A/N: I do not own anything. Also, a trigger warning: This fic contains themes of suicide. It's not really graphic (I think), but if you're uncomfortable with that, please don't read any further. Also, I have never watched TJM, but from what I heard, Arnold and Helga got together, and Arnold got his parents back. This is kind of built on that idea, but since I did not really know what happened in that movie, some of my interpretations may not coincide with it. Thank you.
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Restart
I've got troubled thoughts
And a self-esteem to match
What a catch, what a catch
- What a Catch, Donnie by Fall out Boy
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She stares at him while he eats. He doesn't notice, continues to chew while playing with the mashed potatoes on his plate. He looks up, meets her eyes. He smiles at her, and she smiles weakly back. He looks back at his plate. She continues to stare while playing with the contents of her own plate, unable to eat herself. The words she wants to say is stuck at the back of her throat. Finally, she gathers the courage to let them out.
"I think we should break up," she says.
He stops eating and looks up. For a moment he just stares at her, and Helga prepares for whatever hurtful words he'll say.
"Is that really what you want?" he asks.
She was taken aback for a moment. Then she sighed. Of course. She has to remember this is Arnold. Arnold who was unbearably nice, and continues to be nice even after all the hurtful words she said to him, even after all the times she pushed him away.
It pains her to hurt him but she thought about this for months, ever since they started their sophomore year in high school. She can't keep bringing him down. She was always broken, but recent events broke her even more. Her mother just died, and her father's business is shutting down. She knows that Arnold tried hard to make her feel better, and she wants to feel better, but she can't. She sees how worried he is, sees how he's spending less time with his friends and family just to be with her and she feels even worse. She hates that she can't feel better for him.
She knows he'll be fine. He has his family now, and he is so well liked by his friends. This will hurt him now, but he'll be okay, she tells herself. She's doing this for him, too.
"Yes. I think it would be best. For both of us."
He nods.
Bob decides they should move to another state and stay with Olga the following year. She doesn't say goodbye and so does he.
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Their new neighbourhood is sunnier and has worse traffic than Hillwood but that's about it. Everything is still the same. Or at least, she feels the same, which is another way of saying she's still miserable.
On their first day there, Olga welcomes her and Bob in her apartment with smiles and an unfamiliar home cooked meal. She tells them how happy she is that they're here, tells them about new beginnings with hopeful eyes. Helga doesn't say a word.
Most of her new classmates don't mind her much, each already satisfied with their well-established cliques. One girl 'complemented' her unibrow (which didn't look like much of a unibrow since 8th grade) and she told her to look in the mirror. A few other incidents and it didn't take long before all students in her new school got the perfectly accurate idea that she prefers to be alone.
Phoebe emails her, tells her about her new teachers, tells her about Gerald, tells her about the colleges she's planning to apply to. She mentions Arnold only once, probably out of respect for her. She asks her if she's alright, asks her to write back and Helga tries. Gosh, she tries, but she couldn't find anything good to write about. So she doesn't. Another email comes, and another, and another, and she still doesn't write back. Eventually, the emails stop coming and Helga decides that she hates everything about this place.
She hates how Olga keeps insisting they eat dinner together, telling her about work, asking her about college applications, pretending like she actually knows anything about her. She hates how Bob moves from one business idea to another, pretending that they're not doomed to fail.
She wants to scream, talk some sense to them, but she doesn't have the energy to do so and she hates it. She hates it because she's Helga G. Pataki for criminy's sake. She's a fighter and always has been. She doesn't know when and why she lost the energy to fight.
Sometimes, her mind drifts back to Arnold, and thinks that maybe he knows what to do. Then she stops. She already had Arnold before and even he can't fix her. The thought sucks the remaining hope she has and she hates it.
She stares at the computer screen again. She's been working on this essay for three hours and she only managed to write a sentence. Maybe she should take a break, get some sleep first.
She doesn't go directly to bed, because she knows if she does she'll only stare at the ceiling for hours. Instead, she goes to the bathroom, opens the medicine cabinet tries to find something to help her sleep. She finds no sleeping pills, only an assortment of pills whose purpose she doesn't completely know. She takes them all with her on the kitchen, spreads them out on the table. She takes a look at them, one by one. A voice tells her to go back to her room, work on her essay once more, because, criminy, she's not Miriam. She doesn't drink to forget her problems until the day she actually dies in her sleep. She's strong. She has control. She's in control.
But the pills tempt her, promising her sleep and something else she doesn't dare acknowledge. Before she knew it she's taking a pill, and another, and another, and another.
She hears Olga call out her name. She's not supposed to be home yet, she thinks. She doesn't have the energy to mull it over, as she begins to drift slowly to sleep.
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The next few moments come in a blur. She vaguely remembers her sister calling someone and being hauled somewhere. She remembers being annoyed why everyone was shouting, panicking, when she's finally falling asleep.
The next thing she knew she's in a hospital bed, a bunch of tubes hooked on her, body aching all over. Nurses and social workers come, sticks needles into her, asks her why over and over again. She tells them it was only accident. She tells them that she won't do it again. Still, they don't let her out of the hospital for days while she is constantly being watched.
"Why did you do it, baby sister?" Olga asks, one day in the hospital when they were alone.
"Didn't they tell you, already? It was an accident. I just wanted to sleep."
"Helga, please talk to me. Don't pretend everything's okay."
At this, Helga snapped. Her body still aches, but she finds the energy to shout. "I'm pretending everything's okay? I'm pretending everything's okay? You're the one who acts like everything's still perfect! You're the one acting like our lives are not falling apart! So yeah, maybe I did try to kill myself. Maybe I do want to die, but does that matter? When we get home, you'll still ask me about school like nothing ever happened!"
Olga looked shocked, and for a while Helga thought she'll cry. She turns her back from her. She doesn't want her sister's face to guilt her into apologizing.
"You don't think it's been hard for me, too?" Olga says softly behind her. "I had to speak at mom's funeral. I had to find work that actually pays so that we wouldn't be living on the streets. I had to make sure you and daddy were looking forward. All of these I did with a happy face because I know that's what's expected of me. Because I'm Olga Pataki, and people expect me to be perfect, and for a while I expected myself to be perfect, too. But lately I realized I'm not perfect and it's hard because I believed the lie for so long. I knew something was going on with you, but I did not think of it much. I thought you'd snap out of it, because I know you're strong and brave. You were always stronger than me, Helga, and I've always been jealous of that. I'm guessing that's where I failed. I forgot that even if you are stronger than me, I'm still your big sister, and there will be days where you'll still need me to look after you. I'm sorry. I failed. I just can't believe you'd even consider – Not after mom – "
Helga looks back at her. Olga looks older now. Dark circles line her eyes and her face lost that unsettling brightness she always hated. Helga wonders why she never noticed it before.
I just can't believe you'd even consider – Not after mom – It was the first time Helga saw Olga acknowledge what happened to Miriam. Helga thought she doesn't even know. It was common knowledge that Miriam died in her sleep, and it was an open secret that she died because of drinking too much. However, few people knew the amount of alcohol Miriam bought before she died. Very few people knew that there was a question whether her death was intentional.
I'm sorry, she wanted to say, but the words got stuck on her throat. Instead, she stares at her sister while she sighed. "I have to go," she says. "Daddy will come later."
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The Pataki household was quiet the following days. Olga still makes dinner, but she doesn't seem as cheery as she used to. Her father asks her how she is awkwardly, as if he's afraid she'll break any second. He calls her by her name. "Helga," he says, slowly, as if testing the unfamiliar word in his mouth.
A few weeks later, she finds Olga on the kitchen, concentrating on the bunch of papers in front of her. Helga sits in front of her.
"I'm sorry," she says.
Olga looks up and smiles. "You owe me a helping hand in dinner tomorrow."
She smiles back.
Her father takes her to therapy, as surprising as it seems. He even comes in a few sessions, but he doesn't speak, only holds her hand. She remembers something he said long ago. Pataki's never talk about things, she remembers. Maybe it is true. Pataki's never talk about things, but maybe they're learning to communicate without words.
Her therapist, a red-haired petite lady, asks her to do what makes her happy, asks her what makes her happy.
"I used to write," she replies.
"Why'd you stop?"
"I lost my muse."
"Why don't you find another one?"
"I don't think I could. He's kind of one of a kind."
Her therapist smiles. "I'm not asking you to replace him. I'm asking you to look for something else to write about, anything at all. Even the most mundane things. "
She tries writing later, pulls out a pink notebook and a purple pen. She writes, and writes, about the most mundane things and its . . . bad, but she writes anyway.
She's okay. She tells herself she's okay. She tries to listen now, to lectures, to her father, to her sister. She looks at people's faces, and tries to be nice whenever they are nice to her. She still scowls at anyone who dares try to ruin her mood, but she's okay.
She goes to a community college a few minutes away from their apartment. All those years feeling she was about to break took a toll on her and she wasn't able to properly apply to colleges she wanted to attend. She does well though, even made a few friends.
One day, she finds the courage to email Phoebe, just to ask her how she is. She knows she probably won't read it, probably busy with a life without her demanding friend, but she writes anyway, for her own closure. A few days later, she receives a reply. They've been keeping in touch ever since.
Olga brings home a guy for dinner one night. His name is Matt and he's a software engineer. His nose is a little too big for his face, but he's nice. He looks familiar. She thinks she'd seen her with Olga before.
"So, you two together?" her father asks.
"Oh no, we're just friends, daddy." Olga says.
If Olga wasn't growing on her, she would have exposed her right there. There was no 'just friends' about the way those two were looking at each other. True enough, a year later, they were engaged, and she'd be lying if she says she's not happy for them. Olga asks her to be the maid of honor, and she accepts.
She transfers to a state university on her third year, managed to get a merit scholarship and majored in psychology. Now, she's graduated, and is working as a marketing assistant while applying to law schools and she's okay.
She's walking home from work, when he sees a drunk young man a few steps away from her, walking in the same direction as her. She stops. The man's head is shaped in a way that reminds of a certain boy she loved a few years ago, only a little less pronounced.
She wonders where Arnold is now. Phoebe doesn't mention him. She never asks, doesn't know if she could handle what she'll say. She thinks that maybe one day she'll find him. One day she'll thank him for pulling that umbrella over her head. One day she'll thank him for trying to let her see the bright side of things, even if it wasn't enough. She'll say sorry for being difficult, for hurting him. She doesn't know if he'll want anything to do with her then, but she'll say these anyway. Someday.
The man is crossing the street now, and stops in the middle. What is he doing?, she thinks.
She continues walking and sees that a truck is approaching the man. Oh no.
She runs as fast as she could, grabs him and hauls him to the side.
"What do you think you're doing?" she says and she meets the familiar green eyes of Arnold Shortman.
"Arnold?" she asks, letting go of him.
Arnold steps back, and then slowly, reaches out. "He . . .He. . . Helga? Is that really you?"
Out of all the possible scenarios she concocted about meeting him again, this wasn't one of them.
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A/N: Sorry for the shortness. This was just hard to write. Not only because of the theme, but because I keep being reminded of my childhood while writing. Not that I was depressed when I was younger, but because HA was just so tied up to my childhood. While I was writing this, I actually had dreams of certain moments of my childhood. Not bad, not good, just memories, and it's kind of unsettling. Nostalgia is not really fun.
I guess that's what happens when you watch a cartoon when you were younger, liking it but not really caring much about it, and then learning there's so much hidden depths in it years later after youtube recommends a clip from the said cartoon to you and you binge watch anything from the said cartoon. I don't think I ever cared about this cartoon more than I do now.
This was originally a two shot, since this is inspired by the Japanese Animated Film Koe no Katachi, which I also do not own. However, I don't know if I could write any more afterwards, since life's getting a bit busier now. Anyway, I think it can stand alone as a one-shot, albeit one with an open-ended ending.
Final note: I'm not American. Please forgive me for any errors about the American educational system. Thanks and please review (Or not. That's okay too.)