[fic] Bloom and Grow: Outtakes and Deleted Scenes
Bloom and Grow
Outtakes & Deleted Scenes
Rating: teen
Ships: none involving canon characters (though possibly there's a whiff of Spock Prime / McCoy Prime if you want there to be, plus allusions to McCoy/Emony Dax)
Word Count: about 2,000
Originally, there was going to be a scene (a flashback, in fact) with Joanna on New Vulcan, hanging out with her friends there and meeting Spock Prime. It was going to be part of And Three, but it just wasn't working. I realize now that the tone was completely different from that of the rest of the story, and there really wasn't much in the way of coherence. Besides, by that point in the story there wasn't really any reason for a flashback except that I wanted more Spock. *g*
So, here are the scenes, with some comments from me. At some point, I'd kind of like to write more about Spock Prime in this fic 'verse, because he's kind of fun. (And he knows everything.)
Growing up in Savannah, Joanna had always thought it would be so interesting to meet people from other planets, to talk to them and find out what they were like. Unfortunately, not a whole lot of aliens came to Savannah - which was a shame, Joanna always thought, since they were missing out, as was she. For most of her life, she'd had to make do with what she could.
As a very little girl, she'd had this plush Arcturian dog bird, which she'd brought along whenever her mom and dad - when they were still married - took her someplace interesting, like a museum or the zoo. She'd hold the dog bird - called Bug, for reasons Joanna never revealed, and then forgot - as close as she was allowed to the force field protecting the exhibits, and explain what they were seeing with the authority of a tour guide. At age seven, not long after the divorce, her mom had caught her gluing buttons (eyes), sequins (scales), and strips cut from an old bathmat (tentacles) to her dolls - and making a huge mess in the process. At age nine, she'd had a Martian pen pal - though Mei's grandparents had come from Chengdu, China.
When she'd been twelve, her middle school had hosted an exchange student from Betazed, but Chassia had looked human and acted all superior, just because she was beautiful and could read minds. And she would not shut up about naked weddings, which all the boys in Joanna's class loved hearing about, but Joanna considered idiotic. (She remembered her mom's wedding to Roger all too well, and just the thought of … no.)
Her dad, she'd learned quite accidentally, had had a "thing" (whatever that meant) with a Trill gymnast, back in college. That had intrigued Joanna, since it meant an alien had visited Mississippi, which wasn't too far from Savannah, until she'd found some archival footage from the 2224 Olympics on Aldebaran and discovered that Emony Dax looked completely human too - except for her spots. You couldn't tell there was a slug living inside her. (Remembering that little investigation now, Joanna decided her dad had had no business being so freaked out when he'd found out about her crush on Sulu. Emony had been competing in the Olympics three years before her dad was even born!)
And that had been the extent of Joanna's interspecies interaction, until the summer after she turned fifteen, when Starfleet Medical flew her and her dad to New Vulcan to help out the colony. They spent a month there. They stayed in Doctor Geoffrey M'Benga's lovely house. He was human. Actually, he and her dad had been friendly at Starfleet Academy, five or six years ago. Most of the time, though, they were totally immersed in Vulcan culture. And that was great because Vulcans looked mostly human, but they definitely were not human, as Joanna's new friends, Sairus and T'laria, kept reminding her, and as she herself observed.
There were the cultural differences, for one thing. Sairus and T'laria weren't much older than she was, but they were married. Well, bonded, which was kind of like being married. Though they weren't living together, since they weren't adults yet. T'laria still lived with her parents and Sairus, whose parents had died on Vulcan, lived with his guardians. Joanna knew that plenty of Earth cultures still had arranged marriages, so the idea wasn't completely strange to her. Actually, it made her feel a bit weird, like she was a lot younger than they were. It also meant Sairus wasn't ever going to fall for her, which was a bit disappointing; he was pretty handsome in a stern, frowny sort of way.
Then there was the whole logic thing. Of course she'd learned about it in school, but her dad had told her that really wasn't going to prepare her, so she'd done quite a bit of reading on the flight from Earth. Her dad had been right. Actually, it wasn't so much the logic thing as the lack of emotions. Or the suppression of emotions. That was pretty frustrating, especially at first, when she was trying to get them to like her by being funny. It had actually hurt when T'laria raised her eyebrow and said dryly, "Ah, Earth humor." And then Sairus had had the nerve to give her this mini-lecture on Earth humor - like there was only one kind! - and its purpose.
That had put her in a tearing rage. She'd wanted to hit them both. Of course, she'd suppressed that desire. She was a guest on their planet, after all. So she'd put on her sweetest smile and said in a voice that dripped honey, "Oh, so you do know what humor is. Bless your hearts." They'd both blinked at her like she'd just spoken gibberish, but she'd silently declared herself the winner of that round.
Next day, though, she lost round two pretty decisively. She'd been waiting for them outside their school. She'd waved when they stepped out into the sunlight. They hadn't waved back. They'd actually avoided looking directly at her. Stung to the core and feeling utterly pathetic, she'd spent the rest of the day sulking in her room. It had occurred to her that not one single person on an entire planet wanted to be her friend. It was a very bad feeling.
"It's not you," Doctor Geoff had told her over dinner that night. It had taken some coaxing, but he and her dad had finally drawn her out of her room. "Most Vulcans are very proud, and with good reason. Scientifically, they're extremely advanced; we humans have been struggling for centuries to catch up. Biologically, they're much better adapted for space exploration. So it can be hard for them to admit that they need the help of illogical, emotional beings such as you and me. They're very self-reliant. It's especially hard on the ones, who've never traveled and never met a non-Vulcan, to open up. But don't give up, Joanna."
"Listen to him, sweetheart," her dad had said, his eyes soft with concern. "Remember, you've got your Southern charm. If there's a species that can withstand that, I'd like to meet 'em."
So she'd had a good night's sleep, and the next day she'd laid on the charm. She'd laid it on thick, with slices of pecan pie - not with real pecans, but still tasty - and thermoses of sweet tea, with winning smiles and long, breathy vowels. And slowly, slowly, first T'laria, then Sairus had come to her. And once she'd gotten them talking, she'd figured out how to keep them: pique their curiosity.
[snip] So, around this point I decided the scene just wasn't working, and anyway, I was more tickled by the idea of Joanna using her Southern charm on the Klingons, which is what happens in the actual story. Also, the thing with Emony is one of the reasons I decided to give Jo a Trill beau. Like father, like daughter, I suppose. Now both McCoys know how far down the spots go, and Jim does not.[/snip]
This one time, Sairus scraped his elbow while trying to demonstrate his superior Vulcan strength; until then, Joanna had only ever seen holographic images of green blood. And shortly before she and her dad left New Vulcan, Joanna convinced T'laria to mind meld with her. It was a rebellious act - she knew her dad hated the idea of merging minds - but mostly, she wanted to see what it was like. And T'laria wanted to show Joanna what she remembered of her lost home world.
It was the strangest thing Joanna had ever experienced. She'd felt so daring when she'd first asked T'laria, and she was pretty sure the other girl had felt the same way even though she didn't express her emotions. Afterward, though, shyness overcame Joanna and she stumbled away blushing, almost weeping. Vulcan was inexpressibly beautiful in T'laria's mind, with its deep red deserts, its graceful temples and universities, its knife-sharp mountain ranges. The images seemed to cut into Joanna's mind, and beneath her own pain she understood the other girl's sorrow and longing, even though those exact words were never spoken, were never even thought. And T'laria saw into Joanna's mind, saw the anguish she still felt for her mom and stepdad, and her terrible fear of losing her dad as well. Joanna had never felt so exposed, so naked. The time she'd taken off her top and let Stephen Chang, her jerk ex-boyfriend, touch her breasts while he kissed her didn't even come close.
She met old Spock a little after her mind meld with T'laria. He found her trembling in the shadow of a stone wall, brought her back to his house, and brewed tea for her. The tea was bitter and the first sip burned her tongue, but Spock sat with her and talked with her like they'd met before, and eventually she calmed down. He seemed to guess what had happened, but he didn't lecture her or anything, and he agreed not to tell her dad, providing she suffered no adverse effects from the meld.
She spent the better part of the afternoon in his house. He told her about his travels. She hadn't been sure he would, since his past was her future, and most of the science fiction stories she'd read were pretty adamant about foreknowledge biting you in the ass. But Spock either never read those stories or didn't give a damn. She preferred to believe the latter, since he was pretty amazing. He'd been to so many other worlds and met so many different people. One time, he'd gotten partway to the Andromeda Galaxy, which was as far as anyone had ever traveled (except for the aliens who'd actually come from Andromeda to steal a ship and take it back with them).
"And my dad was with you?" Joanna asked, clutching her teacup. "I mean, my alternate timeline dad? I don't even know what I'm supposed to call him."
"And Captain Kirk," Spock said, nodding, "and Lieutenant Commander Scott. The rest of the crew, you see, had been distilled into cubeoctahedral solids by the Kelvans' belt devices."
"Into what?"
He showed her on his computer.
"Oh," she said. "Kind of like game dice. But my dad fixed 'em?"
"Your father helped convince the Kelvans to reverse what they had done. He helped make them see that they were beginning to think and act like humans and could, therefore, survive in the Milky Way Galaxy. As colonists, rather than conquerors."
"Oh," Joanna said again, somewhat disappointed. Then something about the way he'd said "humans" struck her, and she found herself asking, "You really liked him, didn't you? My dad, I mean. My … alternate dad. He was your friend. 'Cause I get the feeling - just from the way my dad talks - that you aren't such good friends. In this universe, I mean. This timeline. Whatever."
"We argued quite often, but in the universe I know, your father and I were friends for nearly a century."
"Were friends," Joanna said, looking at the leaves at the bottom of her teacup. "He's dead now, isn't he?"
"Yes," Spock replied without any inflection at all, and Joanna felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach. It didn't mattered that her dad lived to be over one hundred, or that Spock was talking about an alternate timeline. The thought of her dad dying anywhere, at any time bothered the hell out of her.
Spock seemed to sense it. "I am sorry," he said, reaching across the table. She looked up at him, startled. Vulcans didn't just go around touching people, she knew. But Spock was only half-Vulcan. "My intention was to comfort, not cause distress."
Joanna tried to wave him off. "It's okay," she insisted. "I'm okay."
He didn't call her a liar, or frown at her like those counselors she'd been made to see after her mom and stepdad died. He just looked at her, his eyes dark and somehow infinitely deep, like space itself. The wisdom in them, the memories, and yes, despite his Vulcan heritage, the sorrow, just went on and on forever. So Joanna swallowed, and dropped her gaze to the table, where his gnarled hand rested over her slender one, and told him what she feared.
He listened, never once interrupting. "And I mean," she concluded raggedly, "it's great that he lived a long, long time in your universe, but that doesn't mean anything in this one, does it? And he's all I got. If there's anything bad … I mean, you were his friend. Maybe you saved him in the past. You'd do it again, right? You wouldn't leave it to chance, would you? Because you'd know and…" She trailed off.
And he said, after a moment's silence, "Joanna. Your future and your father's future are not written in stone. All I know is what may happen and what will never happen because of the way the timeline has already been altered. There are people I knew for most of my adult life, whom my younger self will never meet because they perished on Vulcan or were on the Starfleet ships that Nero destroyed. His interests are not what mine were when I was his age. This does not mean that he is wrong, only that he is different. Despite the fact that we are genetically the same person, I am not sure I have the right to interfere with his life, with his destiny, any more than I have already. There are rules about space and time."
"I figured," she said while her heart beat hollowly. "It's just…" But she couldn't go on. She didn't really know him, and it wasn't fair to dump all her grief and fear on him when he'd been so nice. She couldn't beg him to look out for her dad, not when he'd just been talking about his whole planet getting destroyed. "Never mind. It's okay. Rules are rules."
And then Spock said, in as gentle a tone as she'd ever heard a Vulcan use, "Sometimes, you have to break the rules."
The TOS episode Spock's alluding to is "By Any Other Name," just in case you're interested. It's kind of a funny one (in an actual ha ha sort of way) though yeah, most of the crew gets turned into game dice.
What I really wanted was for Spock Prime to remember the cure for xenopolycy ... whatever the hell McCoy was dying of in "For the World is Hollow" yadda yadda. But I'm working on another story based on that episode, and I thought it would be repetitious. Plus, like I said, the flashback would have been wildly out of place.
So, Spock Prime gives him the cure as a wedding present, Jim does not die on the Enterprise-B, and everyone lives relatively happily ever after. Except for Joanna's jerk ex-boyfriend.
Outtakes & Deleted Scenes
Rating: teen
Ships: none involving canon characters (though possibly there's a whiff of Spock Prime / McCoy Prime if you want there to be, plus allusions to McCoy/Emony Dax)
Word Count: about 2,000
Originally, there was going to be a scene (a flashback, in fact) with Joanna on New Vulcan, hanging out with her friends there and meeting Spock Prime. It was going to be part of And Three, but it just wasn't working. I realize now that the tone was completely different from that of the rest of the story, and there really wasn't much in the way of coherence. Besides, by that point in the story there wasn't really any reason for a flashback except that I wanted more Spock. *g*
So, here are the scenes, with some comments from me. At some point, I'd kind of like to write more about Spock Prime in this fic 'verse, because he's kind of fun. (And he knows everything.)
Growing up in Savannah, Joanna had always thought it would be so interesting to meet people from other planets, to talk to them and find out what they were like. Unfortunately, not a whole lot of aliens came to Savannah - which was a shame, Joanna always thought, since they were missing out, as was she. For most of her life, she'd had to make do with what she could.
As a very little girl, she'd had this plush Arcturian dog bird, which she'd brought along whenever her mom and dad - when they were still married - took her someplace interesting, like a museum or the zoo. She'd hold the dog bird - called Bug, for reasons Joanna never revealed, and then forgot - as close as she was allowed to the force field protecting the exhibits, and explain what they were seeing with the authority of a tour guide. At age seven, not long after the divorce, her mom had caught her gluing buttons (eyes), sequins (scales), and strips cut from an old bathmat (tentacles) to her dolls - and making a huge mess in the process. At age nine, she'd had a Martian pen pal - though Mei's grandparents had come from Chengdu, China.
When she'd been twelve, her middle school had hosted an exchange student from Betazed, but Chassia had looked human and acted all superior, just because she was beautiful and could read minds. And she would not shut up about naked weddings, which all the boys in Joanna's class loved hearing about, but Joanna considered idiotic. (She remembered her mom's wedding to Roger all too well, and just the thought of … no.)
Her dad, she'd learned quite accidentally, had had a "thing" (whatever that meant) with a Trill gymnast, back in college. That had intrigued Joanna, since it meant an alien had visited Mississippi, which wasn't too far from Savannah, until she'd found some archival footage from the 2224 Olympics on Aldebaran and discovered that Emony Dax looked completely human too - except for her spots. You couldn't tell there was a slug living inside her. (Remembering that little investigation now, Joanna decided her dad had had no business being so freaked out when he'd found out about her crush on Sulu. Emony had been competing in the Olympics three years before her dad was even born!)
And that had been the extent of Joanna's interspecies interaction, until the summer after she turned fifteen, when Starfleet Medical flew her and her dad to New Vulcan to help out the colony. They spent a month there. They stayed in Doctor Geoffrey M'Benga's lovely house. He was human. Actually, he and her dad had been friendly at Starfleet Academy, five or six years ago. Most of the time, though, they were totally immersed in Vulcan culture. And that was great because Vulcans looked mostly human, but they definitely were not human, as Joanna's new friends, Sairus and T'laria, kept reminding her, and as she herself observed.
There were the cultural differences, for one thing. Sairus and T'laria weren't much older than she was, but they were married. Well, bonded, which was kind of like being married. Though they weren't living together, since they weren't adults yet. T'laria still lived with her parents and Sairus, whose parents had died on Vulcan, lived with his guardians. Joanna knew that plenty of Earth cultures still had arranged marriages, so the idea wasn't completely strange to her. Actually, it made her feel a bit weird, like she was a lot younger than they were. It also meant Sairus wasn't ever going to fall for her, which was a bit disappointing; he was pretty handsome in a stern, frowny sort of way.
Then there was the whole logic thing. Of course she'd learned about it in school, but her dad had told her that really wasn't going to prepare her, so she'd done quite a bit of reading on the flight from Earth. Her dad had been right. Actually, it wasn't so much the logic thing as the lack of emotions. Or the suppression of emotions. That was pretty frustrating, especially at first, when she was trying to get them to like her by being funny. It had actually hurt when T'laria raised her eyebrow and said dryly, "Ah, Earth humor." And then Sairus had had the nerve to give her this mini-lecture on Earth humor - like there was only one kind! - and its purpose.
That had put her in a tearing rage. She'd wanted to hit them both. Of course, she'd suppressed that desire. She was a guest on their planet, after all. So she'd put on her sweetest smile and said in a voice that dripped honey, "Oh, so you do know what humor is. Bless your hearts." They'd both blinked at her like she'd just spoken gibberish, but she'd silently declared herself the winner of that round.
Next day, though, she lost round two pretty decisively. She'd been waiting for them outside their school. She'd waved when they stepped out into the sunlight. They hadn't waved back. They'd actually avoided looking directly at her. Stung to the core and feeling utterly pathetic, she'd spent the rest of the day sulking in her room. It had occurred to her that not one single person on an entire planet wanted to be her friend. It was a very bad feeling.
"It's not you," Doctor Geoff had told her over dinner that night. It had taken some coaxing, but he and her dad had finally drawn her out of her room. "Most Vulcans are very proud, and with good reason. Scientifically, they're extremely advanced; we humans have been struggling for centuries to catch up. Biologically, they're much better adapted for space exploration. So it can be hard for them to admit that they need the help of illogical, emotional beings such as you and me. They're very self-reliant. It's especially hard on the ones, who've never traveled and never met a non-Vulcan, to open up. But don't give up, Joanna."
"Listen to him, sweetheart," her dad had said, his eyes soft with concern. "Remember, you've got your Southern charm. If there's a species that can withstand that, I'd like to meet 'em."
So she'd had a good night's sleep, and the next day she'd laid on the charm. She'd laid it on thick, with slices of pecan pie - not with real pecans, but still tasty - and thermoses of sweet tea, with winning smiles and long, breathy vowels. And slowly, slowly, first T'laria, then Sairus had come to her. And once she'd gotten them talking, she'd figured out how to keep them: pique their curiosity.
[snip] So, around this point I decided the scene just wasn't working, and anyway, I was more tickled by the idea of Joanna using her Southern charm on the Klingons, which is what happens in the actual story. Also, the thing with Emony is one of the reasons I decided to give Jo a Trill beau. Like father, like daughter, I suppose. Now both McCoys know how far down the spots go, and Jim does not.[/snip]
This one time, Sairus scraped his elbow while trying to demonstrate his superior Vulcan strength; until then, Joanna had only ever seen holographic images of green blood. And shortly before she and her dad left New Vulcan, Joanna convinced T'laria to mind meld with her. It was a rebellious act - she knew her dad hated the idea of merging minds - but mostly, she wanted to see what it was like. And T'laria wanted to show Joanna what she remembered of her lost home world.
It was the strangest thing Joanna had ever experienced. She'd felt so daring when she'd first asked T'laria, and she was pretty sure the other girl had felt the same way even though she didn't express her emotions. Afterward, though, shyness overcame Joanna and she stumbled away blushing, almost weeping. Vulcan was inexpressibly beautiful in T'laria's mind, with its deep red deserts, its graceful temples and universities, its knife-sharp mountain ranges. The images seemed to cut into Joanna's mind, and beneath her own pain she understood the other girl's sorrow and longing, even though those exact words were never spoken, were never even thought. And T'laria saw into Joanna's mind, saw the anguish she still felt for her mom and stepdad, and her terrible fear of losing her dad as well. Joanna had never felt so exposed, so naked. The time she'd taken off her top and let Stephen Chang, her jerk ex-boyfriend, touch her breasts while he kissed her didn't even come close.
She met old Spock a little after her mind meld with T'laria. He found her trembling in the shadow of a stone wall, brought her back to his house, and brewed tea for her. The tea was bitter and the first sip burned her tongue, but Spock sat with her and talked with her like they'd met before, and eventually she calmed down. He seemed to guess what had happened, but he didn't lecture her or anything, and he agreed not to tell her dad, providing she suffered no adverse effects from the meld.
She spent the better part of the afternoon in his house. He told her about his travels. She hadn't been sure he would, since his past was her future, and most of the science fiction stories she'd read were pretty adamant about foreknowledge biting you in the ass. But Spock either never read those stories or didn't give a damn. She preferred to believe the latter, since he was pretty amazing. He'd been to so many other worlds and met so many different people. One time, he'd gotten partway to the Andromeda Galaxy, which was as far as anyone had ever traveled (except for the aliens who'd actually come from Andromeda to steal a ship and take it back with them).
"And my dad was with you?" Joanna asked, clutching her teacup. "I mean, my alternate timeline dad? I don't even know what I'm supposed to call him."
"And Captain Kirk," Spock said, nodding, "and Lieutenant Commander Scott. The rest of the crew, you see, had been distilled into cubeoctahedral solids by the Kelvans' belt devices."
"Into what?"
He showed her on his computer.
"Oh," she said. "Kind of like game dice. But my dad fixed 'em?"
"Your father helped convince the Kelvans to reverse what they had done. He helped make them see that they were beginning to think and act like humans and could, therefore, survive in the Milky Way Galaxy. As colonists, rather than conquerors."
"Oh," Joanna said again, somewhat disappointed. Then something about the way he'd said "humans" struck her, and she found herself asking, "You really liked him, didn't you? My dad, I mean. My … alternate dad. He was your friend. 'Cause I get the feeling - just from the way my dad talks - that you aren't such good friends. In this universe, I mean. This timeline. Whatever."
"We argued quite often, but in the universe I know, your father and I were friends for nearly a century."
"Were friends," Joanna said, looking at the leaves at the bottom of her teacup. "He's dead now, isn't he?"
"Yes," Spock replied without any inflection at all, and Joanna felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach. It didn't mattered that her dad lived to be over one hundred, or that Spock was talking about an alternate timeline. The thought of her dad dying anywhere, at any time bothered the hell out of her.
Spock seemed to sense it. "I am sorry," he said, reaching across the table. She looked up at him, startled. Vulcans didn't just go around touching people, she knew. But Spock was only half-Vulcan. "My intention was to comfort, not cause distress."
Joanna tried to wave him off. "It's okay," she insisted. "I'm okay."
He didn't call her a liar, or frown at her like those counselors she'd been made to see after her mom and stepdad died. He just looked at her, his eyes dark and somehow infinitely deep, like space itself. The wisdom in them, the memories, and yes, despite his Vulcan heritage, the sorrow, just went on and on forever. So Joanna swallowed, and dropped her gaze to the table, where his gnarled hand rested over her slender one, and told him what she feared.
He listened, never once interrupting. "And I mean," she concluded raggedly, "it's great that he lived a long, long time in your universe, but that doesn't mean anything in this one, does it? And he's all I got. If there's anything bad … I mean, you were his friend. Maybe you saved him in the past. You'd do it again, right? You wouldn't leave it to chance, would you? Because you'd know and…" She trailed off.
And he said, after a moment's silence, "Joanna. Your future and your father's future are not written in stone. All I know is what may happen and what will never happen because of the way the timeline has already been altered. There are people I knew for most of my adult life, whom my younger self will never meet because they perished on Vulcan or were on the Starfleet ships that Nero destroyed. His interests are not what mine were when I was his age. This does not mean that he is wrong, only that he is different. Despite the fact that we are genetically the same person, I am not sure I have the right to interfere with his life, with his destiny, any more than I have already. There are rules about space and time."
"I figured," she said while her heart beat hollowly. "It's just…" But she couldn't go on. She didn't really know him, and it wasn't fair to dump all her grief and fear on him when he'd been so nice. She couldn't beg him to look out for her dad, not when he'd just been talking about his whole planet getting destroyed. "Never mind. It's okay. Rules are rules."
And then Spock said, in as gentle a tone as she'd ever heard a Vulcan use, "Sometimes, you have to break the rules."
The TOS episode Spock's alluding to is "By Any Other Name," just in case you're interested. It's kind of a funny one (in an actual ha ha sort of way) though yeah, most of the crew gets turned into game dice.
What I really wanted was for Spock Prime to remember the cure for xenopolycy ... whatever the hell McCoy was dying of in "For the World is Hollow" yadda yadda. But I'm working on another story based on that episode, and I thought it would be repetitious. Plus, like I said, the flashback would have been wildly out of place.
So, Spock Prime gives him the cure as a wedding present, Jim does not die on the Enterprise-B, and everyone lives relatively happily ever after. Except for Joanna's jerk ex-boyfriend.