Disclaimer: I own nothing.
It wasn't that Joanna McCoy lived to make her mother's life hell, it was just that anything that pissed the bitch off seemed to give her immense pleasure. So it was only mostly coincidental that Jocelyn was forced to watch her one and only daughter follow in her ex's footsteps and leave her for the stars.
To say Joanna wasn't terrified would be a lie, one of the many, many things she had inherited from her father, along with his olive skin, hazel eyes, and thick dark brown hair was his intense fear of space shuttles. This however, she was determined not to show in front of her mother, who had, rather surprisingly actually come to see her daughter off on her first assignment. But then again, thinking back to the last time she had spoken with her mother, standing outside the old farm house in the middle of the Georgia rain, unable to legally stop her daughter leaving; she probably had only come to watch her daughter back out in fear and come running back to her, after all she would never pass up the opportunity for Joanna to prove her right. Jocelyn had laughed at her that night as she left, she told her she would never go through with it, that she was a quitter just like her father, and she would never last three months at the academy.
But now, four years later, she was proving her mother wrong. She had always said she was going to live with her father on the Enterprise, if only to annoy her mother, and now she finally was.
Looking back to her mother's sour expression was all that it took for her to ignore the brief leap of fear inside her chest and the butterflies in her stomach, shoulder her duffle bag, and board the shuttle.
Taking her seat she ignored her mother's gaze through the tiny window, she wasn't going to let her anger ruin this for her. This was her moment. This was her chance, she was leaving behind everything she had ever known to chase the dreams her father had been planting in her head since she was twelve, since his first video call when her was back at the academy. Dreams of the stars, dreams of the unknown; they were almost tangible now. And she never had to see her mother again.
So as the shuttle began pulling away, and she looked out to watch the last bit of earth she would be seeing for a long time, that thought, along with bitter scowl successfully demolished any reservations that lingered in the back of her mind.
Joanna smiled to herself, she may be heading for the unknown, but she finally felt as if she might be going home.