Epilogue
"It's all about trying too hard, and not trying enough, and then realising you should never have tried at all. It's about having what you never wanted, while the only thing you ever desired passes you by, with his arm hooked around another girl's body. It's about crying yourself to sleep and screaming yourself awake, and just existing in between. It's about wanting revenge and wanting it all, and it's about sadness, and sorrow, and the loss of something you never ever had. It's about tiredness and physical exersion, and all the lengths you go to just to end up right back where you started.
"It makes you crazy but it keeps you sane. It makes you feel like you're dying when you've never felt so alive. It's about dishonesty and cheating, and pretending you were somewhere else when the whole thing went down, and it's about lying to yourself. It's what makes you get up in the morning, and it's what makes it forever night. There's no stopping it, there's no changing it, and there's no controlling it. There is only obeying it, and being it's slave.
"We all claim to need it, some even say they want it, but we'd all be better off without it. It drives us to try the impossible and only achieve the insane. It makes us change the way we wear our hair, the way we like to talk and the very shirts on our backs. It's makes us itch where we cannot reach and it hurts. It really, really hurts. It keeps us warm but leaves us cold inside. It makes us do downright stupid things, and yet it makes perfect sense. It goes where it wants and forces us to follow, and you cannot turn your back on it. It might be the last thing you do.
"There's no denying it's exitence. There's no way to define it by science and facts and brain scans at Hillwood Tech. There's no way to tell which kind will hit you or with how much force, but there's no way to avoid it entirely. You cannot get away, because it is a part of you. It's blood and breath and flesh and bone. It's mind and spirit and soul and it's so damn hard to live with. It's something I wouldn't trade for the world, and yet it's something I wish I'd never had.
"It's a two way thing, and when it's peddled by one party it's a catastrophe. It's a tragedy, and it's dangerous to everyone around you. It's a disease, it's a pain, but it's a reason to keep on going. What is love, you ask me? "It's something that would rather you hurt others than acknowledge it's existence. It's something I've had to put up with all my life. It's something I never had the guts to expose. It's something I shouldered alone. Love is lonliness, my friend."
A stony silence followed this speech, and then a slow hand clap finally rippled through the room. Helga Pataki did not falter or look embarrassed, she merely smiled at the rest of her classmates and sat down. All eyes were on her, and Helga liked it. She had made them think, made them feel, and made them all very uncomfortable. Slowly, and steadily, the unrest died down and Mr. O'Hara got to his feet.
"Thank you Helga, that was very... interesting," he said quietly. Helga snorted at him. If ever there was a teacher that was a slave to the syllabus, it was O'Hara. He didn't believe in abstract thought or independent ideas, something which Helga found very unsettling in an English teacher. The English Language was the most beautiful tool that Helga possessed to express herself with, and before her stood a man who believed something so undefineable should have set limits and boundries. Love doesn't have boundries, she thought bitterly, so why should the words you use to express it?
"Arnold, it's your turn." Helga lowered her eyes to her desk, wanting to give nothing away. Nervously, the blonde-haired boy got to his feet. The paper in his hands was visibly shaking, but he swallowed down the lump in his throat and carried on regardless.
"Not sure if I can really follow that," he said in a trembling voice. A small wave of laughter erupted around him that seemed to steady his jitters. Helga's face flushed furiously as she knew Arnold was looking at her, but still she did not glance up. Arnold cleared his throat.
"What is love?" he beagn, reading slowly from the paper. "Love is difficult to explain. Love just is, and for that I am glad. Love is an emotion I would never want to define, as I find that the more you know about something the easier it is to have it slip through your fingers. If I knew what love really was, I would be able to find fault with it and then I'd want to just throw it away.
"Love is eternal, I know that much. True love, anyway. The kind of infatuation that stays with you for centuries, and survives even your darkest moments.
"Love comes in many varieties. Love is the way I always watch my Grandma when she is sewing a new quilt. She's been at it for three years now, with the same blanket, and love is what makes me want to see the final result. Her endeavours are my endeavours, because I love her.
"Love is watching my friends struggle with their own hearts, and wanting to help but stepping aside, because true love always finds a way. Love is hoping that it will all work out in the end, because no one deserves to be happy more than someone who has given you unconditional love, someone like your best friend.
"Love is wanting to help people you don't even know, just because your affection for this city, this country, this planet makes you want to make it a better place.
"Love is the one person you can't get off of your mind, no matter how much you want to or how far they go. The one person who lives in your head and refuses to leave, no matter how much you beg them too. Love is constant, a faithful companion when everything else is gone.
"Love is a girl who comes home after six years and still calls you football head, just to show you that she never forgot about you while she was gone."
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A/N: Ok, this is totally different to what was up before and much much shorter, but this is it. It's a little off-key to the rest of the story, I know, and it's disgustingly mushy, but it's better than the rubbish that I posted before. (What was I thinking?) I like to think that epilogues, (and prologues) have the licence to be a little different from the writing style of the main body of the story, or at least I'm saying that now to justify this. This was a one shot that I found that I think I wrote before HHGHMB even started, and with a little tweaking I think it fitted rather well. Or perhaps I hope... anyway, this is it. Please don't shoot me. I'm allergic to bullets.
I must have written about nine or ten Hey Arnold! one shots while I was writing HHGHMB, just to clear the writer's block. Perhaps I will post some of them up when I have had the chance to go over them too.
Thank you so much to all of my most faithful reviewers, you've been a real encouragement to me during this whole messy affair. So... (deep breath)... Darth Roden, pink-helga, acosta perez jose ramiro, sydvicious, ahhelga, The J.A.M, Two Bit's Twobit, sakuya-kaleido, King Cheetah, yzibella, Deadly Objects, Lady Evilness, Number6, Lord Malachite and everyone else I had the sheer audacity to forget, thank you very much!
That's it! Show's over! Go home! There's nothing to see here! - Sky.