One crazy perfect day: a Berkian Wedding story

Summary: It should be the happiest day of their lives. But with interfering family, trouble-making friends and the small matter of possible accidental bigamy, will Heather and Fishlegs even make it to their wedding? (One shot by Vala 411, Nightstar Fury and Harrypanther!)

AN: Welcome to the madness known as our collective minds. Please keep your hands and feet inside the coaster at all times, attendants will be coming around to ensure your safety harnesses are undone soon. Oh, and please watch your Porgs, Vala will steal them when you're not looking.

Heather was nervous. It was an unfamiliar feeling and even the presence of her best friend and sister in all but blood, Astrid Hofferson, did little to alleviate the feeling. After all, she was getting married today and there were moments, even now, when she wondered if it was all a horrible mistake.

"Hey," Astrid said, her tone indicating it was a question rather than a comment. Sighing, Heather looked up. Her raven hair was braided loosely as the pair went for a walk while the final preparations for the wedding were put into place. There had been friction from the start, with Fishlegs' mother, Gertha, deciding to assume the entire planning of the wedding despite Heather's frequently and forcefully expressed desire to handle the wedding herself.

"Nonsense!" Gertha had said, bustling past the annoyed young woman. "You don't have a family so it's only right that Goatlegs and I organise everything so that you don't have to worry."

Heather had been speechless at the low blow. She had lost two families, not one-her true parents when she was young, her mother dead in childbirth and her father vanished and later found dead on Vanaheim. Of course, long before that happened, she had been cast adrift by her jealous and mildly psychotic older brother Dagur the Deranged and found by a pair of wonderful Vikings from the Peaceable Isles. Helga and Forgrim had loved Heather as if she had been their own and indeed, they had been praying to Freya for a child for years and had rejoiced when they found her. If they never looked for her parents, she never held it against them. Especially when the last member of her blood family actually led the raid that killed them, leaving Heather alone again.

"Fine," Heather said sharply. Alone, she had become intensely private and self-sufficient, befriending Windshear and learning to fight and launch a guerilla war against anyone who had helped Dagur. It had led to a number of missteps and misunderstandings until eventually, brother and sister were finally reconciled and had fought side by side against Johann, Krogan and the Dragon Hunters. Still rather odd but probably shading the right side of sane, Dagur had married the Queen of the Defenders of the Wing, Mala and they already had a little one on the way. They were flying over on Sleuther, Dagur's Triple Strike. Heather had deliberately placed her brother next to Gertha in the seating plan just to remind the interfering woman that she did have family. Meanwhile, Astrid had stopped, walked in Heather's way and was glaring at her, her arms folded across her chest.

"Fine is not an answer anyone sane accepts from a woman-especially another woman,' she told her friend bluntly. "Fine means anything but. What's on your mind, Heather? You know you can tell me anything, right?"

Abruptly, Heather sighed.

"Am I doing the right thing?" she asked, sitting on a rock and covering her face with her hands. "It's all so..."

"Overwhelming? Complicated? Irritating? Girly?" Astrid suggested.

"All good options-but I would say...claustrophobic," Heather sighed. "You know me. For the longest time it was just Windshear and me, on our own. We relied on no one. We hid from any strangers. There were so few I could trust-even now, you guys are really the only people I would turn my back on."

"And suddenly you have Gertha the Won't Listen, Goatlegs the Spineless, Yaklegs and Beelegs playing up as your siblings to be and of course, the twins and Snotlout here. You regretting not getting married on Berserk?"