She left a note.

But it would only be discovered later. Amanda's eyes would flood over as she read the damning words. Sarek merely collapsed.

At school, Saavik lingered by her storage station, knowing that this would draw the attention of certain people. She feigned surprise as she turned around, to find herself surrounded.

"We, your peers, find your pauper's rags to be---unacceptable."

The last time they had said this, she had been beaten and stripped in front of her pre-bondmate. Somehow, when he committed suicide, it became her fault, in the eyes of Vulcan. So it was that Saavik determined, if she was forever unfit in the eyes of Vulcan---then she would at last put those eyes out of their sockets. From underneath her heat-insulated tunic, she pulled the cutting tool she had so carefully merged with a phaser rifle, each made bit by replicated bit, over many months.

"I, your superior, find your continued lives to be---unacceptable."

The beam moved forward, criss-crossing the assembled bullies. They stood like statues, until Saavik pushed forward. Pieces of fried meat, all cauterized, fell against the floor liked chopped liver.

Vulcans do not scream, and so there must have been not a single Vulcan in that entire structure, for all the loud screams that issued forth, as Saavik fired randomly and regretted only those she somehow missed. The top halves of bodies fell behind their lower torsos, some faces seeming to desire a reunion that would never come. Some faces were carved straight off their forms, still intact. Saavik recalled at least some of them as those who helped set up her sometimes elaborate humiliations. One face she squished beneath her boot.

Certain fates were more random than others. The old Phaser-One design, set to quick overload, shredded classrooms and classmates and instructors determined that the 'Rihannsu' among them should leave.

 The worst fate lay in the school's audio-visual facility. There, the blind and deaf by will Administrator would be speaking to the parents who were their children's absolvers and defense attorneys. The illuminating lasers, meant to show holos of Vulcan's surrounding systems, were usually hooked to their own power source, this a lowgrade one. Saavik had rerouted the power from the school's massive cooling system. When she opened the doors to the AVF, all that remained was a smoking crater.

"Saavik-kam? How could you do this?"

Sarek stood behind her, eyes wide with incomprehension. Her will broke,
and her mind went with it. She turned to fire.

"YOU SHOULD HAVE STOPPED THEM, GRANDFATHER!!!!!"

When Saavik woke up, she was soaked in cold sweat, and sobbing. How could she do any of what she had seen in the dream? How could she disgrace and then kill Sarek? Why had she called him grandfather, when he had sworn that Spock was not her father?

She knew what day this was. The day she must leave Vulcan forever. The parents of the bullying girls were indeed strong advocates for their children. Despite the beating and stripping, and despite the suicide of the young man, T'Pau's ruling was not against the attackers. It was against the victim. Saavik's 'disruptive' presence had driven these 'True' Vulcan girls to distraction and madness. So Saavik had been banished.

Cleaning and dressing herself, she went to the living area, and awoke William S. Kirk, Uncle of her adoptive father James. She would be living with him on Earth, at his ranch in Idaho.

"Honey? What's wrong?"

"Uncle Bill? May we leave now, to catch the very earliest transport?"

He had seen that same look on poor Peter's face, after one of Brianna's tantrums. So he nodded.

"Just let Sarek and Amanda know."

One day, quite soon, she would return, and even find love on this arid planet. But for then, she wished merely to leave unnoticed by both those she hated and those she loved.

She left a note.

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Writer's Note : This is in response to the San Diego School Administrator's decision to keep out the kids who might--might have known about the shooting in advance. The shooter is now a monster, possibly beyond help. But if bullies caused him to snap, and these kids he talked to are his friends, then once again perhaps the wrong people are being punished. Perhaps they had a duty to speak up. I can't say for sure. But this 'safety' effort seems to me misguided, at best. Sorry to editorialize --- Rob