A/N: Multi-chapter! You know how much you love those.

Disclaimer: I don't own Hey Arnold! Craig Bartlett does.

--

"Finding My Heart In Your Memories"

Chapter One: Meet Your Angel

--

The whole scenario, Arnold decided as he sat in his hospital bed, was incredibly cliché, as someone who was supposed to resemble the Angel of Death – someone with dark, choppy "Emo" hair, a pale face, and dark robes - was beckoning to him with an authoritative finger.

"Arnold Shortman," he said in a dead monotone, "your time has come."

He looked around him, to see if everyone else was seeing this, or if this was just some strange effect of his old age. But apparently time had stopped for everyone around him: Phoebe, Gerald, and their daughter, Audrey.

He turned back to the angel, who was now looking at him expectantly.

"Sure thing," he said, swinging out of his bed with strength that he hadn't had since being admitted. Looking back, one last time, at the people whom he had loved dearly over the years, he saw time slowly come back to the room, and the people begin to move around his now lifeless body.

--

Apparently Heaven didn't stop being cliché even as he arrived at the Gates: like in all of the old Saturday morning cartoons that he had used to watch, there was a tall podium next to them, an angel seated on the stool behind it, checking names off of the parchment in front of him.

"Hey, Reg," he said, nodding at the Angel of Death behind him. "Who've you got there?"

"Arnold Shortman," 'Reg' said, pushing him closer to the podium.

"Arnold Shortman," clicked the Angel with the paper. "Ar-nold Short-man… Ah, here we are." He flipped about halfway down the large piece of paper. "Died at twelve-oh-three this afternoon," he recited in a monotone. "You are supposed to be awarded the –''

The large gates behind him clanged open suddenly and loudly, and a figure was tossed out. Another angel, a rather portly fellow, poked his head out behind him.

"Stay out, Devil!" he roared. "You are not welcome here!"

"Aw," the devil said sarcastically, "And here I thought that everyone was welcome in Heaven."

"Everyone except sinners like you," the fat fellow spat. "Where's your good-for-nothing –''

"Who's good-for-nothing?" another voice boomed from behind the fences. "As I seem to remember, I have higher status than you do, Maurice."

"Although why the Powers That Be decided that, I'll never know," he grumbled, pushing back. "The backstabber's all yours, Vivianne."

Arnold heard an irritated sigh before another being – this one being considerably lighter and nicer-looking than the first one – appeared outside of the gates. She had dark skin, much like Gerald, as well as long, dark, wavy hair that went almost to her waist, with pink bows scattered in it. Her eyes were also very animated; light brown, and he saw annoyance briefly flash in them. Arnold couldn't help but stare at her as she cradled the Devil's face in her hands.

"Aw, poor baby," she cooed. "And here I thought that you'd make it in farther than last time."

He gave her a sardonic smile. "And here I thought that you wanted to see me," he shot back. "Nice to see you too, Viv."

She smiled and kissed him quickly on the lips. "How are things down in Hell, Matt? Nice and hot?"

"Peachy," he said, smiling, and Arnold was now able to make out more of his features: Nice, clear red skin with a mess of dark red hair on his head, tiny horns peeking through. He was dressed in black pants with no shirt, excepting a bit of pink tied around his wrist (most likely from her - Vivianne's – hair). And, like every bad-boy stereotype before him, wore a black leather jacket where the sleeves had been manually torn off. Clearly, this was a very good-looking couple. He almost felt envious.

"Which is why you went to see me?" she asked. "Even though we have a system so this sort of thing won't happen?"

"But of course," he said, smiling for real this time.

"You messed up your glamour spell again, didn't you?" she scolded.

"Nothing too major," he assured her. "But we can talk about that later; I gotta get back to the hottest place on Earth – and I don't mean Death Valley."

"I suppose that it's a nice place for you," she said quietly, brushing his hair out of his eyes. "All of those twits running around half-naked…"

"Hey, hey, hey…" he said quickly. "If I cheated on you, I would know it."

"Heck yeah!" she laughed. "You wouldn't know what hit you."

"So you'll trust me, right?"

"Right," she said shyly. "See you, Matt."

"See you, babe," he said, kissing her firmly on the mouth before floating for the ground below them.

She sighed for a moment, in her own world, giving a look that he recognized – with his old age – that meant that she was hopelessly in love.

She stiffened quickly, feeling his gaze on her back and turned around sharply. His eyes meeting hers, he couldn't help but blush.

"Who's this, Carl?" she called out to the man on the podium.

"Arnold Shortman," he replied evenly, obviously disgusted at her little display with the devil.

A flash of something unreadable appeared in her eyes briefly; so briefly that Arnold wondered if he had been correct.

"Wait," she whispered, "did you just say 'Arnold Shortman'?"

"Yeah," he said. "So, can you get Dave? He has the robes for this guy."

She smiled slowly, evilly, and Arnold had the feeling that he might be very sorry very soon.

"Get him yourself," she barked, her face changing instantly, and Arnold shivered. (Oh, great, the emotional type, he thought). Then, in a noticeably softer tone, said, "I can take it from here, thanks. But there's really no need to bother him – he's off playing cards with Muriel." She gave this angel – Carl – a smile that radiated fake cheer.

"Muriel?!" Carl exploded. "Just wait until I get my hands on that cretin…!" with that, he zoomed into the still-open gates, adding a hasty "Welcome to Heaven, Mr. Shortman!" before disappearing into the light.

She turned to the Angel of Death – Reg, if he remembered correctly – and smirked. "Well, Reg?" she prompted.

"I didn't see anything," he said evenly, holding up his hands in defense.

"Good boy," she purred. "Now, don't you have lives to end?"

"Whatever," he said, shrugging his shoulders and making his way leisurely down the clouds. "See ya, Viv."

"Only Matt calls me 'Viv'!" she shouted after him. "Call me 'Superior,' or something, dammit!" At his lack of a response, she shrugged and turned back to Arnold.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Shortman," she said, holding out her hand. "…You are the Mr. Shortman from Hillwood, correct?"

"That's me…" he said awkwardly, shaking her hand.

"Great, then. I'm Vivianne, your guardian angel. Coincidence of us being out here at the same time, huh?"

He nodded, his mind drifting to a few minutes ago where she had a rather…interesting moment with a devil. "Yeah," he said.

"So, before I go any further…," she trailed off, placing a hand on his cheek and giving it a firm pinch.

"Ow!" he yelled, stumbling back, his hand over the part where it stung. "What was that for?!"

"Youth renewal," she said, smiling. "Standard procedure for all residents of heaven. You are now physically nine years old, which can be seen as the peak of your childhood. As I speak, there should be a tingling sensation on your face; that's the glamor taking effect…"

"That's handy," he muttered, placing a smaller hand on his face. What once had a leathery texture and was wrinkly all over, was now nothing but smooth skin.

"Which brings us to our next point," she said calmly, taking a step closer to him.

"Which is…?" he asked.

"How you and I have the opportunity to fix the biggest mistakes in your life," she said dramatically.

He gave her a skeptical look. "How?" he asked.

"By figuring out your unconditional love for Helga Pataki."

"What?!" he yelled, stumbling back again. "Helga? No!"

"Why not?!" she demanded.

"Because she's…her," he said, looking away in disgust as he did so.

Vivianne's eyes flashed dangerously. "I can't believe that even after all the times I tried to push you two towards each other, you were always trying to be the negative to her negative!" she shouted.

"First of all," he retorted, "I have every right to be negative. Second of all, what the heck do you mean by 'negative to her negative'?"

Vivianne frowned at him, mad that he didn't understand. "You know, like a magnet. How the same energies don't attract and connect? How only positives and negatives attract?"

"Yes, I know about magnets, but what do you mean?"

Vivianne sighed, looking off the side in a 'why me' way since she couldn't look up as they were already in Heaven. "I mean that when both of you would get mad at each other, you'd both storm off, putting our meddling to waste. You'd get just as mad at her and didn't want to deal with her."

"That's natural!" Arnold argued. "You know how insufferable she was."

Vivianne continued on as if she didn't hear him. "And yet still we would keep pushing you two together. We gave you all the hints. No one else has needed so much help because they weren't as dense as you --"

"I'm not dense!"

"—And you'd think you'd take the hint!"

"Why the heck would you be trying to push me together with her?!" he yelled. "In case you haven't noticed, I married someone else!"

"Unfortunately," she bit back, "and she later cheated on you for a work buddy."

"That doesn't have any relation to this, does this?" he asked quietly, angrily.

"Of course it does!" She finally snapped and pulled him in close, taking his thin shoulders in her arms and shaking him back and forth. "Everything has to do with this! How you spend the remainder of your years, what happens to your grandparents –''

"Don't talk about them!" he ordered.

"Too late!" she snarled. "If you had gotten together with Helga as I wanted, you would've had three kids! Five grandchildren! And you wouldn't have died with only your best friend, his wife, and their daughter at your side!"

Arnold was silent for a moment, not wanting to believe her, Vivianne, his guardian angel, but he knew…that she was right.

"And if you had married Helga," she continued, "You would've made it to San Lorenzo."

He glared at her. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"Grade ten. Helga would've helped you find your parents, if you had asked her."

"But she doesn't have the –''

"—She would've organized a collection in your honor. You would have made it, easily."

"Why are you telling me this?!" he shouted, finally fed up with her telling him all of the amazing things that he could have done if he had been with Helga.

"Because it was supposed to be your life!"

He looked down. "Besides," he muttered, "she only thought that I was a joke. No way would I have set myself up like that with her."

"That's where you're wrong," she said, smiling a Cheshire cat grin.

"… You're kidding," he said flatly.

"Nope," she said. "And that's where –''

"VIVIANNE!"

"Damn," she muttered, flinching as the Gates opened up behind her, revealing the angel from earlier: Carl.

"The top angels want you," he said, glancing over at Arnold briefly.

"Tell them to wait," she ordered, waving her hand.

"Now," he said, and she gulped.

"Right-o," she said weakly and, pulling Arnold behind her, walked through the Gates.

--

"Next," Gabriel called out, stamping a piece of paper and stacking it to the side. "A Mr. –''

"Angel Gabriel!" an angel shouted, bursting into the room. "Archangel Vivianne is here to see you!"

"Vivianne?" Gabriel raised an eyebrow. "She's the one dating a devil, isn't she?"

Michael bowed his head. "Yes," he said. "She's always saying something about 'teaching him some good,' or some other nonsense. She's also the most meddlesome archangel; always trying to set people up with their desired. Even if they're not hers to watch."

"But it's not like she's interfering with their emotions!" another angel, Hajim, interjected. "All she does is give them a little shove!"

"Except when things go wrong," Michael said sagely. "Then she 'brings out the big guns,' so to speak."

"She meddles after their deaths?" Gabriel asked warily.

"In a way," Michael admitted. "She's optimistic about the two until one dies. Ir both die. Then she confronts them."

"Ah," Gabriel said, nodding slowly. "Then who is her new 'target'?"

"Arnold Shortman," Hajim said, looking at a sheet of paper, "who is her human to guard, and...Helga G. Pataki."

All three looked up.

"You mean her?" Gabriel asked, motioning to the girl in the far corner of the room.

"Yes sir," Hajim said. "Apparently Helga was in love with Arnold for all but three years of her life."

"And considering how old she was when she died," Michael said, "Vivianne is almost justified when it comes to her frustration."

"I say that we let her!" Hajim said loudly, pounding the table. "I don't know what you guys think, but she definitely deserves a better life – before and after. I think that Arnold can give her one."

"But why is she not with him, then?" Gabrielle asked. "If she loved him so much."

"Arnold was a very dense one when it came to the matters of the heart,"Michael said. "Apparently, she had even confessed to him at one time when they were nine years old. But he had her brush it off as a 'heat of the moment' sort of thing."

"Then we have no choice," Gabrielle said. "If Arnold can see how much she loved him, accept it, and love her himself, then we shall appoint him a second chance."

"Haven't gone over this before?" Michael asked.

"Only forty years ago when Helga died," Gabrielle said.

"I'll tell the messenger to tell her to come in, then," Hajim said, standing up. As he left the room, he could not resist looking over at Helga where she sat with her guardian angel, Ramon, staring at the open sky, a blank piece of paper before her.

Ramon looked at her intently, as if she might snap somehow and remember why she was up here in the first place.

"Do you think that Vivianne will give it away?" he asked, waving his fingers near Helga's ear so she wouldn't be able to understand.

Michael nodded. "But we gave her our word. Now all we need to do is see if she can –''

"YOU!"

Ramon's head whirled around, and he saw at the entrance the Angel Vivianne, pointing a finger at him accusingly.

"Why are YOU here?" she continued, shouting. "YOU have done enough damage!" She came face-to-face with him now and was her pointed finger was currently jabbing his chest.

Helga looked up, warily. "Has he done something stupid again?" she asked, and Vivianne had the suspect that occurrences like these were normal for the two of them.

"YES, he did something wrong!" she shouted, grabbing Helga now by the shoulders. "he ruined your one chance at happiness with Arnold!"

Helga looked confused and gently pushed Vivianne's hands off of her. "I'm sorry, I really don't get it; what does Nancy Spumoni have to do with this?"

Vivianne's mouth now resembled a fish as her mind scrambled to absorb what had just happened. Open, close. Open, close. Open...

"MICHAEL!" she screamed, now turning on the unfortunate angel. Gabriel saw Michael turn slightly green, and he understood completely; Vivianne was the wrong angel to get mad. "Michael, what have you DONE?!"

"I protected her," he said simply.

"From WHAT, dare I ask?" she hissed, making a few gestures with her hands so that Helga wouldn't be able to understand what they were saying.

"From what that boy, Arnold Shortman, did to her."

"What did you do to her?"

"I blocked him from her memories."

"Blocked. What. Part. Of. Him." She asked through clenched teeth.

"His name and any memories associated with him."

"And why, pray tell?"

"So she'd be happy."

"Look at her!" Vivianne yelled, pulling on his collar and jerking him forward, pointing at Helga. "She's confused! She thinks that 'Arnold' is 'Nancy Spumoni'! She's sitting alone, writing, for all the rest of time! She has NOBODY. And you have taken her one great muse away from her! How much has she written since she came here?"

"A few hundred pages," Michael said defensively. Then, looking at Vivianne's steely glare, muttered "of total junk."

"See?" Vivianne said, "THIS is what I meant by letting her reincarnate. That she'd be happy. Free. And not dead at the age of thirty-five."

"Wait," Ramon said slowly, making his way over to her, "You said the word 'reincarnate.' And mentioned Arnold earlier today. Is there something that we should know?"

Vivianne smiled widely. "Arnold Shortman has died," she announced. "Do you know what that means?"

Michael and Ramon gave each other weary looks. "...Helga might have a second chance with that Football Head?" Ramon offered warily.

"Correct-a-mun-do!" Vivianne crowed. "Don't you see? This is great! Helga will get the life that she deserved and Arnold won't be so lonely in the future!"

"You remember the pact, though, right...?" Michael prompted.

She sighed and her two fingers were raised in air quotes. " ' Helga G. Pataki and Arnold Shortman may in fact be reunited in the process of reincarnation,'" she recited, " ' BUT Arnold must be able to realize that he does indeed love her. If not, things will continue as normal he'll go through the Pearly Gates and she shall remain here.'"

Michael raised an eyebrow at her. "I don't remember using the words 'Pearly Gates,'" he said.

She waved a hand dismissively. "Details, details," she said. "So can I finally get a move on and fix Ramon's mistake?"

Ramon opened his mouth to interject, but Michael held his hand up to silence him. "Yes, you may," he said. "But Arnold must be able to realize his feelings by the end of your trip down memory lane, or else. Understand?"

"Yes, Dad," she sighed before blowing out of the room. "You won't regret it!" she called back. "Promise!"

Michael looked at Helga in the corner, chewing on the eraser of her pencil.

"I have no doubt that I might," he sighed before returning to his work.

--

Arnold was sitting by the door, attention held by the numerous amounts of angels flying overhead. She would have been slightly irked at his naiveté, but she knew that even though he was almost eighty years old, he had never seen anything like this before.

"Come on," she said, pulling his arm. "We're going to start this thing at the beginning."

"What?" he asked. "What do you mean?"

"What I mean is that we have permission to continue with this little…thing. Now, when did you first – never mind, I should know that," she muttered, head down. "Then that means about sixty-six years ago… That sounds about right…"

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I'm trying to figure out how long we should go back," she said cryptically, dragging him through the Gates once more. "Take a good look, Arnold – you won't be seeing this for a while now."

He looked back at them obediently and saw them swing shut, having the slight feeling that when he would return things wouldn't be the same…

--

"Okay, first things first," Vivianne said as they floated down from the cloud-drop-off. "First of all: You are not visible to the normal human eye. Only when you wish to be seen can you be seen. And that should be not at all, as we are here merely to observe, not to interact with our past selves.

"We can, however, see the guardian angels of those that we wish to. That comes with one of the many perks of being with one; you can be as big of a busybody as you want."

"So, that means that….?"

"We're going to be doing a little bit of spying on your little girlfriend - Helga's - guardian angel, Ramon. You keeping up?"

"Yeah," he said. "Now, why are we meddling again? And what in?"

"We are looking," she gave a pointed look at him, "at your past – not meddling. And we are doing this so you might be able to learn a thing or two."

"Learn? Learn what?" he asked.

She rolled her eyes and muttered something that sounded vaguely like him being such an idiot.

They appeared over a rainy city. "What is this place?" Arnold asked, looking around curiously. The rain was causing the gutters to overflow, causing the commuters to carry heavy jackets and umbrellas. He felt like he should know where he was, but he couldn't remember. It all looked so old.

"This, Arnold," Vivianne said, "is Hillwood sixty-six years ago. Welcome back to the past."

--

A/N: End of chapter one.

I hope that it's not too confusing with all of the OCs. After this, I don't think that there will be many.

Review, if you will. : )

VM