Arnold wiped his face, his pants, and cast his thinning gaze out the emptied frame of the window he'd smashed; a thousand yard stare to the ocean's sparkling horizon line glinting his squinted eyes.
A long stretch later he finally shifted, reclaiming his spot on the floor beside her after kicking away pieces of crumbled glass. Elbows on his knees, he pressed the weight of his forehead into his hand, and shut his eyes.
"...Everyone just got a lot harder… to be around, after that," he muttered, the husk of his voice scraping over his throat. "People who'd always known me…"
…No kidding, she thought, connecting that. Of course.
How could he stand it?
"People who thought they knew me. Being expected to—be a certain way. People wanting advice, wanting a piece of me. Even, just… being teased for being too noble, for always giving advice. That people thought well of me. Even you—"
Her breath hitched; and despite it, he pushed through their mutual discomfort to say the rest.
"—When you'd mock me for being this 'little goody two-shoes' you thought I was...? I mean. I try to hold onto that part of me still, and it's hard when anyone else cracks wise—but, God," he grimaced, "when you say that? I feel like such a fraud."
Arnold slowly opened his eyes to cast her a strained, sidelong look that she held, straining back.
His stare was an odd, intense mix of both oil and water; of challenge and surrender. He took a crisp, readying breath.
"You want my honesty?" he asked, keeping that look pressed on her, that read, 'Really? You still want this?'
Please, she thought, her mouth pressing into a hard, thin line as her eyes narrowed, nodding back. I wouldn't want anything less.
His throat bobbed.
"...My grandparents are…healthy, right?"
Oh shit, she thought immediately, inhaling slowly in apprehension—filling that space inside she could already feel hollowing out for him, just at that opener.
"And I try…not to think about it, but. I know that even though they are, they won't—be around, for…"
He paused, struggling to work his throat.
"...And the boarders, I mean. They're like family, but… they aren't really, actually family, and they'd… I'm sure they'll stick around at first, but…"
Helga chewed her lip to still the quiver there as her stomach clenched. She tightened her arms around her knees, feeling thick-throated.
Fuck…
Arnold...
He took a wavering breath.
"...I… I know everyone's right. About me trying to fix things, butting into other peoples' lives… I've done it for as long as…well, you know."
He cast her a wry, wistful glance.
"…I used to think it was just second nature, right? Helping others? I mean—how could I not? I couldn't just do nothing, when there was something I could do. How couldn't I at least try? I thought—I didn't need a reason. But...deep down…"
He heaved a sigh.
"… I always had one."
A hand pressed over his chest, bracingly.
"I'm—always…"
Arnold pulled it back, and paused. Then tapped his fingers, deliberately, over his heart—like he was touching a misery there. And let his ear fall to his shoulder as he turned back to give her a look she felt; knowing he understood.
"I'm always trying to fill mine, too."
Helga felt chills, and the emptiness in her where it ached.
"When I do that... if I fix enough, if I'm useful enough, if I can make everything okay enough, then maybe even after my… grandparents, and the boarders, are… I won't… be…"
Alone.
And… she got it.
She had her family, but they'd made her feel that way most of her life—like once she'd grown up she could walk out without them even noticing, or just leave and handwave her unannounced absence like a wrapped-up obligation. And even with their recent turn for the better, that wasn't something she could soon forget. She was always aware—very aware, that that other shoe could just drop.
So she'd lived her life not only being alone, but also seeking her independence… while weirdly fearing it. Dreading it. That confirmation that, one day, she'd have that irreversible, irrevocable proof that she never really mattered to them, after all—and that their fleeting, inconsistent moments of remembering her, trying for her, meant nothing.
And so she'd clung to Arnold with a desperate yearning that went beyond her love, beyond him. And he'd clung, in his unconscious, intense, and less obvious way, to others, in ways that went beyond them, too.
In moments she felt worthy enough, she considered herself his counterpart—and in moments she was lowly and pitiful, considered herself fated 'one day' to be.
But for the first time, as she sat with him side by side, she felt like they were opposite sides to the same coin.
"So I just," he resumed, turning his head away again to a profile view as he faced the lens, "I just poured myself into shelters and soup kitchens. I feel like I've given up what I'm trying to get over and over again, where it's really needed, and… It's never been enough. I've never gotten rid of that feeling. And I know I'd still be helping people even if my own hole was full or not, but…"
He heaved a resigned, weary sigh.
"...I'm still trying to fill it."
Helga's head drifted back against the window as she sank with the weight of his words and her broadened understanding.
He tried filling that void with acts of service.
Elbows propped on his knees, he pressed the heel of his palm against his cheek.
"...When I'm out volunteering, it's fine. I can be around people, the friends I've made there who don't really know me. But half the time, I still can't stand being around…anyone else I've known. That we know."
Helga nodded with the slow realization that it wasn't all that different with her and the twins.
She'd pushed their classmates away when they arrived at camp, holding everyone at arm's length that knew both her and Arnold—but had a fairly easy time making friends with them. Their company brought a comfortable anonymity; their names and pasts unshared. Friends still, and with interests aligned—sharing a mission to plot, and scheme, and pull pranks… but at a distance. An easy-going one.
He could let the homeless and the animals in his volunteer life in, she gathered, because he already knew that they wouldn't be there for keeps, anyway. Arnold could make them feel valued while they were still around.
But… she was certain it was more than that. Whether he realized it or not, he was repeating that pattern of being left behind again and again. Punishing himself.
Criminy.
"I try—I don't always let it stop me, because I know it's not fair, and nobody asked for it, and…I still care," his voice strained, "about everyone, but, just. I still—need to be…"
He gestured his struggle to articulate, and sighed, letting his hands drop with despondent exhaustion as he finally relented and put the truth across in its simplest form.
"I pushed everyone away."
Helga watched the way daylight played off the pattern of the lens as they lapsed into silence, and everything he'd shared just—clicked together. How he could be so different…
Yet still be Arnold.
One who no longer coped with unabashed positivity; and, trapped, turned his back on it—and on others, and why.
"Yeah," she mused aloud to herself, nodding absently. "You didn't want to feel abandoned again."
Arnold flinched.
Helga paused, watching a new kind of tension stir through him, trading his quiet for disquiet.
"Didn't… want…"
His brow pinched as he repeated the words incredulously under his breath, like they were perplexing, ridiculous.
He turned to her with something like a half-smile, but it was off.
"...No, no," he shook his head, "look, I didn't—I don't…"
He kept shaking his head at her, at a loss for words as she quirked her brow, taken aback.
"No," he insisted, almost politely, like she was mistaken and he had to correct her misunderstanding.
Had to have the record straight.
"I never thought about it like that. I mean, of course I missed them, but I didn't—"
Helga's eyes widened.
Wait.
Had he—
"Whatever their reasons for leaving in the first place—even if they were misguided," he scoffed lightly, "they were never… about..."
The longer he stared the deeper his brow furrowed, something faltering across his features that he fought to keep up. Imploring her, with a wordless look that asked, 'Why are you looking at me like that? Why aren't you believing me?'
She stilled, lips parting numbly as she stared back, and it felt like her mind was running on two channels—one in stunned dumb while the other whirled.
He blinked in disbelief at whatever it was she wasn't giving him; a sight to behold, like a wall of his was cracking apart. And once she'd seen it, he couldn't patch it back up, and he couldn't hide.
From either of them.
She didn't even have to say anything. And she knew, as she watched whatever he'd erected crumble in front of her, that there was nothing that she could say.
Helga saw that train coming and could do nothing but watch and wait, heartsick.
"Really, there's—no reason, I would ever feel…like…"
Shaking his head emphatically, he turned his face away from hers, eyes heavy and downcast to the floor..
"After the contest—"
He swallowed, trying again.
"...After it was already too late, I told myself…I might as well have made the right choice, right? That it didn't matter, if I could have—gone, or if they really did, need…"
'Saving,' her thoughts finished as he left it unsaid, trailing off. His brows creased, furrowed and upturned.
"I had all these reasons, and… I'd tell myself that at least they were valid, right?" he said, trembling visibly as his words came out grimaced and tight. "That even if I was angry, and felt like a piece of shit, that at least my motives were—"
Whatever words he sought ran out and left, cutting him off as his eyes slit shut. Teeth gritting as his lips wrenched back, Arnold heaved forward with his face in his hands.
And broke.
"...What the fuck, Helga," he cracked out, wetly. "...you're right. I did. And when I got the chance—" a sob stole his voice and didn't let it free until it it came back sore and warped.
"... I abandoned them back."
Helga clenched her jaw to keep it together, his grief sucking the breath from her and crushing the space it left.
"And I—lied," he ground out, guttural and furious. "I…I always called it something else. So I wouldn't feel, like—"
Like you were thrown away. Like you were so easy to leave behind.
Like you were meant to be.
"I… God, I'm... terrible, Helga..."
His voice was small, airless.
"I'm fucking..."
Her eyes blurred until she finally let them close, tears splashing down her cheeks.
"You're not," she protested, "you're really not, Arnold."
"God, Helga!" he barked back, eyes red and streaming as he snapped his hands out. "How could you say that?! They left—and I betrayed them for it!"
Shuddering from his staggered breath, his gaze went glassy and vacant as the words rang through the room. He slowly shook his head, palms opening with self-realization. Voice crackling and tight, his features contorted in a broken rictus of horrified anguish.
"I betrayed my fucking parents…!"
He hid his face in his hands, fingers scraping his scalp through salt-stiff locks.
"And what if I could have done something, and now it's too late...?"
As a low, agonized sound dragged out his throat, he looked like he might as well have killed his own parents in that tower.
And beyond mournful broken-heartedness, the sight culled all apprehension and ran her hot.
Helga shot to her feet, eyes flaring and damp.
"How could that be on you!?"
Her shout jolted Arnold despite his state, peering through the shadowed gaps of his fingers at her between broken, panting breaths.
"You were just a kid!"
Those eyes lingered a moment before hardening, sealing shut. His head dropped, lolling miserably between his knees.
"Oh, come on!" he groaned back bitterly. "You think that matters? I've had years, I've had my whole life to—I never moved on…I just pushed them down. I... always..."
But the more he spoke the less she could stand to hear his excuses, her rising ire burning through all other emotion like kindling, blasting out heated words in a vehement rush.
"Arnold, you—how could you've kept your head on straight?!" she shouted back, throwing her hands out. "You've been conflicted! And confused! You thought you'd hurt your grandparents!"
And no fucking wonder. Feeling overwhelming anger towards his presumably dead and martyr parents? Yeah.
Who the fuck wouldn't?
"And…you didn't think you could tell anyone! You'd been holding all this inside you for years! Were you just supposed to face this down and get it all figured out—all by yourself?!"
In that moment it didn't matter that he had an unwavering moral code that made it unacceptable to have such horrible feelings for his parents. Didn't matter if she was saying the wrong thing, or that it was hard to be Arnold—and if you'd felt you'd done the wrong thing and couldn't fix it, that being him was impossibly hard.
The fact that anyone could make him suffer the way he had all these years made her furious, and she refused to stand for it.
Even when that person was him.
Arnold drew his flushed face up from his hands, watching wide-eyed as she ranted; struck.
"How could you expect that from you?!"
Helga shook her head with incredulous outrage.
"How are you supposed to help the way you feel?" she demanded. "You feel that way, Arnold! You can change your perspective, but you can't just think it's wrong and flip your feelings off like a lightswitch!"
How many times had she tried to throw her own feelings away? About anything? And when they had changed, when was it ever because she'd told them to?
Never.
"Even if you change your mind…and don't agree with your feelings, sometimes, you just…"
Helga trailed off, her heat dissipating as she heaved a worn out sigh.
"You just feel how you feel..."
Arnold's mouth fell open like he might speak, but he could only stare, speechless.
"Trust me—" she wiped her wet face with a sniff and tossed her hand, tiredly, "I'm the last person you could call an expert on this…"
That would be a therapist, Shortman.
Please get therapy.
"But… the only way I've ever changed how I've felt about something? When I've tried to…? Was…"
She dropped a shoulder, shaking her head as their eyes met.
"...By at least admitting it first…"
For a long while they did nothing but stare at each other wordlessly, cradled in the metal and glass-cracked crucible that held them above the rocky, ocean abyss stretched out behind them.
The first workings of his voice caught stuck in his throat, and Arnold had to swallow before he could try again.
His words finally came out, distant and scratched.
"I'd never…"
He swallowed again, licking his lips.
"I stopped looking," he said, something shifting behind his eyes as he held hers. "I stopped looking—at all this, and anything that would remind me of it. And... anything that... made me look harder at myself..."
He averted his red, puffy eyes as he struggled to say the rest.
"That's why it's hard to be around you sometimes…."
Helga's jaw softly dropped as time itself seemed to slow down, stalk still as he spoke.
"You…" his breath shook, "get me in ways no one else does, Helga. And… when I'm around you, I… start feeling forced to look, and…"
His throat bobbed, eyes narrowing.
"I hate it."
He clenched his eyes shut in a hesitant grimace, looking almost sick-stomached.
"And... God, Helga. Sometimes, I'm even…"
He lowered his head, turning it away from her as his chest shuddered, as if breathing with difficulty around something that tore on its way up his throat, repugnant and foul before he spat it out his mouth.
"Jealous of you, for still having parents. Even your parents."
Through the numbed shock of hearing Arnold finally, after years and years of keeping any real feelings he had about her under wraps, begin to share them, Helga dimly registered the faint clamors of indignation she felt echoing inside her. But she spared them no regard in the face of his own utter self-disgust, and in an old truth she'd long intuited, but never touched.
That even if he never admitted it before now, that of course he did. Somewhere deep down, even if buried to depths so low he'd never see it. And though maybe that was true that he couldn't see it years ago, in his halcyon days of his better self, it was clear he could see it now, and had for a while...
And, being Arnold, despised it.
"Anytime I'd see them treat you like shit, I was pissed. But when you'd complain about them to me, I. I'd still be pissed, but it was…"
He facepalmed, shaking his head with disdain.
"It brought up so much more than that. And not just the jealousy—which I shouldn't have felt, anyway," he snapped with distaste, "that's screwed up. But it also—made me think about…" he frowned, shutting his eyes, "everything I was trying to not look at."
Arnold dug his fingers across his forehead, dragging his remorseful gaze back to hers.
"I pushed you away over that. And not just, but…"
He hesitated, and looked away again, brows knit.
"And goddammit, Helga. You're right, you're not a shit judge of character. You're cutting, and perceptive, and…" he gestured to summon the words, "and as forward as you are… I know there's a lot you don't say."
He leveled her back with a weary, penetrative look that quickened her pulse.
"You can see through people, Helga, and… even back when I still had my head up my ass, I didn't want you to see me. I couldn't… let anyone see me."
They held each other's gaze until his slipped away and darted absently across the floor, as if in self-debate. Finally, he relented against whatever it was he fought against with a sigh, and covered his face in his hand.
"And even though I'd feel like that, I...still couldn't stop myself... from wanting to stay friends. To be around you."
Helga grew roots in place, speechless.
She never thought he'd share about this. That when he'd inevitably leave her behind in that tower, it'd be with so many things left forever unsaid. How the hell she led that horse to water, she couldn't say.
But she knew better than to hope. He'd cut her off. And besides, any way she threw it…
He'd made the right choice.
"Helga, honestly, I'm sorry I made you feel like you had to do all this," he indicated their surroundings. "Or if there were times I was… overly friendly. Or um, made you feel… led on…"
Christ, every damn beat of her heart fucking hurt.
"Ever since the library, I... yeah, I was mad. So mad at you. But, I was also… scared? Like—what if that was it?"
He dropped his fists with frustration, red eyes misty and thinned as he refused to look at her.
"What if I'd cost us the friendship we had? I was angry at you—but, I was even more angry with myself, for how I reacted, because I thought I'd really… jeopardized, our…"
He ran a hand through his hair and tugged at the ends like a weight dragging them down.
"Even before I knew that you…loved me…"
Taking a strong, bracing breath, Arnold looked up, boring his eyes into hers with a burning look that stole her breath.
"...I knew we had something more than that, Helga."
Her pulse raced.
"And, in the library, I. Didn't want to tarnish that, by doing something that could easily damage it… I know that sounds ironic, considering the damage I did do then—that I've done today," he scoffed and looked away with a rueful scowl, "that I've apparently always done…"
With a soft grunt he readjusted, leaning back against the window with a hand clenched at his stomach, and realized she was clutching at her own just the same.
Nursing the gnawing ache there.
"...I really had convinced myself—that whole load of bull when you came at me in the stacks. And after," he admitted, none too proud. "And above all else, that you weren't just upset; you were goading—mocking me."
His brow quirked with self-irony in a brief, considering pause.
"I at least got that right, didn't I?"
Despite that ache clawing her apart, she looked away and allowed a light shrug, the ghost of a guilty smirk tugging at her mouth.
Arnold nodded back, his own smirk matching hers before his face dropped, averting his gaze.
"I'm sorry…" he breathed, "that had to have been… awful, for you. Especially at the end, when I… pushed you against the bookshelf, and almost…"
He trailed off, and screwed his eyes shut with burdened reluctance.
Arnold turned to face her with a decisive sigh. Opening his eyes, he revealed an incriminating non-smile of wry surrender. He tossed a 'you got me' shrug as her eyes blew wide, inviting her mockery.
Holy shit.
Was he actually admitting he tried to—
"It's no excuse," he continued on, cutting off her sputtering thoughts, "but, you're… very direct, Helga. Like I said, you can be…" he looked away, cheeks ruddy and brow cocked emphatically, "... forward."
A moment passed and Arnold released a brisk huff of a breath through his nose, and muttered, "I mean, you grabbed me and put my hands on your…"
He cleared his throat and all she could do was stand there, hot-faced.
Christ, of course. She'd even said it herself, that he'd gotten so close they could have 'accidentally kissed,' and realized with a mortifying pang just how accurate that statement really was.
Kissing her would've been an accident, a mistake she'd nearly manipulated him into making. Tempting him, backhanding his boundaries when he didn't want to be attracted to her in the first place. Wanted…but not her. Fuck.
Well, she thought with a bitten, trembling lip as she felt the burn in her stomach all the way up to her ears, at least after this she'd be out of his way as some confusing friend, so he could finally get a girl who would be good for him.
Who, maybe, wouldn't bring out the worst in him, and be so hard to want.
"And—I—reacted," he enunciated with a deliberate intent on leaving more unsaid, gaze still averted when she braved a look at him. "And I risked so much doing that, I didn't want you to be one of the people I could ever…"
She sensed his curbed impulse to glance up at her, head lowered and eyes wrenched shut in a shamefaced frown. Helga frowned back, heart plummeting when her mind brought his sentence to soft completion; in the one, small place left in her that still felt quiet and calm.
'Lose.'
…Fuck.
Her eyes stung.
"How could I—" he pinched the bridge of his nose with so much force his fingernails left impressions when he rubbed at the salt streaks across his flushed cheeks.
He shook his head, disillusioned.
"I'm a mess."
Neither spoke. After a long pause he knocked his head back, closing his sore eyes as he let himself rest against the window behind him.
The moment stretched before Helga finally approached, her wooden legs unrooting and stiff, feeling like stilts. She took her old spot by the window beside him as she mused that in some crazy twist of fate, she'd somehow become more in touch with herself than Arnold might have ever been.
She leaned back and closed her eyes too, joining him in wordless, roiling disquiet. The ocean breeze teased the salt-dried strands of hair dangling across her shoulders as the distant sound of waves crashed peacefully over them.
Together, at the end of a world where they still had each other in it.
When Arnold spoke again it rose a swell of grief that nearly drowned her when she realized that whatever time was left, she was close to hearing the last words in those husky, throated tones of his she ever would.
"Helga, I. I never wanted to… do any of this to you… I'm sorry."
He meant it; she knew that. She'd take that with her, whatever it's worth.
In the meantime, Helga kept her eyes shut to the world waiting for her.
"Eh," she sighed facetiously as she hung onto the edge, "could've been worse, I guess."
He scoffed bitterly.
"I doubt it."
A brief pause passed.
"Well," she tossed a shoulder, "'people aren't the worst they've ever done' and all, right? Least that's what they say, anyway..."
He didn't reply.
Eventually, she cracked an eye at him, opening both on his darkened profile as he cast a pained, withered look through the lens.
She thought of the final act of them leaving the lighthouse and felt such a powerful, miserable surge of love for him that it could've swept her body out to sea if she'd let it. And yet, there was no way she could ever, ever do that, if the last thing she'd said to him about his deepest torment was in the form of some angry, scolding rant.
Really, it was just shit luck that trip to San Lorenzo fell from the sky when he wasn't ready to deal with it. It forced him to make a choice all too soon; robbing him the chance to come to a decision on his own time. And without support.
Or at least, support he felt he could accept.
"Why was it all on you?" she circled back, keeping her focus just on him, despite the dying pain that bloomed in her chest. "Why couldn't your grandparents have gone? Had they ever? Did they say?"
He didn't respond at first. When he did, his words came out of him like broken things propped up with stoic resignation.
"Search and rescue teams looked for weeks, and never found them. And they had no other leads…So, no. They didn't go."
Helga lingered on him with a drained, tender look, and couldn't believe that for once in her life, she knew the right thing to say.
"Then why were you supposed to?"
Arnold froze.
"What were you supposed to do differently?"
He gave no reply, eyes widening.
"I mean, maybe it'd be different if you at least had a clue on how to find them. But…"
He blinked rapidly before shutting his eyes, brow twitched; furrowing.
"...But I only know what my grandparents, Eduardo, and search and rescue knew, and... you're right," he said slowly, tone solidifying, "it wouldn't've been any different…"
Neither spoke as they observed the patterned light playing off the lens for a lingering, drifting moment.
"Helga...?"
His chest swelled, holding a heavy, shaken breath.
And released it, dropping at last in a long, draining sigh, and closed his eyes.
"...Thank you."
Unseen, a glowing smile broke across her face through her grief; glad for him.
So glad for him.
She wasn't disillusioned. She knew he'd never really revert back to his old self; too much time and change and pain had done its work. But maybe now, he could get in touch with who he really was, and wanted to be. Maybe he really was better off now.
And, somehow, better off having known her, despite everything.
Because she had been safe for him, and she'd proven that.
The thought made Helga's eyes damp as she shut them, and tried not to cry.
"I…I wish I had gone," he said, like he was far away, "even if I never found anything…"
"...Well," she willed her voice even, "it's not too late to try and figure out a way to go somehow anyway, right? I mean, if you want to. Got all summer…"
She heard him swallow; his hitched, unsteady breath, and wondered if he'd cringed at all too, at a thought of a future that lay outside the tower. Without each other.
As long as they were still up there, at the top of the lighthouse, a foolish part of her could pretend they'd stay side by side at its beacon forever, having led them out of dark waters.
Opening her eyes to the lens, she realized it was no wonder why he'd been so transfixed by its vigil since they arrived at camp.
He'd waited his whole life for his family to find their way home.
"I still don't know how I can tell my grandparents what's been really going on…without it just hurting them. Though…" he heaved a disheartened, listless sigh, "I know they've been worried about me… there's gotta be something I can say, that's still the truth…"
She met his gaze with a light grin she hoped didn't look too sad when he turned to look at her.
"Huh. Sounds like something the 'old' you would say…Football Head."
Arnold returned a faint grin of his own that faltered as he crossed his arms over his knees and looked away. He focused ahead with resolve, an intensity that churned inside him; from both the old and the new.
"I don't want to lie to myself, or the people I care about anymore."
…Damn.
I'm proud of you, Arnold.
"The old me…" he reflected, distantly.
He brought a fist to his mouth; pensive.
"You know, I've just been sitting here wondering, how the hell did I get here? But… I mean, sure, I've changed, but the worst parts of me have been there all along. They've just gotten worse. My denial, and… self-righteousness…"
She gave a light scoff and couldn't resist.
"Your temper," she added, cocking her brow guiltily when he looked at her. Then shrugged. "Like I'm one to talk. Go figure I'm the only one who really drags that outta you. Sure you won't miss that..."
Christ, Helga. Fuck.
"No," his voice shook, and she told herself it didn't sound like a plea. "Honestly, I'm already wound up. You're just been unraveling me…"
Her lips pursed dismissively, then slowly slacked at the long, lost look he lingered on her.
Arnold repositioned, leaning over with his elbows to his knees as he sat cross-legged. His stomach sucked in as he took a shaky breath and hid his expression from her, face buried in his hands.
"I know you've made your choice, Helga," he said, broken up, "about us, and… I respect that. I know I haven't been… good for you."
Her breath hitched, eyes widening.
"And, you should do what you need to. I…" he rasped, curling in on himself as his gut spasmed. "I don't want to guilt or pressure you, but. I need you to know how much your friendship mattered to me—even if I've done a lousy job of showing it. And, I…"
Her jaw dropped softly, feeling oddly in and out of herself.
"...Thank you," his voice cracked, meeting her gaze with a flushed look that failed to hold back so much feeling that she had to blink her eyes dry. "For setting this up. God, for putting up with me. And not just today, but. For years. I mean it."
He swallowed thickly, eyes raw.
"I don't deserve it, but I needed this, and… you're right. I couldn't have faced all this down on my own, so… Thank you."
She could only stare as her heart leapt to her throat, choking the sound that strangled its way up. It'd serve no purpose if it came out clear, anyway.
Words wouldn't be worth a damn.
Helga cast her gaze across her hands, fingertips trembling, touching as they dangled over her knees. She worked her throat as a throwaway smirk played across her lips.
"Just wish I'd picked a dryer spot."
He snorted despite himself, something broken across his face as he smirked back.
"With less glass?"
"No kidding," she returned with a small scoff. "And maybe a little less haunted, too. Y'know, presumably."
Arnold shook his head, shifting. He leaned back against the glass, and reeled.
"Presumably," he echoed. "God, rogue waves… now that," he paused to just appreciate its utter absurdity in a moment of needed levity she couldn't help but share, the surreal disbelief of reality washing over them both, "was just…insane."
They joined together in a series of shaken, cracked up chuckles.
"I can't believe that happened. That we're still alive…That it's the same day."
"Pff, right?" she snorted, "Today's just been… fucking bonkers."
Lapsing into a brief silence, they watched as a cloud-blocked patch of afternoon light broke through and glittered across patterned sections of the lens, and the crumbled glass scattered across the floor.
"Maybe Beatle Boots was onto something, and coming up here an' stompin' around on a deathiversary wasn't so bright," she shrugged sardonically, "tempting fate, and all that."
He went quiet, something in his frame hardening.
"...You mean the Tolmens?"
Helga stilled with trepidation.
"Yeah…"
She knew, of course, that Gerald's rendition of the tale had unsettled them both, for reasons neither dared to broach; an untouchable, ominous foreboding that couldn't be spoken of between them.
The scream of the wave and his distorted colors when he chased her around the lens in mind, she decided to gingerly prod, unable to help herself.
"Whaddya think, anyway?" she asked, trying to keep it cool when he turned to look at her inquisitively. "Y'know. About them?"
Arnold was unreadable in the long pause that followed, until he finally averted his gaze, replying in clipped tones.
"That guy was an idiot."
Helga steadied her breath above the nerves dancing in her stomach, braving her next question.
"And what about his fake wife? You think she was a sucker, too?"
He went quiet again, out of reach when he eventually spoke.
"For thinking he'd actually marry her? …No. Whatever their arrangement was, what really mattered was how he treated her. That wasn't fake," he asserted, a sharpness to his voice. "Whatever his reasons, by the end, he was an idiot… and an asshole," he scowled. "He wasn't worth her life. Or their friends."
Arnold shook his head, seemingly removed from himself as something dulled across his face, staring past the lens.
"She should've just left him."
Helga dropped back against the window, awestruck.
She finally realized why he never brought out the big guns during their fight. Never accused, or shot her down for having real feelings as the motive behind her schemes. It wasn't that he just didn't know, idiot that he also was; he could've just said it to hurt or belittle her, anyway. But, no. That wasn't it.
For all his self-loathing, he couldn't stand to mock the idea that he could be wanted or loved. And, figured, that even if he could…
He couldn't face those real feelings, either. Not if they made him look at him.
The longer she thought of the right words to say, or how to even articulate the feelings his stance gave her, the less equipped she felt to even speak of anything prepared; so when she spoke again, the thoughts tumbled out without a filter, or trying.
Whatever.
End of the world, right?
"Remember my baseball cap? I mean, before the wave took it?" she said, letting the words come without even thinking and before embarrassment could stop her. "I started wearing it after my shrink signed me up for some peer-support thing, for troubled kids. Yeah, I have a shrink," she tossed out, rolling her eyes tiredly. "Have for a while. Anyway, of course I thought it was bullshit and a big waste of time—and I mean, well, some of it was. Nasty, rotten little…"
She waved off the memory of the shittier kids, letting her hands drop from her knees to cradle in her lap as she stared up to the ceiling.
"But, by the end, I actually… wound up helping some of them? And… it even wound up helping me, going through my own shit. And I mean—oh, whatever, I'm rambling, I don't even know why I'm saying all this, but, it's just…"
Helga closed her eyes and sighed.
"I did all that, and wore it, because… even though you were around, when I was going through all that stuff, I didn't feel like… I could…"
She gestured out her frustration with wanting some way to speed through the fallout of long-gone closet shrines, the gaps his changes left in her coping hopes and daydreams, Phoebe's increasing absences with Gerald, and the unshakeable fear of Arnold pulling back completely if she got too close confiding in him.
"...I missed you," she heaved at last, throwing her hands out. "My family had gotten so much worse, and I missed your supportiveness and advice, and I figured if I couldn't get that from you when I needed it, I could… try and bring those parts I admired about you into myself, instead," she huffed with self-conscious defeat, the words of her therapist echoing in her thoughts.
'Maybe one way to get what you need is to give it to others, first.'
And lo and behold, who would have thought that would work, and could give her something she could give back again, when it was needed.
She'd taken that part of him into her.
And used it, to help reconnect him to parts of himself, too.
Helga blinked when he scoffed in response.
"I should've been there," he muttered, without a trace of self-forgiveness, "and not at arms length. Honestly, Helga, I feel like all I ever did was just the bare minimum for you. Best way I've ever been there was just… by being this idea for you. Larger in life to you than I've ever been. Honestly, God, my shitty friendship, the library, camp, today, I've…"
Arnold trailed off with a shudder, hiding his face when he resumed with an eerie, hollow chill in his voice that she couldn't place at first.
"I've had no right to be such a big part of your life… and such a painful one…"
In the silence that followed she finally recognized his tone for what it was.
He'd said it like a goodbye.
Yeah, came the quiet, lifeless thought.
Really… we're about getting to that time now, aren't we…
And there was nothing she could do about it. But until that moment struck, there were points made that she wouldn't let stand.
"Not everyone even gets the bare minimum," she muttered somberly.
Helga closed her eyes, setting herself with firm resolution.
"You noticed me."
"I brought you an umbrella."
"You were kind."
"That's not enough—"
"It's more than I had," she snapped back, hard.
Helga sighed with exhaustion and regrouped, gulping around the thickness in her throat.
"Arnold."
Her voice went low with an aching, rough sincerity.
"I know you've let yourself down, and let others down, but. You were always so much more than that. And you kept giving more, at shelters, and soup chickens… not like you used to, but—however you could. You're still a giver, Arnold. You always have been, and. The worlds better having you in it."
Speckled prisms of light crossed and scattered across the floor as she looked ahead, something sad, surreal and dreamlike fading through her in a haze.
"You live your life never really knowing how much you gave, or what it might have meant to someone else. And as long as you're still you, that's never gonna change. You're a pain, and a total Football Head, but… you're a gift too, Arnold."
For a long stretch, Arnold didn't react, face hidden behind his cupped hands. His fingertips dragged slowly, under his sore eyes and up past his cheek to press against his temples, his mouth set in a hard, shaken line. A choked up breath broke from him moments later, his face shielded from her when he spoke. His voice almost didn't sound like his.
"I… that's… really something to hear from you, Helga..."
"Yeah…" she shrugged, her tone distant but not unkind. "Kinda sappy, right? Like you."
He responded with a sardonic snort, breath ragged and airy as he laughed.
"So what, does that make you my 'Arnold' now?"
She couldn't place what it was. But in the quiet that followed, something in her heralded the end of their talk, and when her tears returned, they came back silent and seeping as she sat adrift beside him, reducing her to a shuddered breath.
She didn't know how all the words would come out, but she knew once they had, she'd be leaving him with truths that spared neither of them and brooked no reply.
After this, she would tell him to leave, or leave herself.
"No," she said, in a dead, quiet monotone. "But, I'm yours, even if you won't have me."
A beat passed. Arnold lowered his hands, dropped his slacked jaw…
And stared.
She cast him a soft, ironic smirk through her trailing tears. Trembling as she turned away from his stark, virescent eyes, she felt it fitting.
After all, her life was a joke.
"Even when I've tried cutting you out of me, you're like some… damned phantom limb."
In her periphery as she stared ahead, he bent away from the glass, his legs a blur as they shifted and repositioned. Not that any of that mattered.
Helga breathed the rest, her words dragging and lifeless.
"You know…that thing when people, like, lose an arm or whatever, but they can still feel it, even though it's gone? And it just haunts, and hurts like it's there, and just—"
She didn't get to say the rest.
Her whole world was eclipsed as Arnold grabbed her to him, and kissed her.
There were no thoughts. Not at first.
When her mind came back on it lurched and sputtered.
He—I'm—what?
Disoriented, she dimly registered Arnold pulling back with a breathy shudder before smothering her gasp with another kiss. He was warm, his hands firm and drawing her in by her waist; at her jaw, her cheek where his fingers trembled and gripped her. Issuing a shocked, confused whimper, she shook as he tilted his head and slanted his lips over hers again.
The chaos in her was suffocating and timeless as her heart somersaulted.
When he pulled back again with his forehead pressed against hers, her throat tightened on a choppy whine or whatever the fuck kinda noise she just made was, and gasped, "wh–wha—"
Finally able to focus enough to see his eyes looking into hers, brimming and earnest, every memory of her hanging onto his mixed signals while her hopes died cringing deaths raised and lashed her hackles all at once.
"Do—do you f-fucking mean this?" she shoved him away with a hiccupped, shivering sob. "Don't you tell me this is how you're—f-fucking saying goodbye?!"
If this was how he meant to say goodbye she'd kill him.
He held onto her with a gentle firmness, taking her erratic, aimless strikes to his chest as she cried out a stream of words unintelligibly. Her thoughts, wild and damning, clung to the horror of him finally owning his desire for her—but keeping her untethered to him; uncommitted.
Like Health and Ada Tolmen.
"—just want me now cuz I let you spill your guts—"
God. For years she'd have settled for scraps.
But no. Kill her for real if he ever decided he wanted her, but not all of her.
Not just have her when it suited him.
Like the way he'd used her company for years.
Arnold's voice broke through the sound of her dampened cries as she wept and cursed into his shoulder.
"I knew since the wave."
She balked in his embrace, shaking her head with a gobsmacked, humiliated bewilderment that left her temporarily speechless.
"...T-that I loved you?...W-was I that obvious?!"
"I–what? No, I mean, Helga, all that stuff you said before it… you were right."
Helga wiped her eyes with a sniff, and hiccupped, clearing her blurred view of him. She'd never seen such an odd combination of excited overwhelm and remorse, and gawked at him, rightfully confused. He shook his head, looking like he was trying but failing to clear it.
"When it was about to hit, I knew, and then after, I…couldn't…"
He let out something like a laugh, running his hand through his hair and gazing at her as if beseeching her to not think he'd gone nuts.
It wasn't working.
"I feel like—I can't even explain myself," he facepalmed, at a loss, "I think I might be crazy."
Definitely wasn't working.
"I—feel crazy. I'm still putting it all together…"
He shook his head again, embracing her more fully as she shook her head; reassuringly, insistent.
"But, Helga? No, I… I mean this."
"Then why didn't you fucking—" she snarled, shoving at his chest.
Ohh, but she should feel elated, right?
Every wound and concern should just go out the window, with them in each other's arms. And yet that part of her that was exhausted, hurt, and angry, couldn't help but feel played. She couldn't just take a revelation like this without umbrage.
Thinking of him hovering above her right after the wave when they'd come to, when she swore he might actually kiss her. She wouldn't have had to confess the way she did if he had, could've avoided being completely gutted. And she knew it, she knew when his guard came back up that he was hiding more, fuck.
Salt stung her cheeks and the sore skin around her eyes.
"Why didn't you just kiss me then?! And—and save me all this—"
"How could I?!"
Though she could tell he hadn't meant to raise his voice so much by the face he pulled after, she recoiled angrily, chest heaved and eyes flashed when she fumed in his persistent grip, mindful of her bandaged cuts.
"I'd just torn you apart! And, God, you'd been right! About all of it! And all this time, I couldn't just let myself see it, I'd—"
He screwed his eyes shut in a burning, shameful grimace before facing her again, his voice mournful and shaken.
"I'd shoved you down like I shoved them down. Everything, down. And every time, I'd call my feelings for you something else. And I refused to see how you really felt, until—"
Bringing his hands to his face like partial shields, he gestured with despondent frustration.
"...Until you confessed."
Arnold's hands dropped away, leaving her close but untouched. He sagged against the window, head hung from his shoulders.
"I had—I have, no fucking right," he said quietly, voice heavy like gravel. "I'm sorry, I swore I'd just leave, that I wouldn't do this, but… I couldn't, just…"
Elucidated in the wake of his confession, Helga lost herself in a long, drifting moment of stunned, spellbound suspension.
When she closed the gap between them she felt like she was oddly floating.
She pressed her cheek softly against his; then kissed it. Then kissed it again, then the corner of his mouth when he shied away, unworthy. Then his lips when she lifted his chin and sought them with hers.
Another kiss, and another, and he began pushing her lips back slowly with his. And when she held his face in her hands and pressed back harder with a sigh, he met her force with some smothered, needsome sound as he crushed her to him, and the world spun.
When they broke for air he guided her hands down gently, clasping them together effusively, his conflict unabated.
"God, the way you talk about how you…"
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, like he couldn't quite accept what was happening.
"I know you can't help how you feel, but are you sure you really want this? After how I've…"
He dropped his head to her shoulder, touching the edges of her bandages as his fingers trailed gently down her arm.
"You deserve…someone, who's…"
She let out a light snort of a laugh, attempting to look annoyed but failing, and didn't care how goofy she looked as she beamed back at him.
Helga was exultant and radiated, and just couldn't stop.
"You want me happy?"
He paused, taken aback, and nodded.
Her face already hurt from smiling so damn hard.
"Then stop being too fucking good for me."
First he just squinted at her in confusion. Until, slowly, his eyes widened, like something was finally starting to click.
This time when Helga kissed him it was with a force that he returned right back.
Gradually, they lost their balance but didn't care, sliding down the side of the window and onto the floor. Forgetting there was another world around them while lost in their own, they startled at the clatter of kicked glass when Helga pushed out her leg from under him. Before she could even string together a retort he was already kneeling for them both and picking her up off the floor with him.
Her head swam in a lightheaded haze when he pushed her back against the window and dove in for another dizzying kiss.
She couldn't think of a higher-flying, ecstatic moment in her life.
And yet, even pressed together in arduous lip-lock, she couldn't rebuff the feelings of damaged trust and doubt panging her edges. When they broke apart to catch their breath she relented to them, asking shakily when he dropped a kiss; two, three of them on her shoulder, if he really was serious, that he's not gonna run cold on her again, that he's actually in this…
Helga bit her lip against the tremored quakes of vulnerable, tearful emotion that came when he nuzzled the crook of her neck as held her in a full, heartfelt hug, and nodded.
"I'm done trying to deny it."
His forehead against hers, he let out a hard, bracing breath, and drew back to look into her eyes. They were blown wide, anxious and going damp when she noticed his weren't quite so dry either, and felt the warmth of his hands when he wiped his thumbs across her wet cheeks to dry them.
"Helga…"
She couldn't believe it, but when he gazed at her like that, she knew he would say it, and holy fuck she had to bite her lip to not cry seriously ugly right then and there. He shivered when he enunciated the words emphatically, tender and only for her.
"I. Love. You."
Then folded her into his arms and stifled her broken whimper with a long, melting kiss.
Time stopped.
In her life, she'd endured defeat, self-abandonment and despair; weakness. Incurably worthless, she'd still bore raw parts of herself that, when exposed to the air, oxidized and died.
But in the glory of being loved, she'd never been so obliterated.
Helga swooned limp and weightless against him, her joy reducing her to nothing.
His voice in her ear brought her back.
"And I do want you," he said, the heat of his cheek against hers; heartfelt. "I haven't wanted anyone but you. To the point where even you knew it was obvious."
He gave a soft, airy laugh, and pulled away just enough to hold her face and draw her forehead to his, nose to nose.
"Please, that shit I said before the wave… I didn't mean it. I'm so sorry, Helga…" he whispered; earnest, heartbreaking. "You're the only one, who…"
Far be it for her to presume he'd be out of surprises, but she wasn't expecting that he'd find another way to break her even further. She fisted the fabric of his bloodied tank as she blubbered. The most wounding thing he'd ever said to her before the wave; that had haunted the fears she'd had her entire life—being tenderly soothed, salved and bandaged.
'You're the last person I could ever fucking want, Helga.'
And turned out was a lie all along, and one he'd first told himself.
"I'm sorry if I made you feel like you were impossible to love… I can't even stop myself."
In an effort to quell the sobs that bubbled out of her she couldn't help the high, involuntary sound that whined in her throat. Face wet and buried in his shoulder, she couldn't even care.
My God… Arnold…
Fuck…
Eyes closed, she felt the drop of a kiss in her hair. Then felt him gently pull her back, the wetness of her cheeks being wiped away and kissed, one at a time. Then her nose, her cheek again, the corner of her mouth. And when his lips brushed against hers she stole the kiss, surging her lips over his with a shaken force, shuddering them both.
Rendered without relativity or comprehension once more, time slowed the entire world as they kissed. Inexperienced or not, she had no idea how much had passed by the time her tears turned to chuckles; euphorically drunk on a new world with him that they weren't just in, but that they actually reveled and shared.
She was just… so fucking happy, and couldn't keep a straight face, or a straight kiss, for that matter, and didn't care if a few of them were clumsy.
"So," she said between kisses, her tone faux-casual but laced with bliss and mischief. "You really didn't mean any of that stuff you said earlier?" Kiss. "Or did you—" Kiss. "—but you can't help liking me, anyway?" Kiss.
"Loving you, anyway," he corrected, with an experimental bite at her lip, grinning at the gasp that elicit. He pulled back in the loop of her arms around his neck, and tried leveling her with his classic deadpan expression as she sniggered, but failed, his mouth twitching into a smile, his elation just as uncontainable as hers.
Christ, she loved him.
"Well…" Arnold began, making her squirm with a playful squeeze around her waist. "You are a bit wild. Bit of a schemer." He cocked a brow with light disapproval, provoking her pretend offense, then smirked when he pulled her in closer, making her blush and roll her eyes. "Definitely a schemer… and maybe just a little unhinged."
"Hah! Look who's talking," she shot back, grinning but meaning it.
And go figure. Anyone who'd fall for Helga G. Pataki would have to be a little unhinged themselves, at least.
He let out a soft burst of a laugh despite himself. "No kidding. I've…"
Arnold trailed off, his humor slowly fading as he paused and shook his head reflectively. Bringing up a hand to her cheek (how was he so warm) the way the other held her waist changed, going from flirtatious to caring, and gazed into her baby-blues with so much sincerity her throat closed up.
"Thank you," he said, his breath fanning her cheek. "For seeing me through my bullshit, and… not giving up, until I could see through it, too."
It was just for a moment, but he paused to close his eyes and nuzzled his nose against hers, and if she weren't made of sterner stuff she might've turned into a sniffling mess.
She figured such tiny gestures of affection indulged on her shouldn't trip her so much.
'Hi, nice bow.'
'Huh?'
"I like your bow, because it's pink like your pants.'
But, then again, it really was the smallest of things that had tripped her up for a lifetime.
"God. I can only imagine how much that cost you, and to have known how I…" Arnold pressed his forehead with reverent relief against hers, and looked into her eyes again. "I can't think of anyone else who could have done that, Helga."
A tremor went through him and into her—or was it the other way around? So gently, he let the hand at her cheek fall down her arm with light, lingering touches to her bandaged cuts.
"I can't believe I could've lost you..." he said in a cracked whisper, swallowing back emotion that moistened his eyes before he closed them.
Air rattled in her chest as chills swept up her back.
Shit. He was right. And in addition to almost losing each other due to their own actions, there was also the fact that either of them could have died; not just both.
A very possible, dodged scenario where one of them had, and lost the other.
The thought hadn't even occurred to her, she realized, because she'd been so focused on calming him down after the wave, and was staring down the barrel at something she'd feared even more. And hey, well, maybe she really was made outta sterner stuff.
Maybe not enough though, she thought, her eyes growing damp again as she sniffed. Shit.
"Oh, quit your blubbering…" she grumbled, but there was no heart in it.
Arnold let out a light chuckle, and kissed her forehead.
"I won't," he met her lips in a chaste kiss as his hands fell to her waist again, his sigh gusting over her cheek. And closed his eyes.
"You're incredible."
"Pff," she dismissed, but her smile was stubborn. She closed her eyes, too, in the glow of his comfort.
"...And maybe a few other things…" he baited, and she could hear the grin in his voice.
She snorted softly, feeling light as she threw it back.
"What, that I'm 'callous, corruptive and perverse?'"
"Well… maybe you can be one of those."
"Oh yeah? Which one?"
At first he'd only pulled back to taunt her with a teasing smirk. But when their gazes met it kindled a spark that caught him first, and the longer his eyes bore into hers the stronger they burned, igniting a heat that bloomed through her like a panic and fanned her breath.
Holy shit.
There was a restraint to his smirk that didn't match his eyes, speaking to her like an exciting threat. He leaned in, pretending to ignore the light gasp she couldn't help, and tilted his chin at her.
"What was it you asked at the library?" he asked, his husky voice no more than a breath as his hands slowly encircled her wrists. "Something like, 'You wanna throw me around again?'"
Her eyes widened, captive to his as he leaned in close and raced her pulse.
"Is that what you want?"
An explosive breath burst from her lungs when he pinned her wrists to either side of her head, leaving her panting.
"Should I?"
Holy shit.
She was speechless, but figured her face said it all when his eyes darkened and brushed his nose softly against hers.
"Whatever you say, Helga."
Dropping her hands to bend and yoke her thighs around his hips, she gasped, her arms clung around his neck as he whirled them around, strode through the room and pressed her up against the lens with a kiss so searing she squealed and saw spots.
Panting ragged when they pulled apart, she gasped when he drew across her cheek to mouth at her ear. Then lower, whimpering at the first trail she'd ever felt blazed down her throat.
"Whew," she blew out, in a heated daze. "On second thought, maybe I am a little corruptive, too."
She felt his lips smirk when he bit the flesh above her collar, and sucked her there, hard, when the noise she made wasn't decent.
Helga didn't know why, but she thought of the first time he'd ever seen her cry, at the animal shelter. Really cry, at words that weren't directed at her but shook her all the same.
'Yeah, you've been a good girl all along, haven't you?'
No, she really hadn't. But he wanted her anyway.
Loved her, even.
And she couldn't believe her goddamn luck.
She knew he had her. But, distractedly, she still felt the need to adjust the way her back braced against the lens, and locked her ankles behind him as she pressed down on his shoulders, squeezing her thighs around his hips for leverage. Which, he adjusted for, by shifting his leg and pushing against her in an amazing moment of full body contact, and—
Arnold flinched a few inches back when they gasped and caught themselves, flushed and rattled as he sought her eyes, and through the jumble of her startled thoughts something leapt out.
What was it she taunted him earlier for? That it must have felt good for him to push her up against that bookshelf in the library? And if he'd stepped between her legs any closer, she would have felt just how much?
Damn.
Hey, Arnold.
Helga panted, shivering as she realized, rather acutely, that she wasn't quite ready for that. Which, from the mortified look on his red face, he could tell. And, maybe it was a little too fast for him, too.
"S—sorry," he bowed his head, easing her legs down as he stammered, withdrawing.
"N-no," she said, already pulling him back to her, reassuring but not as close below the belt, shaking her head. "It's okay, I—"
Spotting something in the distance over his shoulder, she paused, staring out the window incredulously.
It was a relief to see the flood situation looking better by the minute, but it's not what had caught her attention.
Before the line of pines separating the park from the camp was a small information center standing in the receding waters, and far-off but recognizable, sat the twins on its roof, head-banging and flashing devil horns… right in their direction.
Her jaw completely dropped.
Puzzled, Arnold turned to look as well, searching out the window for whatever it was she saw.
Helga didn't know whether she wanted to laugh or die. But when he did a double-take after not noticing them at first, the sight of his jaw dropping with what was first shock, then embarrassment, and then indignation made her bark out laughing. Really, she thought, she'd have to thank those idiots for their help in making all this happen in the first place.
And then kill them.
Beckoning him to look at her again with a tug, his blushing face broke into a disbelieving laugh of his own, joining her, and before long, their awkward flub or them being unknowingly watched didn't even matter.
By the time Helga led them to the other side of the lens, they were glowing.
It would be a while before they finally went down the hatch and left, and for her, leaving the lantern room was a kind of death that she welcomed and could have never imagined.
A rebirth.
Down the spiral stairs in the mechanical room below, they took their last, long, private embrace in the Penacook Lighthouse. In it, Helga mused on the fact that the first time she ever felt his heartbeat, it was in the face of death. And now, in an illuminating realization that felt surreal and dreamlike, it was in the face of life.
When she arrived at camp she was out for blood. And, instead, got his whole heart.
And hers, freed at last, could finally beat along with his.
Before Arnold squeezed her hand and opened the door, Helga smiled wryly at the thought of that newfound, fragile freedom she'd uncovered in the wake of her confession; feared, unfamiliar, and something she didn't know how to trust.
Of course a heart's shackles were there to keep you safe in the first place, and stop you from making the wrong choices.
Who would have guessed that taking them away could lead to the right ones?
It was a revelation she wouldn't soon forget. And, she figured, Arnold wouldn't, either.
Something that, however tempting a return to that old, decaying safety sometimes was, couldn't be disputed.
And, holding hands as they walked through the door, it was a new start. A chance they couldn't deny.
A truth cast in the Fresnel lens.