| It was B’Elanna’s wedding day. She was all excited about it. She had a wedding dress with white lace, train and veil. She had an engagement ring of a dilithium crystal in a band of duranium. She had organised the wedding ceremony, the guests, the reception afterwards, and the honeymoon. She had even organised the groom - Harry Kim. (She decided that Tom Paris *was* a pig after all and ditched him in a scene no-one in the mess room would ever forget, least of all Neelix, who never made Leola root mud pie again. As for the warp core… Well, it wasn’t as if Harry spent all his time in Engineering, was it?)
So everything was ready for the big event. Until Kathryn, her maid of honor, turned up and looked at her in horror. "Haven’t you heard of ‘Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue’?"
B’Elanna hadn’t. "Sure I have," she said. "Um…" Then she spied her makeup table with its rows of contact lenses - plain ones, spotted ones, fancy dress ones, scary ones, coloured ones, and blue ones. "Blue’s my contact lenses," she declared, and put them in.
"Okay," Kathryn said. "What about the old and the new?"
"Um…" Then she spied the garters that she hadn’t put on yet. They’d been her mother’s garters. Her mother said they’d been her grandmother’s garters too, but they still had the shop label on and B’Elanna didn’t think her grandmother had ever been to Earth. Still, that was fairly old. "Old’s my garters," she declared, and put them on, missing Kathryn’s strange look.
"Okaaayyy…." Kathryn said. "And new?"
"Um…" Then she spied the mirror and its reflection of her. Her hair was styled into a sort of mohawk, with thin plaits falling down the sides, and the mohawk itself dyed alternatingly in yellow and purple. "New’s my hairstyle," she declared.
"Okay," Kathryn said. "What about borrowed?"
"Um…" B’Ellana thought for a while, but couldn’t think of anything she had that was borrowed. Well, she could, but she didn’t think they were the sort of things one normally wore to a wedding ceremony. "Do you have something I could borrow?" she asked hopefully.
Kathryn did have something B’Elanna could borrow. She had lots of things B’Elanna could borrow. She just didn’t feel like walking all the way to her quarters to get them for her. "No. Sorry," she said.
"Um…" B’Elanna walked into the corridor and wandered along it, making sure that Harry wasn’t there. She’d heard that it was bad luck for the groom to see the bride on the wedding day. She wondered briefly how they were going to get married without seeing each other, but just as she was wondering that, she saw Chakotay. "Chakotay, do you have something I could borrow?"
He looked at her strangely. "Um… I’ve got a spirit guide."
"I don’t think that’s the sort of thing I want," B’Elanna said.
"Oh. You could try Paris."
She wandered some more until she came across Paris. "Hey, pig, do you have something I could borrow?"
"How ‘bout a nosering?" he suggested. "Or the pearls someone cast before me?" But before B’Elanna could agree that they’d be the perfect thing, he’d turned and walked off in an inexplicable huff.
B’Elanna kept wandering down the corridors, and then she came across Seven of Nine. Seven of Nine was trying to fit into a jefferies tube, but despite the bone-tight clothes she was wearing, she was being hindered by certain portions of her anatomy.
"Hey, Seven, do you have something I could borrow?"
"Here, have these," Seven said, and unscrewed the aforementioned appendages.
"Cool," B’Elanna said. "Thanks, Seven."
So she made it to the ceremony after all, wearing something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. Everyone enjoyed themselves a great deal, except for Tuvok who, as B’Elanna made her entrance, had suddenly blushed deeply and realised he was late for a meeting or something. The Doctor reflected later that it seemed a little strange, since the whole ship’s crew was at the ceremony and therefore could not meet with him, but his presence wasn’t greatly missed. |
