AN: I took a little liberty with the pair of mittens and made them a pair of gloves. Hope that's alright. It's a similar concept. I just, what's the word, tweaked a little. Call it artistic license.
Chapter Two: The Perfect Pair of Gloves
Penny had had her perfect wedding dress picked out from the time she was seven years old. It would a slightly off white with a fitted bodice and a long ballgown skirt. The bodice would have a sweetheart cut with off the shoulder cuff sleeves and the skirt would pull away from the body just slightly at the hip. Then, the whole of the gown out be covered with a layer of antique (not yellowed or old but classy, white antique) lace to bring back the traditions and everlastings that came with weddings. She had old drawings she had done of this dress folded up in a box under her bed. She had fooled around with adding the latest fashions and seeing if she liked anything changed but she always came back to this design. This was her dream dress. So, when Sheldon Cooper (Ph.D) asked her to marry him, she had first called the bridal shop to set up a fitting and then her mother (whose first question was whether or not Penny had already scheduled the fitting.)
Penny was sitting in her bridal suite, preparing to walk down the aisle to marry the man she never would have dreamed of; a theoretical physicist with two Ph. Ds. Her mother was curling her hair as she looked down at all her accessories. Penny had done well in fulfilling her dream bridal gown. Instead of a sweetheart cut, she opted for a neckline that went straight across (Sheldon would appreciate the minimalism) and she had changed her color from off-white to ivory, but it was still the dress of her dreams. She pulled on the elbow length gloves she had always wanted and clipped on the earrings her father had given her ("your mother wore them when we were married") and her grandmother's pearl bracelet. She clasped on the yellow apple necklace that Sheldon had given her as his wedding present last night at the rehearsal dinner (the fourth one that Sheldon insisted on having to verify the quality of the food.) Sheldon had had to make it himself (though, for a scientist, it wasn't hard to make yellow lacquer to replace the red he had had to chip out of the apple mold by hand.) Her mother thought it was tacky but Penny didn't mind; it meant more to her than her mother could know.
"Well, darling," her mother said, tears thickening her voice, "you've got something old, and something new, something borrowed (I want those earrings back, darling) and something..." her mother looked all around. "Do you have something blue?"
"What?"
"Something blue, darling."
"I thought you were bringing Great-Aunt Lucille's sapphire broach?"
"Darling, I don't have Great-Aunt Lucille's sapphire broach. She was buried with it."
"Great, mother, I don't have something blue!" Penny must have said this louder than she thought because she heard her husband-to-be-in-five-minutes knock on the door. She went up to the door but refused to open it.
"Penny, what's going on in there?" He tried the knob but she held it fast.
"I don't have anything blue," she told him through the wood.
"Penny, you've got to stop with all this superstitious nonsense."
"No," she said flatly. "Sheldon, it's tradition." She could hear him thinking outside the door. She loved to hear him think. It was never silent with Sheldon; you could hear his mind whirring on all cylinders, purring like the engine of a car as he thought.
"Hold on a moment." She could feel his presence leave and she heard the doors of the church opening.
"Why, he's leaving!" her mother said, staring out the window. Penny rushed over as fast as she could in her full skirt to watch Sheldon pop the trunk of the limousine and take out his emergency rations bag.
"What the hell is he getting out of there?" Penny said. She watched as he pulled out his hermetically sealed bag and opened it with his emergency pocket knife. Penny was confused; why was he exposing all the bandages and medical instruments he had boiled the night before to the elements? He pulled out a pair of blue latex medical gloves before methodically placing all the objects (save the gloves) in the bag and returning it to the limo trunk (he insisted they bring it on the honeymoon "in case of emergency".) He walked back in, the picture of collected calm and knocked on her door again. She opened it a crack and he slipped in the blue gloves.
"It was the best I could do, given our current environment and the resources available therein." Penny's mother had a slight sneer on her face and Penny almost looked like she didn't know what to think. Sheldon slipped his hand out and walked back to his place at the front of the church, standing nervously beside his best man, Leonard, and his groomsmen Howard (who was busy winking at one of the bridesmaids) and Raj (who was trying very hard not to look like a deer in the headlights).
"You're not going to wear those, are you, darling?"
"Don't suppose I have any other options," Penny humped her shoulders. She hurriedly pulled off the long gloves she had wished for as a girl and slipped on Sheldon's too big latex gloves.
It wasn't until she was walking down the aisle, carrying her carefully chosen bouquet of orange blossom (wisdom), myrtle (love), and scarlet Zinnia (constancy), that she realized that it didn't matter about her blue latex medical gloves. She stood there, her hands held by Sheldon's, and she didn't even remember she was wearing them. And when it came time for him to say "I do" and place the ring on her finger, and he carefully peeled each finger of the glove away and folded it neatly over his arm like it was silk, she knew. The elbow length ivory gloves of her dreams had been all wrong. These had been the perfect pair of gloves.
