Star Wars Episode X: Afterlife

Existence

It was eerie, the sensation of being bodiless. Floating, directionless, purposeless...no rhyme or reason except purely to exist.

Ben Solo's consciousness gathered with the stars, seeing every corner of the universe from an elevated point of view. Being everywhere and nowhere all at once was somehow peaceful.

Like someone pulling threads together for a garment, the pieces of Ben sprinkled throughout were drawn back together. Thoughts and memories were pieced back once more, whole images and feelings layering both precious and pivotal moments that created the person they were once attached to.

Something called to him that stirred the reconstruction of himself. 

The Force.

It commanded him forward out of the curtain of stars; no rebuttal nor rebuke valid enough to resist and his soul had no choice but to cooperate. 

The flecks and fragments gathered under the cosmos, knit together one by one until it formed a strong body. Life was breathed back into the vessel, but not the same life. Some fibrous substance that made him completely physical was missing. 

I'm bare.

Ben opened his eyes to find himself stark naked on the white pathway, the lukewarm atmosphere offering no draft to his flesh. He rose up off the floor, feeling vulnerable and disorientated in his present state.

Clothes...that's what was missing.

Naked as the day he was born, Ben looked down in disappointment at his predicament, knowing it was unlikely a spare robe would be lying around in this surreal place. A small part of him clung to indifference at the discovery, the shock both lackluster and meaningless.

He recognized this place and had been here before. How he could forget the feeling of standing above the galaxy, seeing endless and unfamiliar stars decorating every inch above and below, pathways made of white stretched overhead that intersected for infinity.

"Why do I get the feeling you're going to be the death of me?" a male voice questioned the air.

"I'm one with the Force. The Force is with me. I'm one with the Force..." another chanted religiously.

"Captain, being held by you isn't quite enough to get me excited."

His mother's voice was the last to echo in the succession of voices. The ire in her tone almost made him smile; a fire only his father could ignite when he teased her relentlessly.

The voices kept speaking, even as he crossed the stars along the ivory path he walked. Some of the pathways ended in a circular hole. Some were in constant rotating motion, others were dead and not moving.

"I thought becoming 'one with the Force' meant all the answers would be given" a question echoed behind him.

"The Force still works in mysterious ways" came a gentle, patient reply, the speaker's tone laced with knowing wisdom. 

"More practical encouragement would make me feel better."

Whomever was talking didn't seem to be too far away and speaking overhead like the rest of the voices, but these ones seemed to be much closer.

"Ben knows we're here."

"So you do know him."

"Well of course I know him, he's me; Leia named him after myself."

Looking back down the path behind him, Ben could see two men walking toward him, both were not familiar. One was tall, in his forties with shoulder-length hair, half of it tied up. The other man was shorter and older, with white hair and a beard. Jedi robes swung around their feet aa they crossed the ivory path. They slowed their approach to halt a few feet from him, staring at him as if he was expected.