Author's Notes: Intended as an ongoing project of short pieces focused on Theron Shan and Lana Beniko. Sparks of inspiration! Outlet for the busy fanficcist's mind! While I have been thoroughly enamored with the idea of a Theron and Lana pairing, any number of these may or may not necessarily fall in with that. It's all going to be more or less experimental on my part (I apologize for any weirdness or nonsensicality that may result from this). All introspective musings or snippets and the like with a focus on these two characters with respect to each other and perhaps also individually. Can and probably will encompass observations of their relationship anywhere from platonic views to your classic slow-burnin' sexual tension and anything in between. Yowza, lol. Anyway, thank you for checking this out, and please enjoy!

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.

This one's an imagining of a possible future encounter between Theron and Lana after the events of Shadow of Revan.

Chances By Design

Narrowly avoiding two blasterbolts, Theron raced down the dim corridor, rounding the next corner turning up. He was desperate to remove himself from the crosshairs of the Imperial sentry hot on his tail, opting for the cover a new corridor might provide. His heartrate began to spike at the realization of the obstruction that lied ahead as it focused into view under the sparse lighting and the strain of creeping exhaustion.

In his haste, Theron failed to foresee himself bound toward a dead end. Despite his fatal disadvantage, he readied his hand for the blaster at his holster until the boom of a violent thrash from behind stalled him for a fractional second. He'd peered back for a brief glimpse to see that the sentry in pursuit of him had been sent hurtling into the wall of the enclosed corridor by some unseen force. The blow had been fierce enough to knock his pursuer's helm clear from his head, and now he'd lain crumpled to the floor, incapacitated.

Theron did not bother to dawdle with his mysteriously given reprieve. His eyes quickly scanned the intricate inner workings of this industrial passage in search of another escape route. Not a single signal to trace with his cybernetic implants, he stood blind in the heart of enemy grounds. It had not been an unfamiliar hybrid of dread and exhilaration that crept along his cognizance this very moment. Though it remained, as ever, every bit as vivid a sensation as each of its previous incarnations his memory could evoke.

"You need to leave." A voice stirred the perceived stillness of the shadows. A woman's voice. Grave. Unassuming. Abstruse. Familiar.

And footsteps. Theron did not stir, listening to the tap of each footfall, gauging each progressive inch as it approached. In a trained, singular motion, he drew his blaster and turned to face the stranger.

You.

His discerning, cautious gaze remained as still as the arm that held his weapon, now pointed unwaveringly at the heart of its target.

"Don't think you're going to stop me from this mission, Lana," he warned.

Her heavy amber eyes only allowed a shade of her tenacity and her resolve to behold. But he knew well of the other existing colors beneath the amber. It had been the reason for this deliberate meeting, after all. It had been by her design.

Lana's fair, ungloved hand took the barrel of his blaster into her palm, her slender fingers wrapping with care and precision around the cold durasteel. The calmness of her gesture only masked the reticence of her intent. She felt no resistance as she gently pushed the weapon away from her heart, but the action itself required a perceptibly conscious effort against her adversary's steadfast immobility.

"You need to leave here, Theron," she repeated, her voice absent of any misgivings.

One chance.

Just as easily as he allowed her to disarm the threat he posed with her simple gesture, he found understanding in her unseen colors. As always with this lone Sith, he need not wander far to find them, as much as he deigned to presume otherwise. Their reluctance, their restraint had been a shared sentiment—unspoken, but underscored in every subliminal channel between them.

He drew a breath of unsolicited catharsis. With a burgeoning sense of guileless faith, he returned his blaster to its holster. His eyes peered briefly past her shoulder at the unconscious guard sprawled on the ground further down the corridor.

"Why are you here?" he questioned her. Lana was full of enigma more times than not, and a transparent question toward her purposes may as well be as forbidding as a dare. A Sith compelled to honesty was always a thing of intrigue.

"Chances are not an abounding luxury, Theron."

"And this was one of design, Lana. Not really a chance in that respect, is it?"

"Are you going to waste the time I've permitted you on philosophical semantics?" she quipped in a sardonic drawl, her eyes now flickering with withering patience. "I've never known you to take after the modes of the Jedi."

Like a goading insult. That would send him off with little further contention.

"You think I'm going to owe you for this?" he challenged her as the sobering reality descended upon his better senses. Ulterior motives were never beyond her, but neither was sincerity. Still, it remained second nature to test her virtues.

"No debts," she plainly answered. "But I hope our constancy remains as true to you as it has for me."

"Nothing like unreciprocated trust, huh, Lana?" He nearly smirked in the residual snideness of his remark.

A passing silence. Old wounds were hard to heal without impurity. Lana would know. All Sith knew. Her own wound—one of a different essence—as well, remained an obscure scar on her own being. Somewhere close to the place Theron's blaster had aimed only moments ago.

Lana raised her chin as her eyes lowered. A subtle trace of her resignation, one that Theron had studied and learned well. "Back down this corridor. Turn right. Fifty yards, and you will find an electrical control panel embedded into the wall's pipelines." Her tone grew barren and quiet. "Use it to your advantage."

As a Jedi would probe his enemy's mind for threads of treachery, Theron's discriminating gaze searched Lana's features for any vestige of subversive intent. Even Sith Lords had tells. It'd been difficult to detect her lies at times, but he'd ably discovered through divine patience that there was no such guarded impediment in her moments of candor.

Like the unseeable shades of ultraviolet and infrared, there'd been something more in her color the eyes couldn't glimpse. A sensation. Like the burns the invisible light was capable of inflicting on one's flesh, Theron felt something more permeating deep beneath his skin. But to their shared lament, there was no time to be had to dwell on sparks and glimmers of pathos.

Swiftly, Theron brushed past her without a further word. He commanded his steps softly onward, just as she'd bid. There was a task at hand he needed to complete.

Like a phantom dismissed for an unassuming draft, Lana lingered on with her gaze downcast as he passed her by. Once her heart steeled with purpose, the ghost spoke, her voice unearthed from the grave from which she rose.

"Theron." Her voice held more power than she ever knew.

Drawing to a halt, he directed his gaze over his shoulder back to her.

"If you value your life, you will leave these grounds at once. Leave this world," she urged him once more. Stirring, she turned to meet his gaze. "And do not return. Do you understand?"

Her words were less so a warning than they had been a bid for persuasion. A plea.

Theron's own gaze wavered only momentarily as he weighed her request. Then once again, he turned away from her, departing in silence, leaving the phantom to her befitting solitude.

In the shadows of this space, Lana remained. In the passing minutes, she watched from her dark corner as the commotion passed before her left and right. The sparing lights that dotted the corridors soon flickered shut with the waning whir of the expiring electrical systems. Only the humming red glow of the backup lights were left to illuminate the depths of this underground. Her operatives and sentries swarmed about in search of her intruder, all none the wiser that he'd already been found. Like an invisible ghost, she lingered. So many colors, so many shades—all unseen for the dense and unforgiving shadow that eclipsed her. Such had always been her existence, it seemed.

The groans and twitching of the guard she disabled caught her attention as he roused back to consciousness. She'd been careful with the power exerted against him in her command of the Force. Playing the ever-watchful champion to this underling, she came and lowered herself at his side, picking up his thrown helm from the floor.

"How are you faring?" she asked him with a calming voice, handing him his piece of armor.

Taking the helm, he rubbed his eyes clear of the stars and haze that still clouded his mind and vision. "I... I saw the intruder."

She patiently allowed his bearings to return.

"And..." He strained to recall what had taken place. "I was... I was thrown into the wall," he murmured, his puzzled countenance furrowing in his incomprehension of the events. As the image rushed back into his recollection, he turned his enlightened gaze to her. "I saw his face."

Peering into his eyes, she placed a delicate hand on the man's shoulder. "You saw no one."

The ardor that possessed him only seconds ago now drained from him completely as she reached through his gaze and seized him by the mind.

"I...saw no one..." his sunken voice followed. The thought was forcibly compelled into his very consciousness.

Lana rose to her feet, her imperious, hollow gaze burrowing into the unwitting guard. "Resume your duties."

"At once, my Lady," he complied. He moved as a dancing marionette dangling from her wires. Fixing his helm back on, he reclaimed his dropped blaster rifle and departed to rejoin the guard.

These had all been her puppets—all the little pawns and pieces who jostled across her ruling eyes. All under her command—who moved when she directed and as she governed. Unlike most masters, she did not submit them to any mercurial whims or humors. But how easily she exerted her sovereignty over them. It was within the shadows, behind the shroud, where she'd placed herself. The mistress of puppets was never seen.

And yet, even atop the ordained cathedra upon which she now found herself seated, Lana never could expel the disquieting intuition that even the mistress herself was not completely unbound. There certainly were forces unseen that shepherded her movements. Her decisions. Her heart.

Why are you here?

Theron questioned her flawlessly, and she'd skirted around his query by artful sleight. It seemed only Theron ever held the insight to ask the questions she could find no answers for. She would even swear it had always been well within his intention to do so.

I take it that is your design, then, Theron?

How maddening it grew to be sometimes—not knowing. She'd feared the possibility that the shadows may yet grow to become too dense for even herself to navigate. To be one with the darkness—yes.

But let it not consume you.

Lana considered what this encounter had brought her. What chance this had presented before her. Had she lingered too deep in the dark to even realize it before it'd slipped between her fingers? It would be upon this uncertainty that she would, as always, defer to the wisdom of the Force.

(More) Author's Notes:

Hello, hello! So, in a flurry of a sudden onset (well...onsets) of inspiration, I've decided to go on a limb and write up and put out all this stuff that's just been milling around in my head. I've been writing so much randomness just for kicks and thought, why not? Let's post some of this stuff, haha! And why Theron/Lana-centric? 'Cause...the hell with canon? I know I can't be the only one who ships the bajeezus out of these two. I was actually kind of shocked by the dearth of even the slightest hint of Theron/Lana-esque writings or art and the like that's available. I mean, I'm not just crazy, right? I felt there was a lot of fabulously understated chemistry between the two characters (as opposed to the somewhat contrived and hilariously cheesy romancing options available for the player with either of them.)

And I'll admit it—I've become rather infatuated with this pairing and all the potential it brings. Been working nutso over this one ambitious...behemoth of a story that's been in the works since...when the frack did Shadow of Revan get released? Yeah, like probably two months before that. It's been coming along quite well; however, I don't intend to post anything until the bulk of the story has been drafted out. It definitely hasn't been a chapter-by-chapter process, which is why I just can't routinely write and post things as so many fanfic authors are able to do. So...if there are any prospective Theron/Lana fans out there, stay tuned!

Anywho, I've loved the developer's blogs that have been released surrounding a lot of the character back stories and mythos. Seeing the more recent ones about Theron and Lana respectively has just really gotten my writer-itches going. Now, I do want to express that while I've had numerous and ridiculously grandiose story and fanfiction ideas throughout my life, I've rarely, and I mean rarely have ever gotten through the process of writing anything, let alone sharing it. That said, do forgive me if any readers out there have finished this feeling like I've wasted your time... I sincerely, hope that any of you guys will have find some entertainment out of this. That's a win in my book. :)

Apologies...I can be a bit of an ol' windbag. Well, I do hope to post other things in the future. And please leave reviews! I love hearing people's thoughts and ideas! Even a small thing goes such a long way. And please feel free to offer any constructive advice or thoughts you may have. Thank you!

3/9/15