He felt the burden of his body fade away, his heavy heart and bloody hands and all. It was like he could breathe again, like he'd be drowning his whole life, and was only just now being pulled from the violent waves of his past transgressions. Thus was the way of the Force, in reconnecting to everything-that-was-and-is, Ben Solo ascended from physical existence. He was relieved to see how painless the process was. That was the thing that had kept him up at night as a child. The ancient Jedi texts never said if there was any pain when giving up all that blood and bone. He can see himself briefly, the boy he was, yearning wordlessly for any other condition, looking over those ancient words, trying to see if he were to die, would it hurt?
There were few fairytales in a galaxy still reeling and limping from a catastrophic series of wars that had irreparably scarred the stars, and the people, and the Force. Ben Solo went to sleep reading the words of long dead Jedi, and somewhere, far away from him, a little girl scratched passing days onto the hull of a rusting war machine, and a boy was being torn from his family and given a gun, and another was learning how to fly away from his problems.
I was just a child, he wants to say, why did no one understand that, he wants to scream. But someone understood. In the darkest depths of space, in the nightmare of stars, the Sith preyed upon his childhood, and what could he do to withstand them? The Sith are not just hatred and selfish power personified. They are a promise that there is an end to the pain. You can conquer it. Use it.
But they don't tell you how your pain will just adapt. Change. In an endless cycle, he killed himself every day, trying to live. He fills with remorse and resentment and all the things the Dark Side manifests when –
The Force, in its entirety, gently plucks at his heart strings and he feels the pain and rapture of every living thing that every was and is, and he is gifted with an understanding his flesh would not have allowed him to comprehend.
How all this sorrow and joy was the same. Pain and comfort were just different words describing the same experience that was living.
He did his part, he understands, knowing his sorrows. And he feels himself forgetting what loneliness felt like, overwhelmed by the presence of everything else wrapping its arms around him. An embrace that promises contentment.
But when the weight he'd carried all his life threatened to be removed entirely, and so he recoiled back on instinct and fear, grasping at this familiar pain, his pain. Like a desperate child, he could not let it go, not when it was all he knew, not when it was the thing that had brought him to her.
He had gone through his living years, warped and distorted by his own quiet suffering. He did not know any other way to be. Could he exist without it? What would remain of Ben Solo, if not this horror?
So he holds himself together, as bodiless and unseen energy, denying its return to the greater whole, afraid that after his painless ascension, there would be no more pain to prove his existence.
And the Force understood.
Last blood of the Chosen One, orphaned prince of Alderaan, son of Naboo and Corellia, while you hardened your own heart, and fell farther from the light, you forgot that you were starlight made flesh, and that you were capable of love.
You suffered long on your dark and lonely journey, but you were loved, always.
And you loved us in return, always.
What are you without your hatred? Your suffering?
You are love.
Did you not realize it, when you felt your connection to her diminish? When you saw her limp body, her lifeless gaze? When you felt her heavy bones in your arms? When you decided that she had more life to live?
Was this not an act of love?
But it's just a moment, he hears himself say, though he does not speak it aloud. And now I'm back to the way I was. Afraid and spiteful, full of hate and resentment. A screaming child, a lost little boy, a victim of war.
My child/son/grandson, the Force says all at once, here moments are infinite.
Be with me, he hears her say, quietly, prayer-like, in a long and lonely night.
Here, she is with us. And you are with her. Always.
Did you not feel the tenderness of her touch? Her fingertips tracing over scar tissue?
And his mother/father/grandmother/grandfather/uncle reach out all at once, and love him so dearly and desperately, Ben Solo let go of everything.