Author - Mystic Rains
Rating - PG – 13, Because we all know Hey Arnold are too good for those little cheap Nick kiddies
Summery - Arnold's in an orphanage, only a shell of what he really use to be. The kids there are even making bets on if he'll be the next suicide. But when there's the person from his past who ends up in the same situation as him, will they be able to hang on together?
Disclaimer - Hey Arnold? If it was mine I'd probably have a hard time trying to find the perfect person to fulfill the "Hey Arnold – Real World" role
Little angel, go away
Come again some other day
Devil has my ear today
I'll never hear a word you say
He promised I would find a little
Solace and some peace of mind
Whatever, just as long as I don't feel so
Desperate and ravenous
So weak and powerless
Desperate and ravenous
So weak and powerless
Over you
Over you
Weak & Powerless – A Perfect Circle
"Criminey, what a dump..." Helga muttered lazily, dragging her feet behind one of the older girls, guiding her up to her new room. She gradually hauled her poetry book bag on her back, despite the nuns' warnings, and avoided the offers to have someone carry it for her. She was tired of having everyone acting like she was made of glass. She still was a Pataki, despite what the state or anyone else said.
"You think this is bad, just wait 'till you get to our 'community cell.' You got a lot to learn kid, 'bout being an orphan of the state." The guide snickered, waiting for her at the top of the stairs.
"What do ya mean? It's not like Annie? Am I not going to get adopted by a billionaire and start skipping and tap dancing like I'm on sugar pills? There's goes my dream." Helga drawled on sarcastically, finally making it on top of the steps with a heavy breath and aching body.
The girl gave a light laugh and smacked Helga on the back with a smile, causing her to wince.
"I can see I'm going to learn to like you kid. I'm Candy. Though the others say I'm about as sweet as broken glass." She grinned, flashing a perfect row of sparkling white teeth at this, and flipped her bright orange hair over her shoulder. Poising with proud grin, Helga had no doubt she would have been Rhonda's lackey in no time.
"Helga. Sorry I can't flip my hair as well, I've recently had whiplash." Helga muttered, obviously not impressed. With an airy dismissal wave of her hand, she began walking down the one way hallway, leaving the girl in her tracks.
"Looks like you'll be stealing my title," Candy muttered with a confident smirk at Helga's retreating figure, before running up to catch her. She rolled the heavy pink suitcase along the floor like it was nothing, pounding on the crooked wooden ground. "You're with the sixteen and up, so you're through those next doors Helga."
"Got it." Helga mumbled, as her hand reached for the doorknob and pushed it open.
The door complained with a long squeak on its' rusted metal hinges, casually revealing the components – or lack of. There was simply a line of what looked like extremely stiff cots and dirty blankets, which looked like they "might" have been able to be pulled off as white originally. There were three lines of these, with about six beds within each line. Other then the beds, and a small window covered in bars seemed to decorate the place, there was nothing within the oversized room, blank as the day it was finished in construction.
"Welcome to our humble abode. Do try not to gape at our extensive accommodations, for we know they are impressive. Your beautiful bed is the one right against the wall and under our fabulous window. " Candy drawled slowly, pushing her way through the room aside Helga. She suddenly had a touch of southern accent, which was quite familiar.
"Hey," Helga called out with a light smirk. "You don't happen to like lemon pudding, do you?"
"Lemon puddin', I sure do love that lemon puddin'. Who couldn't? " Candy asked, licking her lips as if the taste was right there in front of her.
Knew I recognized that slow cow talk. With a name like Candy, I coulda seen her dating Stinky.
Helga wandered to her bed, finally being able to dump the heavy bag onto the floor. With a soft sigh, she threw herself upon the bed, expecting a nice soft mattress to greet her wary body and heal her of all aches and pains as if she were home. Instead it was met with a mattress as soft and as inviting as her tombstone, and Helga groaned with pain as she felt her bruises come in full contact with a brick like structure.
"Sorry. Shoulda warned ya." Candy shrugged, sitting upon a bed near by with her long legs crossed. "These beds make concrete feel like clouds in comparison."
"I could tell." Helga moaned in pain, waiting for her body to stop aching. The bandages under her pink dress were still there, and although her face was back to its pale complexion, there were still obvious black and blue bruises dotted along her clothes covered body.
"Listen, you should change out of those wet clothes. I imagine you had something to eat before you came here, which by the way I hope you enjoyed it. You know that thing about Oliver and eating grovel? That's true, here at least." Candy shuddered for a second, then regained her thought. "By the time you get ready, they'll probably be someone out the door who'll show ya how to get around." Candy smirked, gazing at Helga's unmoving figure. "I gotta get going tho', I hear they're serving my fav puddin' down in the mess hall." Candy paused lightly, as she rubbed her stomach. "See ya toots."
Candy swung herself up, and hurried out the bare room, closing the door behind her. Helga only then, moaned in pain and rolled to the side, as she peeled off the soaked wet shoes and socks. Spotting a box marked 'dirty' she made a show towards the box, throwing the pair into a large laundry basket at the end of the room. She grinned to herself and mouthed 'three points.'
"This is going to suck. I want my room back. Even the hospital cot was softer… " Helga muttered, pulling the bow out of her daffodil blond hair, setting the cloth aside to dry . Leaning up against the cold wall, she slowly wriggled her way out of her soaked white pants, and well-worn in pink dress, and threw it in to join her dirty socks.
"Nothin' you can do now, Helga ol' girl."
Getting up to her feet, she caught a mirror behind the block door. It was small, but a full enough length to view the whole body. Slightly mystified by the fact there was one there when the room seemed so bland and bare, she got up to her feet. She wrapped her arms against her, shivering lightly as her bare feet pressed against the cold tile.
Extending her hand out, Helga ran her fingers across the cool glass, drinking in the first view of herself within a mirror since the "room". She had to tear herself away from the gaze the first time.
"Why the hell should I care what I look like. I'm not some stuck up princess who cares how she made up every second of the damn day…"
Despite her words, she turned back to the mirror. Whimpering, she brought her fingers to her porky finger shaped prints upon her arms and traced her fingers over them in feather brushed lightness. They seem to extend downwards down her arm, until her arm met her wrist. Most of them had luckily almost faded away, but there were still some there that stood proud of what use to be her pale skin. Her upper body was covered in thin stretch like bandages across her chest and ribs, which she knew was still bruised and the bone still weak, though mended. Her doctor had told her to go easy on them, and "not go kicking anyone's head in on the first week, in fear of you breaking another bone and me having to deal with you longer". Helga remembered that with a light smile, which quickly turned to a hidden smirk.
What she was now was a great improvement of what she had been then, then being when she was first going into the hospital, and she knew it. Helga sighed however, as she ran her finger against a particular nasty bruise upon her thigh, along with a scar. The scar was from a spur on his cowboy boots, needed in his new job costume (whatever it might have been.) It was her last day there, her day of escape, and most painful.
I lost them, and what have I left with? I'm left with nothing, nothing but you! You shoulda been Olga! She shoulda still been here…>>
Helga whimpered hard as she applied too much pressure on the disfigured scar, lightening bolt pain shooting through her nerves like a hot iron. Ignoring it, she walked back to the bed and pulled out a random dress out of her suitcase. It was simply to block out minor pain now, and it barely bothered her. His words though, had struck her harder then any blow he had given.
Did you really think that she had the right to live and I didn't Bob? I'm your daughter too. I was your daughter…
The walls vibrated with the soft knock of the door, and echoed off the blank walls. Although it was soft, it seemed like anything could echo in the room.
"Wait a damn second, crimanty!" Helga bellowed, throwing on some dry clothing and some new shoes in record time. Grabbing her new locket, she stuffed it into her dress's hidden inside pocket, and hurried over to the door, swinging it open wide. "I just had to get…"
"Hey Helga. Remember me…?"
…dressed."