Passing Ships in the Night

Posted on Tue May 6th, 2025 @ 10:30pm by Bomoor Thort

1,015 words; about a 5 minute read

Chapter: Chapter VII: Uprooted
Location: Medical Bay, The Red Raptor, en route to Irrikut
Timeline: Start of week six (After "To Ashes")

Cold and damp, the bacta from the regeneration tank clung to Bomoor's mottled skin, seeping into the cuts and burns carved into his thick frame. It stung as it worked, knitting flesh, eroding away dead layers that still clung stubbornly to him. But something deeper within the Ithorian resisted. His natural connection to the healing energies of the Force, the calm essence that had always run through him, was blocked. Muddied.

Grief, shame, and a slow-burning anger churned like a storm behind closed eyelids.

From beyond the tank’s transparisteel, a faint voice filtered through. It was dull, robotic and impersonal. “Useless,” Bomoor thought dimly, recognising the droid’s whirring monotone, speaking to someone else nearby in the room. The words were lost to him, buried beneath the liquid’s weight and the gravity of his own pain. His eyelids were too heavy to part, and the voice only lulled him back into restless sleep.

The water grew thicker around him. No longer just a healing fluid, but an ocean pressing down, swallowing his limbs. His breathing shortened. In his mind, the flames returned; the bright, terrible moment that his loving mother, Mumin, had been murdered by Tolmin Voq. The memory of his smirk as he pulled the trigger, as if relishing the horror he caused, was the most obscene thing Bomoor had ever witnessed.

And he had seen much cruelty throughout of the galaxy.

He relived that instant again and again, the blaster flash lighting up Mumin’s gentle features, just before they were consumed. The pain clutched at him, but worse still was the memory that followed: the crack of Voq’s bones and machinery beneath his own hand, the way Bomoor had torn him apart in blind fury. There had been no peace in it. No balance. Only hate. And yet it had felt necessary. It felt justified.

So why, then, did he still feel himself drowning?

The darkness deepened. His lungs felt tight. Still deeper, his thoughts drifted to Thane.

Their Force bond, forged through the will of the Force on Ossus when breaking the bond with Beríá, must have allowed his friend to feel the same chaos raging inside. And yet he had remained composed. He had piloted the ship to safety and dragged Bomoor from the wreckage to then place him safely in the tank. Always the one to endure, to carry on the fight. What strength had Thane mastered that eluded Bomoor? What clarity, what control, did the self-proclaimed Sith possess that he, a once-devout follower of the Living Force’s, lack?

The thought struck him with clarity and, for a brief moment, stilled the chaos within. He let himself drift and the pressure lessened. The waters calmed and the fire faded.

He floated up.

Breaking the surface, he felt a cool breeze against his face, drying the bacta film into a dreamlike mist. When he opened his eyes, a vast arm of stars curled across a midnight sky. Spirals of brilliant light stretched from horizon to horizon, each one gently twinkling, mirrored in the water below. Their light was soft and welcoming, bouncing their little pinpricks of light across the surface of the dark water he now floated atop. Part of him knew he was still in a dream, but he welcomed this moment of peace, knowing the water below still wished to pull him down and claim him.

It was peace. Fragile, temporary, but real. He breathed. The pain dulled.

He stared up at that starry expanse for a time. How long, he could not say but he could feel some of his wounds beginning to heal.

He felt the water shift beside him—small ripples nudging his sides. Rising to look out across the glimmering ocean, he first saw nothing. Then, a light.

A lantern, soft and golden, bobbing in the distance atop a small unpowered watercraft. Its glow cut a path across the black surface. As it drew closer, Bomoor saw two figures upon it. One with eye stalks protruding at the base, an Ongree perhaps. The other was unmistakably Ithorian.

His heart surged. It was his mother.

He tried to speak, but his voice had abandoned him. Instead, he thrashed, sending small splashes echoing across the strange water. The two figures turned. Under the warm light of the lantern, he saw her long neck, her familiar silhouette, her calm eyes. Her soft feminine, motherly figure sent him back to a distant childhood and he felt faint echoes of another life, unlived with her on the plains of Üssina.

She nodded slowly.

The Ongree raised a hand in a light-hearted salute, then turned as the craft continued its gentle path, sailing toward the distant horizon and the ribbon of stars beyond.

He reached out. He kicked and paddled but his legs sank like lead, pushing through thick nothingness. The harder he tried to move, the more the water resisted. His limbs became useless and he became more frantic, again trying to shout and scream but finding no air leaving his lungs. He kicked and paddled more, but the water began to cling to him again and he felt himself slowly sinking down into its depths once more. He felt the panic again, like the fire was going to engulf Mumin all over again. The universe would take her away again and again and he was powerless to stop it.

The boat slipped away. The lantern dimmed into the endless night. The stars above still shone, but the water began to pull him under again—back into the pain. Back into the fire. The helplessness. The rage. It welled in his chest like a building steam pressure with no release valve.

The last thing he saw was her gaze, calm and unafraid, vanishing beyond the horizon.

Then the waters consumed him again.

Darkness returned and the pain surged anew. Voq’s face, the fire, the sick satisfaction and now that gaping void inside. Yet still, no voice came. No peace. Only silence and the weight of all he could not forgive.

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