Hello! Lady Hallissa here with my very first fic, a Hey Arnold one-shot! Reviews would be very much appreciated by anyone and would mean a lot to me. Thank you and enjoy!


Helga Pataki stood before the tombstone, the old and worn black dress she was wearing hanging from her thin frame like a sack.

A couple of hours before, the cemetery was filled with heartbroken mourners. Birds chirped in the trees as crisp, dying leaves drifted astray from the security of their branches. The sounds of organ music and hymns trilled across the cold, gray, and very cloudy autumn sky.

Everyone had long since left, but Helga didn't want to go home. She never wanted to go home again, or to school on Monday either.

"Oh Arnold," sighed Helga, tears welling up beneath her aqua coloured eyes again.

"How cruel fate is to have taken you away so soon, my love." She plucked another daisy from the grass and placed it on the grave.

She could hear only silence and feel only numbness.

After the accident had happened, she was devasted, hurt, angry. But after she had taken it all in, she was left empty and hollow inside.

Reluntantly, Helga began the walk home for dinner, not that her parents would really have noticed her absense anyway.


The sun had just started to set right as Helga reached the front porch. A cold breeze kissed Helga's face as she glared up at the very confused skyline, watching as faint, mystical purple hues were slowly overtaken by dark, bloody orange hues.

The zenith before her brought back memories of Arnold and Gerald, and even of Phoebe, her best friend, when the shade was just right. But as the sky gradually darkened, Helga couldn't help but remember that fateful day, the tragic "accident", as everyone called it.

But it was no accident, Helga knew that much.

She had only been a block away and she would never forgive herself for it.

Arnold had needed her and specifically her, specifically her angry eyes, her clenched, flailing fists, and the dagger-like words. Arnold had actually needed Helga G. Pataki, for once, and she had failed him.

Warm crimson coloured blood had dribbled from Arnold's lower lip, a dark bruise swelled under one of those baby blue eyes, and his preachy, uplifting voice had been reduced only to wimpers of pain. His chest had been battered too.

In a frenzied panic, Helga left a weak and severely injured Arnold lying on the sidewalk alone while she called for help. It was the hardest thing she ever had to do.

And Helga could easily recall just how hurt Arnold had been. His slowing heartbeat, the faint traces of blood he coughed out, those soft groans, his pale, almost colourless face.

But when the paramedics finally did come, it was too late, Arnold was gone.

Never had more sincere tears fallen down Helga's face, the salty, burning tears of the unspoken love she had for him.

Helga knew that Wolfgang and his friends were Arnold's assailants and they did it solely to boost up their own egos. It could have been anyone who was smaller and weaker than they were who happened to turn that particular street corner that day. Arnold just happened to have the misfortune of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The lighter shades of the sunset would always make Helga think of the love she lost, her Arnold. Those tresses of bright blond hair, his soft cerulean eyes that held no contempt, his gentle smile. There was poetry in his mere existance, it seemed to Helga.

The darker hues that often dominated over the fainter ones would be there to remind Helga of tragedy and her own eternal, relentless misery.

The black nothingness that always ensued, the night, provided Helga with closure, an ending, and perhaps even a sense of justice.

The reddening sun and bright colours soon were gone completely and were replaced by darkness, shimmering stars, and an ivory moon.

Helga took a long, deep breath and went inside.

End