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leskuhTitle: Trying
Fandom/Universe: Hey Arnold!
Character(s): Helga, Arnold
Rating: Teen
Chapters: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12
“Fuck.” He exhales the obscenity like it’s as simple as breathing. Helga is still frozen in place, but something in the back of her mind is affronted at the not-dead man’s first word to her.
She only has a moment to feel insulted, before he pushes her aside and rolls onto the ground. Then he’s on his feet, swaying just a little as he stumbles towards the kitchen. She stares at him wordlessly from the ground, still not really sure how to feel about everything that has happened so far this morning.
“Gotta…gotta move. And you can’t….” His hands are shaking as he tugs them through his wild hair. His shirt hangs loose on his torso, but she can still see hints of the body beneath. She notices, absentmindedly, that he’s no longer fifteen.
Neither is she.
“What are….” He isn’t making much sense to her, but she isn’t all that surprised. An elephant could drop into the room and she wouldn’t really be shocked at all. She’s already seeing a dead man walk.
Suddenly, he turns to look at her. Her insides begin to boil under his stare, which she returns just as forcefully.
“You weren’t supposed to be here.” He says finally.
She raises an eyebrow at him and crosses her arms over her chest. She’s still sitting on the ground by the couch, staring him down from across the room. He’s still shaking, though his hands have managed to come to an uncomfortable rest on the doorframe. Helga can feel her heart pounding in her head.
“I live here. Doi. Where else should I be?”
She notices that his breathing is getting more erratic. He’s got more than just a hand on the door to steady him now - his whole body is leaning on it for support. She gets to her feet and moves towards him.
“Whoa, why don’t you sit down or something? You look like he-“
“I didn’t know this was your house.” He whispers, before finally loosing his balance and toppling forward. She manages to keep him from smacking his head against the wooden floorboards, but he still goes down hard. He’s close to passing out again.
“Hey.” She says as she gently shakes his shoulders. “What is going on? Hey, Arn-….”
She stops.
She hasn’t said his name for three years now.
“Come on, stay awake.” She’s shaking him a little harder now. His eyes flutter open and close again. “You big stupid idiot thing. Stay awake and tell me what you meant - what you’re doing here!” She yells at him, but it doesn’t seem to do much good. He passes out again, his head resting on her knee. She sighs heavily and leans her back against the side of her coffee table.
Without really thinking, she places her hand on top of his head and brushes his hair out of his face.
His eyes twitch.
Helga contents herself with staring at the wall for the next fifteen minutes - thoughts flicker in and out of her head, but nothing stays. She feels worn out and exhausted.
She never called work to tell them she wouldn’t be able to make it in today.
Strike 24. She is most assuredly out.
“Oh well, it was a crap job anyway.” She mumbles.
“Huh?”
“Hello again, Sleeping Beauty.” She taunts (same old Helga, she thinks to herself). He blinks.
“Fuck.” He says.
“Y’know, this is not the first time you have said that to me today, Football-face. And I’ll have you know that it’s not quite as amusing the second time around.” She tells him, her hand now far from his face, resting on the ground beside her. He looks at her wearily and she finally gets her first good look at him. Once again, she thinks about how strange it is that he’s no longer fifteen - even weirder that she’s grown too. When did she get so damn old?
He makes an attempt to force himself off the ground again, but she puts her weight against his shoulders to pin him down.
“Lay down for a minute. You’re obviously still mixed up.” She says.
He glares at her and her grip on his shoulders falters.
(there’s too much hatred in his eyes for him to really be…)
“Arnold?” Her voice comes out kind of tiny and meek - it’s foreign to her, but somewhere in the back of her brain she realizes that it’s the voice she’s been using for a long time now. Too long, she thinks.
He says nothing, only uses her unsteadiness to his advantage as he suddenly sits upright. He stands once more, as shaky as before, but with a determined expression on his face. He starts a slow walk to the door.
She scrambles to her feet and runs ahead of him, thrusting her arms out across the hallway.
“Move.” He says through clenched teeth. He sways a little, but manages to keep his balance. He’s still glaring.
But Helga isn’t backing down that easy.
“Not until you explain -“ She waves her hands around. “- all of this.”
Instead, he grunts and pushes past her. The sudden movement catches her off guard. She tries to hold her ground, but it’s been years since she’s worked out and he’s stronger than he used to be.
(when the hell did they become not-fifteen?)
He gets to the door and has to steady himself for a second. She realizes somewhere in the back of her mind that he’s leaving and never ever coming back.
“I-…” But she doesn’t know what to say to make the fire deep inside her bones stop raging.
He doesn’t look at her.
“It’s better that you don’t know anything.” He says quietly. His hand is on the doorknob and shaking so bad that she thinks it might rattle the handle right off the door. “Good-bye Helga. Sorry.” And with that he throws open the door and steps onto the front step.
Helga screams as a shot rings out. Arnold dives to the ground and scrambles back inside, slamming the door shut behind him.
In one fluid movement, he lifts Helga to her feet and tugs her along after him.
“Fuck fuck fuck!” He yells, before stopping dead. He whips around to face her. She realizes then that there are tears on her cheeks. She ought to wipe them away, but she’s forgotten how to move.
“Helga,” He says slowly, begging for her to understand despite the ringing in her head. He presses a hand to her arm and it’s only then that she realizes she’s bleeding. She is bleeding and he is not fifteen or dead and she knows then that, like it or not, things are going to be changing drastically from here on out.
“We need to find another way out of here and as quickly as humanly possible. Okay Helga? Helga?” He shakes her shoulders as she stares at him through blank eyes.
Nothing will ever be the same, she thinks.
His emerald eyes are locked onto her own baby-blues when she suddenly realizes something very important.
Helga is not afraid.
a/n: Lol, longest chapter yet and the plot in my head at the beginning of this was basically: "Get Arnold to the door." Haha, awesome.
Um, also I don't really foresee this being a super fluffy story. More adventure-y than anything? But there's a lot of Helga/Arnold bonding!
Fandom/Universe: Hey Arnold!
Character(s): Helga, Arnold
Rating: Teen
Chapters: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12
“Fuck.” He exhales the obscenity like it’s as simple as breathing. Helga is still frozen in place, but something in the back of her mind is affronted at the not-dead man’s first word to her.
She only has a moment to feel insulted, before he pushes her aside and rolls onto the ground. Then he’s on his feet, swaying just a little as he stumbles towards the kitchen. She stares at him wordlessly from the ground, still not really sure how to feel about everything that has happened so far this morning.
“Gotta…gotta move. And you can’t….” His hands are shaking as he tugs them through his wild hair. His shirt hangs loose on his torso, but she can still see hints of the body beneath. She notices, absentmindedly, that he’s no longer fifteen.
Neither is she.
“What are….” He isn’t making much sense to her, but she isn’t all that surprised. An elephant could drop into the room and she wouldn’t really be shocked at all. She’s already seeing a dead man walk.
Suddenly, he turns to look at her. Her insides begin to boil under his stare, which she returns just as forcefully.
“You weren’t supposed to be here.” He says finally.
She raises an eyebrow at him and crosses her arms over her chest. She’s still sitting on the ground by the couch, staring him down from across the room. He’s still shaking, though his hands have managed to come to an uncomfortable rest on the doorframe. Helga can feel her heart pounding in her head.
“I live here. Doi. Where else should I be?”
She notices that his breathing is getting more erratic. He’s got more than just a hand on the door to steady him now - his whole body is leaning on it for support. She gets to her feet and moves towards him.
“Whoa, why don’t you sit down or something? You look like he-“
“I didn’t know this was your house.” He whispers, before finally loosing his balance and toppling forward. She manages to keep him from smacking his head against the wooden floorboards, but he still goes down hard. He’s close to passing out again.
“Hey.” She says as she gently shakes his shoulders. “What is going on? Hey, Arn-….”
She stops.
She hasn’t said his name for three years now.
“Come on, stay awake.” She’s shaking him a little harder now. His eyes flutter open and close again. “You big stupid idiot thing. Stay awake and tell me what you meant - what you’re doing here!” She yells at him, but it doesn’t seem to do much good. He passes out again, his head resting on her knee. She sighs heavily and leans her back against the side of her coffee table.
Without really thinking, she places her hand on top of his head and brushes his hair out of his face.
His eyes twitch.
Helga contents herself with staring at the wall for the next fifteen minutes - thoughts flicker in and out of her head, but nothing stays. She feels worn out and exhausted.
She never called work to tell them she wouldn’t be able to make it in today.
Strike 24. She is most assuredly out.
“Oh well, it was a crap job anyway.” She mumbles.
“Huh?”
“Hello again, Sleeping Beauty.” She taunts (same old Helga, she thinks to herself). He blinks.
“Fuck.” He says.
“Y’know, this is not the first time you have said that to me today, Football-face. And I’ll have you know that it’s not quite as amusing the second time around.” She tells him, her hand now far from his face, resting on the ground beside her. He looks at her wearily and she finally gets her first good look at him. Once again, she thinks about how strange it is that he’s no longer fifteen - even weirder that she’s grown too. When did she get so damn old?
He makes an attempt to force himself off the ground again, but she puts her weight against his shoulders to pin him down.
“Lay down for a minute. You’re obviously still mixed up.” She says.
He glares at her and her grip on his shoulders falters.
(there’s too much hatred in his eyes for him to really be…)
“Arnold?” Her voice comes out kind of tiny and meek - it’s foreign to her, but somewhere in the back of her brain she realizes that it’s the voice she’s been using for a long time now. Too long, she thinks.
He says nothing, only uses her unsteadiness to his advantage as he suddenly sits upright. He stands once more, as shaky as before, but with a determined expression on his face. He starts a slow walk to the door.
She scrambles to her feet and runs ahead of him, thrusting her arms out across the hallway.
“Move.” He says through clenched teeth. He sways a little, but manages to keep his balance. He’s still glaring.
But Helga isn’t backing down that easy.
“Not until you explain -“ She waves her hands around. “- all of this.”
Instead, he grunts and pushes past her. The sudden movement catches her off guard. She tries to hold her ground, but it’s been years since she’s worked out and he’s stronger than he used to be.
(when the hell did they become not-fifteen?)
He gets to the door and has to steady himself for a second. She realizes somewhere in the back of her mind that he’s leaving and never ever coming back.
“I-…” But she doesn’t know what to say to make the fire deep inside her bones stop raging.
He doesn’t look at her.
“It’s better that you don’t know anything.” He says quietly. His hand is on the doorknob and shaking so bad that she thinks it might rattle the handle right off the door. “Good-bye Helga. Sorry.” And with that he throws open the door and steps onto the front step.
Helga screams as a shot rings out. Arnold dives to the ground and scrambles back inside, slamming the door shut behind him.
In one fluid movement, he lifts Helga to her feet and tugs her along after him.
“Fuck fuck fuck!” He yells, before stopping dead. He whips around to face her. She realizes then that there are tears on her cheeks. She ought to wipe them away, but she’s forgotten how to move.
“Helga,” He says slowly, begging for her to understand despite the ringing in her head. He presses a hand to her arm and it’s only then that she realizes she’s bleeding. She is bleeding and he is not fifteen or dead and she knows then that, like it or not, things are going to be changing drastically from here on out.
“We need to find another way out of here and as quickly as humanly possible. Okay Helga? Helga?” He shakes her shoulders as she stares at him through blank eyes.
Nothing will ever be the same, she thinks.
His emerald eyes are locked onto her own baby-blues when she suddenly realizes something very important.
Helga is not afraid.
a/n: Lol, longest chapter yet and the plot in my head at the beginning of this was basically: "Get Arnold to the door." Haha, awesome.
Um, also I don't really foresee this being a super fluffy story. More adventure-y than anything? But there's a lot of Helga/Arnold bonding!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 09:48 pm (UTC)I'm still working out the details, but I think I've got the basics as far as backstory goes.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 12:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 02:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 07:46 pm (UTC)ADVENTURE?! I'M EXCITED.
I love their relationship, too. I always have, and you just made it more grown up and real. It's fascinating to watch her struggle with all those emotions about his disappearance and realizing that she HAS to help him because she's all he's got. I LOVE IT. ^_^
And this made my day:
"...Hey, Arn-….”
no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 08:46 pm (UTC)INORITE? I LOVE adventure stories. It's totes my favorite genre and I'm drawn to anything BIG and EPIC. This is also why I love crossovers and when a bunch of characters who don't normally interact all at once are sort of forced to come together to SAVE THE WORLD and junk like that.
Their relationship makes me too happy for words. Although, it's not... perfect in this story? I'm sort of struggling to understand where they're both at with one another emotionally in the beginning.
Like, he's really not happy to see her, but it has less to do with her and more to do with the situation. Also, she's ALWAYS there when he needs it the most/least so it's both a good omen and a bit worrisome. And *spoilers!* he honestly didn't know that she lived there at all, so he's just sort of thrown back at seeing someone he knows again, because the people he used to care about think he's dead.
And Helga has sort of just come back to life in a way? She struggled with inspiration for years after he moved away and then when he 'died' a part of her sort of went with him. She's not head over heels in love with him, but there's this bond with him that refuses to die out, despite her half-hearted attempts to smother that side of her (half-hearted, because a whole other side of her wants to hold on to her love for him forever).
Also, now that he's back it's like she's just woken up after nearly a decade of slumber, so letting him disappear again doesn't seem like a very good option to her.
Hee, I loved that too. And I think I'll probably repeat it at various times throughout the story? I am madly in love with repetition (as you can see in this chapter alone with all the repeats of being 'not-fifteen'), so lots of themes that I mention offhand sometime in the beginning will more than likely end up coming back around later on.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-05 11:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-05 05:01 pm (UTC)And yeah, I talk about it a lot. Although part of that is because it's on my brain right now. It's been a few months since I've been in a really good HA! mood.
Helga/Arnold are both the most hopeless/hopeful relationship I've ever seen. There's SO MANY things that come between them, but at the same time there's also this undercurrent of pure love that keeps them circling one another time and again.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-05 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-05 06:39 pm (UTC)So yeah, this is actually a ton of fun for me. Plus it gives me a chance to stretch some of my writing muscles - I haven't done any sort of multi-chapter stuff in years I think.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 06:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 06:34 am (UTC)Also, some lines have just made me squeal with fangirl gush.
She wasn’t Lila and he wasn’t perfect and they kept expecting each other to be something else and how was that fair?
But still, there’d always been this… something. She still doesn’t really know what. But it kept her moving forward.
As long as there was Arnold there was hope. <~~ My FAVORITE so far!! :DD
Keep writing, I'll totally keep reading!!
P.S. Its very refreshing to see them out of high school yet still young enough to have to figure each other out all over again!! I like the time frame a lot!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 02:05 pm (UTC)I'm still going pretty strong as far as writing goes. I've slowed a bit from the first day, but I'm still chugging along. I think I'll end up trying to do at least a chapter a week once my jets have cooled.
Aww, things like that make me gush too.
(I've always sort of assumed that Helga and Arnold would have to be out of high school before they could really come together at last. Besides, this would be a lot harder to pull off if they were too much younger.)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-07 12:23 am (UTC)LOL Jets should never cool! Never I say! XDD You dont know how giddy I am having found all this... Arnold and Helga stuff stuff! I feel like I hit my nostalgic gold mine. LOL
This particular story I can see would be more awkward if they were younger.
I feel like I agree with you on the fact that they need to be older (early-mid twenties) to be at peace with each other and actually be happy. . . however I do still love the concept of them being in high school and just being extremely awkward around one another. I love the idea of exploring Helga having finally gotten her dream (Arnold having feelings for her in return) but not know at all what to do with it. Through out High School, theres no doubt in mind they would do more yelling than cuddling. . .but I think thats why Im so attracted to their relationship. Given its history is just so complex.
That being said however, I still stand by my previous statement that I like them not being in High School in this story because its a perspective I have not seen done yet AND . . . let's face it. . .I have yet to find a really, really well done high school Arnold/Helga fic out there.
All the ones I find either are too mushy without the drama and conflict or just are written as if the characters came out of the womb and walked into high school and seem to dis regard any previous development and flaws. Almost like Im reading about a different "Arnold" and "Helga".
I'd write one myself. . . but I don't really have the attention span for writing my own fanfics anymore simply because Id much, much rather RP out the idea/story with someone else. I just love being able to bounce off of the other character when they're written by an RP partner and I can focus on the one character I'm playing and it just makes the whole writing for me seem so much more real and fulfilling.
Buuuut I havn't found a specific Hey Arnold RP partner in almost geeze 7-8 years and even then if I did find one theres no guarantee they'd be in character or know how to write sooo I just stick to fan fics!
Wow Im sorry this comment was so damn long. Im in class and had nothing else better to do! XDD
no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 06:34 pm (UTC)Do you have a reasonable explanation of why it wasn't published on FanfictionNet? People could like it, you know.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 06:50 pm (UTC)And I've actually got a pretty good handle on where this story is going now. Sometimes things just take longer than I expected.
Um, do I need a reason? I might put it there eventually, but not now. Besides, I haven't posted to FFN in over a year.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 07:11 pm (UTC)Oh you have posted the fourth chapter, I have not noticed it... I don't get it, LJ looks like pandemonium to me. How I'm supposed to find anything here?! Sorry for grumbling.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 07:49 pm (UTC)Haha, perhaps I should post on FFN. I do understand that LJ probably isn't the easiest for people to navigate through. Haha, it'll be so weird posting there again. I used to check there every single day for HA! fics. And then eventually I just stopped.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-04 02:26 am (UTC)OH MY GOD.
hell giiiiiiirl
no subject
Date: 2009-04-07 12:23 am (UTC)It's good that she's not afraid, because there's some rough times ahead.