Welcome Home, Helga Pataki

Summary: At the end of the fifth grade, Helga moved to Italy with her family. Six years have passed and she is coming back to join her fellow PS 118 peers, but six years can really change a person.

Disclaimer: I don't own Hey Arnold!

Chapter One

Six Years Ago…

Helga was surprised when her father told her the news. He had gotten a huge contract to move his business overseas and it was a huge opportunity for him. His only worry was that he would be away from home too much. So after a long discussion with his wife, Helga's father and mother decided that moving overseas was the best option. They told Helga and she took it better than they thought she would. The thought of going overseas, any chance to try and forget Arnold was a good excuse for Helga. She was getting a little tired of having her heart broken over and over again.

So when the time came, she told Phoebe. Phoebe took it far worse than Helga had. Soon the entire school knew that she was leaving and this included a much-concerned Arnold. He was not happy with the idea of losing one of his oldest friends but there was no way of helping it. The fifth grade was almost over and when the summer began, the entire family would be moving to Italy.

Helga promised everyone she would write every chance she got and with a lot more goodbyes than she was expecting, she boarded the plane to disappear from the world of Hillwood and PS 118 for six long years.

The time apart made everyone miss her even more than they were all expecting. The next three years were spent in middle school, all of the students of PS 118 moving up together. All, including one football-headed Arnold, missed her presence. Phoebe heard from Helga every few months and often showed everyone the post cards she would send. Helga was being home schooled since the American school system was far more advanced than the Italians. She was doing great every time she wrote, talking about how wonderful it looked there, but she would often talk about how she missed Hillwood. By the time the kids were freshmen, e-mails became more often and Helga continued to tell everyone what they were missing out on every few months. Then, for the entire sophomore year, Phoebe heard almost nothing from Helga. This was a concern mostly because it had not happened before. Then suddenly during the summer before the students' junior year of high school Helga sent a letter telling everyone that she was coming back for the beginning of their junior year. This was cause for celebration and everyone was ready for her to come back home. Most of the years had been quiet because she wasn't there yelling at anyone or pushing anyone down. Everyone had grown up and matured a little, but the idea that they had of Helga hadn't really changed at all.

There was even talk that she probably didn't look any different than she had when she was in fifth grade. Gerald was convinced that she probably still had the unibrow and Harold had a bet going that she had gained a hundred pounds since she went to Italy. Most of the kids joked about how she probably looked worse than when she left. Arnold wasn't too convinced, but his idea of the teenage Helga wasn't much different from the ten-year-old Helga. He had a little hope that she had changed. He had changed a lot since he had hit his growth spirt. He had lost his football head and had more of a square head now, had gained three feet and was fairly well built after deciding to join the high school tennis team. Gerald, Harold and most of the other guys had been like him, gaining a lot of height while the girls gained something else entirely.

So the thought that Helga had changed made perfect sense to everyone involved. But the change that they would see was nothing like they imagined…

- I have not seen this show in years. Gawd, I used to love it so much as a kid, mostly because I felt like Helga sometimes, having to find ways to get attention. Anyway, I was looking around Youtube and saw a mv for this show and fell back in love with it. Oh the nineties. You need to just stay right where you are. Anywho, wrote this because I always had the thought that one day Helga and Arnold would in fact be together.

Invader Hog