Disclaimer: Do I really even need to say this? I don't own Vocaloid, I'm not making any money by writing this.

Author's Note: I created this "Deleted Scenes" series for my story because sometimes, I'll come up with random, non-plot related scenes before I write a future chapter. However, when I actually start designing the next part of the story, these scenes don't always fit.

Blondes Are for the Birds: Deleted Scenes

Entry #1: Dreamscape

Intended placement: At the beginning of Chapter 5, but you could insert it at almost any point in the story when Rin is sleeping, because she never remembers her dreams.

Reason I didn't use it: This fanciful dream sequence just didn't fit the tone of the story. It was more like a filler passage than anything else, and the chapter was completely unchanged when I took this section out. However, I spent so much time writing it that I didn't want to simply throw it away. Plus, having a RinXLen moment at the end and a chance for Rin to talk to her father made it very precious to me. I cried while writing this, and I never cry.

Extra Note: This is a dream, but I didn't write it in italics because having a long passage written in that form visually bothers me (which is another reason why I didn't put it into the main story).

She wasn't quite sure how she had gotten there, but Rin found herself walking over the creaking floors of a western-style building in the late afternoon. The peeling coral paint and the white molding lining the ceilings reminded her of a house she had toured with her mother before. Beyond that, this strange place was unfamiliar to her. Her footsteps were the only sound she could hear in the tense, electric silence.

Seeing a door along the long walls of the hallway, Rin grasped the gilded doorknob and let herself into an empty room. The area was dimly lit, and the dusty air and yellow rays of light peeking through the boarded-up windows laid heavily on her eyes and ears, like being inside of a brain during a bad headache, making her eyes squint and her nose and eardrums pound under the pressure.

"Hello down there!" a voice lightly called from somewhere above Rin.

Rin's head jerked up towards the ceiling and her eyes widened. In return, the girl that was hovering above Rin's head waved.

"Um…" for a moment, Rin tensed up, but then her eyes flashed with recognition, and she relaxed. There was only one person she knew that wore pink, corkscrew pigtails. "Teto, what are you doing up there?"

Her pink-haired friend was floating in midair, wearing a masquerade mask and an archaic gymnast's leotard patterned with red, green, black, and yellow stripes. This was definitely a dream.

Teto removed her ornate facemask and giggled, "I should be asking you what you're doing in here!"

Rin crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. In her mind or in reality, Teto was always Teto and always ridiculous.

"That doesn't make any sense."

Rin could go where she liked. This was her dream.

Teto continued to laugh as she spun weightlessly through the dusty air. "This is the wrong room; you're not supposed to be here!"

Deciding to play along, Rin asked politely, "If I shouldn't be here, then where should I go?"

"Next door! He has been waiting for you for quite a while."

"He?"

"Yup," Teto chirped as she descended back to the ground and extended her gloved hand dramatically to the left, "right this way. You'll find them both in the next room."

"Both? I thought we were talking about one person…"

"Pah, just get out of here already! Time's a wastin'!" Teto threw open a door in the wall that Rin hadn't seen before and promptly shoved Rin through its opening. "Bye bye!"

The door slammed behind her, and Rin slipped and fell on her face.

"Ugh," Rin gradually pushed herself off of the white tiled floor and rubbed her aching nose. Teto could have been a little gentler…

Her thoughts froze in place as her brain processed her surroundings. Was she really in the same building?

The walls were sky blue; the billowing curtains framing the two windows were long and white. A timeless aura replaced the stifling dusty air from Teto's room, and a sharp smell pierced Rin's nose. She recognized the scent as disinfectant, and memories of the endless hours waiting in St Luke's Pulmonary Medicine ward began to flood her mind. A place apart from time, reeking of sanitizers. A hospital room.

"Touchan," Rin murmured, standing to her full height and wildly looking around. When she turned towards the back right corner of the room, a china blue curtain suspended from the ceiling materialized before her eyes.

Rin sprinted towards it and pushed the fabric aside, revealing a man with eyes as blue-green as a mountain river and hair as light as the first rays of dawn. He smiled.

"Touchan!" she screamed as she leaped towards him without hesitation, embracing the man lying on the hospital bed. The water leaking from her eyes and down her chin soaked his hospital gown with tears.

"Rin."

In thoughtful, gentle motions, Rin's father wrapped his arms around his daughter as she buried herself in his chest.

"You came to see me."

"Of course I did," she sobbed shamelessly. "I miss you. I miss you so much!"

He squeezed her tighter.

"Kaachan misses you. She's been looking for you everywhere, but she couldn't find you." Rin's cheeks stung from the salt water, and the moist stain on her father's chest grew larger and larger, but she couldn't get herself to stop crying.

The longer her father held her, the harder it was to maintain her usual composure, staying calm, mature, and locking her emotions in a gilded box. In his loving arms, she was small. She was five years old again.

"I've been looking for you everywhere. For so, so long." Eyelids puffy and red, Rin looked up at her touchan and whimpered, "Where did you go?"

She waited patiently for a moment for his answer. Then her dad's face twisted into the expression he always used to suppress laughter, cheeks red and eyes gleaming. Rin's mouth dropped in outrage.

"I'm serious!" she wailed and beat her fist against his chest as he burst into chuckles. "I was so sad without you, nothing was the same. Our house was so empty; Kaachan was so lonely." The waterworks in her tear ducts started up again, dumping liquid into her eyes. "And look, you made me cry again!"

Her father's laughter abruptly stopped. "Oh, sweetheart," he murmured, rubbing her tears carefully away, "I'm sorry. It's just that, you're so big now and… They really never told you?"

"Never told me what?" she demanded, determined to stay angry with him even though the soft caress of his thumb against her cheek was more soothing than any words of condolence could have been.

"I never left."

Her eyes, a perfect reflection of her father's, burned with skepticism. "You're kidding, right?"

"No, of course not."

Rin sighed loudly and looked him straight in the face. "Touchan. You died of lung cancer."

"Well, yes, but that doesn't mean I'm gone."

Rin contemplated this for a second. "If you're floating around as a ghost in our old house, I swear, Kaachan will kick your ass into the netherworld."

"Ha ha, I'm sure she would." The idea seemed to entertain him, but his merry eyes sobered when he saw his daughter's tear-stained face.

"Look," he put a hand under Rin's chin and looked solemnly into her eyes, "I can't show you where I am now. It's not your time yet. But I can tell you that no matter what I will always be here," he pointed to her chest, "and here" he pointed to her head, "no matter what."

Rin's hand rested over her heart, and then she narrowed her eyes at her father. "That's supposed to make me feel better?"

"Well, yes," he smiled wanly, "but it's probably no use." Taking her by the shoulders, he repositioned her into a more comfortable pose on his lap. "You're like me, so you'll forget all of this when you wake up."

Rin's eyebrow rose. "You don't remember your dreams either?"

"Nope. Never."

"Oh." Rin sat up a little. "I guess we forget because we have really, really weird dreams." She smiled mischievously. "Like this one."

"Maybe so." Her father stroked the stubble on his chin contemplatively. "Personally, I think it's because we dream about things we're not supposed to know yet."

"Hm?"

Before Rin could ask her father what he meant by that, he gathered her into his arms for another hug.

Leaning forward slightly, he whispered to his daughter, "Now, I probably shouldn't tell you this, but someone's going to take care of you soon." Out of Rin's sight, her father's eyes twinkled conspiratorially. "Mind you, he's nothing like me, and it'll be a while before he's man enough to care about anyone, but you'll just have to sit tight and be patient."

While Rin was concentrating on her father's words, she failed to notice the floor tiles as they fused together into a flat, white surface. The walls and the bed beneath her began to gradually fade into whiteness.

Realizing his time with his daughter was almost up, Rin's father tenderly pulled away from her, but allowed his hands to linger on her shoulders as he addressed her for the last time.

"Rin, don't hold on to me too tightly. I love you; I will always love you, but there's so much more waiting for you in the future. As your father, I want you to continue to move forward and to…"

"…be happy," Rin finished for him, remembering Neru's words.

"Hm, that's my girl."

Nothing was left in the room except for one open window, Rin, and her father. He reached to ruffle her hair, but his fingers couldn't touch her. His hand passed right through her head, like an apparition or mirage. Unable to form the words, he mouthed 'I love you,' and then disappeared, drawn away like a sharp ray of sunlight.

Without the bed to support her, Rin fell hard onto the flat, faceless floor. Lying there on her back, her eyes prickled as she realized that no matter how much she wanted to keep this memory in her mind forever, once she woke up, it would all be gone. The most she would be able to recall was that she had a dream. It was always this way.

From her sprawled-out position on the cold floor, Rin stared off into the white nothingness above her. After her father's disappearance, her dream should have ended, yet it continued unceasingly, as if her unconscious mind was clinging onto the precious images for as long as it could.

Only the hospital window remained in the barren landscape. Without a wall to hold it, the glass hung suspended in empty space. A wind from an unknown source blew across Rin's face and threw the window curtain back into the air. She closed her eyes to the sensation while the white curtain billowed over her head like a passing ghost. One last gust played nimbly with her hair before the breeze died down, allowing the curtain to fall back into place.

When she opened her eyes, a little boy was standing by her head, peering down at her.

"Hello," she greeted him cordially.

From the look of him, Rin guessed that he was between three and five years old. His eyes were blue, his cheeks were round, and his light golden hair stuck up in all directions.

"Have you seen my mama?" he asked straightforwardly, mouth pulled into an expression too old and solemn for his young features.

"No," she said, propping herself up on her elbows and wiping the tears out of her eyes. "Do you remember where you last saw her?"

"Nuh uh. I-I can't 'member anything." His cute little face screwed up in childish contemplation. "I should 'member. I usually reee-remember ev'rything."

Even though he spoke Japanese, his words had a slight accent to them that Rin couldn't identify. His "r"s were harder than they should have been, and he added extra vowels to words and stressed random syllables.

"No one remembers everything," she told him frankly, setting herself on her knees in front of him so that she was on his eye level.

He just pouted silently in reply.

Standing back up, Rin wracked her brain for possible solutions to his dilemma and then blurted out, "Have you asked your father?"

The minute the words escaped her, she realized her possible mistake. What if this little boy didn't have a father, just like her?

Luckily, this was not the case.

At the mention of his father, the boy's sullen look darkened considerably, and he sniffed, "Stupid Oyaji won't tell me anything."

"Oh!" Rin cried in shock at the child's rough vocabulary. "That's not a very nice word to call your…"

Her words trailed off when she saw the moisture building in his eyes. For a moment, she had no idea what to do. Then instinctively, she scooped the boy up into her arms, leaning back at an angle to support his weight. In response, the child stiffened at first, but soon his head settled against her chest, and he grasped the soft material of her top in his clenched fists. Teardrops carved rivers into the reddening skin of his cheeks.

"I lost mama!" he wept bitterly. "It's all my fault!"

With her eyes closed, Rin shook her head from side to side and swayed the child gently. "Of course it's not your fault."

"No, you're wrong! She went away 'cause she hates me. I'm a bad, bad boy."

"No, no, shhh." She pressed her cheek against his downy mop of hair. "You're a sweet boy, a good boy. I'm sure your mother loves you."

All childish temper vanished from his face, and his trembling mouth stilled. He raised his head towards Rin, and his expression cut her to the core.

Heart-rending sorrow poisoned the blue of his eyes as he whispered, "She doesn't."

Rin could tell, God knew why, that this boy wasn't lying to her, and the most terrible thing about his words was that they were true. Ribbons of pain wove through Rin's chest as a piece of her heart broke off and shattered on the ground. It was just so hard to believe. She shut her eyes tightly to cut off her tears. What kind of loveless world did this child live in?

As her eyelids pried themselves apart again, the little boy looked up at her expectantly, waiting for her reply.

"Well," her voice shook with emotion as she tried to find the words to comfort this sad angel. "Then…then I'll love you instead!"

His eyes widened. "Really?"

"Really," she confirmed with complete sincerity, holding him close. Who wouldn't love this darling boy?

He hugged her with the desperation of a starving man, and she allowed her eyelids to droop closed. A smile played across her lips. Something about having a small, warm body in her arms gave her a sense of responsibility. It was so easy to forget that in every hardened adult, there was a little child not unlike this one, full of hurt and care and raw emotion and desperately in need of something as simple as love.

As she considered this, she felt a wriggle in her arms, and then a sudden absence of weight. Assuming the boy had decided to jump down from his perch, she glanced down at the floor.

She blinked once, and nothing was there. She blinked twice, and her tiny passenger had been replaced with a completely different form. A much larger one. She found her arms firmly wrapped around the ribcage of a stranger, and when she looked up, she was staring into the face of an unfamiliar young man.

"Oh." She blinked again, just in case her mind was playing tricks on her. "Um. Who are you?"

She registered his flaxen hair and intensely blue eyes and could tell he was very attractive, but for some reason, all the pieces from her observations wouldn't come together properly and form a concrete picture. She felt as if she should know him from somewhere, but something was out of place. Something that wasn't there before.

At her squinted, serious expression, he laughed heartily. His chest vibrated with the sound. Rin was too confused to feel offended about him laughing at her. She didn't even raise a protest when he moved her arms from his ribs to wrap them around his neck and shoulders. However, the thrilling sensation of his fingers running along her sides and up her back as he pulled her against him tugged her into reality with a snap.

She realized what kind of position they were in, his arms around her body, her arms on his shoulders, and she panicked. "Wait, what are you doing…"

It didn't help that his face was rapidly looming closer and closer to hers. Helpless and overwhelmed by the sensory overload, she just stood there and watched as his mouth came centimeters within her own. Squinting her eyes shut, she braced herself for impact.

He stopped less than a breath away from her parted lips. With a teasing smile, he whispered against her skin, "It's time."

The heated, moist air of his exhalation completely fried her brain. "Hm?"

He chuckled. "Rin…"

Wake up.

The dreamscape dissolved from Rin's memory in a shock of cleansing white.

A.N. In case you weren't able to figure it out, yes, the "stranger" at the end is Len. :) And the littler boy is 4-year-old Len. Isn't he the cutest? XD

The initial setting of the dream, an old house with pink walls and creaking floors, is based off of a place in one of my own dreams. In my imaginings, the architecture was distinctly French, and I was on the second floor of the building, walking around a white banister that formed a rectangular hole in the floor of the hallway, with a grand staircase leading down to the first floor and walls of doors encircling me. All the people I ran into were in masquerade/strange costumes, and I went into several rooms, though I don't remember what happened in each of them. All I can recall is what the place generally looked like, and a man in a top hat with a black mask. As you can probably tell, I have really odd dreams.

Touchan – dad/daddy

Kaachan – mom

Oyaji – dad/old man (derogatory and improper)