of it remained waiting beyond that threshold.

"I will hold nothing back, as far as I know how," he said, and this time the words carried the weight of a promise rather than a declaration. "If you wish to know what happened on Sleheyron, then I would rather you see it than hear me attempt to describe it."

With that, the Sith Lord knelt upon the ground, the movement not quite seamless, but done without complaint, and he gestured to the space opposite him.

Bomoor's eyes now were firmly open and he seemed to move in synchrony with Serus as he directed Bomoor to take the spot before him, already feeling their quantum-like entanglement in the Force becoming more vivid. He felt, as he manoeuvred himself that he was merely sliding a gear into place in a mechanism that had been constructed many years ago and only now allowed to move as designed.

He opened himself to it.

Kneeling softly on the mountainside before his friend, he breathed deep of the humid air one moment and, the next, he found himself sampling that nefariously sweet vapour from the synthspice factory on Sleheyron. As his eyes adjusted, they burned with the sight of a crimson blade held by a deeply familiar man - the red-haired Human was more than the archival photo of a similar child Bomoor had seen; he was kin, he was grief, he was pain.

Bomoor heard the unmechanical voice of Thane leaving his singular lips.

"Ventul...It’s me... It's Thane. Your brother. We... I-"

What followed next seemed like flashes of blinding emotion: Ventul came at him. Then again and again. Bomoor, as Thane, ducked and blocked, held back more than he ever had against an opponent. The strikes were powerful, brutal, but the hardest thing to bear were those eyes. Absent of any recognition, any will of their own. Even hate would have been more bearable.

Another plea rang out and went unanswered. Any attempt to end the fight was rejected. It only ended when Axion decided.

Bomoor knew already what happened next. He had felt it before, yet now as the form of the Kaiburr-adorned cult leader formed in his mind's eye, the reality of the moment sunk in and he started to shake and panic as he was dragged back through that moment. Ventul dying in his arms, a spark of himself finally surfacing in that final moment only to look at him in absolute terror. The rage that followed, the anger at Axion and himself for failing to control the violet blade in his own hand to deliver the righteous vengeance he sought. Soaring through the air, the sting of defeat nothing compared to the physical agony of the acidic ground below and Axion's boot on his head.

That hauntingly simple command that now grounded the worst agony Bomoor had felt in his life:

"No. Stay."

Bomoor tore himself back from that brink, gasping as the acid in his lungs was once again replaced with a rich, moist air. It all became a memory again. His memory.

For a moment, he just knelt there, panting. He could feel Serus was drawing heavier breath too and sensed his Human heart slowly settling back into its resting rate.

"I just..." the Ithorian began, before pausing, reframing his thoughts, "Not since Ossus have I felt the connection so vividly. You were right - we have held back from the bond, pretending it is less than it truly is to spare us from what lay on the other side. Yet, there is no strength in burying knowledge. We know this from the Jedi's many failures."

He felt his own heart settling and questioned his friend, "You must have seen what I saw too," he frowned, a weight of concern settling upon him, "How I could not halt Amare's capture."

For several moments, Serus said nothing. The memory had receded from immediate experience, but it had not vanished entirely. Fragments of Sleheyron still lingered within the bond like heat trapped within stone long after a fire had passed through it. He could feel traces of Bomoor's distress mingling with his own recollections, the boundaries between them slower to reform than either of them might have anticipated. Perhaps that was the consequence of finally stepping through the doorway they had spent years pretending did not exist. Once crossed, it became impossible to entirely forget what stood on the other side.

The Sith lowered his gaze briefly towards the water pooling between them. Tiny ripples spread across its surface where droplets fell from overhanging leaves, whilst beyond the plateau the jungle continued its endless, indifferent conversation. Somewhere across the valley another bird called out and was answered in turn. The mountain remained utterly unconcerned with either Ventul's death or Amare's capture. It had stood before both and would likely stand long after them.

When Serus finally looked back towards Bomoor, his expression had become intensely thoughtful. His remaining organic eye narrowed slightly, the corruption within it seeming to tighten around the iris as though focusing upon something far beyond the Ithorian sitting opposite him. At the same time, the photoreceptor within the cybernetic eye contracted and widened in subtle adjustments, processing information that had nothing to do with light or distance.

Bomoor could feel it through the bond; Serus was not reacting emotionally. He was examining the question and turning it over, following it backwards through memory and consequence until he reached the place from which it truly originated. By the time he spoke, his conclusion had already been reached.

"No," he said quietly. "I do not blame you." The answer arrived with such immediate certainty that it was obvious he had considered it before. "Not for Amare. Not for any of it. The fault belongs to Axion. It has always belonged to Axion."

The words settled between them. Darth Serus drew a slow breath through the respirator before continuing, his voice remaining level despite the growing tension beneath it.

"If blame must travel beyond him, then it reaches me long before it reaches you."

For the first time since opening the memory, something sharper stirred beneath his composure. Not the uncontrolled fury Bomoor had once known in the aftermath of his own mother's death or Serus' suffering on Sleheyron, but something denser and more concentrated. The same emotion compressed beneath certainty and discipline rather than allowed to burn itself out.

"I could see and sense what Ventul had become, yet I allowed myself to believe there was another answer waiting for me if I only fought hard enough. I allowed myself to become isolated and I allowed myself to be manipulated. Most importantly, I allowed myself to forget what I was truly facing." His jaw tightened faintly beneath the respirator. "Ventul was no longer my brother. He was a tool, Bomoor. A weapon that Axion had been sharpening for years whilst I convinced myself in that moment that that love alone would somehow bridge the distance between who he had been and what he had become."

The anger revealed itself then, not through raised voices or dramatic gestures but through the bond itself. Bomoor felt it more than he saw it. Beneath Serus' calm exterior there remained a furnace of frustration, grief and self-recrimination that had never truly gone away. Amare sat at the centre of it now. Her capture and her absence - the certainty that every day spent in Axion's hands would be another day subjected to the same cruelty that had consumed Ventul. For a brief instant, the molten colours within Serus' remaining eye seemed to brighten, dark veins also standing out more prominently against pale skin as the silent rage surfaced before being mastered once again. When he next spoke, the anger had already been folded back into purpose.

The Sith remained silent for a moment, watching mist spill across the neighbouring mountainside before continuing. Even as he spoke, he seemed to find some assurance in the nature surrounding them, even if it was further from his senses than ever.

"Amare will not remain his." The certainty in the statement carried a weight that had little to do with confidence and everything to do with conviction. "I do not know how long it will take and I do not know what we will find when we reach her. I do not know what scars he may leave upon her before this is finished. But I will bring her back, Bomoor. Whatever else happens, whatever it costs - she will not be left in his hands."

His gaze returned to the Ithorian at last and, for a brief moment, Bomoor could feel the sheer solidity of the belief beneath those words. It was not hope or even determination, but felt closer to inevitability. The same certainty that had allowed Thane of Caanus to become Darth Serus now fixed itself upon a single outcome and refused to move. The mountain wind stirred the edges of his robes as he sat there amongst the moss and stone, surrounded by the living abundance of Öetrago, and when he spoke again his voice carried none of the anger that had briefly surfaced moments before.

"Axion mistakes possession for power," he said. "He always has. He believes people belong to him because he can break them. He believes that makes him strong." The faintest trace of disdain touched his expression. "He is wrong. His age is ending. His cult, his lies, his stolen disciples and hollow prophets all belong to a galaxy that is already dying around him. This is our age - and I will not leave her behind to become another monument to his failure."

Bomoor looked away a moment and cast his gaze across the chirping network of green and brown that lay below them and around them. He breathed deeply, finding the motion of breathing a little disjointed after delving so fully into Serus' being. Still, he hoped that the connection worked similarly for Thane, so he could experience at least a fraction of the sensory experience the planet around them offered.

"It is no longer just an ambition, but an inevitability," he announced, long fingers clenching and unclenching as though pulling on the threads of life, "I can feel it in the pull of the Force - in spite of all that happened, his essence shrinks, his voice is muted. He will fall and we will have Amare back."

As he opened himself to not only the network of the Living Force, with all its chattering liveliness, he began to feel the weight of the greater will of the Cosmic Force upon him as his mind drifted outwards to thoughts of the shifting powers in the galaxy. Axion had had his day and was being nudged out of the picture, leaving a vacuum that he knew would fall to either them or the false knights of the Reborn Order. While the future was clouded, he could feel the motions falling into place for them, like stepping stones across a river.

Yet, something tugged him back - a disturbance more immediately present. The birds still chirped across the valley, but the answer from their side of the valley failed to echo back. Other creatures had fallen out of their usual rhythms as well.

Opening his eyes, he turned back to Serus.

"I think it might be time to move on," Bomoor spoke the words, while silently projecting the sensation in the Force towards his companion.

Whether it was their doing or something else, the time for peace had ended.

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