Chapter Text
What happens to a Jedi after death?
It had long been taught as the Order's final precept: There is no death, there is the Force.
In Ben's youth, it had been an abstract, one of the many lessons he'd learned as a youngling that didn't really matter to him then. He hadn't really had to face the loss of life until he was a Padawan, seeing his onetime rival fall from a fatal height while they fought. That had been the first death he'd borne witness to. Sadly, it had not been the last.
When one was Force-sensitive, every death, every passing of a life could be felt. Sometimes it was like an ember slowly burning away. Other times it was like a bright flame being snuffed out suddenly. Every time, it was disconcerting, horrifying even. It was a long-held belief of the Jedi that all living beings eventually became one with the Force, though what that meant, even the wisest sages of the Order could not say.
"It is the way of the universe, which is another manner of saying that it is the will of the Force." Ben had once said to his own Padawan regarding death. "Everything dies. In time even stars burn out. This is why Jedi form no attachment: all things pass."
How ironic, that said Padawan ultimately ended up being responsible for Ben's death.
To be fair, Ben probably could have escaped, or fought longer. But seeing the galaxy's last hope waiting for him, Ben knew somehow that it was his time. That this was the will of the Force, for him to stand as his former student delivered the final blow. He held his saber in a simple youngling's salute and closed his eyes in acceptance of his fate.
When he was younger, Ben had thought a lot about what possibilities awaited after death. Even with the teachings of his late master, it was never clear what it really meant to pass on into the netherworld of the Force. Qui-Gon had spoken to Ben many times after his death on Naboo, and it had only been within the last few decades that Ben realized it was actually his master and not his own imaginations of what the man would say in a situation. Perhaps the dead never did leave the living, but existed unseen, as the Force did. Now, Ben would join their ranks.
He heard the humming of the red blade as it swung towards him, felt a brief sensation of painful heat as it touched his shoulder, then nothing.
Whatever Ben had expected, it certainly wasn't this. He had opened his eyes in surprise when the searing of the lightsaber stopped, wondering what stayed Vader's hand, only to find that he was no longer on board the Death Star. Vader, Luke, the stormtroopers, everything had vanished, leaving Ben standing in empty blackness.
"Hm..." Ben realized he still had his lightsaber out, and deactivated it, replacing it upon his belt. His shoulder, and even his robes were unharmed. As a matter of fact, all the sand and dust that had accumulated on it during his hermitage on Tatooine had also vanished. How odd.
Upon closer inspection, the empty black plane that he found himself in was not entirely void after all. The ground (if it could even be called that) below him felt solid, and stars glimmered all around him. White lines curved everywhere, forming what looked like paths, and Ben could see vague circles marked with symbols in the distance.
The old Jedi turned around to find one such circle behind him. Unlike the other ones he could see, this one was glowing a red very distinctly like a Sith lightsaber blade. And within the circle flickered images like those projected onto a holoscreen. Vader stood inspecting the empty space Ben had previously occupied, while a squadron of stormtroopers fired their blasters across the hangar at Luke and his companions. The princess and the smuggler hurried onto the battered freighter, followed by the droids and the Wookiee, but Luke remained where he was, firing his blaster with a look of desperation and anger. The boy was doing well, managing to take down a few of the stormtroopers and even trap Vader behind the blast doors, but it was clear he would soon be overwhelmed.
"Run, Luke! Run!" Ben called out.
Impossibly, as though he'd heard Ben's voice, Luke blinked, then turned and ran up the gangway into the Millennium Falcon. As the battered old freighter took off, the scene faded to black, and the circle ceased to glow.
Ben waited for several minutes, but nothing else happened. With nothing else to do, he began to walk along the white lined paths. He passed by a dozen or so of the white circles, noting that each one had different symbols around it. None of them however, responded to his presence, and Ben kept on moving.
A long time ago, when he'd still been a young apprentice named Obi-Wan, Ben had come across a text in the Archives of the Jedi Temple while researching for an academic assignment. It was a very long and dry treatise published more than a thousand years before Obi-Wan's birth, written by an ancient Jedi Lord. The essay was so old that the grammatical structure made reading it like parsing an entire lecture in Master Yoda's speech, and Obi-Wan had eventually resorted to asking his master about it.
For his troubles, Obi-Wan received a stern lecture from Qui-Gon about wasting his time with unnecessary documents and afterward dutifully tried to forget about Martel's theses. Not that it was difficult, it had been a very boring text, but one particular line had stuck with him:
To guide the Jedi, the will of the Force is. Trust only in the Force.
It had certainly seemed hypocritical for Qui-Gon of all people to scold his Padawan for reading about that sort of thing, given how the man would defy even the High Council if he felt that the Force compelled him to do so. It wasn't until he was older that Obi-Wan realized the real reason he'd been scolded was not for studying archaic doctrine, but for failing to stay on task while researching.
Even so, he hadn't fully understood what Martel had meant. Certainly the Jedi spoke of the "will of the Force" and learned that it existed everywhere all around them, but it wasn't as if the Force itself was sentient, was it? It wasn't until during the Clone Wars that Obi-Wan finally learned to let go of his conscious self and let the Force guide his actions.
Now, as Ben Kenobi walked along the white lined path, he opened himself up to the Force, feeling it pull him along in a direction unseen. To his surprise, the Force in this place felt different. It took him a moment to realize that it felt cleaner. Much like how his robes now appeared cleansed of the dirt and grime, the Force here was unstained by the Dark Side, as clear as cold water from an Alderaanian mountain spring.
Ben felt the current of the Force shift direction, compelling him to turn and face one of the white circles hovering in space. As surely as though he were being pushed forward, he approached it, noting the symbols along the outer edge of the circle. The straight lines of the runes were reminiscent of ancient Jedi script but were clearly different. Ben had never seen anything like them in all his travels throughout the galaxy.
As Ben drew closer to the circle, it burst into blue flames, though no heat emanated from them. An image faded into view, a dark room with stone benches arranged in rows rising up from the point of view. The image itself was hazy and rippled, as though seen through the surface of a liquid disturbed by the wind.
Suddenly, the blue fire burned a brilliant shade of red. The effect lasted for only a few seconds before returning to its previous color. Despite the stunning visuals, Ben felt no danger in the Force, so he remained where he was, studying the circle. He stroked his beard. "How curious."
The fire flashed red twice more, and Ben began to wonder if this was just how this circle behaved. But then the flames burned red a fourth time, and the tugging sensation that had brought Ben to this circle returned with twice the intensity. It wasn't a warning from the Force to stay away, but an urgent beckoning. Whatever was on the other side of the circle, it was where Ben needed to be, and he needed to be there now.
"Oh alright." Ben stepped through the circle gingerly, taking care to avoid catching his robes on the flames. Just because he felt no heat from them didn't necessarily mean they wouldn't burn the only set of clothes he had.
The Jedi Master stepped through a transparent veil into the dark room he'd seen earlier. When he turned around, there was no sign of the circle or the infinite expanse of stars and lines, only an ancient-looking stone arch and the tattered black veil hanging within. The air of the room was freezing cold and completely still, yet the veil swayed gently as if caught in a breeze. Ben could hear the vaguest whispers just at the edge of his hearing but could not make out what was being said.
Ben shivered and wrapped his brown cloak around himself. The Force felt, well not dark, but unfathomably ancient in this place. What's more, the tugging sensation was gone. The implication was clear: Ben would have to find his own way forward, for now.