Epilogue

Four Months Later

This is bizarre. Just…bizarre.

"By the power vested in me by the North West Governance and the United Federation of Planets, I now declare these two to be man and wife. You may now kiss the bride."

The groom virtually leapt forward and encased the bride in a bear hug. He kissed her like a starving man before burying his face in her neck and, if her giggling was any indication, began to tickle her with rough neck kisses.

"I don't think that's traditional." Lore smirked from his place in the third row.

Anna nudged him and laughed, "It's not. Hey! Get a room, you two!"

Trevor Logan finally managed to bring himself under enough control to face the yard full of wedding guests and grin. Louise lifted her bouquet of sunflowers like a trophy and actually hopped in place a few times. Everyone stood and applauded as the two came down from the flower covered gazebo and began making their way down the center aisle. Despite the supposed happiness of the occasion, Lore was surprised and confused by the number of people he saw crying. Katherine, who stood in the row just before him, was a blubbering mess of running makeup and soaked handkerchiefs.

"Oh, my God." She sighed, "Those two….Who would have ever thought it?"

"Me." Beth said stoically.

Eugene shook his head and waved at his youngest daughter as she passed by, "All I can say is thank God. Maybe now they'll stop turning the town inside out trying to kill each other."

"I heard the mayor is going to lift that ban." Beth said, "They can both go the library at the same time now."

Lore shook his head with too much amusement, "You humans are weird."

"Weird?" Anna laughed and took his arm as everyone began to shuffle out of the aisles and around the back of the house.

"Yes." Lore said, "Your nephew is very fond of that word, and I think I'll adopt it. You're all very weird."

Beth gave Lore a glance over her shoulder as they walked, "I will not disagree."

The wedding ceremony took place in the Hall's back yard, which had been made up with flowers and chairs and all manner of frilly white decoration. Lore took it all in curiously as everyone—and there were a fare number of guests—made their way to the front yard and the area where the reception was to be held. Anna had informed him that the reception was the real point of it all, and was likely to last several hours. A dozen large round tables filled the front lawn, each covered with cloths and dishes and silver accoutrements for which Lore could not discern any real purpose. There was an open space between the tables, where the lawn had been covered by a smooth wooden floor. Gene currently occupied the center of the space, and was busy spinning his little sister around in some version of a dance they had made up.

"So…" Lore whispered, "Everyone is going to eat a meal and then it's over?"

Anna laughed deviously, "Oh, no. There's much more torture than that."

"Such as?" He pressed. He was not particularly irritated or trying to get away, he was just curious. Considering how circumspect Anna had been, he had a right to be. He was beginning to think she was having fun keeping him in the dark.

She shrugged, "Usual party stuff."

"I've never been to a party." He reminded her. His statement was outrageous enough to make Katherine and Eugene stop in front of them. Katherine faced him with a look of surprise.

"What do you mean you've never been to a party?" She said, "No…no birthday parties? Retirements, nothing?"

Lore shrugged. Considering his past, it was not an unbelievable thing. He had indeed never been to a party. The few minutes he had once spent in Ten Froward during Guinan's birthday party could hardly be counted, since he had not been invited or involved.

"Well, this should be a treat then." Katherine said. She gave Anna a look, "I hope he knows how to dance."

Lore frowned, "I learned. Specifically."

Katherine and Eugene laughed and continued into the crowd to accept congratulations and other well wishes for Louise. Lore stood with Anna near the porch steps for a moment as he continued to look around. Except for Anna's immediate family, he did know any of the other guests. It was an issue to which he had already given much thought and which he and Anna had discussed. While he had no issue keeping company with people who might have a problem with him, he had no desire for Anna to feel uncomfortable or put upon. That last thing he wanted was for Anna to be placed in some kind of situation where she felt the need to defend or justify him.

Oddly enough, such a problem had yet to come up. It seemed that being falsely accused of murder and almost killed himself was what it finally took to get the benefit of the doubt in general.

"Hey." Anna whispered, squeezing his hand, "Wanna dance?"

He smiled down at her, "If I don't it will be a useless skill."

"Exactly." She said as she took his hand and led him toward the dance floor, which was already filling up with people who were antsy from sitting through the ceremony. Lore did not know the song, but guessed it to be some kind of band piece from the mid Twentieth century. Louise clearly had a favor for that time period.

As they stepped onto the floor, Lore took her hand and spun her around smoothly. She ended the spin close against him with hardly a fault, which set off the dark green silk of her dress wonderfully. She giggled and looked around for a moment. "Are you planning to show off today?"

"Why not?" He shrugged, "You are."

Anna narrowed her eyes, "I am?"

"Yes. You brought me. If that's not showing off, I don't know what is." As if to prove his point, he spun her around again in an easy gesture.

"Ha!" Anna laughed and leaned again him, "Wow. You know, I think you're the one who once told me not to compliment you because you so vain you'd become intolerable."

"That doesn't sound like something I would say." He grinned. Actually, he had definitely said that.

"Okay, but on that note…." She made a dramatic show of looking around, then whispered, "Yes, I'm definitely showing off."

Mmmm…. He spun her around a few more times and continued to move around the dance floor. Because he was enjoying himself so much, and because he did not feel like testing the receptiveness of the other guests in pointless small talk, they both danced through three more songs. By then, the guests had begun to fill in their places at the various tables, and the dinner was being laid out. Louise and Trevor had reappeared, and were seated at the middle of a long table which faced the rest of the guests. The music stopped when someone tapped a glass with their knife.

"Come on." Anna whispered. They moved off the dance floor and to the table closest to the front. Beth and Amy were already seated at the table, along with Amy's husband Paul and their two oldest children, Gene and Angie. The sun had set early in the winter sky and the entire front lawn was lit with hanging paper lanterns and table candles all around.

Lore glanced at Anna as they took their seats, trying to ignore the fact that more of the guests appeared to be watching him than the bride. Her hair was piled up in a loose twist that allowed small curls to fall around her face, framing it perfectly. Unable to help himself, he leaned toward her and whispered.

"You look beautiful, Anna."

She tried to conceal her smile, for Amy was shooting her a teasing a grin from across the table. To cover it further, she picked up her fork and began poking at the salmon on her plate.

"Speech! Speech!" The cry rose up as Trevor's best man stood behind his seat at the front table. He held a glass of champagne in one hand a baseball in the other. Several people in the crowd laughed.

"Okay, okay…." He said, waiting for quiet, "Before my speech, I want to let you know what we're doing. Whoever has the baseball has to give a speech about either the groom or the bride, and whoever talks last can toss it to whoever they want. So, you better think of something to say now."

"Oh, God…." Anna laughed. The man began his speech in the typical best man flare, making fun of his friend and mentioning more than a few crazy episodes from Louise and Trevor's lifelong feud, including something to do with industrial adhesive and a lunch box handle. The ball then made its way to one of Louise's school friends, who playfully predicted that Trevor would be dead in a month. Lore even had to laugh at that one. At least he did until he felt something warm press against his hip.

Lore looked down quickly and immediately rolled his eyes. "Anna, that animal has trying to get my attention again."

"What?" Anna looked down, "Oh! Maggie, what are you doing? She likes you."

"She does not like me." Lore sighed, "She's merely figured out that I'm the best option for getting food."

Gene and Angie laughed and tried to lean over the table far enough to see Maggie, who was insistently bumping her nose into Lore's leg. He rolled his eyes again and picked up his plate, which he hadn't touched.

"Here." He said, as he held out the plate and dumped its entire contents onto the ground with a splat.

"Ah, awesome!" Gene cried as he practically crawled on the table to watch Maggie dig into the mixed pile of salmon rice.

"Yuck!" Angie sniffed, "Mom! Lore gave all his food to the dog!"

"Squealer! It's not like he wanted to eat it anyway." Gene laughed. He made a face at Lore and said, "You're weird."

"You're weird." Lore shot back, along with the face.

"Oh, God…." Anna laughed.

"Paul, heads up!" Someone shouted, but Paul was too busy trying to keep his daughter's hair out of one of the tea lights, and was oblivious to the baseball headed his way. Seeing the impending disaster, Lore reached out and caught the ball right in front of Paul's face.

"Oh!" The cry went up from several corners, followed by hoots and muttered comments.

Lore frowned and shoved the baseball into Paul's hand, but that only seemed to get a larger response from everyone.

"No, no!" Louise cried from her seat, "You caught it. Speech! Speech!" She started slapping the table, "Speech! Speech!"

Lore looked at Anna, but she shrugged helplessly, "You'd better get up."

You've got to be kidding me….Lore rose to his feet with such a show of misery that the other guests must have thought it was an act, because they started laughing hysterically. Anna put her glass in his hand and he raised it, as he had already seen the other speakers do. It quickly became quiet.

Oh, great…. "Eh…I met Louise when I walked into the house unannounced and scarred her nearly to death in the kitchen." He began, not being sure of what else to say about her. It seemed to work though, for the laughter continued, "She threatened me with a knife and called me 'nuts', which happened a few minutes before she spilled a platter of lasagna on me."

To this, Louise cracked up and slapped the table top several times.

Lore smiled. This isn't so bad. "Over the next several hours that day, I experienced several firsts, which included Louise calling me a smart-ass, a goof-ball, and a 'love-bird'." He put on a playful scowl, which he shot in Louise's direction, "I'll let everyone guess which of those three I disliked the most."

"Looove bird!" Louise crooned, pointing a teasing finger at Anna. Anna raised her hand and scratched a small itch under her eye with her middle finger, which elicited several approving hoots.

Lore smirked and continued, "I think tradition dictates that I congratulate the two of you, but I'm afraid I have to agree with Louise's friend Mary. Trevor, I think you're going to be dead in less than a month, probably bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat. Good luck." Over the chaos of amused applause that followed, Lore made eye contact with Eugene and tossed the ball to him.

"That was perfect." Anna whispered as he retook his seat. She leaned over and kissed his cheek, which caused him to gasp and shift his eyes. He was still not accustomed to Anna showing him affection in front of other people, but he loved the she did. In fact, she seemed to insist upon it.

"What are they doing now?" Lore asked, for several of Trevor's friends had suddenly entered the dance floor with a chair, which they set up dead center.

Anna laughed and squeezed his arm, "Oh, I can't believe I forgot about this! They're going to do the garter dance." Seeing Lore's confused frown, she added with a grin, "Trevor is going to remove Louise's garter from under her dress."

Lore's eyes widened and his jaw fell. Seeing his reaction sent Anna into a fit of laughs.

"You weren't joking." He said.

"When?"

"When you said today would be torture." He smirked. "Why would this ceremony include the removal—?" Lore stopped talking when his communicator beeped several times. He removed it from the inside of his suit jacket and gave Anna mildly irritated frown.

"It must be important." She said, shrugging, "Maybe Geordie made a lot more progress with the new unit, and he calling to tell you."

Lore nodded. It would most certainly have to do with either B-4 or the new android unit they had been building for the last four months. He and LaForge, still, were not exactly chat buddies. He stood and moved away from the babble of the wedding as people already started to cheer Louise's arrival on the dance floor. Lore stopped near a large tree just at the edge of the force-field protected area and tapped the badge.

"Lore here."

"This is LaForge. Lore…." There was a pause, "Is B-4 down there with you?"

Lore's eyes shot wide instantly, "No. Why?"

Another long pause followed, in which Lore gripped the trunk of the tree next to him. Finally, LaForge spoke, "Damnit, Lore. We can't him. We're searching everywhere. The ship, the station, but…."

"But what!" Lore demanded. His voice was loud enough to draw some looks from the party, including from Anna. She rose from her seat quickly and headed toward him. He did not mean to overreact, but losing someone on a Federation starship was nearly impossible, unless sthe person wanted to be lost. Anna reached his side and gave him a questioning look before taking his hand.

"LaForge?" Lore demanded again. "Where is he?"

"You need to get up here, Lore. We've searched everywhere. The ship, the station." LaForge's voice stumbled and paused, then, "The Enterprise runabout is missing and we can't detect a warp trail. Bee is gone."

To be continued…

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Everyone, I am so thrilled at the reviews and awesome messages I have gotten over the weeks and months. I wasn't sure if I was going to do a part III, but I'm afraid that I must. The story of Data's return simply cannot be tacked onto the end of Lore's story, which is already pushing 200K words.

I have not, as yet, figured out how Data is going to come back or what kind of hassles I will put him through, so you must be patient for Part III. Still, I PROMISE that it will actually happen. We've all gotten involved in fanfics that seemed to so promising and then just stopped because the author got bored. Let me assure you that I do not get bored with what I do. Thanks again, everybody, and keep checking back in the future ;) -LG

Update and Notice!

Everyone! There is some guy on fanfiction who has sent me harassing messages. Apparently he's been screwed over by someone named "Lydia Gastrell" somewhere else on the web and he's decided-in hid infinite Googleing wisdome-that I am this person. He's threatened to post so-called incriminating/embarrassing/whatever info on my review pages. I don't know who this guy is or what his deal is, but just disregard any crap you might see. I don't know what the hell's going on.