Chapter 9: Watch Everything You Know Burn
Baylan's feet carried him on a path towards Gellayria's quarters, as much as he almost wished his feet would never get him there.
The conversation he had had with Anakin Skywalker rang in his ears. While the Jedi Knight rising star had hedged, stating that any advice he might have to impart would largely depend on what Baylan desired that would require breaking the Jedi Code, and even though Baylan had (he thought) kept his thoughts and feelings well guarded, the implication had been clear: however Baylan might be tempted, Anakin seemed to be relaying to his fellow Knight not to do it, whatever it was.
Baylan didn't know whether Skywalker was genuinely giving this advice, even implicitly, out of a genuine desire to help guide his fellow Jedi… or if Skywalker was warning him away from something.
Baylan didn't believe that he had given away anything incriminating to Anakin in asking for advice regarding such hypotheticals. He liked to believe he hadn't. Even then, would Skywalker report him to the Jedi High Council? …. No, Baylan didn't think so. Anakin had no reason to believe that Baylan had already broken the Jedi Code – all he had was a suspicion, suggested in a private conversation, that Baylan was considering breaking the Code, though Baylan had not said how. You couldn't turn someone in for the suggestion that they were considering breaking a law or statute.
Another thought: if the roles had been reversed, and Anakin Skywalker had been the one to seek Baylan out with these thoughts on temptation, would Baylan turn his fellow Jedi in? The idealist in Baylan couldn't help but admit that, yes, he would.
It wouldn't even be anything personal. It really boiled down to a clash of styles. Baylan was a stickler for the rules of the Order. He believed in the idea of the Jedi wholeheartedly, while at the same time granting himself a healthy dose of skepticism, the ability to question, when he felt the Jedi were straying from their professed path. For example, Baylan had never believed that the Jedi should have gotten involved in this war, not because he didn't think the Republic shouldn't be defended, but because the duties of a soldier lay outside the purviews, the bounds, of what a Jedi should be. They were peacemakers, not an arm of the military. However, Baylan was not the Grandmaster, nor was he the Supreme Chancellor.
On the other side of the credit, Anakin Skywalker was brash, and had always prided himself on flouting the rules of the Order when it suited him, and because he was a war hero and the Chosen One and dashing, the Council and even his own Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, pretty much just…. let him. After all, Anakin Skywalker was the golden boy, and now more and more, the poster child for the war effort. The fact that Anakin was the spiritual descendent in a long line of Jedi who had not always toed the line didn't help matters. His master's master before him, and his master before him had maintained a rather shaky regard for the Code. Qui-Gon Jinn had very likely ruined his chance for a seat on the Council with some of his choices; Master Dooku had left the Order entirely and was now in the opposing camp. Had fallen to the Dark Side. It still pained Baylan to think it, even now, even as the tiniest part of him couldn't help but wonder if Master Dooku had had his reasons. Had the Jedi Order pushed him away and into the waiting arms of the Sith Lord still in hiding? As for Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, he was the one exception in the chain drifting from Dooku all the way to Anakin who actually did try to follow the Code. Baylan had to admire Master Kenobi for that, considering the man had been surrounded by influences who listened to their own ideas: not the Council's, and in some ways, not even the will of the Force itself.
Well. Baylan wasn't about to not listen to the will of the Force, as tempted as he was to cast it aside, just this once. Not if he wanted to remain a Jedi in good standing.
He arrived in front of Gellayria's parasteel door. Heart in his mouth, he knocked.
When the parasteel rose with a pneumatic hiss, Gellayria's beautiful face appeared. She lit up brightly when she saw him.
"Hey, sweetie…." She leaned forward as if to take him in her arms, to kiss him. It took everything in Baylan to shy away.
He glanced down. "I…. I can't…."
Gellayria's lovely face, her expressive sapphire eyes, flickered with confusion and hurt. "Can't what…?"
Baylan lifted his head, his own expression pained. "Gellayria…." He softly took her hands in his. "I care for you more, than any Jedi I have ever grown or served with, second only perhaps to my own Master. But this…. this cannot be. If – if we were discovered…."
"I don't care," Gellayria clipped, shaking her head. She wrapped her arms around his waist. "I love you…. I want to be with you…."
"The Force does not wish for its servants to lay down in love with one another," Baylan clipped back, averting his gaze, staring off almost at nothing in the distance of the hallway beyond. "If we as Jedi are married to anything, it is the Force. As it should be. Gella…. If we were discovered, we would be expelled from the Order!"
"And so what if we were?" Gellayria asked challengingly, and Baylan's eyes popped because she couldn't be suggesting…. She just couldn't!... "Baylan…." She smiled at him softly. "I've felt the torment in you. The conflict. Don't tell me you haven't thought of leaving the Order yourself. I remember well how you were close with Master…. Master Dooku…."
Baylan worried his bottom lip. He still found it a struggle to look at her. "The thought…. has crossed my mind…. yes….."
Gellayria's expression brightened. "If it has, as it has for me, then should we not interpret that as the Force trying to tell us something?"
"Tell us what?"
Gellayria shrugged. "A guidance."
"…. Or a warning…." Baylan muttered. He wasn't sure why he said that.
"Master Trennis left the Order to marry for love. Why shouldn't we?"
"That was decades ago!" Baylan pointed out, though the point was weak, even to his own ears. Sighing, he stepped out of Gellayria's embrace. "I will always care for you…. but it cannot be in the way that you wish…." He ducked his face as he pulled the hood of his Jedi robes low over his head. "…. I'm sorry…."
He indulged in one last kiss goodbye, though he silently berated himself for allowing even that, before he turned and trudged down the corridor beyond the Atrium, leaving his fellow Jedi Knight with a broken heart.
19 BBY
The Clone Wars continued apace. Baylan served in many of the fiercest battles of the conflict and was eventually recognized for his actions by being promoted to Jedi General, and then later a Jedi Master.
In spite of many of his colleagues' urgings, he never took a Padawan learner.
He would meet other apprentices, though. Jaro Tapal, his old Master, stopped by one day cycle to say goodbye, on his way to a mission in the Bracca system, for which he was bringing his new Padawan along. Cal Kestis seemed eager to please the stern and taciturn Lasat and Baylan could sense in the Force how the lad had raw potential.
Though things were much more awkward now between him and Gellayria, Baylan was still supportive of his friend and one-time lover when she took a Padawan apprentice herself: an Ewok named Wabat. As a species, it was rare for Ewoks to possess enough Force sensitivity that they were brought to the Temple to be trained. Baylan noted how Gellayria doted on her Padawan.
He found himself thinking that, had she left the Order, she would have made an excellent mother….
It was strangely quiet, the day the galaxy changed.
It had been a whirlwind several day cycles already: there were fresh reports that Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi had defeated General Grievous in combat. In politics and other news, the Senate was looking to keep Supreme Chancellor Palpatine on for another, unprecedented term in office, due to the emergency war powers currently in place.
Baylan was just leaving the Jedi Archives with Gellayria and Wabat when the ground beneath their feet began to shake. The tremors were in chilling rhythm; it sounded like so many clone troopers marching in lockstep.
Baylan and Gellayria shared a confused look. Between them at their feet, Wabat let out a nervous chitter. While clone troopers were stationed outside the temple doors to guard against attack, they were never permitted to enter the Temple itself. The Jedi had special Temple guards posted, wielding yellow lightsabers, to serve that security function.
All at once, a gashing tear ripped through the fabric of the Force itself, sharp and overwhelming enough that it nearly brought Baylan to his knees. Beside him, he felt Gellayria sway, as she cried out in horror.
Jedi are dying….
They seemed to be falling all at once, as if in some great battle, yet Baylan instinctively knew that this was somehow bigger than a mass casualty event caused by the war.
In the middle distance, several hundred paryards ahead, Baylan watched, in the midst of Gellayria tugging him to his feet, as a phalanx of clone troopers entered the Atrium of the Temple. At their head was a hooded figure dressed all in black, wielding a blue lightsaber.
The clone troopers and their general, to Baylan's horrified astonishment opened fire on the first braided Padawan learners who crossed their path.
Shouts went up. There came the HSSH of lightsabers igniting from deeper in the Temple as the clone troopers and the Jedi advanced.
A stray blaster bolt pinged down the corridor towards the two Jedi Knights and one Padawan. Gellayria yelped and dove one way, Baylan the other. There was a rattling squeal, and when Baylan looked, he was shocked and traumatized to see the sprawled body of little Wabat, a orange and red sizzling hole in his tiny chest.
Somewhere amidst Baylan's ringing ears, he heard Gellayria scream.
"Gella! Come on! We have to move!" Baylan grabbed Gellayria's arm and tugged her along, back towards the ornate doors leading into the Jedi Archives. A detachment of clone troopers splintered off from the main group and began rushing to take positions down this corridor.
More blaster fire, and Baylan ignited his green lightsaber almost unconsciously; next to him, Gellayria ignited hers of silver.
"They're firing at us! Baylan, why are they firing at us?!..."
"I don't know!" Baylan hollered, taking a defensive position and deflecting the laser beams.
Past the clone's helmets, Baylan saw the dark and hooded Jedi with the blue lightsaber mowing down anyone in Jedi robes who came into his path, much less attempted to engage him. At one point, the traitor turned his head and seemed to peer down this corridor, so that he and Baylan, for a brief parsec, locked eyes.
Baylan's blood turned to ice in his veins, like the crystals from the ice cave on Ilum. Anakin Skywalker was attacking his brethren? Leading their own clone allies into opening fire…?
At his side, Baylan wasn't sure whether Gellayria had seen Skywalker's face, so concentrated was she on them holding their position, even as they were more or less pinned to the doors of the Archive.
Still turning back incoming fire, Baylan went against his personal instinct of keeping both hands on his saber hilt and instead kept one palm free, which he now threw back as he summoned the Force the open the heavy Archive doors.
"Fall back…. Gella, honey, we need to FALL BACK!"
Gellayria looked at him. Something resigned collapsed into her expression in the moment before it softened, and then she tugged Baylan close, framed his face in her palm and kissed him deeply on the lips. As if it was a kiss farewell.
"Go….." she breathed when they sultrily broke apart.
Before Baylan knew it, the Jedi he cared for most was flinging out a hand and Force pushing him back, into the darkened Archives.
"… and may the Force be with you….."
Gellayria threw the pneumatic doors down with the Force, so that Baylan was sealed, entombed into darkness.
"Gella?! GELLAYRIA!" In panicked tears, Baylan howled and banged on the parasteel desperately with his fists. He could hear blaster bolts stinging the other side of the door as they found their mark in the metal. There were other, more disturbing sounds of blaster bolts finding connection against the plasma of a lightsaber, still others that sounded as though they were finding a mark in flesh.
Muffled, slightly deadened, but still shrill enough to be heard, Baylan heard Gellayria scream.
Another gashing of his soul through the Force and then…. she was gone. Gellayria became one with the Force; Baylan felt it. He screamed with grief and anguished rage.
Staggering, stumbling back from the door, Baylan whirled about, the green glow from his lightsaber blade illuminating these hallowed shelves. A half-opened knapsack – empty – lay abandoned on one library table. Snatching it up, Baylan ran through the shelves and began grabbing Jedi texts at random, stuffing as many into the satchel as he could carry.
Up above him, he could hear fighting just outside of the doors leading into the balconies, the Archive's second floor. The clones were drawing closer. It would be moments before they broke into the library, hunting for barricaded survivors.
When the satchel was nearly bursting at the seams with books, Baylan charged up to a stained-glass window and plunged his lightsaber into the glass, shattering it. He carved and hacked out a hole big enough for him to squeeze his large frame through; it was then a short drop down to the concrete just off of the Temple's front steps.
Panting, eyes darting about like a hunted, wild animal, Baylan took off. He rounded the corner nearly into a small battalion of clone troopers.
"There's a Jedi! BLAST HIM!"
Despite his bewilderment at the chaos unfolding, at the galaxy itself seemingly turned upside down, Baylan leaned into his Jedi reflexes… and much more besides.
In the end, that was what saved him.
He succumbed to the Dark Side, just this once, pouring out his grief and anger at the loss of his best friend, the woman who had declared herself to be his wife, who had once been his love and perhaps could have remained so in another life, his sense of betrayal against the Jedi Master who had found him as a youngling, his sense of betrayal now at the gallant Jedi Knight who had been rumored to be the Force's Balance made flesh now selling them all out. Roaring, Baylan charged into the fray of stormtroopers, deflecting any blaster bolts that came at him. He chopped and slashed and within moments, an entire outfit of clones lay strewn about him in the form of diced breastplates and severed limbs.
Shouldering the satchel of Jedi texts, Baylan's ping-ponging gaze landed on an idling transport nearby. A speeder, featuring several rows of seats; he wondered if the clones he had just dispatched had arrived in it as reinforcements to hunt their erstwhile allies. Leaping into it, Baylan gunned the thrusters and took off into the teeming traffic of the city. He took the speeder up into a nearly vertical ascent, climbing steadily to the higher levels. Higher… higher…. Higher still….
Only when he was above the tallest skyscrapers did he level the speeder off, and glance down and back:
Baylan's tears streamed down his face, the moisture almost bathed in bronze from the glow of the Jedi Temple in flames.
Baylan ditched the speeder on the outskirts of Coruscant's main city. There was a transport booting up nearby, bringing what looked to be a new shipment of loader droids Yoda knew where. Using a simple Jedi mind trick on the transport foreman, Baylan slipped aboard and found a hidden compartment where he could stow away.
He huddled, shivering in the cramped dark, trying to process the horror of what he had just seen: Anakin Skywalker turned traitor…. The clones…. double-crossing their Jedi benefactors…. Scores of his colleagues and friends cut down and becoming one with the Force….
There were now vibrations under his feet, jerking Baylan from his thoughts. As the thrusters engaged and the loader droid shipment transport lifted off-planet, Baylan finally slumped against the durasteel in exhaustion.
…. He could feel the taste of Gellayria's goodbye kiss, her lips on his, and he choked down a bitter sob. His tear-filmy gaze fell on the satchel of Jedi texts at his side.
Even though he wanted to believe, had to believe that what he had just survived had absolute no precedence, it wasn't possible, Baylan also sensed he wasn't going to get answers anywhere else any time soon. And so, he dug out the first tome he had absconded with, picked it up, and began to read….