Chapter 8: In Defiance of the Force Itself
21 BBY
Jedi Knight Baylan Skoll sent a nod towards Master Nu as he bade her good morning, sweeping from the Jedi Archives and prowling down the hall to his quarters after pulling an all-nighter. A handsome youth of 29, he had found much peace in his life and his role as a Jedi.
Well…. in most instances.
As a youngling Initiate, if anyone had asked Baylan how he envisioned his career as a Jedi to go, he would not have expected it to be a mixed bag of fortune and misfortune.
He had been fortunate to be the apprentice to such a wise and respected Jedi Master as Jaro Tapal. Being his apprentice as long as he had was what had been unexpected. Not necessarily unfortunate, even if Baylan had to concede: he had been at the far end of the age range at which most Padawans took the Knighthood Trials and were finally Knighted.
And what a trial he had gone through in order to have his Padawan braid shorn.
The Battle of Geonosis a year cycle ago had seen Baylan board a Jedi shuttle alongside his Master, now-Master Shaden Wessiri, and her Padawan and his dear friend, Gellayria Coxswain. They had gone into the arena to engage in battle with the Separatist battle droids.
Up on the balcony of the arena, dueling briefly with Master Windu, Baylan had seen him: his old friend and mentor, Master (now Count) Dooku, fully the leader of the Separatist faction that had now sent the galaxy into civil war.
Baylan's dismay and disappointment had only heightened further when he heard from Master Obi-Wan Kenobi himself that he and his apprentice had engaged Dooku in a lightsaber duel, and that Dooku was now a Sith Lord.
Baylan had thought Dooku to be a wise man, during his time at the Temple. The young man had been saddened when the Master who had discovered him had left the Order entirely. Over the years, Baylan had sent holo-letters to his old mentor, but had never heard back.
Passing into the quarters where he and his fellow Knights lived, meditated and studied, Baylan paused in front of the door he knew to belong to fellow Knight Gellayria. Even through the parasteel door, he could feel her distress and anguish, a kind of torment, rippling through her presence in the Force.
She must have sensed him, for her door suddenly and pneumatically hissed open. Gellayria's round, lovely, heart-shaped face seemed to ease, even as her eyes widened upon sight of him.
"Baylan…." She breathed, and taking him by the forearm, she yanked him into her private chambers.
"Gellayria. Is everything all right? I sensed much fear and torture in you, just now."
Gellayria glanced down shyly, and by the dim lighting, Baylan noticed how her sapphire eyes were shimmering with tears. "I'm being torn apart…." She finally moaned. "I want to be free of this pain! I know what I have to do to purge my sin, but I don't know if I have the strength to do it. …. Will you help me?"
"Yes. Anything," Baylan breathed, searching her face, concerned.
Lifting her eyes tremulously to his, her lashes fluttering, Gellayria took a deep breath and smiled weakly. "This. This is my sin." And looping her arms around his neck, she softly kissed him.
Baylan was shocked enough that he had didn't pull back right away, and even for a moment allowed himself to get lured into the kiss. He finally drew away, though not abruptly enough so as to offend or hurt her. "No! Gellayria… we cannot do this. It…. it is forbidden….."
Gellayria just smiled and shook her head. She kissed Baylan again, more intensely this time, and Baylan felt his own kind of torment reverberate through the Force as he started to kiss her back.
The pair of Jedi Knights, who had gone up in the Temple together, gone through scores of missions together, staggered back onto Gellayria's simple sleep mat. Gellayria rolled her handsome fellow Knight on top of her, and when she enticingly spread her legs for him, opened them so that his large and firm body settled between them, Baylan wriggled free of the embrace, though not enough to extricate himself from her arms.
"Gella….." His pet name for her. "We – we really mustn't….." Attachments of any kind within the Order were strictly forbidden…
Gellayria just shook her head again and clamped her thighs about him. "I don't care," she hissed with relish, smiling. Even laughing, a little.
And when she kissed him once more, Baylan gave in and returned it. Hands clasped fabric, pushing it off of shoulders; Jedi robes fell away as the couple undressed.
Pressed now skin-to-skin, Gellayria tenderly guided Baylan to her maidenhead. Baylan sent a prayer up to the Mortis gods that he might be forgiven.
He mounted his fellow Knight and mated with her.
They made love ardently, passionately, rutting like two womp rats in heat. Feasting on her firm, pert breasts, Baylan listened to Gellayria melodiously moan against him. Draw him closer. Breathe his name – when she did, it made him shiver.
"Baylan…. I – I love….."
Whatever she had been about to say was cut off in a choked squeak as she was brought to orgasm. The young woman thrashed beneath Baylan, and growling, he sped up his thrusts, feeling his cock expand in her warmth in the moment before light and color exploded and he came deep inside her.
Her long, svelte fingers digging into his rippling shoulder blades, Gellayria drew her lover close, pressing their naked, sweat-slicked bodies together. Baylan was astounded by how much they fit together.
Through his ringing ears, Baylan could hear Gellayria singing, softly on the edge of her voice, a kind of madrigal in a tongue he did not recognize. Perhaps it was her Kijimi native language.
Kissing her goodbye, Baylan redressed in a haze and staggered out of Gellayria's chambers with his mind cloudy. He – who prided the Order and its ideals above all else, even in the face of some questions about their military policies as of late – had just broken the Jedi Code.
He needed to talk to someone. But to whom could he go? Master Tapal? No, surely not! The Lasat took pride in adherence to Jedi strictures and protocols almost as much as he took pride in his absolute trust in the Force.
Baylan decided to track a certain droid down in the Jedi Archives about the problem.
"Ah. Young Knight Baylan. Tell me: what troubles you?"
Baylan winced at the Mark IV architect droid professor. What was he supposed to tell him? What advice exactly was he seeking? It wasn't as though he could un-violate the Jedi Code after violating it.
He still smelled of sweat and something else. He smelled like her – Gellayria, his fellow Knight who had seduced him into taking her as a lover…. It had felt so good, so impossibly, disturbingly good, to go to bed with her – Baylan could still hear her soft, lilting voice in her ear, rising into song….
"Huyang…. It is a tune that troubles me. I am…. doing some planetary oppo research on a planet that is a key Separatist defensive position. Kijimi." That was a total lie – he had no idea if the Separatists even had a presence on Kijimi.
"A tune, say you?" chuckled Huyang. "Pray, can you hum it for me? Or perhaps sing it?"
Baylan turned the color of a Geonosian reek. "I can hum a little, Profeesor." He blushingly did so, Huyang holding a recorder disk in front of his lips. Then the architect droid turned and fed the sound into the data computer, enhancing the audio.
"I am uncertain as to whether it could be a kind of secret code, used by the Separatist forces to communicate…"
"We have a match," Huyang chirped. "And to the contrary of your theory, young Baylan, the tune actually corresponds to a traditional Kijimi wedding song."
It took everything in Baylan not to stagger back a step. A…. a wedding….? Had Gellayria performed a….? "Does it hold any special significance?"
"Customarily, when the bride or bridegroom sing it to their intended, it binds them together in matrimony for life," Huyang reported. He tilted his head curiously. "Are you feeling all right, Master Skoll?"
Baylan blushed, and told himself that it was due to the droid referring to him as a 'Master'. His fellow Knight had married them, bound them together, after they had strayed from the Jedi way and found comfort in each other's arms. Gellayria had performed a wedding ceremony, in defiance of the Force itself…. "Yes. I'm… I'm fine." He bobbed his head at the droid. "It…. well, it couldn't be what I thought, then…. Thank you for your expertise, Huyang."
He somehow fled the Archives without breaking into a run.
There was an exposition this afternoon cycle, for the Padawan learners to show off what they had been studying.
Baylan entered the symposium in the gym, to perhaps better gather his thoughts, even with and despite of all the background noise. Hiking up into the stands, he kept to himself. No one took any notice of him, which was just fine.
As a Jedi, Baylan had always been mostly a lone wolf. He had an inner circle of a select few people, which essentially included colleagues like his old Master Jaro Tapal and Gellayria.
Making a sweep of the training duels, Baylan felt his eyes zero in on a Togruta female, wielding a green lightsaber. Her grip was a rather unorthodox one, yet as an extension of her petite, lithe body, nevertheless deadly effective.
"She's a wonder, isn't she? A cunning warrior, with guts. A keen mind, too."
Baylan glanced up sharply, startled out of both his observation of the young Padawan learner and his inner reflections over the crude and base, nay, even beastly act he had just engaged with Gellayria, a woman he deeply cared for.
Anakin Skywalker, his fellow Jedi Knight and rising star within the Order, the purported Chosen One himself, smiled down at Baylan.
Baylan nodded and turned to refocus on the Togruta again. "A remarkable child," he rumbled. Realizing something, he glanced back at Anakin. "Yours?"
"Yup," Anakin's broad smile of pride showed all of his teeth. He was a good decade cycle younger than Baylan – roughly twenty whereas Baylan was 29 – yet the copper-haired gentleman somehow seemed, in this moment, to be the much older of the two. Anakin, along with Baylan and Gellayria and how many others, had been Knighted in the wake of the Battle of Geonosis, the baptismal fire of combat serving as their Jedi Knighthood Trials.
Baylan cleared his throat, trying to work through what to say. "I am surprised you decided to take a Padawan, for one so young as yourself." He couldn't help but feel a little resentful, illogical as it sounded: Anakin had spent less years as a Padawan learner, yet had come to Knighthood at the same time as Baylan despite being at least nine year cycles younger. The two men were really extremes, at opposite ends of what was considered the average age of achieving Knighthood.
"I'm surprised you haven't," Anakin chortled. Baylan flushed, shrugged and glanced away.
"The war has changed things," he muttered. "We've only been free of our Padawan braids for a year cycle." He smiled wanly, though the upturn to his lips was weak. "Give it time. I'd like to have a couple of solo missions under my belt before I even think of taking on a student."
"Your old Master already has," Anakin observed. "Master Tapal taught you well. I expect his new apprentice will receive much the same treatment."
Baylan nodded. "Yes. A boy. Red-haired." That was all Baylan knew about the lad – he swore he had even seen him at a distance once, in the Atrium, but he had yet to meet his successor. He would have to speak with Master Tapal to perhaps arrange a meeting.
Baylan ran his tongue over his teeth in thought. "Master Skywalker…."
Anakin chortled, though his chest seemed to puff out at the title. "Not yet, Master Skoll, not yet…. give it time for us both…."
Baylan smiled indulgently. "Have you ever been…. tempted? To stray away from the Force."
He was surprised, perhaps even a bit hopeful, at how Anakin's face seemed to darken just slightly. "Sometimes…" the younger man admitted, almost ruefully.
Baylan straightened. "That is to say… if you were faced with a choice, wanting something that was against the Jedi Code…. would you pursue it?"
Baylan felt Anakin study him curiously, probingly. Feeling the younger Knight's essence brush up against his in the Force, Baylan instinctively closed off his thoughts. He didn't want his colleague, who was barely an acquaintance, to know of Gellayria.
"…. I guess that would depend on what it was you…. desired….." Anakin drolled out slowly, his lips twisted in a bemused frown. "But generally, in such moments of doubt, I would turn back to what my Master taught me. Obi-Wan always used to say: trust in the Force, and let that be your guide."
Baylan nodded. "Master Tapal always said much of the same thing: Trust only in the Force."
"Yes…." Anakin nodded, glancing to Baylan again. Baylan couldn't pinpoint it, but he thought he detected something like suspicion in the other man's eyes. "I must go and congratulate Ahsoka. Good day cycle to you, Knight Skoll."
"And to you, Knight Skywalker," Baylan dipped his head deferentially.
He exited the symposium not long after, just as confused as before…
…. and now deeply shaken, gripped by the very real fear that perhaps he had not hidden anything from Anakin Skywalker at all.