Helga stands at the docks and sighs, she should be happy to be going home, but she isn't. They did what they set out to do, Arnold found his parents, and they saved them and the rest of their class from probably a certain death. She even shared a real kiss with him, albeit they were interrupted by Arnold's best friend Gerald, it was still an official kiss between Helga Pataki and Arnold.
'Damn it, what is his last name?' Helga curses herself for still not learning the last name of the boy she adored more than anything. "Well, I guess it doesn't matter now…"
Helga looks around, she sees all of her classmates and her only real friend Phoebe waiting to board a big steamboat to take them out to the coast where a plane will take them home. Everyone's clothing was dirty and tattered, signs of the ordeal that the twelve to thirteen year olds have gone through. Helga was in the worst condition out of all of them, she lost her bow she wore in her hair, ripped the strap of her dress, and lost a shoe, but despite it all, she managed to keep her locket with her. The locket has a picture of Arnold in it with an engraving about him, it is always with her, so he is, in a way, always with her.
Helga takes the locket out from under her shirt and looks at the photo of the blond boy. He is not going with the rest of their class, he is going with his parents, and it breaks her heart just thinking about this.
She hears a boat horn bellow off in the distance and looks off towards the noise. "That's probably his…" Helga looks back down at her locket, and then up at the other kids. She wasn't the only one that had luck in the romantic department. Her best friend Phoebe and Arnold's best friend Gerald finally became something official, rather than the passive flirting they have been doing for over a year. The two are standing a little away from the other kids, holding hands.
Seeing the two young lovers just holding hands ignited something inside of Helga, she couldn't let it end like this. She shoves the locket back under her shirt and runs off from the others, determined to be honest for once in her life.
"Helga? Where are you going?" The class's teacher, Mr. Simmons, yells after Helga as she runs.
But Helga doesn't stop to answer her teacher, she has only a few minutes to cross the docks to where Arnold's boat is meant to be.
Helga runs as fast as she could, dodging the people on the dock and ignoring the yelling that is being directed at her. Nothing is going to get in her way or stop her. That is until a cart full of luggage rolls in front of her, forcing her to skid to a stop.
"Criminy! Watch it!" Helga yells at the dock worker pushing the cart.
"Hey, no runnin on da dock!" The worker yells back at her.
Normally Helga would yell back at anyone that yelled at her, even if she started yelling first, but she just low grows at the worker and jumps over the luggage cart, getting yelled at again, and starts running again.
'I can't stop, I can't let him go, I need to get there in time.'
Helga keeps running, but her rule breaking running hasn't gone unnoticed by the other workers of the dock. As Helga turned a corner, she is grabbed by a big dock worker. "Where the hell are you going in such a hurry?"
Helga acts without thinking, and punches the dock worker in the stomach, forcing him to let her go and falling to the ground.
"Sorry, but I don't have time for this." She says over her shoulder as she took off running again.
Again she keeps running, pushing herself to the limit, letting her heart keeping her going. She sees the boat, it is a small little dingy with room for no more than seven people on it. She can even see the small little blue hat nestled between blond hair through the crowd on the boat. But as she draws closer, a wall of dock workers form in front of her. The dock workers are bracing for impact and are determined to stop Helga from causing any more problems on their dock.
She has already gone this far and is not going to let them stop her, the fire inside of her is too great to be stopped.
"Out of the ways morons!" Helga yells at the dock workers. But she knew this was pointless, they are not going to move, and she is not going to stop. So when an unstopped force meets an immovable object, the only thing you can do is go over it. At the last moment, Helga jumps as high into the air as she could and stomps her foot into the face of one of the workers to give herself enough force to leap right over them and lands on the ground.
"Arnold!" She yells once she has recovered from the landing. "Arnold wait!"
Arnold, the blond boy from her locket, hears Helga and turns. "Helga?" He says surprised.
Helga stops at the edge of the dock, Arnold's boat has already cast off and is slowly starting to move away. Helga braces herself on her knees, trying to catch her breath from all the running she has just done. She looks up and her eyes lock with Arnold's.
This is her only chance, her last chance. She doesn't give her brain time to think, thinking will only lead to doubt, she has to do it regardless of the outcome. "Arnold." Time seems to slow down for Helga, the boat is moving ever further away from her, carrying the only person that ever gave her a sense of purpose away. "Arnold, I." the boat seems even further away now. "Arnold I don't want you to go."
"Helga." His voice seems so close to her, yet he is further away. "Why?" He asks moving to the very end of the boat.
"Because I can't live without you. I… love you, Arnold." She said it, her deepest and most well-kept secret. She finally told Arnold what has been in her heart from the moment that he complimented her on the first day of preschool.
But she realized that she was still too late, even with all the effort to get to his boat. The small boat carrying Arnold and his parents was too far away and the engine starts to roar to life.
Arnold looks at Helga with shock on his face. "Helga, I-"
He said something to her, but the sound of the engine cut him off, all Helga could hear was the boat motor roaring and water splashing around. But she didn't break the eye contact with him, she was never going to forget this moment, or this pain. The moment that she finally did what she should have done long before coming to San Lorenzo, and the pain of watching the only person she loved disappearing down the river.
As Arnold drifted away, Helga lost any care she had for the world. She didn't care when she was grabbed by four dock workers, or when she was taken back to the boat she was meant to get on, or even when Mr. Simmons scolded her in his usual passive manner. Nothing mattered to the young Pataki girl as the steamboat traveled down the river.
Days turned into weeks back in the city. The story of Mr. Simmons fourth grade classes trip to San Lorenzo spread like wildfire, mostly due to every kid in the class telling the tail to any that would listen. But Helga didn't even tell her parents what happened, not that they would have really cared or paid attention to the story to begin with. Helga spent the remaining days of summer vacation alone in her room. Phoebe and Gerald were spending all their time together, so Helga had literally no one that she wanted around her.
Even when school started up and she would walk the halls of P.S. 118 she didn't care, without Arnold in her life, life didn't matter to her.
One morning she felt even more "didn't care" than normal, and choose to no go to school for the day. She spends the day walking around the city, trying to find anything that would get her mind to think of anything other than Arnold. But that was an impossibility. The two of them both grew up in this city, and despite the rocky history the two of them had, they had a lifetime of adventures in this city.
As she walked around the city letting the memories fill her, Helga couldn't help but smile. Arnold and her have made a lot of great memories together. From small ones of playing baseball in the streets, to ones as big as saving the boarding house together.
And it was that boarding house that Helga found herself standing in front of without realizing it. 'So many times spend out here, if only you had said it then, then maybe things would have turned out different.'
Helga lets out a long sigh and turns to walk away, there is still a lot of time left in the school day and a lot of sidewalk to be walked on.
"Helga?" A voice says from behind her.
She knew that voice immediately, and her heart almost fell into her stomach out of disbelief. She spins around on the spot and her eyes grow wide, Arnold is standing in the doorway of the boarding house.
"Ar-arnold?" Helga says not sure if he is real.
"Hey, Helga." Arnold responds, closing the door.
Helga's mind is over ran with questions. "What are you doing here? Where are your parents? What happened to staying in San Lorenzo? Why are you here?"
"Um, I live here, they are inside, we never were going to forever, and I live here I guess?" Arnold says, answering all of her questions in the order they were asked.
Helga was back to disbelief. "You… weren't going to stay?" It never accrued to her that this might be an outcome.
Arnold shakes his head. "No, I told you that."
"When?" The heartbreak Helga has been suffering for weeks has vanished, letting her normal self return.
Arnold's cheeks turn a slight shade of red. "On the docks, when my boat, was leaving…" Arnold had in fact said that he was going to return to the city, but the boat motor covered that part.
"Oh… Well, welcome home I guess." Helga kept herself under control.
"Thanks." Arnold gives her a quick smile. "Um, Helga?"
Just hearing him say her name made her want to dance. "Yeah?"
"Question." Arnold sits down on the steps of the boarding house.
"Shoot."
"Did… did you mean it?" He asks rubbing the back of his neck and looking away from her.
"Mean what?" she raises one side of her unborn.
He looks back at her. "What you said to me, on the docks."
Helga moves closer to him, without realizing that she is doing so. "What about what I said?" It could be the weeks spent with just her thoughts, or the longing for him, but Helga was not afraid of this conversation like she would have been prior to the events in Central America.
"I need to know, if you were being honest with me. That it wasn't another prank."
Helga sits down on the same step as Arnold. "And… if it wasn't? A prank that is."
Arnold's cheeks turn red again. "Then, I'd be happier, about being back here."
Helga's own cheeks also grown red. "Then I guess I'm happy that you're happier."
The two young city kids both look at each other, and smile. A flame was started that moment, one that many people would say should have started a long time ago, but regardless it is there now, and every party involved is happy for its existence.
So some context to this. I got the idea for this very short story from browsing the Hey Arnold! Subreddit and saw someone posted the song "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" by Meat Loaf with a picture of Arnold and Helga holding hands on a bus titled "Helga will do anything for love" and I got inspired by the song to write this. The original idea was to go with the flow of the song, but I deviated a bit in the end. Arnold and Helga is a pairing that I want to dive into again, it was the pairing of my first ever story on after all, but I am not that informed as I am with the only other couple I've written about. I hope this was an enjoyable read for you.
A quick note to any of my fans (it is really strange to say that, let alone type it) that are wondering what I have been doing writing wise. I've been working on a completely original story idea for the past couple of months and starting from nothing is a lot harder than fan fiction. I'm rather proud of the world I have came up with, and if there is interest for it I can make the first chapter available on 's sister site FictionPress (under the same username as here).
Well, until next time, keep being awesome.
Linken88.