Part 1

"May I have this dance?" the man asked the two lovely ladies seated at one of the tables along the wall.

"Which of us are you asking?" replied the taller of the two.

"Whichever will have me," he answered.

The fair lady looked at the other one, then turned back to him. "We’ll both have you," Kathryn Janeway said. Four-month-old Elizabeth, lying in her lap, smiled broadly at the first officer. Kathryn handed the baby to Chakotay and stood. They moved onto the dance floor with the baby between them.

Halfway across the mess hall, Tom Paris saw the captain and first officer start dancing together. His eyes widened.

"Tom, we just got married this afternoon. Don’t tell me you’re already looking at other women," teased B’Elanna Torres, dancing with him.

"No, it’s not that. Look," he said, gesturing unobtrusively.

"Wow," B’Elanna said when she saw the ship’s two commanding officers. "How far are we into this reception thing?"

"Uh...twenty minutes," answered Tom, checking his chronometer.

"Where’s Elizabeth?"

Tom took another quick look—they’d both been pretending not to look at them, as the rest of the crew seemed to be doing—and caught a glimpse of what he thought was Elizabeth’s pale blue dress. "Between them, I think."

"Well, it’s good to know they have a chaperone. Who had the bet on fifteen minutes?" Tom’s latest betting pool had been on how long it would be at the reception before Chakotay and the captain danced. Bets had been placed for every fifteen minutes up to two hours, and whoever was the closest would split the pot.

Tom maneuvered them over to the table where he’d left his padd containing the list of bettors. "Let’s see...Ensign Wildman, Kes, and...us."

"I thought I told you to bet on 45 minutes," she said gruffly, not really angry.

"I just had a feeling this time. But hey, it worked, didnt’ it?"

"Well, I guess I can’t complain about a few extra rations for our honeymoon."

Tom grinned at her. Then he kissed her. "Speaking of honeymoons, where should we go?" he asked when they had finished. They both had a week off duty, and they intended to enjoy it; B’Elanna had even already taken care of yelling at Lieutenant Carey for the mistakes she knew he was going to make.

"I was thinking we should go to Risa first, then maybe...Oh darn, we can’t. We’re in the middle of the Delta Quadrant,’ B’Elanna said jokingly. There really wasn’t any place they could spend their honeymoon except in their new double-size quarters, but neither of them had a problem with that.

The music, provided by a rather odd group of musicians assembled by Harry Kim, stopped; then Neelix, who had by some strange piece of Talaxian charm convinced B’Elanna to let him run the wedding reception, moved onto the platform. The conversations throughout the mess hall slowly came to a halt. "Would all the unmarried ladies please assemble over there for the bouquet toss?" he said loudly. The bouquet toss was an ancient Earth wedding tradition, rarely practiced anymore, but Tom had insisted they do it. "After all," he had said, "it’ll be good to know that somebody else is going to get married at some point."

Kathryn started to hand the baby to Chakotay as all the unmarried women, which included all but three of the women in the mess hall, headed to the area Neelix had specified.

"Keep her. She’s unmarried," Chakotay said with a grin.

"And she’s going to stay that way for at least twenty-five years if I have anything to do with it," Kathryn retorted. Seeing that Chakotay wasn’t about to take her, she lay Elizabeth on a chair and headed off, knowing that Chakotay would pick her up before she rolled off.

B’Elanna stood with her back to the group of women and tossed the bouquet over her shoulder with all her might. She turned to watch it and decided she had thrown it a little too hard. It flew over the heads of the assembled women, hit the wall, and bounced off, heading towards where Chakotay stood with Elizabeth in his arms. Elizabeth reached out and caught the bouquet as it fell. She immediately pointed it toward her mouth, but Chakotay took it from her before she could eat any of the flowers. Everyone laughed.

"Just goes to show why you shouldn’t take these things seriously," B’Elanna told Tom. "If we did, no one else would be getting married for twenty years."

Kathryn walked back to Chakotay, and he handed her the baby. "I told you you should have taken her with you," he said.

"I bow to your mightiness, oh great all-knowing one," Kathryn said sarcastically.

Neelix then brought out a gigantic cake and served everyone a piece. Elizabeth kept trying to get some of her mother’s, so Kathryn gave her a tiny bit. She didn’t like it.

The reception continued for a couple more hours. Kathryn and Chakotay danced together several more times. Sometimes they held Elizabeth between them, but sometimes they got someone else to hold her. Finally, people started going over to B’Elanna and Tom to say goodbye.

"I’d better go," Kathryn said to Chakotay. "Elizabeth is getting cranky. She needs to eat and get settled down for bed."

"I’ll go, too," Chakotay said, and went with her to the door.

They thanked Tom and B’Elanna for the party, wished them a happy honeymoon, and headed out.

Part 2

"There doesn’t seem to be anything physically wrong with her, Captain," the doctor said. "I hesitate to give her a sedative because she’d so young. I would guess that she’s simply overexcited after the wedding and the party."

"Thank you, Doctor," Kathryn said, lifting Elizabeth from the biobed. She knew being overexcited was not the problem. It was three hours after Elizabeth’s normal bedtime, and being overexcited wouldn’t have kept her up for more than an hour. Besides, she ought to be exhausted; she’d missed her usual afternoon nap.

"Try some music," the doctor called to her on her way out. Kathryn didn’t bother to tell him that she’d already tried music; Elizabeth had calmed down a bit while it was playing, but she hadn’t fallen asleep immediately afterwards like she usually did.

Kathryn went back to her quarters and kept trying to console the unhappy baby. Sometimes she’d whimper and move around restlessly, sometimes she’d wail loudly, and sometimes she would just lay calmly, but she didn’t fall asleep.

Elizabeth abruptly stopped the screaming fit she’d started a few minutes ago and started making her hungry noises. Surprised, Kathryn checked the time and found that it was midnight, time for Elizabeth’s first nightly feeding. "You should have been asleep for four hours now, kid," Kathryn said as she began to feed her.

Elizabeth drank her meal quietly, then immediately began wailing again. A few minutes later, she quieted down to the whimpering stage.

The door chime rang. "Come in," Kathryn called. She wondered who could be visiting at this late hour. To her surprise, the doors opened to reveal Commander Chakotay, dressed for bed.

"Has she been keeping you up?" Kathryn asked him as the doors closed behind him.

He nodded. "I just came over to see if you could use some help. Looks like you could at least use someone to hold her while you change. That can’t be the most comfortable thing to wear while trying to put a baby to sleep."

Kathryn looked down to discover that she was still wearing the dress she’d worn at the reception. "You’re right, I could. Are you volunteering?"

He came over and took the restless infant from her. She headed into the other room and emerged a few minutes later wearing a nightgown and robe. She sat down and told him about her visit to the doctor an hour ago and what he’d said.

"I’m sure there must be something wrong with her, though," she said. "Why else would she still be awake four hours after she usually goes to sleep?"

Part 3

Three hours later, Elizabeth was still awake. Chakotay was still there, and Kathryn was very happy that he was. It was comforting to have someone to talk to.

Elizabeth began crying her hungry cry again, and Kathryn rearranged her clothing to feed her. Chakotay turned away.

"You know, I’ve gotten pretty good at doing this without showing anything. Just the other day I started feeding her in the middle of Lt. Paris’ report. I thought his eyes were going to jump out of his...Ouch!" she cried suddenly, pulling Elizabeth away.

"What is it?" asked Chakotay, turning around. Kathryn had her finger in Elizabeth’s mouth and seemed to be probing for something.

"No wonder she was having trouble going to sleep," said Kathryn, now gently rubbing a spot on the baby’s gums.

"What?" Chakotay asked, completely mystified now.

"She’s teething," Kathryn responded with a smile on her face.

"I think she’ll go to sleep now," Kathryn said a while later, after Elizabeth had finished her interrupted meal.

"She looks like she’s about ready to," Chakotay responded. "I’d better be going."

"Wait," she said, grabbing his arm as he turned toward the door. "Stay here? Please?" The long hours on the couch with Chakotay and Elizabeth had given her a sense of family that she’d been missing for a long time, and she didn’t want it to end.

"I think I can manage on the couch."

Kathryn smiled and led him into the bedroom. She lay Elizabeth in her cradle, right by the bed, where the baby immediately rolled onto her side and shut her eyes. Then she led Chakotay over to the bed, where they both fell asleep, exhausted, in each other’s arms.