A/N: Not much to say. The story continues towards the end. I apologize for the late updates. In a case of life imitating art, a series of disasters prevented my pen from moving.
Strangely, perhaps by serendipity, I hear Craig Bartlett is returning to Nickelodeon studios to finish The Jungle Movie. I never anticpated that my entire fanfic would be invalidated so quickly.
Ah, well. Easy come, easy go.
Anyway, on with the show. I promise the angst will continue to flow, right up until the fluff explodes all over your dumb faces. I love you guys.
Keeping Arnold, Chapter 16: If You Let a Child Be a Child, You Ain't Doin' Her No Favors in the End
"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." - Sun Tsu
Gerald watched with concern at the eerie quiet that had descended over his distraught best friend bouncing in the back of Brainy's van. No longer a savage wreck, Arnold now just seemed impossibly far away from them, in some place and time Gerald could only guess at.
He was annoyed with Arnold just as much as he was worried, however, because this should have been their righteous moment. Years of pursuit and dead ends and false starts would finally, for real this time, come to an end. Lila was Fuzzy Slippers, and her confession was caught on tape, and Helga's name was in the clear.
It should be a moment of triumph, but Gerald felt a sick emptiness where the joy should be, and the sober atmosphere in the van betrayed that there was no spirit of victory within. He wasn't alone in feeling cheated, short changed of his hard fought victory, but he was aware with no small amount of guilt that he was probably the only one that was also angry at Arnold.
The Arnold he remembered wouldn't just be sitting there dumbly, he would be trying to convince everyone that there was a logical and reasonable explanation for everything. He would be trying to temper the desire for absolute revenge. He would be getting everyone to see that even though Lila was guilty of years of monstrous abuse and lies, she was essentially still a good person trying her best, who should be shown mercy, even forgiveness.
The Arnold he knew as a kid wouldn't be silent. He would fight.
Gerald was just about to throttle Arnold when Phoebe broke the silence.
"Well, the city seems pretty intent to finish Lila off," she sighed, flicking her thumb over her phone's screen. Gerald could make out a wall of texts in the nearly city-wide mass text conversation. He had turned his phone's notifications off, so frequent and incessant were the updates rolling in. "Helga seems to be getting a bit of praise, as well. It seems the danger has passed."
"Not for Lila," Gerald scoffed. If Arnold wasn't going to speak up, he would.
Phoebe turned slightly in the shotgun seat of the van, regarding her boyfriend with a skeptical look. "Is that any of our concern, Gerald?"
"Damn right it is," he grumbled, and once again looked at Arnold with disbelief. Phoebe seemed to notice.
"He's just in shock. We all are reeling from the truth, Gerald."
"He's bout to get his ass reeled right out of the damn van," Gerald threatened. "Hey, Arnold, wake the fuck up. These women is crazy, you gotta step in and do the Arnold thing, man. Like, calm the crowd, speak some reason. Do something, man."
Arnold looked at Gerald, finally seeming to see him. "Right under my nose, Gerald. It was always right there."
"Under your nose? Maaaan, Arnold, you don't know how damn ignorant you sound right now. This shit has been going on under our nose, me and Phoebe's, for seven damn years. She even played us into thinking she helped. You didn't get played the fool nearly as much as we did."
"Arnold," Phoebe began, "The truth is that Lila has been deceiving us all about her true nature ever since middle school. But I think that the truth is perhaps a bit more complicated than it seems. I still don't understand her motive, maybe there's something you recall from your correspondences?"
Arnold rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, and then shook his head. "No, she never talked about this stuff. Mostly she just talked about how...how she felt."
"Like I give a damn about your damn love letters, I still don't get how she did it." Gerald was eager to get Arnold off the past, especially his sentimental letter writing.
"Well, as Brainy explained it, he was the original Fuzzy Slippers, who would slip Gerald urban legends and fantastic rumors he heard about or came up with. When he held the alias, it was just a fun way for the very shy Brian to interact with his friends without having to stand out. Gerald was chosen because he was the most popular and the funniest, but sometimes Sid got a few stories too. And he mostly grew out of it."
"Right, I got that part," Gerald nodded. "It's where Lila came in that I need to hear again. How did she know it was Brainy when none of us did?" He didn't need to hear again, but, Arnold had been spaced out the first time this was explained, and Gerald wanted to make sure his friend heard this.
Brian spoke up, surprising everyone.
"She caught me."
"Right," Phoebe continued after regaining her composure. "One day after Lila moved here but before Arnold had left, she caught Brainy slipping a story into Gerald's lunch during recess. She confronted him, but promised not to tell anyone, claiming it was because she really loved the stories Brainy spread for everyone to have adventures. And she kept silent for years, at least until middle school."
"That's when the real trouble began," Gerald explained to Arnold, who was finally listening.
"She returned to Brainy, but this time, told him she would be taking the name from him for her own. By this time, Brian and Helga were not speaking and Brian didn't care enough about the childhood pseudonym to protest. But, he made a critical error. In exchange for keeping her use of the name a secret, he made Lila promise to never spread any tall tales about Helga."
"Why did you do that, Brainy?" Arnold asked. He was clearly confused.
Brian didn't answer.
"Regardless, with the promise made, Lila began to revive the name of Fuzzy Slippers. Stories and rumors began to surface with that name attached. At first it was mostly innocent, but, it didn't last. The rumors began to become very specific and personal. Tragedy began to follow the name of Fuzzy Slippers. And Lila's leverage over Brian slowly built, until she could demand his compliance and assistance on threat of going after Helga."
"Lila...threatened you, Brian?"
"Yes." His answer was as final as it was curt.
"Her threats apparently began to become more and more frequent as Gerald and I started to close the distance on her. She was still eluding us, but, apparently, was growing weary of the chase and too cautious of being caught by happenstance. Rather than make a mistake, she orchestrated a false victory for us with Brian's help."
"Damn girl set us up to find the black journal and chase after Brainy, the supposed true figure of FS. We bought it. We thought we won."
"I had never anticipated the possibility of a second journal. Who writes redundant copies of their own encoded journal? I couldn't account for that level of suspicion and secrecy. We were just high schoolers, not international spies."
"She wrote the journal." Arnold said, not a question, but sudden understanding about something else he had seen.
"Damn straight she did. Every word. And unfortunately for us, Arnold, she kept writing." Gerald hoped Arnold would come back to them with this.
"Gerald is correct. Over the years of supposed silence, she's been keeping up with Hillwood news. Through us, other friends, Rhonda and the like. The gossip mill never died out, I am afraid. She has had ample material to collect. And now, after your sudden arrival, events catalyzed her endgame plan."
"Framing Helga." Arnold spoke with understanding a second time.
"The reason Brian's promise was so unfortunate was that it played right into Lila's hands. It suited her just fine to never strike at Helga. It allowed the absence of her attack to slowly implicate her, over time. Gerald and I noticed the void in her attacks in high school, but, the rest of Hillwood only noticed when Lila wanted them to." Phoebe removed her glasses to rub at her eyes. "She's so damn brilliant."
"And evil," Gerald sneered. He'd get Arnold to defend her, humanize her. He begged internally for there to be some piece of the old Arnold left. To say something in her defense.
Nothing from Arnold.
"As I said," Phoebe spoke to fill the empty space in the conversation where they all waited for Arnold to say something. "I still don't understand her motivations. It seems unfathomable that Lila would hate us all so much in secret to do this out of pure spite. Arnold, what do you think?"
"It doesn't matter," he shrugged, looking deflated. Gerald felt for an unbearable second that the man Arnold had grown into had become unrecognizable to him. He wanted to fight! An anger of retributive outrage courses in his limbs and jitters of energetic strength trembled beneath his skin.
"Arnold my man, forgive my fool ass mouth for what I am about to say," Gerald started, ready to lay into his friend and knock some damn sense into him if necessary.
"Oh my God, Gerald, Arnold, look!"
"Oh no," Brainy groaned, and tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
Gerald looked away from Arnold reluctantly, and leaned over the passenger seat and Phoebe's shoulder to see what could possibly be so important.
His mouth went dry. Helga was holding Lila up out of her chair, Lila's arm slung around Helga's strong shoulders and the powerful blonde's forearm cinched tight around the generous curves of Lila's waist. Lila's face wore an empty expression turned to the ground, and Helga's was a snarl of disgust.
He didn't see what the problem was at first. Not at first.
Lila's feet were supporting her - albeit shakily, and unevenly.
Rhonda, Nadine, and Eugene were sitting behind them on the Pataki stoop, Rhonda and Nadine animatedly discussing something, no doubt Lila's final dishonesty. Gerald turned his whole body to check on his wayward friend, ravenous for a change in his stoicism.
Arnold looked confused. Gerald couldn't place the precise emotion on his friend's face, but it wasn't anger. It looked more like what his sister's face looked when he told her Santa wasn't real.
"Lila?" He heard Arnold squawk, his voice a the tortured twisted metal of denial.
"Why are you standing up?" Gerald demanded, on the spot, blood hot and his teeth throbbing with anger.
"Oh this?" Helga casually shook Lila in her grasp, wiggling her back and forth cruelly. "She surprised me with it too when she stood up while she was shooting her damn fool mouth off. Don't worry, if I let go, she falls. She's not completely lying about being a cripple, only just sorta lying,"
Helga demonstrated. Lila made a sound not unlike a gurgle and a yelp, and fell to her hands and knees pathetically. It seemed she didn't have the strength or feeling necessary to support her own weight, but she was hardly paralyzed.
"There you have it folks," Helga continued with the lofty airs of a carnival barker. "The grand and invisible Fuzzy Slippers! Behold, the nemesis! Ha! Some nemesis. Ain't that right, Lila?" Helga punctuated her mocking tone with a forceful nudge of her foot against Lila's hip.
Gerald saw Arnold rush forward from behind him, and watched with confusing dismay as he knelt by Lila's side with concern.
Helga's fury was fully trained on Arnold as he rushed to Lila's side, her hot stare beating down on the back of his head. It looked like she was ready to pounce when Arnold finally spoke up.
"Did you hit her, Helga?"
Gerald was pretty sure Arnold was about to get his ass kicked.
"Does it look like I laid hands on her, Football Head? You think if I had hit her you'd still recognize her face?! After EVERYTHING she's done?!"
"Arnold, my man, no disrespect, but you fucking up everything right about now," Gerald drawled, feeling just as annoyed as Helga. She shot him an approving look, maybe for first time in their lives. "Lila's got an angry mob 'bout to come lynch her or worse, and you throw accusations at your girl? C'mon man think straight. This ain't the Arnold I knew."
"I'm just making sure Helga's completely clean," he said, lifting the silently thankful Lila by the shoulders to lean on him. "I didn't see any marks or anything, but I wanted to make sure everyone saw and heard Helga say she didn't harm Lila, and then Lila not even bother to disagree."
Lila shot her face up to stare with shock at Arnold. A pained crease in her forehead lead down to ugly bowed lines of a grimace beginning to peel her previously lifeless expression apart.
"No, Arnold, Helga didn't hurt me. She merely had the grace to humiliate me, and lay me and all my hopes and dreams low. You don't have to extract insurance of my cooperation and timidity; I lost. It's over; I'm done."
Gerald clicked his tongue, unsure. Helga seemed placated by the exchange, but the glances he kept catching Arnold cast at Helga made him uneasy. This still wasn't right - it was like someone pretending to be Arnold was putting on a show, but wasn't quite getting it right.
"I think it would be prudent if we all moved to interfere with Sid and his angry mob, and soon," Phoebe chimed up. "Arnold, you should take Lila to the airport and get her out of Hillwood. Quickly."
"What and leave her and Arnold alone so she can sink her claws in him again with more lies? Fat chance," Helga spat on the ground her hands flexing like predatory talons at the thought of them pairing off.
"Helga, I need to finish this," Arnold said wearily, his face full of disappointment and exhaustion. He was still sweaty and coated in the dust of Gerald field. "Don't worry, there's nothing she can say now that will change how I feel."
At this, Helga seemed to ease up, her furious expression softening somewhat. She set her jaw and squared her shoulders, nodding once.
"Fine. But you better still show up to our date dressed to the nines. You owe me, bucko."
A polite cough behind the trio brought everyone's attention to the stoop. Rhonda waved her long fingers delicately.
"Yes, hello, sorry to interrupt, but, you don't honestly expect us to allow Lila to skip town now that she's caught? Sid and his ruffians are repugnant brutes, of course, and beyond all condemnation we can offer for their vile and bilious violence, but we can't just let her go. Sorry, Lila, I love you darling but you have Hell to pay for what you've done to us. And you still haven't explained why. So unless you plan to take her to the Airport by driving over our bodies, she's not going anywhere."
An irreconcilable tension shivered through the gathered collection of old friends and new enemies, and Gerald counted the beats in his breathing before someone finally answered. It wasn't Arnold, but Eugene.
"Why did you do this, Lila? It just seems so unlike you, it's so sneaky and so mean. What was the point in exposing my affair with John? What was the point in outing Sheena? Didn't you feel bad for hurting your friends? For ruining our lives?"
Gerald saw genuine pain and concern on the elfin features of Eugene's face. The thought struck him that of anyone here, Eugene's life had been the most thoroughly wrecked by Lila's sick games, and yet he seemed the most poised and willing to accept apologies, offer amnesty, or grant forgiveness. That's just who Eugene was, at his core, and years of hard luck and ostracism from his friends had not diminished that core in a significant way.
So what had happened to Arnold that made him so...jaded?
Lila looked up from the ground to level a green-eyed sneer at Eugene with no trace of empathy.
"I'd like to see where you were now if I hadn't intervened, Eugene. Where his wife would be. Would you still be falling for his tricks, stooping to the level of a lowlife adulterer if I hadn't spoiled it for you? And you think it is my fault that you were doing these things?"
Eugene didn't answer but seemed taken aback by the acid in her response.
"Or any of the rest of you for that matter. Sheena, it may have been wrong to expose your sexuality in high school, but it wasn't anything that wasn't already going to come out. You and Rhonda were engaged in a cold war that none of these senseless idiots could see, except for me. I may have destroyed your friendship but I saved half a dozen other hapless kids that would have been pulled into the crossfire."
Rhonda stepped forward once, her whole body already twisting into a single, percussive slap that struck Lila across the cheek with a resounding clap. Everyone seemed poised on the edge of violence, and Sid hadn't even arrived yet with his thirsty mob. Gerald realized he was holding his breath when Lila finally spoke again, shaking her head and moving her stinging jaw.
"Like Hell I will take the blame for being custodian of you awful people when Arnold left. I can't count the number of secrets I have yet to reveal or seen fit to allow see the light of day. Rhonda alone would warrant the entire city's wrath. If you all only knew how each of you is in secret. Disgusting.
"And Hillwood is still a paradise compared to what's out there. How do any of you know what the world is like?"
As she began her final proclamations, Lila commanded Gerald and everyone's attention with all the zealous magnetism of a Baptist preacher. Nobody could tear their eyes off her terrible radiance, not even Helga.
"Do you know that the world is a foul sty? Do you know that if you rip the fronts off houses you'd find swine? This world is a Hell, what does it matter what happens in it? Listen to me! Use your wits, learn something. You wake up in the world and you know perfectly well that there's nothing to trouble you. You go through your ordinary little day, and at night you sleep your untroubled ordinary little sleep filled with blissful, stupid dreams. And I brought you nightmares."
Lila lifted her chin, looking down on them all from over the bridge of her nose, a gawking Arnold staring up at her face with the captivated slack of jaw that betrayed an almost religious awe.
"There's so much you don't know."
Her spell hung over them like the Sandman's fog, trembling through their nerves and pinioning them to their positions. Gerald could not fully realize that what froze him to his spot was a feral, primordial instinct, a shared pack awareness that stretched back far into the evolutionary mists to touch when humanity's distant ancestors required a visual preparedness to spot predators. The shiver of fear in his spine that twisted and flopped his guts when Lila stared him down from her position, propped up by Arnold, was the same fear a mouse felt when it stared into a cat's eyes. It was a reptilian thing, an ancient magic that tore itself twisted from the womb of life when the Earth was yet still young and hot.
Lila was an Apex Predator, with no known natural enemies but others of her kind.
And Helga Pataki was standing right there, blinding in her own terrible radiance, the only thing more dangerous in all of Hillwood than Lila Sawyer.
Animal noises left Helga as she curled herself like a fist around Lila's form, hauling her out of Arnold's grasp with both arms and tearing her away from the crowd violently, wrists around her waist. Lila, for her part, seemed startled by the sudden manhandling but didn't make any sound or noise of protest, placidly accepting her rough treatment at the hands of her captor. Helga stomped three steps hauling Lila's rag doll form away from the group, and dropped her like a sack of flour into the street, a good foot away from the curb. She stood over Lila, who fell in a heap immediately. Helga was audibly hyperventilating, a furious wheezing in her chest betraying that she was only just barely in check.
A terrible wind escaped her, as a shriek of every kind and color roared from Helga's overworked lungs and blasted Lila as if she meant to shiver her apart with the very sound of her roar. Her fists stuck out from skinny wrists, pushing out behind her as she lifted onto her tiptoes like she was on slowly expanding springs. Spittle flew from her tooth-baring scream, the outrage and malice rushing out of her and blistering her cheeks a deep ruby red.
Gerald imagined she squeezed every last drop of air out of her lungs before she finally finished screaming.
Everyone stared at Helga in the roaring silence that rushed behind her yell, which was just as quickly filled with the curious shouts of strangers and the odd car alarm. He'd never heard a more blood-curdling sound.
Helga lifted her hand to point accusingly at Lila, and began her own particular brand of magic.
"Look at you! Look at YOU! Lila Sawyer - Fuzzy Slippers - WHOEVER you may be, look at you now. Cast aside in the street like yesterday's trash! No Arnold to pick you up now, no Brainy to hide behind, nobody but you and yourself for company. How many faces you got, Lila? How many voices and masks? Think you could stand to speak to a few? Maybe a dozen; maybe all of them, I don't care. But you should care, you should be glad you have so many pretty masks to wear and people you can be, because YOU is all you're ever gonna get again. And I'll personally see to it that you get your fill. I will be the maître d in your banquet of pain, the guide clown to your funhouse hall of mirrors, gleefully busy to position every mirror to show you aaaaaaaall the sides you seem to have. I'm gonna be fucking busy, too, because lord knows there's so many Goddamn Lila Sawyers that I just don't know how you'll ever find a place to start, much less find a way to meet them all. And oh, how I cannot wait to see you finally break, Sawyer, when all that is left is the empty skull you hang these masks from and you're finally spent, no more faces and no more Lilas left to see. That is when you'll finally see me again, staring back at you, ALWAYS Helga, always me, never anything or anyone else. Helga Geraldine Pataki will be the last person you see, because from here on, it's just your dollhouse and everyone you put in it. Take a good look! I'm the last real thing you're ever gonna see."
Gerald didn't even notice when Sid and the unruly mob had shown up, but he noticed them now, equally as silent and transfixed by Helga's curse as she spat it word by word, syllable by syllable. Any thoughts of vengeful violence they might have harbored seemed momentarily suspended by the power of Helga.
It was Arnold that dispelled the mysterious silence.
"Helga," he patiently began, his voice stern and soft. "That's plenty."
Helga whirled on him, her face a twisted rictus of rage, but Gerald was shocked when her features calmed suddenly. Then he saw Arnold's face.
He'd never seen this person before. A dark countenance and terrible grief had transformed Arnold into a version of himself more grave and grim than Gerald had ever imagine possible. It was like looking into the face of a prisoner of war, a distant and angry and hollow cast to his eyes. Helga had not calmed because she saw that Arnold was stopping her from giving Lila her due; Helga had calmed because she saw that Arnold needed to take his turn.
The tall blonde young man stepped into the street, the crunch of his baseball cleats on asphalt the only sound he made. Lila didn't look up at him, but seemed to keep her eyes on his shadow as it loomed over the twisted wreckage of her form.
"You're not sorry, are you." He didn't give her time to answer. "I wish I could pretend that I don't understand you. I wish there wasn't a part of me that thought 'Yeah you know what these assholes deserve this,' because it means a part of me, a small part, somehow ended up like you. And after I see how we treat our oldest friends now, with angry mobs and pack violence and vicious gossip, maybe you were right to shake things up a little and show us all the darker sides of ourselves."
Arnold wasn't looking at Lila now. He was turning his head and his body to slowly, one by one, make eye contact with everyone in Hillwood he had grown up with.
"I thought that returning would be the greatest feeling I've ever had, but," he paused when his gaze passed Helga's, "it's been the most disappointing and ugly experience. I should have kept Hillwood in my memory where it belonged, because the way it ended up has been just...such a let down."
He was looking down at Lila again, trying not to notice the glimmer of a destroyed look of anguish in Helga's frown.
"You should have just left and come to be with me instead of this. Maybe I could have helped that darkness inside you if I had seen it sooner; it's doesn't matter now I guess. You're not someone I recognize, or ever knew. Lila Sawyer was a fiction. Helga is right about one thing, you'll have only yourself to keep yourself company from here on. I'm done with whoever you are. You're not even sorry for what you did to everyone, to Helga, or to me. What if I had actually gone through with it? And married you? Was your plan to just never tell me the truth? How could you make your vows if they were based on a lie? They wouldn't have meant anything. You would have tricked me into marrying a lie. You nearly ruined my life."
Arnold rubbed his face with a hand, pausing for a second to gather his thoughts.
"The difference between us though, is that I don't turn my back on someone who has lost everything. Even if I am included in that tally, I don't forsake my vows."
Gerald felt a little tickle of joy in his chest. Arnold wasn't all gone.
"Hey Arnold! We want Helga!" Sid barked from across the street suddenly, apparently not having caught up to the current string of events. Arnold briefly looked away from Lila to give Sid a caustic and disapproving look.
"Sid, I reckon we misread the situation a bit," Stinky slowly interjected, sensing the danger the situation seemed to offer. "We ought to let Arnold finish before we go off making our demands."
Sid said nothing but hardened his jaw, and watched. Helga stood defiantly across the street from the crowd Sid had gathered, radiating deadly confidence. She all but invited them forward to taste their destruction with the icy blue glare of her eyes.
Arnold clearly was processing the finality of what happened at last. Gerald watched his oldest friend take on the leonine nobility of a merciful Caesar, placing his hand on Lila's downcast head as if he was laying hands on her, as if he was casting some miracle.
"You're going to stay in Hillwood," Arnold finally quietly commanded. "Here, among the faces of those you betrayed. Once your property is sold, you're going to use the money to pay back what you took from everyone. And I'll know if you do as you're told because you're going to live in the boarding house where my Grandpa can watch you. I'm not taking you captive, but you know you have nowhere else to go. I was all you had left, and that's gone now. If you decide to leave Hillwood against my advice, I can't be responsible for what happens to you anymore. But as long as you continue to stay, you'll at least go without suffering any physical punishment."
He looked at the crowd again, stopping on Helga. "No one will touch you. I made a promise to keep you safe. As long as you live under my roof, you'll at least be that."
Arnold was about to continue, but Lila's hand snatched onto his knee like a claw, and she hiccupped a sobbing plea.
"Don't," she started. "Don't you dare finish me off, Arnold. Put those hands on me again and nothing we shared mattered."
Arnold looked sad as he considered her words, and stooped to scoop her up into his arms in a princess carry. She looked so small to Gerald, he suddenly realized. The predatory ferocity she bared along with her fangs and claws of terror had fallen away. The final mask, perhaps, or at least the last layer before the real Lila was exposed. A broken, empty little thing, who had to be carried.
Arnold only answered her when he started to take her away.
"I know."
The gathered crowd watched in silence as Arnold carried her back up the stoop and into the building, disappearing from sight behind the door that clicked closed quietly.
Curly stood among the crowd, as silent as the others in reverence for Arnold's judgement. Even he had felt the gravitas of the sentencing, a deadly strike if he ever saw one. Life in disgrace and servitude was his literal worst nightmare. He secretly wished Lila had the strength to survive it; he knew he would not have the necessary resolve if it came to it.
"Arnold's different."
He turned to see who had said it. Harold. Curly didn't even notice how bad Harold smelled, the observation had been so astute. He stared at Harold for a moment, recognizing the elusive tail end of an opportunity that was so subtle only his mind could catch it.
Arnold had changed, certainly. He noticed it most of all when he icily turned away from Curly's hostility at the party the day before. The younger, optimistic Arnold from his childhood memory was unflappable in the face of even the harshest cruelty. He wasn't a perfect paragon of pure hearted behavior, but when the cards were down, he sought ways to reach out to bullies and villains to reform them.
And he had just brushed Curly off entirely. Something certainly unpleasant had finally turned Arnold into someone who could walk away from a cry for help. The previous night's embarrassing confession to Rhonda had confirmed to Curly that he was in a bad way and wanted reformation, even forgiveness. He didn't have any idea how to find it.
Until now. Curly knew what he needed to do to fix his life. And if he had anything to say about it, it could help Arnold as well. And just like any good plan by Thaddeus Curly Gammelthorpe, it was just crazy enough to work.
Helga stared at the closed door of her mother's flat, swirling numbness cutting through the tempest of emotions she was currently awash in. There are only so many cathartic experiences one can have in a two day period without losing some of the awe that accompanied the shock. Still, she was trembling with the after effects of her adrenaline rush when she noticed Phoebe pulling on her wrist.
"Helga! Helga we have to go! This doesn't look like it's over!"
Helga glanced at Phoebe's hand, and the smaller girl released her as if she suddenly realized she'd been grabbing a lion's tail. Helga seemed unimpressed with Phoebe's panic. She glanced over at Gerald, who until now she hadn't noticed, but who seemed to Helga the logical place to turn.
"Hey Hairboy, will you give a girl a break and help calm Pheebs down? She ain't gonna like what I'm about to do."
Gerald, for his part, didn't disappoint. He always was the calm, cool half of the couple. Helga liked him more and more these days, but especially now when he stepped up to her request with gusto.
"C'mon baby, Helga's got this. And we got her back. You an' me, we chased this wild goose to the bitter end. Least we deserve is the fireworks at the grand finale."
Helga couldn't actually help herself, she was smirking in delight at Gerald's choice of words. Why yes, she internally purred, there will be fireworks. The kind these dim witted yokels have never seen. Helga lifted up her hands to her face, clenching her right fist into her other hand and generously cracking every joint in her fingers and knuckles, with the sort of slow threatening movements a big cat made before finishing off her prey.
"C'mon, Betsy," she growled, pushing the sleeve of her right arm up above the intimidating swell of her bicep. "It's time we got to work."
Sid and the others stood uneasily on the other end of the street, watching Helga move forward with the hunched lope of a predator towards them, clutching her arm menacingly. Half of their number immediately peeled off and scattered, wisely determining that it was best not to tangle with the looming Viking she-beast that slouched toward their gathered posse. Helga let out a deeply satisfied scoff, a honey-sweet sound that betrayed how much she was legitimately enjoying being feared again. She was big enough to admit to herself that it felt great to be a force of elemental fury, and given appropriate berth.
"S-stay where you are, Pataki," Sid warned, and a few of the gang seemed to bolster his threat with a display of solidarity. Helga snorted, unimpressed, and kept right on crunching the asphalt of the street under her baseball cleats. These cretins didn't even give me a chance to get home and change, she fumed, merely continuing her direct trajectory towards the crowd that dared menace her of all people; this sorry lot of cowardly betrayers and profiteering Buccaneers! How dare they presume to chase her down as if she was some kind of victim to be pursued! Helga ground her teeth and set her jaw, visibly snarling when she stomped the last few strides to stand nose to nose with a very unsure, very small-seeming Sid.
"Listen here, Bucko," she snarled, catching Sid by the lapel of his smarmy leather jacket and twisting it into her fist against his chest. She never noticed how small he actually was, until she was towering over him, hand nearly as big around as his arms. "There's two reasons I don't just pound you into this sidewalk and make a Sid-stencil like that Banksy idiot you're always prattling on about. One, I don't want to fuck up my hand on your thick skull, because I've got a date tonight and don't have time to spare to pick bone chips out of Ol Betsy for the next hour after the world-ending beating I would administer on you. I would pound you so hard they would name a new kind of trauma after me and put your name in every medical oddities and curiosity journal from here to Singapore. Your face would be so much tender burger meat that they'd have to rename them Sidburgers with Helga's special fist sauce."
Sid's face was blanched into the sickly bloodless expression the kind a man gets when his legs suddenly noticed that his bladder was emptying.
"Two, we're fucking adults and don't solve our differences with violence you stupid fucking piece of shit."
Helga released Sid and snorted angrily in his face, then made deeply penetrative eye contact with every remaining member of the crowd, which was mostly just their childhood friends from PS118 at this point in her monologue.
"I expect the kind of batshit crazy heel turn you all pulled from a gormless monster like Lila, but not from your sorry asses. How long have we known each other? Most of us were in preschool together, which is actually kind of insane if you think about it. I mean, we are all still friends and talk to each other; some of us even DATE and live together. Since larva we know each other, and this is how you act?"
Helga spat on the ground at Sid's feet.
"Today I got accused of being all of y'all's childhood bogeyman and chased through the alleys like a wild beast. I got hit with rocks you savages! I have A FAIR AND DELICATE COMPLEXION, you assholes, you can't hit me with ROCKS!"
Helga noticed she had begun to shrilly shriek, and so took a moment to merely grumble like a distant thunderhead, promising the sudden immediate outburst of destructive lightning. After a pause, she threw her hands up in the air.
"And you all chased me down to here to, what, lynch me? Where's your torches and pitchforks, if I'm the proverbial monster here? Were any of you prepared to carry out this ramshackle vigilante mission to Get Helga? Or were you all just stupidly pulled into the maelstrom of Sid's half-cocked demagoguery and joined along for the ride? My money's on the latter, though I bet you all thought it felt like the former. Well, what do you have to say for yourselves now?!"
Helga kept her fury in check for what felt like the trillionth time today, every instinct in her goddess heart screaming for her to grab a foreign object and start bashing some skulls. The awe-inspiring effect of her barely restrained fury seemed to have a pacifying effect on the crowd, most notably Sid, who had a pained frown on his face.
"We're sorry, Helga," Eugene chirped up, deep remorse pulled into the ginger lines of his face, polka-dotted with freckles. Helga turned slightly to see him crossing the street to join the crowd. Even though he had been one of the ones that had listened to her, believed her story, and helped her escape this very same rabid vigilante crowd, he was still magnanimous enough to get the process started for the rest of them.
"Yeah, I don't rightly know what in tarnation came over me," Stinky drawled, looking sheepish and embarrassed for his part in the blood hunt. She looked down at Sid, who was hesitating, but as the apologies started to wash in from everyone behind him, the short little punk finally rolled his shoulders and spoke.
"Yeah, guess I fucked it up pretty bad this time. You know how much dirt Lila had on me? I panicked. But you are right about one thing, there wasn't any way this could end well. I don't know what I was thinking. I'm sorry. I owe you a big one for this fuckup, Helga."
Helga snorted with a small measure of satisfaction. Sid owing her a big one was something she could be fine with. She thrust her hand out and sighed with exasperation.
"Fine, you owe me one big fat fucking favor to call in at a time of my choosing, and I forgive your dumbshit mob stunt, and we just go back to normal. Capiche?"
Everyone in the crowd released a tense breath when Sid grabbed Helga's hand firmly and smirked. "Capiche."
There, that problem is handled, now for the harpy in that house with my man, Helga started to turn back towards the house.
"Just a minute though," Sid interjected. "What's gonna happen next? Is Arnold really gonna just take Lila to his old place like that's that?"
Helga shrugged, arms up to the sky while she stormed across the street and up the stairs of the small stoop.
"You got me, Sid, but I aim to find out."
Lila crossed her arms over her lap passively when Arnold laid her carefully on the couch, eyes downcast and expression mutely blank. Arnold stood in front of her, unmoving after gently laying her to rest. He searched the blank, flat expense of her forehead, searching for some wrinkle or hint of emotion. Something he could identify as human.
Lila just stared down at his knees, lips a plump line of silence on her current mask of defeat.
Arnold felt the child in him that loved Lila so passionately wailing in despair and disbelief, even as the betrayed adult in him felt sick with passionate outrage. Lila had been such an enormous, important figure in his life. His first girlfriend. Not his first unrequited crush, but perhaps his strongest. Eventually, one of his best friends, a confidant. Lila was so much to him, and it had all been a lie. Arnold didn't want to believe it had all been a lie, but the truth came from her very own lips.
He was shattered. What use did he have for love now if it did this? If it ruined everything?
Exhausted, simply from being, Arnold moved over and fell back onto the couch next to Lila, his head rolling back to lean on the floral-print cushions. He squeezed his eyes shut, covering his face with a hand, struggling with the storm of emotion that was shredding his insides like a sandstorm pelting his tender guts with microscopic shards of glass.
Emotion swelled his throat shut, and he heard himself start to sob.
Lila's head lifted and she turned to look at him, Arnold noticed in the periphery of his blurred, tear-choked vision. He couldn't really make out what she looked like, with his eyes squinted nearly closed and drowned in Sorrow's gifted waters.
She didn't speak, but he felt her hand touch his shoulder, calmly, gently. Arnold felt his chest buckle and choke with a spasm of agonized crying, the contact like being stuck with a block of ice and burned with a branding iron all at once. It was horrible to be touched by her, it made his stomach flip and churn and it made his nausea rush up to the back of his throat. And yet, he hated himself, because he so desperately wanted her to comfort him in his devastation, he weakly, submissively fell into the touch.
Arnold folded over, crying as he went, and fell with his face in Lila's partially deadened lap.
He spent a minute or so simply emptying his vessel of remorse in this way, clasping his hands over his face in prideful shame while he filled the cracks between his fingers with bitter tears, the wail of the dead hauntingly escaping him between deeply heaved breaths of panic. Lila stroked the back of his head, fingers slithering between wild locks of leonine blonde hair, disgusting him with how good it felt to have her kindness when he ought to be hating her.
She even hummed, gently, a fond tune she used to hum him on long phone calls in the middle of the night in Argentina when the years of Helga's silence had finally gotten to him. The choice stung him acutely, and the sheer gall of her to pay him insult even while she tenderly stroked his head in patient forgiving gentleness just knocked Arnold even further off his kilter.
Arnold pushed off her lap, anger creasing his handsome features, tears ugly in their seat of the lines of his face. Hateful crying was not a good look for Arnold.
"How could you do this, Lila?" he hoarsely demanded.
"Do you want the real answer, or do you want me to make you feel ever so much better?" Lila's neutral expression was tinted with the slightest bit of amused pity, it occurred to Arnold.
"Is there a real answer?", anger shook in Arnold's reply.
"Oh truth is ever so much relative, I'm afraid, Arnold my dear," she chided, a patronizing smile on her pretty lips. "But in this case I have a real answer for you, or an answer that you will like so ever so much you will want it to be real, and maybe even come to believe some day. The mind is a fascinating con artist, Arnold, better than I could ever hope to be."
Arnold shook his head, just not sure how he could have ever come to trust this...this demon sitting next to him.
"You probably compare me to some sort of monster or demon in your thoughts," she mused, looking back down at her lap. Arnold nearly choked, it was like she was reading his mind. "And I'm not reading your mind," she chuckled, freaking the emotionally distraught Arnold out further, "you're just the easiest to read. Plus, it makes sense. I did some ever so awful things. Told some ever so terrible lies."
Arnold was ready to leave. She stopped him with her green eyes, steadily looking deep into him.
"But the truth is pretty boring, and human, and it won't make you feel better. It will ruin things with Helga ever so much, I think. It will haunt you. Normally, that would be ever so fine with me. But the Queen is captured; your prisoner will merrily accept your demands, and thank you for her comfortable cell. If you demand the truth, I'll smile while I tell you something that will hurt you. But I prefer to tell you one last little tiny white lie, and give you something you won't get otherwise."
"What is that," Arnold asked breathlessly, somehow tugged under her rhetorical spell so effortlessly. How does she do that? he wondered, amazed at her skill.
"Closure." She shrugged with a wan smile, hands folding again in her lap. "The ability to move on with a clean conscience. Something precious, I dare say, considering your imminent date with Helga. You don't want the details hanging over your head. It might be a ridiculous thing to say, but trust me when I say you want me to lie one last time."
Arnold was struck with how empty and cynical she was. How boldly she determined that she knew best for him, even totally exposed and defeated as she was. Lila Sawyer - whoever that was - remained true to herself at last, in that she hadn't stopped working him. Arnold didn't think she could.
"There's a third option," Arnold quietly murmured.
"Hm? Mystery door number three? I'm ever so curious, Arnold, what is your simple, beautiful mind thinking, my darling?"
Her sweet nothings made his stomach churn.
"I can just stand up and walk out, and deny you this last little...manipulation. I can quit your game, and go outside, and never come back into your life again."
The stern strength of his declaration stood like stone between the two former lovers. Lila's face returned to a bored-looking mute mask, her gaze flitting over his shoulder and focusing elsewhere.
"Suit yourself," she quietly clucked. "Ignorance is bliss, I suppose. Enjoy your date."
Arnold looked across the couch at her, tried to land eye contact while she stared past him. Lila was gone. His Lila maybe never existed. Maybe she did in some way. Did he want to know? Was it important to him that he know the truth?
Arnold realized then, that he had a bad history of leaving behind girls and regret, and things left unanswered. He imagined the havoc a left-behind-Lila could wreck on his heart, and knew there was no place for it. Answers were required.
He couldn't afford another decade of "what if?"
Arnold steadied himself with a deep breath, wiping his face clean with his sleeves. There was little dignity in the act, but he didn't have Lila's immaculate mask. He was guileless, and could not help but openly display the ugly truth of her hurt in his face. Or his tears.
"No, you are right about one thing. Being ignorant is just running off again. I choose fight."
Lila turned to regard him, her eyes impassively matching his gaze. "So which is it?"
"I want truth and beauty."
Lila sneered. "Beauty. The truth is ugly. That's what I tried to shield you from for so many years, stupid boy. But my efforts failed. I failed."
"Truth is beauty, Lila," he asserted, needing to believe those words more than he meant them. Lila seemed to see the desperation in him, and relaxed her composure.
"Truth it is."
"The ever so sad fact of the matter is that Lila Sawyer, as you knew her, never existed. She is a fabrication, a ghostly image I conjured up in spite of myself, seeking some new absolution for a youth misspent in sin. I molded her speech carefully, full of Ever So and sweetness, a lilt and a song to carry the sweetest lie I ever told. I built her sense of humor, laugh by laugh, and let my creation bubble free when the good times came. I avoided deepening my bonds; with you most ardently and passionately like-liking me, I had no choice but to retract. The truth is, I thought you were too simple, and too sweet. A horrible match for a mask wearer like myself. What if you got close enough to notice the illusion? I was young and inexperienced at mask-wearing those days, and unsure of the fit I had moulded to my face. I couldn't be too careful, and a young Arnold in like-like with me was too dangerous to allow.
"I can see by the frown on your handsome face you think this is some kind of abhorrent, monstrous confession. Dear Arnold, everyone wears masks. Even Helga. Even you. What about the Arnold that Helga met before he told her he was engaged to Lila Sawyer? That was quite a mask until Helga's fist shattered it. What about the mask Helga wore those ten years of silence? Don't you know, my ever so stupid love, how badly she was shrieking out to you behind it? How much she said behind her mask of silence?
"I simply made mine on purpose.
"And I wore it well. It became comfortable after a time. And maybe, if I am honest, the line between the mask wearer and mask became to minute as to be virtually invisible. But even something that is almost zero isn't quite zero. I could remove the mask at will, and it never became my true face.
"The mask of Fuzzy Slippers was another false face I wore. Helga has it right, that ever so clever girl, I have face after face I wear that any given person might encounter. I heard about a Japanese concept about this, that basically a person has three faces they wear in life. The face your family knows is the most intimate, followed by the face friends can see, and lastly the face strangers know. It's similar except that I just have more layers of separation than most people. There's more discrete partitions in my world than family, friends, and strangers. My enemies see a different mask, my victims yet another, my lovers a private mask I've worn only once, and so on. Fuzzy Slippers was a bit more of an alter ego, but you can really just consider it a mask I wore for myself.
"I hate myself.
"Fuzzy Slippers is the mask I made to wear instead of having to look at the real Lila Sawyer anymore.
"It didn't matter if the mask was cruel and dangerous and sought to damage and destroy our friends' reputation, that was the cost of the mask. I paid it, eagerly emptying my purse into the tollman's expectant sack. Nothing less could distract the awful exposed nerve of the real me.
"I'm not sorry for Fuzzy Slippers. She's who got me here alive in the war against myself.
"Do you want to know the one time I allowed the real Lila Sawyer to come out since you met me, totally out, without restraint? I'll tell you how cowardly I am, and I'll empty your heart of affection of me and replace it with guilt. You chose fight. You chose truth and beauty.
"Your price is your happiness with Helga.
"As I saw your broken bleeding body resting with absolute cold stillness against the rocks that rose like teeth to clash against a waterfall you were too unlucky to safely climb, I let her slip out. Rightly, that should be where you died.
"If Lila Sawyer hadn't come out, you'd be dead.
"She's the only one who has rights to sacrifice this vessel, this broken body I would have married you with and allowed you to pleasure yourself with every night if you'd wanted. She's the only one who could decide to scatter the protective measures aside and throw herself down the waterfall with frightened abandon.
"So I see your body, see the blood, and there's ever so much. I could have walked away, you know? Or ran for help knowing it was in vain. Anything but risk my life. I'm a coward remember? I can't even risk the very sight of my real personality out of fear.
"But death stares at me and says 'I will kill you if you try to save him," and I laughed as Lila Sawyer Unmasked and careened down the waterfall and shouted, 'Come, Death!'
"I saved you, somehow. I had extra pitons and the temporary invincible strength of someone who was being human for the first time since their mother died. I was letting you in my heart and the wretched thing would soon stop beating for allowing you entry.
"The only reason I lived was the random chance of a change of wind. A butterfly flapped its wings in India and so I lived. I should be dead. Lila Sawyer certainly is. She died when she hauled you up over the rim safely, muscles screaming in a way I pray I will be able to feel again someday. She died when she looked at your unconscious face, white with shock, and fell back over the edge from the slick mud, and watched her hand release the climbing rope. She died when she hit the first precipice that took my legs, too short of a fall for the safety line to catch me. She died when the rescuers came, and saved me without effort.
"Lila Sawyer, may she rest in peace, died saving the only person she loved. And she left me in her place in these broken limbs and messy heart and pile of masks. I would not let you escape. You had to be mine. It was not only in your best interest, it was my right. My weregild.
"Fuzzy Slippers became the real Lila Sawyer. Everything else was the lie."
Lila broke eye contact with Arnold at last, looking over his shoulder at Helga who had come into the house and the room sometime in he middle of Lila's speech.
Arnold didn't notice the fleeting change, because Lila slapped her gaze back onto his.
"That's why, Arnold," she continued, knowing her audience was there to secure its victory, and thus knowing she had nothing to lose, "you won't end up with Helga in the end. The guilt, that terrible monster inside you, it will eat you with unending appetite. You will try loving her, maybe, you might even date her for a time if you are especially stupid, and hate living. That she beat me is ever so true. It was my total loss. But your heart was not the prize. It wasn't hers or mine to begin with. Your heart belongs to this world, to goodness itself. And you can try ever so hard to forget this guilt and live without my sacrifice in your shadow, and part of me truly wishes you could be free of me forever, but you won't. And anyway, you doubted Helga. You believed me. Even without the guilt your future with her was decided the instant that choice was made."
Arnold was silent up until this exact point.
"Shut up about Helga, SHUT UP ABOUT HELGA!" he roared. "Helga has nothing to do with your betrayal, or the disgusting way you treated our friends!"
Lila jumped a little, surprised at the sudden force of Arnold's shout. He wasn't one to yell usually, it caught her off guard. He seemed ready to burst. Lila glanced at Helga briefly, recognized the same surprise on her face.
"And how DARE you try to guilt me for saving my life! You have no right to put me in that position, to hamstring me like that!"
"I told you the truth had a price," Lila almost laughed in her mocking reply, perhaps amused at the shock in his reaction. She'd warned him, after all.
"That's not a price. That's a death sentence." Arnold was rising to stand, his hands shaking.
"If life guilt-ridden by your life-debt to the traditional wretch you cast out to catch her death in the snow means you will die, then I suppose you should prepare to greet death." Lila's tone was patronizing, cold. She measured the weight of every word as she laid them out.
She was laying it on thick, she knew, but the effect it had on Arnold was exactly what she wanted. She watched Helga twitch in fury in her place far back in the entryway of the house, a private smirking smile almost daring her to interrupt.
However, she noticed that Arnold had calmed suddenly, his hands fists at his sides.
"I don't owe you. You didn't save me. Lila Sawyer did."
"Arnold I'm ever so sure I don't know what you are trying to imply. Lila Sawyer sits before you." She batted her eyelashes at him prettily, mockingly.
"No, you said so yourself. Lila Sawyer died when she saved Arnold Shortman. She sacrificed herself and paid the ultimate price. She left Fuzzy Slippers in her wake. That's all I see sitting before me. An empty husk where Lila Sawyer used to be, and the pile of masks she wore heaped up in her place."
"Very clever, Arnold. Maybe you'll be able to convince yourself of that in time. You know the truth now, anyhow. And my point remains: it's over for you and Helga. It never had a chance." She checked her fingernails, emotionally empty now, discarded the last bits of affection she had for the boy who broke her heart in a nasty act of casual cruelty.
"I know," Arnold sighed. Lila looked up, shocked. She saw Helga standing there, silent, eyes wide and locked on Arnold.
"I know, and I guess I knew for awhile. I didn't trust her, you were right. I was sitting in this house trying to figure out how I could forgive her, how I could maybe act like it never happened or I didn't know. I was wondering if I could look into her lying face for the rest of my life. I knew I couldn't do it. I knew I wasn't...strong enough for her."
Lila watched with her jaw open in a shocked smile as Arnold slowly sank to the couch again and put his head in his hands. She could hardly believe the dramatic irony. She lost the battle when too much had been overhead because of Helga. And now Helga would lose the war when she overheard too much because of Lila! It was almost too rich!
Lila couldn't help it. She laughed.
A rich, bubbly laugh, velvet and silk, tinted with all the malice and schadenfreude that delighted her at the utter desolation Arnold's words would have on Helga. Arnold snapped his face up to look at her, shock and disbelief on his face. He saw where Lila was gawking, now cackling with delight, and whipped his head around.
Nothing. Nobody there.
Lila had watched Helga quietly, mutely turn from the scene in front of her. She knew Helga had heard the first delighted notes of her laughter before she silently closed the front door. Lila knew Helga had heard the cackling start when her white ponytails bobbed down out of view from the front door window as she escaped down the stoop.
Lila knew the war was won, and Arnold would find out the hard way.
"What the fuck is so funny, Lila?" Arnold spat in a disgusted tone.
"Oh, oh dear, I'm ever so sorry. I...I didn't expect you to agree with me! It just, it surprised me so much! I was sure you'd hate me so much forever and ever, and you'd never admit a single thing I ever said was right again." She wiped the tears of humor from the corners of her eyes.
"Lila, we're done," he said simply. "I'm done being your fiance, I'm done being your friend. I'm done knowing you. You'll live under my roof. There's your weregild. You'll eat my grandmother's teriyaki turkey thanksgiving dinners. You'll endure my grandfather's hyperactive bowels. You'll deal with Mr Kokoshka, and that's punishment enough for a lifetime. But I won't see you there. I won't acknowledge you as anything but a tenant I have to modify the boarding house to be wheelchair accessible for. Don't call, don't write. Don't ask about me. And leave Helga alone."
"Oh you don't have to worry about me and her, Arnold. That fight is over." She could barely contain her cheshire grin. Total victory was so sweet when it was this pyrrhic.
"Good. I'm going to go tell Miriam to help you get ready to move. I expect your things will get moved pretty quickly. You're done with harassing the Patakis to get at Helga.
That stung. Lila tried not to show it, but she had to admit, even if she had tried to get close to the Patakis primarily as a vessel to antagonize Helga, she had grown legitimately fond of them.
"When I leave, I'm going to go shower, and wash this and you out of my life forever. Then I'm going to put on a brave face, smile real big, and go have a date with Helga. The one she deserves. The one I promised her. Got it?"
"I'm ever so sure that you'll do exactly that, Arnold." Lila replied with a cheery tune in her voice.
Arnold couldn't figure this creature out, Lila could tell. He stared down at her with a confused look on his face, like he just expected her to apologize and start sobbing her eyes out and beg for forgiveness. Lila was not about to debase herself like that, not when she'd really won.
Arnold made a disgusted sound, shook his head, and stalked up the stairs out of the room.
"Goodbye, Lila Sawyer."
Goodbye, Arnold Shortman, Lila thought, and closed her eyes with a smile.
Finally, she was done.
Lila Sawyer folded her hands in a relaxed position in her lap, breathing steady as she recalled every detail of Helga's destroyed face with precise attention to detail. It would be the best, last memory she had of her time as Lila Sawyer for the rest of her life. She could reply the memory back again and again with nearly perfect recall. She loved the moment when she could see Helga's heart rip in half etched across her features the most.
Lila Sawyer was finally herself again, alone, and no one could hurt her loveless heart again.
A/N Part Deux: Don't hate me if it's another nine months before I update again.