BISEXUAL'S FOLLY

It's not from my "canon", because my main timeline is pretty canon compliant and the beats follow the usual story, so I don't know if that counts, but now I just want to get it out. (Slight tengeant, I have pretty good ideas on how to portray these usual cliffhangers in a manner that better fits having all the PCs in one place, like ending an arc at the end of KotFE chapter 1 instead with everyone losing to Zakuul one by one and letting stuff happen or on the end of LotS I've made a fic about the end of LotS I'm NORMAL about the end of LotS and the implication for each and every one of my PCs and no one has proof of the contrary.)

So. There is a timeline that diverges from my "main" because, in the confrontation with Valkorion the first time, my Sith Inquisitor is normally the one to kill him and become the Outlander. And there's an au for what if my deeply emotionally unstable Jedi Consular did it instead, inheriting the role and the responsibilities, and was slowly going insane over the weigth of it all and the lack of guardrails over anything for the first time in her life. Like things are making her insane and there's LESS consequences if she goes apeshit than when she was the Jedi Council's guarddog.

So I'm making her go insane as a treat.

TW death and the body is described a little but just a little bc the post is long enough as it is without my drawn-out descs

Sarh'el Llan, the Commander, has barely just claimed the Eternal Throne. Everyone's in a celebratory mood, preparing to party or already doing so. The first part of this story is coming to a close. Despite the multiple obstacles Sarh'el faced and everything she had to put up with, she did it. She saved the galaxy.

And then comes the murder, as it usually does when things get too chummy.

Sarh'el tries to get at Cyaka first. He's been a thorn in her side for the entirety of this Alliance and his services are no longer needed. (He IS more of a little shit as a consequence of the five years under Zakuulian ocupation, and he DID take her arm way back on Hoth)

Of course being the annoying little shit he is, he escapes by the skin of his teeth and Sarh'el declares the state of emergency. And she orders that everyone who vehemently stayed a Dark Force user should be exiled or executed as they are no longer welcome in her Alliance. Mass panic. But there are enough people following the order, either out of fear or respect or some twisted satisfaction, that a fucking purge happens.

Hold on stay walk with me that's not the cliffhanger part.

Eventually she manages to catch up to Cyaka before he can leave the planet. They get into a heated fight. And I want you to imagine, not only a Consular (that, iirc, is the class who's the most powerful force user of their generation) that has been trained and uplifted by other powers through being the Commander, but also that has no moral guardrails anymore, and that PLANNED how she could win this fight. She is SCARY. So she wins. Takes a few of his limbs as revenge for her arm, preventing him from running away or trying anything dirty too. She stabs his only eye left, and she prepares to finish it while her adversary's on the ground, writhing in agony.

That's where Theron arrives. Alone, because Lana was held back by some fuckers. He's stubbornly putting himself in between them both and arguing with her because he just wants to understand what the fuck has gotten into her. She tries to just get it over with (Cyaka's life) but Theron tries to wrestle the sabers out of her, and they get into a more physical fight. They're still not trying to kill the other but it's definitely gotten more violent, and Theron is not budging and it's angering Sarh'el like he's never angered her before. The tension rises when Sarh'el notices that [one of my other PCs] is dragging away Cyaka's body towards the ship, trying to take advantage of the distraction. She loses it and Theron doesn't want to understand and she tries her best to just push him away but he's stubborn in a bad way and he's so good at being obstructive and she's losing more and more her restraint and she's still wielding both her sabers by the way and they're still wrestling and then SLASH

Lana arrives just in time to see one of the person she trusts most in the galaxy slicing in half the other person she trusts the most in the galaxy. You have no idea how much I want to draw that face of pure abject horror as she freezes once she realises what's happening.

It takes. A few seconds for Sarh'el to realise what just happened. Enough, with the struggle before, for the ship with Cyaka and the other PCs to take off far away that she can't pull a Vader on them once she notices. Meanwhile everyone is too busy to help Cyaka on the ship figure out where Theron is because he's in full denial he didn't SEE it he couldn't but it had to be his arm, right. Or his leg. There just wasn't any scream because of the shock and the adrenaline. But he's too connected to the Force to be able to ignore it that long.

And Theron's body is still on the ground while Sarh'el is trying to get him back together because he was supposed to block it this wasn't supposed to happen and she curses at the Siths who escaped because it's Their Fault and she's NEVER going to let them get away with this. And Cyaka's mind is fully collapsing on itself on that ship because he just lost the person he was trying to become good for and who believed in him and trusted him to make the galaxy a better place day by day. And Lana is just frozen.

*I slam my hands on the table* And then shot on Theron's warm oooo so warm body and CUT TO BLACK. BAM. NO ANSWERS UNTIL I GET THE MONEY TO PRODUCE THE NEXT ISSUE /j

THAT's my big cliffhanger. I have an animatic that I'm never gonna finish, that is about how she got to this point. Everything culminates to this very moment, on Frank Sinatra's "My Way", about everything she had to suffer and everything she chose to do to end up murdering her best friend and only moral guardrail at that precise timeframe. The intention is to reveal right at the very last frames that the person who intervened was Theron so the cliffhanger can be even worse.

Stuff happens after that of course and it's delicious doomed toxic yuri with Lana and both Sarh'el and Cyaka getting consumed by their negative emotions and becoming a bleak shadow of their past selves, consummed by the desire for power just so they can have revenge and be their own definition of safe. Theron was a catalyst for the good in the moral compass of them both, not even counting Lana. And not only is he gone, he was MURDERED and they blame each other for it. And everything goes to SHIT, as things tend to do in these situations. And also I get to brainstorm about Lana angst and her missing Theron like she's never missed a friend before because they were worse than that.