#that only reminded me that I would have to write Han. ALSO major canon departure: in the books Han's an orphan. this is

[vermiculated]

terrible tuesday: Louisa likes ugly shoes

a nice thing, before the screaming intensity of next week’s inevitable fix-it. 

when Louisa is twenty, she takes a break. This is how she thinks about it:

A Break.

She cannot promise herself that she will be fine. She will be fine. She has not thought that, she has never thought that. That is not a promise she can even make, not even to herself. Sometimes out loud, when her mother is around, she says so. There are more important things in the galaxy that her own happiness: Louisa knows where she fits in the galactic ranking order, and she adjusts her expectations accordingly. It's summer on Corellia, and the sun is invisible in the high troposphere haze.

It is restful. Han's doing something, and Louisa has taken the opportunity to explore the coast. She only has to be back in the evening. Her dress is drying in the shower. Louisa had brought the basics of what she's wearing these days: a shift dress that reaches her knees and honey-colored boots that roll up to her thighs. She likes how she looks. When they'd arrived, Han had promised that he'd take her shopping for some things that were better for the weather. Louisa squints at the strap of her sandal.

It looks okay. The rock outcrop where she's standing glistens from where the water washed over it. They're supposed to see Han's friends tonight. It's not going to be any more horrible than anything else. They'll probably be boring. Yesterday, her grandparents just told her about how they think she needs a hobby or a job. It's pathetic, how devoted they are to that. Like repairing busted kettles is going to make her happy. Everyone except her parents thinks that Louisa needs just one thing to be happy: a big thing, sure, like a career or a spouse or a brain that isn't shimmering with toxic gas, but they all imagine it to be so easy. Like she might have missed an obvious obstacle and if they tell her about it, it'll be gone. She'd drunk whiskey out of a tea mug and slumped lower on the settee over the course of the evening.

Everyone tells her that she's amounting to nothing. Louisa doesn't have to listen. Her parents know what she can do. Her mother walked to her to the Falcon. It hadn't been embarrassing. Louisa knows about embarrassing.

Louisa crouches down to look at a crab. It's tiny, the size of her thumbnail, and making sturdy progress across the wet sand. She straightens up and keeps walking. She doesn't care about that, either. What does it matter when everyone's seen her at her lowest -- and then they still want more of her? They're contemptible, and she doesn't like listening to them. She'd thought the worst thing that could ever happen to her was losing Nikolaj, but the pain of that is like ripping off a bandage compared to how she feels now. Her existence just goes on and on. Louisa didn't mean to see him. Louisa didn't mean to survive him. The fact that anyone wants to spend time with her only proves that everything's rotten. Nik would have said that it was 'corrupt,' and Louisa hates thinking about that. He had been so good, he had been so good to her, why did he have to throw their friendship away on something stupid?

They should have fucked. He talked like that sometimes, like he was back in his weird childhood cult where they prayed. That was so weird, the way he talked about it: all those years had really meant something, even if he didn't believe them anymore. Nik was still working with the same stuff, it was just that this time, he didn't believe it. "Corrupt." When she says it out loud, the word doesn't mean anything. The sounds are empty, and she feels foolish. Standing here, by the shore, the sun warm at her shoulders. The new things aren't so bad: Han didn't say anything about them this morning, and she is more comfortable in her new sandals than her boots. Earlier, she'd gone down to the water and let the waves engulf her.

Not all the way. The beach is cleaned up from when Han was a kid here and there was all kinds of industrial debris everywhere, tar and cored cells floating in the gyre, but she's not going to swallow the water. It isn't clean like Coruscanti water, she could tell anyone that: yesterday, all anyone could talk about was drip agriculture, like it was a new technique that they all had to be really interested in, instead of standard practice. Louisa could tell that it was getting to Han too, but he has to tough it out while she's here. If she stays, he has to stay.

The sand had been abrasive, and stuck under her new swimming suit. Louisa can still feel the grit inside. What she had liked most was how surprising it was: she'd knelt in the sand and the waves had lapped at her knees. They'd moved unpredictably. The feeling had been almost startling. She'd enjoyed it. Maybe the break is a good idea. If she doesn't feel anything bad for a while, maybe she can get into enjoying good things. Like: the beach. Like: a holiday. Like: making changes in her life.

Louisa had imagined it: the sand curling around a seedling like it curls around her feet. Coruscant wouldn't have sand, it barely has dirt. Maybe she should visit the local airponic garden when she's home again. Look at lettuce and radishes. Sand hollowed out with a place for the seed, and the greenery flourishing up. It's almost pretty. Her swimming suit is drying as she walks.

The tip of her braids drip down her chest. They're holding together pretty well. Louisa did the double braids because her grandparents have a picture of her mother and Han, which she had looked at last night, and her mother has such lovely long hair. She looks even prettier than Louisa remembers her looking. Radiant. The buckle on her sandals glints in the sunlight. They're nice sandals: woven with thick straps across the top, and stitched firmly to heavy soles at the bottom. The buckle opens on the outside, and the heaviness of it around her ankle is calming as she walks. The sameness, Louisa likes that, each step is the same as the last one.

The sky brightens. Louisa shades her eyes and looks out at the water.