This is a story I came up with while on vacation. You know the inspiration for it if you read the summary. Anyway, this is my first Hey Arnold! story so be gentle in your feedback. I hope that I didn't make Arnold too OOC. I hope you like the fic. Read & Review!
Disclaimer: I don't own Hey Arnold.
13 year old Arnold had always been considered the angel of Hillwood. When people described him, they generally used three words: kind, caring and heroic. His deeds and demeanor were well-known throughout the city. Of course, Arnold wasn't perfect, but he was about as close to it as one could get as far as the people of Hillwood were concerned.
When Arnold cared about someone, loved someone, his love had much the same characteristics as the rest of his personality: kind, caring and patient. He cared about his loved ones to where he would readily risk his life if necessary and he was always kind to those he loved, even if they didn't treat him the same. His love was also unconditional, and therefore, patient. He would take his time with a relationship and wait for someone to warm up to him and trust him if he really cared about them.
The list of people Arnold loved was rather short. His parents and grandparents were at the top of the list. Gerald was next as his best friend. Phoebe and Lila came after that, as he loved them both as very good friends. The last person on the list was a recent addition and one that he never thought would be on the list at all. Helga G. Pataki. He discovered his feelings for her about a year ago.
Despite her historical treatment of him, Arnold and Helga had become great friends within the last two years. Arnold had always thought of Helga as a mystery. Her tough facade hid a compassionate, creative and fragile individual. Helga felt that she had to be strong to avoid being hurt since her home life sucked. When he thought about it, Arnold realized that he had been in love with Helga since elementary school, which was why he invested so much time and energy in trying to get close to her.
Now that they were on good terms, Arnold treated Helga the same as his other loved ones. He was always nice to her and her to him. He looked out for her well-being and was always there when she needed him. He had always been patient with her and it seemed to finally pay off. However, Helga still seemed to keep him at a distance when it came to her emotions and now matter how hard he tried, Arnold felt that he didn't have her complete trust. Over the course of their new friendship, he realized that his love for her had taken on a new characteristic: desperate.
Arnold was no longer content with just caring for Helga as a friend. He wanted to love her, to hold her and kiss her and be the one she confided in. Fear kept him from expressing this desire, however. Since his friendship with her was fairly new and he assumed that she had hated him prior to it, Arnold was afraid that if he told Helga of his feelings, she would almost certainly reject him.
The irony of course was that Helga had always loved him, but had eventually given up on him returning her feelings. After the FTI incident, Helga assumed that Arnold's lack of reciprocation meant that he didn't feel the same so while her feelings had never faded, she did away with any notion of being together with him which is what allowed her to let down her walls and become friends with him in the first place though she still kept a certain amount of distance between them to keep from feeling vulnerable.
Since Arnold couldn't verbalize his feelings, he expressed them the only way he knew how; through his actions, often in secret and he began to do things that Helga had done when she was younger in order to express her feelings for him. Arnold would glance at her constantly in class when she wasn't looking. He would hide behind walls and stare after her, both on and off school grounds. Arnold had essentially taken on the role of a stalker with a crush and not only knew Helga's school schedule but where she went after school and on the weekends and he would deliberately modify his route so that they would bump (and sometimes crash) into each other, just so he could talk to her. He barely went to Helga's house however, since her father didn't take too kindly to his presence.
Arnold even had a picture of Helga that he kept in his room. He had taken it on the day that the two had agreed to start over on their relationship. She was smiling at him in the picture and her hair was out of its pigtails and now went to her shoulders. When he got home, he would take it out and stare at it for up to an hour, carrying on conversations with it. Sometimes, he would say "I love you" to the picture as if it was the real thing.
Coincidentally, Arnold started a journal to celebrate their new friendship. The tone of the passages started out happy as he had finally achieved his goal of becoming friends with Helga. When he realized he loved her, the tone was still happy, but carried adoration for her. He talked about the aspects of her personality that attracted him and the fact that she had become quite the beauty of middle school.
Now that Arnold wanted Helga as more than a friend, the nature of his entries varied. The adoration was still there, but many times, the entries related a longing for a romantic relationship with Helga. Other times, he expressed anger at himself for not being able to tell her his feelings and sometimes, on days when they would fight (which were rare now), Arnold's entries carried a profound sadness over the fact that he still didn't have her complete trust and that he felt Helga would never return his affections.
Arnold's love was kind, caring, patient and in the case of Helga, desperate. He had never wanted someone's love so much before, not even Lila's. Because his love was kind, Arnold would always treat her well. Because his love was caring, he would lay down his life in a heartbeat if it would make her happy. Because his love was patient, Arnold would wait for her forever, and because his love was desperate, every day, his need for her grew and every day, he hoped that he would get up the courage to tell her just how deep his feelings were.