Summary:
As the galaxy treads along the borderlines toward peace, there exist ones who remain ambivalent of its promises. Against the swelling tides are those who come forward to gather at the boundaries, led not by mere civic morality, but by faith of the heart. Through their visions, the bounds are glimpsed and crossed, dissolving at the very places where they meet.
[Post-Shadow of Revan continuation, sort of canon-divergent AU; primarily Theron & Lana's POVs with more player and canon character appearances as it progresses]
Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction inspired by and using characters and elements from Star Wars: The Old Republic, creative property of BioWare.
Chapter 1
When Idle Time Gives Rise To Idle Thought
"Ow! Son of a..."
Grumbling, the SIS agent ducked his head from beneath his computer console—a mindful impulse regrettably far too delayed, to his chagrin. He rubbed the back of his head as he rose upright to his knees. Turning his eyes between his keyboard and the redundant messages floating across his monitor, he sighed, teeming in irritation while peering over the console. Considering his fair time spent dodging lightsabers and blasterfire, he'd still managed to routinely knock his head on the outer lip of the console nearly every attempt at accessing its interior components below for maintenance.
"Having fun there, Shan?"
The distinct goading drawl of this particular SIS coworker failed to pull his attention from his business. Unmistakable as the woman's voice had been, the sarcastic undertow of her banter was not what he needed or wanted at the moment. Not while he was so vexingly preoccupied with this task, and certainly not at this ungodly hour.
"Dolo, shut up," he half-mindedly murmured to her without turning away from the monitor, a seemingly practiced response as if by rote.
"Hey. I just came here making an energy drink round. You want one or not?" she offered dryly, baring a pure, sardonic spirit quite characteristic of her with an arid expression to match.
Continuing to run his diagnostics, he tapped along on his keyboard. "Sure."
"And 'cause of your wonderful jerkish attitude, you're getting one of those not-so-good flavors," she quipped as she fished through her heavy bag full of canned drinks.
The unceremonious clangs of the metal can bouncing low across the floor rattled Theron's ears enough to make him wince. Gaze drawn over his shoulder, he eyed the can's steady journey as it rolled its way toward his feet before redirecting his unamused look to the woman hovering in the hall just beyond his doorway. The express nonchalance in just about anything she did seldom failed to astound him anymore.
"Twenty-five feet's just...too much for you to walk, huh?" he commented wryly, gesturing at the literal footfalls between them.
"Know what? Those old-fashioned milk delivery guys would've just left it at your door," she remarked with a shrug. "I went above and beyond that. Didn't even ask for tip." At a single finger's point, she propped back her glasses, brow emphatically arched in a show of droll smartassery as she matched his dull gaze in a one-sided battle of wits. "But that's okay. You're a friend, so..." she hummed, circling away from his doorway to move on. "Anyway, got more kapows-in-a-can to pass out. Have fun. Obligatory double-tips next time. Bye."
Theron continued to stare incredulously at the vacated doorway, lingering curiously between annoyance and amusement long after she'd slipped away from view. Left in the wake of the other agent's typical, unabashed show of antics, he followed with an equally habitual response in kind—a shake of the head and an eye-roll. Ever a handful even on the most benign of days. It'd simply been too late for this old shit.
Picking the can up from the floor, Theron placed it upright on top of his console. Letting an airy groan percolate to the surface from deep within his bowels, he labored to his feet before plopping backward again into his chair. In a wretched attempt to soak in what trace of leisure there'd been to milk from these late, mind-numbing hours, he reclined as far as the seat allowed, strumming his fingers to an idle rhythm along the armrest.
Banal was what this type of work was. And banality was one of the things Theron thoroughly disliked. Among the field agents within the SIS, Theron Shan was especially exceptional at his work. He mused over the events of the past brief months—nothing of note in particular. Not since the events of the Revanite uprising in the year's previous quarter.
There'd been some comfort to take from the months following their victory on Yavin 4. A tentative truce had been negotiated between the Republic and the Empire—perhaps the most favorable outcome absolutely no one had anticipated. And who could have ever foreseen it to take form into anything tangible to persist this long without incident? Most of the initial clashes and skirmishes scattered along the active lines quickly quelled to nothing as aggressions subsided with the advent of peace and promises—a deed of no inconsequence undertaken by none other than the Grand Master herself, who urged an open dialogue to continue between the two powers beyond the scope of the immediate threat. The Empire, rather faithfully, responded in kind.
Perhaps, then, as Theron himself had come to learn, the Imperials were not all barbaric warmongers. And with the looming spectre of the forsaken Emperor effectively banished, the spaces that divided their sides now seemed all but simplified. Or imagined, rather—the ways in which they'd been perceived. The unobscured views, the unobstructed vantage points. Like a clear pane of glass. A mirror, even, at certain angles. Like the other, they'd grown wearied and worn from the strains of such lasting warfare. Like the other, they'd come to see the abounding limitlessness, the potentials of collaboration over conspiracy. Though cautious in their strides, this had been the first time in decades of unrelenting violence and bloodshed that both others could meet in between toward an earnest attempt at an armistice.
As expected, the activities of the SIS had seen a substantial ease during this time. While Theron professedly deplored the mundane days that confined him to the humdrum tedium of monotony within their headquarters on Coruscant, he truthfully could not imagine a more comforting outlook. In an ideal world, there would be no need for operatives like him. In an ideal world, neither would there be a need for the Jedi Order. Even the years of honed skepticism couldn't keep Theron from entertaining such wishful notions even a few times in his life. Still, he was ever a man of incorrigible pragmatism. Some dreamed such a day could come to pass. He was not one of these precious few.
Even so, Theron couldn't remember the last time he'd gone this long without being dispatched on yet another field mission.
The galaxy never stays quiet for long.
Drawing in a breath, he peeled his eyes across the room, trying to find the chrono in that particular spot on that one wall. (Boredom, like the existentially questionable self-conversations, could be disorienting sometimes.)
Eleven twenty-three...
Why he'd ever voluntarily chosen to stay for overtime to run the routine full diagnostic on his system, he lamented he could not retrospectively figure out. A temporary lapse in judgment due to sheer, unadulterated boredom? A sudden onset of some sort of pathological, coma-ridden half-consciousness—also due to boredom? Either of those had to be it. It had been all the more exasperating knowing that he could have easily had any other specialist slicer within HQ undertake the task for him.
That's it. Freaking Dolo can do this next time.
He peered at the chrono once again.
Eleven twenty-four...
Theron sat up and rolled his chair closer to the console keyboard. Propping his elbow against its surface top, he leaned on his open palm, languidly eyeing the screen. It did help that his cranial implants aided in running much of the system's applications without requiring use of the keyboard.
Letting the current task run on its own, he then drifted his other hand in reach for the canned energy drink. Drawing it close, he popped it open and raised it for a sip. As soon as the liquid's artificially laden flavors sloshed past his lips, he grimaced at the particularly strange aftertaste he couldn't quite place. Wondering where in all of Coruscant she could possibly have gotten such a foul thing, he'd been rather unsurprised to see a very foreign language printed on the can across a gaudy logo he would never recognize even in passing under any given circumstance. (Well, perhaps now he would—at least to know what never to drink.) With a distasteful frown, he propped the can elsewhere far from his work space.
Huh. What's this, now?
Synced with the system applications he'd currently been running, his cybernetic implants suddenly alerted him to something rather unusual they'd picked up on. With its interface projected to him optically, he reviewed what his cybernetics appeared to be detecting. Eyes narrowed in focus, he attempted to make sense of the feedback he was receiving.
"This isn't right..." he uttered quietly to himself as he shifted upright again, proceeding to quickly type in a string of manual commands and inspect the strange irregularity he'd found. Being the adept slicer that he was, it didn't take long for Theron to identify the cause of this strange activity.
Another slicer, huh? Ballsy trying to pull something on SIS headquarters...
Quickly undertaking maneuvers to outwit the intruder, he deftly traced and followed their path. In due time, it'd been clear that the intruder realized he was trailing them as their pattern of movements grew increasingly hasty and erratic.
"Asshole...you're not losing me that easily," he murmured in response as he continued to decipher his screen.
As his fingers continued to fly across his keys, he inwardly noted in passing how impressive it'd been that this slicer had managed to slip into the headquarters' network unnoticed so far. In fact, there was quite a plausible chance that this activity would have remained undiscovered had he not been presently in the middle of such a thorough system sweep to begin with.
An unconscious little smile tugged at the corners of his lips as the unblinking focus of his dilated eyes seamlessly drifted between the retinal projections of his implants and the screen in front of him. It'd been months since he'd been caught in the rush of any sort of pursuit, mental or physical. Now tested, he'd soon see if the underuse of his skills in all that time would prove any detriment to his consummate mastery of them.
Over the following seconds of the chase, it'd come to note peculiarly that there had been no major disturbances he could discern from the intruder yet, baffling him as to what they had intended to accomplish. No slicer would breach the SIS network in order to do nothing.
Making short work of the task, Theron successfully traced and locked the intruder out. With a self-assured snicker, he dropped back into his chair, staring victoriously at the blinking blue cursor on his screen. His enthusiasm had been only fleeting once the abrupt commotion settled down with the steadying pace of his heart rate, and he snapped back upright in his seat, promptly remembering to further assess the security breach.
Still...no obvious trace of malicious activity to be found on any of his readings. The blinking cursor in the middle of his screen remained unchanged. They hadn't even attempted to log out of the network.
Brows furrowing, his fingers tentatively drifted over his console before keying in some commands to open an audio relay.
"Hey, listen! Whoever you are—you know I've got you," he began speaking through the open channel. "You understand that you're attempting to slice into the Republic SIS main—"
"—Well, hello to you too, Theron."
The unmistakable voice stilled him down his spine to the core. His expression paled upon his dawning, bewildering consternation, shaded by just the barest tinge of uncertainty of what this entirely accidental encounter could possibly mean.
'Accidental'…? Not likely. Not when it comes to her.
"...Lana?"
"Agent Shan," she greeted him with all the assuring candor absent from his own composure that very moment. Even through the simple audio link, the warmth of sincerity carried by her voice was as plain and tactile as the keys beneath his fingers and the screen before his eyes. Certain details about Lana Beniko would never change, it would seem.
The moment left Theron at an impasse. What could Sith Intelligence possibly intend by slicing into any Republic network other than surveillance and subterfuge? And Lana, of all people. Now the new minister at the head of it all, if their intel was correct. His jaw tensed at the thought of this as he once more peered through the data his cybernetics could detect. Again, he found that all activities had indeed halted on her end.
In a lowered voice, he spoke rather gravely through the channel, "Lana, what the hell do you think you're doing?"
"I thought it was quite apparent—slicing into the SIS network. Or...attempting to."
By the sound of her benign voice, he almost wondered if she'd even realized the enormity of what she'd been caught doing.
"That's it? That's all you've got to say?" he asked her dryly, sharing in absolutely none of her seeming amusement, however modest it'd been. "You understand how serious this is? I've just caught slicing activities attempted by Sith Intelligence—"
"—And thwarted quite ably, Agent Shan," she cleverly reminded him, an impression of some regard for his own impeccable countermeasures.
The silence thickened between their relays. Theron found himself quite at a loss, uncertain between her apparent pleasantry and his own ambivalence.
Sensing the slight unease weighing through the quietness, she'd been the one to break it. "I was curious...how far I could get before you caught me," she revealed a bit haltingly.
Unsure of what to make of this, Theron remained slightly wary as he questioned her again, his voice no longer shaded by any guarded hostility, shifting instead to some measure of concern. "Lana, what exactly is this about?"
Her familiar subtle laugh gently sounded through his speaker, marking her delighted entertainment of his seemingly perpetual paranoia of her. She mused over how he may never quite grow out of this mindset, though in full knowing that she herself was entirely to blame for it. Even so, she supposed that it was only a mark of his own ability and diligence as a Republic agent to respond in such a manner.
"I wanted to see how well I've learned," she nonchalantly answered, "and what better way than to put myself up against the very one who taught me? It is what the Sith do. However, as it would seem, I appear to have failed in my apprenticeship in this instance."
Theron could only picture the modest little smile she must have worn as she spoke then. He was quite incredulous at her answer. As reckless as it all was, he couldn't help but find some levity in her daring antics. This was a very rare light-heartedness uncommonly displayed by Lana Beniko, but he'd witnessed this side of this particular Sith enough during their brief time together to know she was more than capable of doing something like this. Mischief was most certainly not beyond her.
He poured a sigh in resignation. "Listen. Lana, you can't be doing this. You know that."
Another pause followed as she considered his words. His tone. She knew the sound of anger in his voice, and there was none of it as she listened to him now. Neither, however, did he appear to share in her harmless and well-intended amusement. She now feared that she may well have overstepped the finely drawn boundary yet again.
"It was the only way I could think of to contact you," she admitted in earnest. Her voice lowered as she continued, waning in its former mirth, "A way of doing so and remaining inconspicuous, that is. I apologize if I've caused you any undue concern. I suppose it was rather imprudent of me." She offered her polite apology as she inwardly berated herself for her poor judgment.
"Just...some excuse to contact me, huh?" he echoed, his reservations melting away by the layers as he searched for comprehension in her words. He mused over the lengths of what exactly she'd done. What she made seem like an innocuous little trifle was, in truth, quite foolhardy and halfway harebrained as far as mischief went. Though he couldn't deny the least bit of pride in that she'd managed to put the skills picked up during her time working with him to some decent use all on her own. (Yes, it'd seemed he truly had created a monster.)
No longer able to suppress the barest breath of a laugh, he then finally relented. He'd known she was a closet mischief-maker, but he never quite pegged her to be this whimsical about it. "Lana, I..." he halted in a sigh of laughter, "you know, you can just...call."
"Why, certainly, it's simple enough to suggest," she commented, a spark of humor returning to her voice. Of course she had already considered this, deeming it to be far too insecure given the considerable expanse between them. "How do you suppose we should? Without putting our correspondences at risk of being discovered?"
"You say that like as though we were getting involved in some sort of espionage." The first sound of voluntary banter to come from him that entire evening, earning him quite a gracious swell of laughter from his present company.
"Are we not? An SIS agent and Sith Intelligence—making regular contact across the galaxy in order to inquire on one another. Sounds rather...dubious, doesn't it?"
In hindsight, among all the peril and hazards they faced during the Revanite uprising, Theron realized he seldom had any opportunity to reflect in any meaningful way the honest nature of their respective companionships beyond their working alliance. Even fewer were opportunities between any of them for real, sociable conversation. In fact, much of it had consisted of long-winded and rather one-sided exchanges with Jakarro's loquacious droid. With the absence of a mission objective to maintain, he realized how pleasant it actually was to speak on such genial terms with someone like Lana.
He gave a humored smile, reclining back into his chair. "We're both intelligence agents. We'll figure a way around it."
Responding with a gentle laugh, she then at last gave her proper greeting. "How have you been, Theron?" The question she'd meant to ask since conceiving this entire intercourse.
Theron leaned forward over his console, crossing his arms along its edge as he smiled to himself. "Just fine. How about you?"
"Quite well myself. Though it has been rather lackluster. I couldn't put my finger on why that was for some time. But now, I feel I have a good idea of what may be lacking."
He quirked a brow at this comment, curiously envisioning what expression could possibly be gracing her features that very moment. "That your way of saying you miss me?" he quipped.
"Oh..." she mused in a pitched drawl at this unforgettable brand of sarcasm. "I see with your new promotion, a slightly inflated sense of self-importance was bound to follow."
Giving a snort of a laugh, he countered with his own tease, "Yeah. And you're the deluded one who thought she could slice into the Republic's central intelligence network by herself. Just for an excuse to talk to some guy."
"In all honesty, I had no expectation to successfully slice through. In fact, I was laying a wager that 'some guy' would notice and intercept me. Otherwise, we wouldn't be having this conversation, would we, Agent Shan?"
While many of his colleagues and superiors would address him as such, the unfamiliar ring of it coming from Lana struck him as odd. Its rigid, foreign sound made him grimace. "'Agent Shan'...? So formal all of a sudden?"
"Well, now that our alliance has officially been dissolved, I don't suppose it would do to continue on with such casual familiarities," she suggested with some manner of remote deference.
One such as Theron couldn't care less about these things. He suspected that she, of all people, would have known this, but he also knew that it was Lana Beniko in question after all, whose sincere graces never seemed to switch off, regardless of the circumstances. She was a Sith Lord who would kill you if you so happened to find yourself standing as her enemy, and still do so without displacing a single drop of utmost courtesy.
"But it's totally okay to still fraternize," he remarked. Though veiled beneath the humor of his sarcasm, he'd meant to point out the obvious contradiction. "So I can't call you 'Lana' anymore? Is it...'Lord Beniko' now?"
It'd been Lana who grew quiet this time. The moment lingered as her mind grew heavy by the wayward passing peripheral thoughts, only for her to realize that she'd spent her allotted time.
"Theron?" she addressed him once more. There was something different in the manner she spoke his name. Something nuanced. Some perceivable sentimentality in the way she said it this time. It had always been about the finer details when it came to Lana Beniko.
"...Yeah?" he answered tentatively, sensing the finality in her tone.
"We should talk again soon." A whisper of reluctance seemed to weave through this simple statement as it sounded through Theron's speakers. A premature end to a conversation with a friend was not what Lana desired, so she meant to hold him to this like a promise.
Hearing this paled his countenance a bit, but he gave a nod of understanding. "Yeah, okay."
An indicator on his console screen flickered briefly before a visual feed opened. He turned to peer at an adjacent monitor, smiling as he saw the face illuminated on the screen before him.
Her own warm expression mirrored his, gleaming as she, too, finally caught a glimpse of his face, glad to see that he appeared well as he claimed. Since she'd been the one to draw their call to a close, she intended to at least offer a somewhat proper goodbye. "Be well to yourself."
The departing phrase was familiar—echoed from when they'd previously parted ways on Yavin 4.
"And you stay out of trouble," he recalled, the very same response from then as well.
As though hearing some sort of inside joke hidden within an esoteric goodbye, she nodded in fondness and quiet laughter. Her welcoming gaze remained until she severed the relay from her channel's link. Theron's screen once again grew blank. The blinking blue cursor disappeared.
He sat back into his chair, letting the recollection of those days swarm his memory in a drift of pensive musing. Nearly three months of relative, luxurious calm, and even Theron realized he hadn't given a lingering second thought toward her until now. Strange, the things one considered when idle time gave rise to idle thought.
Evidently, he realized, the course of Lana's thoughts, too, had led her to him at some point. Why in all the galaxy would she have ever been prompted to reach out to him like so? Nearly three months, and even Sith Intelligence had little better to do with their time, it'd seemed. It was uncanny moments like these that often drew an instinctual solicitude within him. In no time of recent remembrance had the galaxy seen any enduring calm. For once, Theron invested some hope that perhaps his instincts, so well adapted to the turbulence of disquietude, would prove wrong.
With a sigh and some renewed morale, he reestablished the sync between his cybernetics and his system console. He endeavored to be done with his initial task once and for all and return home for some precious, well-desired sleep.
Lana's fingers rested over the switch that ended the transmission of her relay to SIS's systems. She was seated back against her chair, its rests laden with the languid weight of her arms. Her unfocused eyes gazed downward toward her console where her fingers remained. The contented smile she wore lingered as she slowly drew her hand from the switch, letting it come to idle loosely along her lips—a habitual pensive gesture of hers.
Unstirred during the private seconds of this quiet moment, it'd been the gentle beeping of her personal comlink that at last drew her gaze to attention. Lana turned her eyes to the other end of her console where the small blinking device laid. Uncrossing her legs, she bent over to reach for it. Her eyes lit as she read across its tiny screen from whom the incoming call was arriving.
As she'd been finished for the day, Lana rose from her chair and proceeded to leave her office. Bringing the receiver to her ear, she answered the comm. "Of all times for you to call your darling girl, you do so at this hour, Master Gedeon?" she spoke, beaming with a full smile as she greeted her caller.
Nearing her door, she reached for the switches to shut off the lights in her office. "No, I'm just leaving now," she responded as she stepped out into the hallway, the automated door sliding shut behind her. With a tap of her key card against the door's terminal, its indicator light blinked to red as it locked the room shut.
"I apologize for missing your previous call. I was...catching up with an old friend," she continued, fondly considering the most fitting manner of excusing herself. Turning from her office door, Lana then proceeded on down through the corridor, homebound at last in the late evening.
A/N: Hey everyone! I want to start by greeting any readers who stumble onto this fic! ^_^ Thanks a lot for taking the time to read. I'm guessing some of you guys might be readers who have been following along some of my other posts, but I also hope there are some new folks too! (Meh…I figure by now and from this point on, it seems like the fandom is kind of thinning out a little, lol.)
What am I doing trying to post new stuff when I've been super quiet with the other storieeees? I've actually had this thing plotted out in notes and all sorts of fragments and bits for yeeears now. Like…even before the other stories were posted and way in the beginning of me ever discovering The Old Republic. Like…when the Forged Alliances arc had just come out, lol. So most of this story was planned before a lot of actual canon backstory and plot was finally established in the game. It's kind of why I almost want to call this somewhat of an AU…canon-divergent for sure. If it was a bit unclear, I'd say the story disregards all the canon after the Shadow of Revan arc and assumes that the Emperor was never successfully resurrected. (Sorry, Fallen Empire/Eternal Throne stuff…none of that's going to be a part of this fic.)
I wanted to share a little bit about some of the background around this fic idea. This had been something I've been building on since I'd started following the game. It's not just a fic to satisfy my weird obsession over shipping the crap out of Theron and Lana (lol), but I also kind of always wanted to write some large, probably way too ambitious story about these two factions eventually dealing with everything beyond the war and fighting. I mean the game seems to be a giant never-ending war—which I get it, I mean, how else would it continue as a playable game and all. But…I dunno…some of it is just so bleak, it depresses me, haha.
Unlike some of the other fics I've posted, there's definitely a lot less i-don't-know-where-im-going-with-this as far as the plot and ideas go, haha…but it's really just buckling down and writing it all out from all the notes I've had forever. I guess I was always really unsure about its completion, and it's a little bit of a special personal project for me. I don't know… But recently, I really thought about it a lot more, and I started feeling kind of stupid about sitting on it for so long. I realized it's never going to feel 'complete,' so I thought…what the hell, I'm just going to write stuff. Otherwise, I just don't think I'm ever going to get anything out. Hell, I'm not even sure there will be a decently thriving fandom left by the time this story gets anywhere anymore, lol.
But that said, this doesn't mean I've put any other project on hiatus. I know I've been ridiculously slow on all the updates, and even this one might end up the same way. But I'm stubborn! And I haven't abandoned anything, lol. I promise! All of these stories are constantly on the back of my mind, and I don't think I'd feel satisfied with letting them stay unfinished forever. I know it's not terribly reassuring, but I'll chip away at each of the fics bit by bit eventually. ^_^;
Anyway, thank you guys so much for reading and following along. I feel like I'm constantly apologizing, and I really, really appreciate all the friends who have continued to watch and wait for any updates and for offering kind and encouraging words (or even occasionally just jab at me to make sure I haven't just died entirely, haha.) I really hope that those of you who decide to follow along this one will enjoy it too. Of all the stories I'd ever tried to play around with, this might be the one that's closest to my heart as far as the content and core of it goes. I really hope I can convey all the best of these ideas in a way that you guys can find some enjoyment in reading. :) Thanks a lot, and please follow and feel free to leave reviews! :D
6/21/19
