BISEXUAL'S FOLLY

Needless to say it works exactly as Hex wanted, and their family is incredibly displeased about the match. Hex having Quinn's kids would weaken their bloodline. By that point they can't say shit about it either because Hex is Emperor's Wrath. Hex takes his last name too, just to rub it in their faces. Hex intends to avoid having children as long as they possibly can and with Quinn's respect for their career, they expect they can pull it off.

What is this like from Quinn's side, you might ask? Well, I wouldn't say he's oblivious necessarily. Hex has always played with him like a cat playing with a mouse. He's well aware that their relationship exists more for Hex's amusement than out of any sort of romantic inclination on their part. That doesn't mean there's not affection between them, if you consider Hex picking on him affection, which he does. The sizzling attraction between them also helps. He finds it hard to think straight when Hex is around because they're so distracting.

Quinn is an officer and a cis man. Hex will always be above him in the Empire's hierarchy, regardless of their gender. It never occurs to him to think of Hex as anything other than an all-powerful Sith Lord. Then Hex takes Quinn to meet their family and he realizes that to Hex's family, Hex being a Sith Lord matters less than Hex being a woman.

The knight, Theo, had his background changed a bit; his family was no longer killed by rivals. He left Korriban because he was disillusioned with life among the Sith. There might be more, idk yet, but either way, his family is still alive and well, and they become angry and feel betrayed. They thought he died in the tombs, then suddenly his face is plastered across Republic propaganda posters. His cousin, Lido, used to be his best friend, and she takes this most personally. She becomes the Sith warrior, and after their initial confrontation, she declares him dead to the family and dead to her. Her issue with him isn't that he wanted change--she's a LS Sith and reformist--but that he left and abandoned the family to do it. She prizes family (originally exclusively blood family, but this changes) and loyalty above all else (heh, she's in for a fun time in her story); in her eyes, Theo committed the most egregious betrayal possible. This occurs before she ever becomes the Wrath (I'm thinking very early, like they run into each other on Tatooine, maybe), so she puts him out of her mind for the rest of her story, and he tries to ignore the creeping guilt for the rest of his. I don't think Lido informs the family before his face appears on propaganda; it's not that she isn't planning to, but she didn't anticipate him being a prominent war hero so quickly, and she thought she had time to find a way to tell the rest of the family. Just fun things for my OCs to contend with~

Anyways, that's just context for the cliff hanger, which is Lido finding out that Theo attacked and killed the Emperor, who she thinks is going to reshape the Empire with her now that she's freed him from the Voice's trapped body. The Hand says he's not really dead, but she doesn't know what to believe. She's angry that the Hand never bothered to tell her he was even attacked until it was too public to avoid (isn't she the Wrath? Isn't she supposed to answer insults like this? Why was she not informed? (I actually can't remember if you get mail from the Hand regarding the knight's assault on Dromund Kaas and the Emperor, but in this, I'm thinking she doesn't regardless of what the game says lol), and she feels unsteady as her previous beliefs about Vitiate are challenged (i.e., that he's better for the Empire than the Dark Council, as he forced the Dark Council to sign the Treaty of Coruscant, so he must care for the welfare of his citizens more than they do, and he promised her a better galaxy on Voss) because he's made no changes and not even bothered to speak with her, and apparently now he won't even bother to let her know if he's alive. In addition, her position, which she previously felt was closer to power and autonomy than she'd ever had before, is looking more and more like her life under Baras--a longer leash, but a leash all the same. All of this is projected onto Theo, who she has an easier time being angry with.

This culminates in her hunting Theo down. It's no longer enough for him to be dead to her--he needs to actually die. She's not fully thinking clearly, and she's certainly not leaving room for her actual feelings on the thought of her cousin and old friend really dead. She refuses to remember how it felt to hear he'd been lost and presumed dead in the tombs of Korriban--the guilt (she was also on Korriban and never felt his death), the grief, the anger at a system that so callously threw away her loved one. She needs an outlet for her anger, and her life has been hunting one enemy after another for years now. Instinct takes over.

If this were a season, it would culminate in her finding him on Makeb (doing one last search for civilians to get them onto the ark) and attacking him. Their fight would last long enough for a groundquake to occur, and a cavern would collapse on top of them. As the cavern falls around them, Lido keeps trying to return to their fight, but she's uncharacteristically struggling, her vision switching between the current collapsing cavern and the cavern on Quesh falling around her. Theo is trying to stop the fight; even though he had no trouble defending himself up til now (he also has his own anger with her, especially her willingness to serve Vitiate and her unwillingness to see who Vitiate actually is), he stops, more concerned with what's happening with her than even the cavern still falling around them. The end would be a dark screen and Lido's still-panicked breathing.

It's fun for me to imagine because it's a parallel image of Lido's life figuratively collapsing around her, and her panic and association of it with the moment her life intertwined with Vitiate in the first place feels poetic to me. That she's also lashing out at one of the only people actually interested in what she's feeling and who sees her as fully a person, not a tool to be used, also hits hard for me. It's also a bit of a reversal of their class stories: Lido's journey in her class story has her deluding herself into believing she's in control, that she's truly gaining freedom through her pursuit of power, and Theo's journey through his class story is the opposite. He kills the Emperor, he's supposedly turned the page on a new galactic era and should feel like nothing and no one can stop him, but he feels more out of control than ever. She's building herself up, and he's crashing out. Then, Lido's life starts to fall apart (or, well, she can no longer ignore that it's falling apart and it's never been quite the way she wants to believe it is) while she's trying to hold onto her victory (becoming the Wrath and surpassing Baras), and Theo starts to return to himself a bit while helping Makeb's citizens escape certain destruction (yes, there's still killing, but this is about protecting life, and he's realizing he wants to be a Jedi, not the Sith he's been acting like, and uphold the principles he's cast aside in favor of taking on the role he thought the Republic needed from him. It's the first thing that feels right to him in a long time).

I'm still thinking about what the rest of the legacy is doing while Lido and Theo are having their disastrous family reunion, but this is already long and this is the main cliffhanger anyways, so I'll leave it at that for now :D