A/N: This is the rewritten version of All the Difference in the World. Some of you who follow my stories may have heard that I've decided to rewrite this story, and here it is. You don't have to read to original to understand this story. Some of the changes, for those of you who have read the original, are that I will change the overall tone. It will be a bit darker, the characters past stories will be a bit more complex, and not revealed in one chapter. It will unfold over the course of the story. The characters past coming back to haunt them will be the main plot device in this story. And just like the original, I will be upping the rating some time later.
Summary: Time changes some things, and keeps others the same. But after five years apart, they may be just too different to pick up where they left off. Arnold has spent five years in the darkness. But is that too long for her?
Pen scratching across a blank piece of notebook paper, his fist pressed into his cheek, hearing the professors words but none of them actually reaching his brain, knowing he should be paying attention but not having neither the desire or the need to listen, it was like being in briefing all over again.
Might as well be. At least now he knows he's not the only one not paying attention. The guy next to him on his laptop is checking his Facebook account, and the girl on his other side is on her phone tweeting. Letting in a long breath, he spins his pen around in his fingers and taps it hard against his notebook to click the head back inside the pen and lets it fly out of his hand and land on the desk with a hard clatter and fall to the floor. It gains a few looks, but he just moves his hands to the back of his head and closes his eyes.
He probably should be paying attention. But part of him is still trying to figure out why he signed up for classes here anyway. Work is always just a phone call away when he needs it. Change of pace, maybe. A petty attempt to slow things down, make it quiet.
The professor is still going over the syllabus for the class and is rattling off different assignments that will be due. And he knows that when it's this quiet, his mind likes to go places that he didn't want to go in the first place. He found out quickly that he needs to think of something calming. Some place quiet, comforting, soft, warm.
Some place happy.
Soft lips move against his in a smooth motion, more passionately than she usually does. Her body not wanting to stop moving under his. Every part of her moving and touching him, pulling at every part of him, insatiable even for her. She's never been like this. Things have gotten heated between them once in a while over the past few months, but never like this, never this primal and unaware of what path her actions are making him take them down. Or maybe she knows exactly what she's doing to him, has clear intentions and is desperate to achieve her goal despite it never even being brought up in any mood of conversation.
Clawing her nails into his shirt and tugging it up his back, he can do nothing but surrender to her and let his body, and maybe even his heart, take over. Her lips start to falter off rhythm with his, opening when his are trying to close around hers when she tries to pull his shirt off over his arms that are anchored around her, supporting him so's to not crush her, even when her legs are telling him to just let himself fall into her, coiling themselves around his waist tightly enough to where it feels like he's softly being crushed.
He's always loved her legs.
He moves his weight onto one arm, shifting himself and making her jump a bit, and moves his hands to the hem of her shirt and lets his thumb graze the territory he's been wanting to tread, but scared to. After her gasp lets out and turns into a moan, his conscience pushes past everything else and makes him speak up, making sure it's not just the drinks that he is sure were spiked. "Beautiful."
Enclosing his lips in her soft, wet lips, she moans again, acknowledging that she heard him.
Still moving his thumb against the hot skin of her lower abdomen, and both their bodies affirming what he's about to ask, he lets go of her lips, reluctantly, and lifts his head to look her in the eye. "Is this going where I think it's going?"
Her puffed lips and slightly smugged lip gloss curls into a smirk and quickly pushes against his side, flipping them over and sinking his body into the plush and tossed bedding of a bed that isn't theirs. The slow movement of her hips is his answer, and the theft of every other sense is his confirmation. "Yes."
Moving to attack him with her lips, and every other part of her, with him helpless with his hands pinned, his conscience once again gets the better of him. "Are you sure?"
She stops just an inch or two away from his lips, leans back a bit and flips her hair, forcing him to suppress the urge to groan.
"We've only been dating for four months."
She lets out a short sigh, as if it was a switch to turn off her mewling body, because everything on her stops moving when she does. "I want this, okay? I just need this one night..." She averts her eyes as a fear quickly crawls into her features. "... to be perfect." She says and looks into his eyes again. "Okay?"
He can give her that.
He slips his hands out from underneath her grip that slackened, and slowly leans up and presses his lips to hers. She responses immediately and sinks into his soft kiss like she usually does and frames his jaw with her warm hands. He feels her back jump a bit when he moves his hand up her spine, and her breath do the same. Almost as if she was...
That's where he stops. He can never make it past that point. Even though that night was the best night of his life, it was only the sharpest point of a very dull knife.
She never even called. Never wrote except for a four paragraph note he found on the nightstand. There are some nights when part of him bitterly thinks that she was just using him that night, one night of fun before she ran off to where ever it is she ran off to. But then he remembers running his hand out her spine, and the definite feeling of her fighting back a sob as she took his hand and let him carry her off the edge of oblivion. He's decided that that night was serious to her. Hasn't decided if she was being vague in her note on purpose, or because she herself didn't know where she was headed.
No point dwelling on it now. She's gone for good.
He lets out a breath and bends down, picking up his pen off the floor and clicks it, deciding that maybe burying himself in note taking will be mindless enough to take his mind some where else. But when he looks down at his notebook, he sees that in his scribbling, he's written the first line of the note she left. Angry with himself for dwelling on it, or maybe because he still has the note tucked away in his dresser back at his apartment, and angry at her for leaving in the first place, he grabbed the paper and rips it from the notebook, crumpling it tightly in his hands.
How could she just leave like that? Not even talk to him in person. Maybe if she had stayed, he wouldn't have had to do the things he's done. No, he won't let him think that. His atrocities are his own fault alone. He won't be such a pussy as to put them on someone elses shoulders.
He looks up at the clock, hoping that at least an hour has had to have passed by now, but seeing that it's only been twenty minutes. Feigned hopelessness and annoyance floods him and he clicks his pen again, and commits himself to start taking notes.
"You will then be assigned to write a two page paper, five hundred words, on said subject, and-"
The door bursts open, and his body reacts. When he comes back, he realizes he's bent over his desk with his hands over his head. Realizing where he is, he takes a deep breath and sits back up, trying to act like nothing happened, despite the fact that the people on either side of him are looking at him with indifferent eyes. Not the first time it's happened since he's gotten out.
He settles back in his seat and leans back, hears the door shut. "Please join us." The professor says.
He looks up to the front of the class, seeing a girl who just smiles sheepishly and moved her fingers behind her ears as a nervous behavioral tick. A very familiar behavioral tick. No, it couldn't be her. But as the girl took the first empty seat in the front row, the more he couldn't look away.
The long, beautiful hair. The healthy, thin figure. The tanned skin. The sheepish, nervous smile she flashed just before she took her seat. It couldn't really be her, could it?
No. It's been five years since she disappeared. It couldn't be her. But...
As she leans over to open up her backpack, and a piece of hair falls out of her ponytail, when she replaces it, and her eyes come into his line of sight... he'd know those eyes anywhere. It's her.
He hasn't felt his heart thump this hard since his first roll call in BT. He felt more confident then than he does now. Hasn't sweated this much his his first patrol duty at the first FOB on his first tour. Hasn't felt this powerless since the last time he had blood on his hands that wasn't his. He spends what feels like a few minutes staring at her, part of him hoping that she'll feel someone watching her and she'll look back and spot him. But what if it isn't her? Maybe it's true that we all have doppelgangers out there.
The class suddenly erupts in noise and movement. This snaps him back to reality and makes him realize that he must have been staring at her for much longer than a few minutes, and that class was now over. He quickly closes his notebook, puts it in his back and slings it over his shoulder, sliding and clipping his pen on the collar of his t-shirt. It isn't until now that he wishes he hadn't chosen a seat in the very back row of class. But looking over to her, she's still gathering her things.
People keep passing in front of him, and he's starting to get pissed off, even more so when he see's a preppy guy with gelled hair eye her and slickly. It's then that he pushes the desk beside him out of the way to get to her. He's now standing behind her after she had just lifted her backpack onto her shoulders and is looking down at what is probably a cell phone.
He takes a deep breath to calm himself, his breath training briefly flashing through his mind, and clears his throat. It draws her attention in the form of a glance over her shoulder. Obviously seeing someone is behind her, she steps to the side to let him through, her attention still down on her phone. "Hey Beautiful." He says in the tone, that if it is her, she is sure to recognize.
Her attention is raptured immediately off her phone and she looks her eyes up to him, and she's finally looking into his eyes, utter shock washing over her. "Arnold?"
It is her. And he can't fight his smile anymore. "Helga."
"Arnold!" She yelps and drops her backpack to the floor, jumping into him and wrapping her arms around his neck. Once he feels the familiar shape of her body land against him, he whips his arms around her midsection and hugs her tightly against him. Her arms coiled around his neck, her legs popped up into the air, the sound of her happy laughter ringing in his ears, it's the closest feeling he's had since that night with this woman five years ago.
Her arms start to loosen and he sets her back on the floor, reluctant to loosen his arms from around her, afraid that she'll run off again. "Oh, Arnold, it's so good to see you!" She says happily and hugs him again, this time pulling him down to her. He's has only an inch on her at the most, so he wraps his arms around her again and tightly pulls her to him, the feelings he's had festering all this time winning over his resentment. He's just wanted her back, and now he has her.
"I wish I could say the same, but I don't know if you're really here or not." He says over her shoulder.
She puts her hands on his shoulders and pushes back, giving him a puzzled look, but with a smile. "What are you talking about?"
"Helga, I haven't seen you five years. You'll have to forgive me if I have to convince myself if this is real or not."
She smiles and arches her brow, as if to say 'how sweet', and lets her arms fall to her sides. "I'm really here, Arnold."
"Then I guess you know what I'm going to say next." He says and lets his hands fall off her.
She looks down at the floor and nods, looking back up to him a second after, a smile still effortlessly gracing her face. The Helga that left never smiled that effortlessly. "Where I've been." He just keeps looking at her, not trusting himself to use words, afraid that they'd come out laced with venom. "Why don't I buy you a cup of coffee and explain on the way."
"You didn't exactly leave a mailing address in that note you left." He finally said after two solid minutes of silence between them as they made their way out to the quad. He's spent the time drinking in the way she's changed. She never dressed this way, wearing a wife beater and blue jeans with a sweatshirt tied around her waist. The girl that left him wore lose fitting clothing, cargo pants, skate shoes. Tight clothing was never an option with the Helga that left him lying in bed all those years ago.
"I'm sorry, Arnold." She said sincerely. "I was going to tell you that I was leaving. And trust me, if I could do it differently, then I would, believe me."
"Where have you been, Helga?" He says seriously, refusing to let her skirt the real issue. He doesn't look at her, just keeps his stare pointed towards the ground and his hands in the pockets of his field jacket.
He hears her let out a breath, and pause. "A few days before graduation, I went to the guidance councilor and signed up for the Peace Corps."
He looks over to her, surprised. Having just closed many theories he's written over the years, and opened so many others. "You joined the Peace Corps?"
She smiles and nods, looking over to him with confidence and assurance in her blue eyes. "My sister did it when she graduated boarding school."
Why'd she leave without telling her, how could she not tell him, how could she be so scared that she felt she couldn't tell him? "Where'd they send you?"
"Tanzania. I spent three years there. Then after that, a year in Ethiopia." He felt pride in him. There are a lot of reasons he should be angry at her, more to never to speak to her again. But she did something good in the world. Something that mattered. "Then after what happened in Ethiopia, I decided it was best to come home. I decided to go to school and was able to land some Pell grants."
"What happened in Ethiopia?"
Her body language shifts in an instant, and when he reads it, he regrets asking. He should know better than anyone not wanting to talk about something like that. "I-I uh... I just got homesick." He knows she is lying, but he would lie too.
"What'd you do in Tanzania?" He asks, knowing it will make her happy talking about the time she spent helping people. He knows what the Peace Corps does, ran into them a time or two.
A smile returns to her face and her shoulders seem relieved of the weight that he slammed her with. "I taught children English, reading, writing, grammar. It really felt great. They were all so grateful."
"I'm happy for you, Helga." He says, careful not to get too personal into the conversation, and making the decision to let her bring it up when she's ready.
"Well, what about you? What's been keeping you occupied since high school?" She asks as she swung open the door to the campus' coffee shop.
"I don't think you'd believe me if I told you, Helga." He said behind her as she stepped up to the counter, waiting for someone to come up to the register.
"Come on, Arnold. I told you where I've been. I think I get the right to earn where you've been." She says with a confident smirk that reminds him of the old Helga. Just then, someone appears behind the counter, and they each order coffees, with her telling the cashier to keep the change from the five, and he followed her to the table to wait for her to put cream and sugar in her coffee. He takes it black.
"You really want to know?" He asks her, surprised she hasn't looked at the name velcro'd into his jacket. She just lifts her coffee cup to her lips and raises her brow, waiting for her answer. He smiles, deciding to just get it out in the open, and lips his cup to his lips. "I've been in Iraq."
A/N: I've written too many scenes for this rewritten version to keep it inside anymore, and I've decided to start it.
For those followers of my other stories, I'm not finished. I'm about half way through part four of the epilogue of Not A Soul!, and I've come up with a plot device for Can't See the Forest and I'm going to start writing it soon and see out it plays out. Thanks for the never ending support, and I really hope you enjoy this story!