A/N: Thank you all for your kind comments on my first HA! piece. I'm glad it was well received, because I plan on writing many more one-shots for this show, such as this one. Enjoy, and reviews are very much appreciated.
Based off the flashback in the episode "Helga On The Couch". From Helga's perspective.
Before Arnold, there was only gray.
She can barely remember that time, when she was still young enough for the world to seem infinite. When the sun felt cold on her skin and the sky overhead never looked blue, no matter how clear.
I'm worried about Helga, the preschool teacher had said at the conference - the only one her parents had ever bothered to attend. Her drawings always seem so angry; she only uses dark colors. Is everything all right at home?
Of course it is, they had said; always on the defensive, always "sweeping things under the rug". Do you think we don't know how to raise our own daughter?
Yes, she would have retorted with that sharp tongue she eventually grew to embrace - had she been older. At that age, though, she didn't understand much of anything. Only that she always seemed to be alone, in rooms filled with her sister's old toys - keep her occupied, her dad had said. Out of our hair, he had said. When the dolls and the puzzles and the games all grew old, she began tugging books off the shelves, awkwardly flipping through them in search of comforting images; smiling children, grassy meadows, anything. Soon, she stopped looking and began to focus on the words instead. Maybe that was how she learned to read years before any of her classmates did.
The piano's melody was always in the house, always finding her; like cold fingertips on her back. Olga was constantly at it, flawless smile plastered across her face, hands pouring over the keys as though they were made of water. Once, left alone in her room for the millionth time, she tried banging on her own toy piano, in the hopes that maybe Mommy and Daddy would come in, to clap and smile as they always did for Olga. She pounded on the keys with as much force as she could muster up, desperate to hear something beautiful. It sounded all wrong, though - nothing like Olga's recitals, not delicate or fluid; just loud, messy - and Daddy only came in to yell that all the racket was giving him a headache.
There must have been color, she realized, years later; it wasn't as though she was living in one of those old movies or something. And yet, she couldn't recall ever being able to grasp anything but ugly, overwhelming gray. The pink clothes she always wore, the purple wallpaper draped across her bedroom, the blue blankets quietly waiting on her bed - it tainted it all; made even the most necessary of comforts feel cold, hollow.
Three years old, and her world was already falling apart.
She remembers walking to preschool alone that day - raining the rain is cold my pants there's mud on my clothes what if they don't let me in I'm dirty - standing on the street corner between rows of unfamiliar faces, shivering as the wind hissed along her face - everyone's else Mommies and Daddies take them to preschool why don't they bring me why do they like Olga more than me - looking out into the world, seeing endless gray, gray, gray, hot tears bubbling in the back of her head - I'm all by myself why does no one see me why is everything so dark why why why...
And suddenly, amidst all of her jumbled thoughts - the rain stopped.
She looked up, and her eyes drowned in yellow; a beautiful, bright yellow that almost seemed to fill her up inside.
Color.
He smiled.
Hi, he said, and she almost turned to see if there was someone behind her. No one answered; no one came up beside her. The sidewalk was empty. He was talking to her.
Nice bow.
Huh? It was the only word she could think of.
I like your bow, because it's pink like your pants.
He walked to the door, and she stood there, wide eyes following him; rain soft on her back. A damp hand tentatively reached up to touch her mud-splattered bow. It was pink, she realized - such a pretty, bright color - and her pants - yes, they were pink too, so strong that it stood out amidst all the streaks of mud - how had she never noticed before? - and for a moment, she wondered what happened to all the gray, what changed. She came up to the door, placed her hands on the glass; she still saw the boy, hanging up his raincoat; a sunny yellow, like his hair. Not gray. Yellow. Yellow.
Her world flooded with color, and she didn't know how she had ever lived without him.