Guilt was all consuming and an emotion people don't talk about nearly as much. It felt like guilt was even more powerful than love itself. Being blinded by love, while euphoric and comforting, was not nearly as raging as the sharp and painful wave of guilt crashing all around you. Was love really worth any of the guilt that coincidentally always came with it?

Helga sat on the floor next to her bed staring at the wall for what seemed like an eternity. She had managed to successfully cast Phoebe and Jayla away as they were waiting for her in her room when she was back from her dinner with Lila. They had many questions for her but Helga dodged every one of them. Helga had lost the plot to her own revenge story, what was once a plan to ruin a wedding and have Arnold pay for his mistake turned into Helga slowly drifting off into madness, and once again falling for this lover's curse.

At the end of the day Helga did not want to be caught in the middle of an uneven love triangle, but there she was, trapped like a pig to the slaughter. There was really only one thing she could do, and that was do what she did once before, run and this time never return. She had made her mark in Hillwood and it was time for her to accept her fate and move on, and most importantly end her reign of terror.

A faint knock came from her door and before she had a chance to stand up, Olga was already waddling toward the bed with a giant smile on her face. "Hi baby sister," she announced.

"Hey."

"Can I talk to you for a moment?"

Helga cut her off before she could keep going. "If this is about me coming home drunk, I'm sorry and it won't happen again."

"No it's not that," Olga reassured her. "You should sit."

Helga came up next to her and Olga placed her hands on top of hers and smiled a warm Olga smile. "Helga, Liam has a new job opportunity."

"That's awesome, he deserves better."

"The thing is, it's in London's West End. They're letting him work remotely until the baby comes, after that they want him to start work in London."

Helga's mind went blank. Moving to London? It wasn't something she particularly wanted, but for Paul, she'd go anywhere. "Okay, that's fine, let's go."

Olga's face softened, it was familiar, but not in a good way. It was the face she made when she said goodbye to her before leaving Helga in Hillwood as a teenager and returning home. "Oh Helga…"

She caught on quickly, that sadness was hard to miss. "You mean, without me."

"Baby sister, you have your whole life in New York, your school, your friends, it wouldn't be fair for me to ask you to come."

Olga didn't want her to come, after 5 years she was ready to leave her behind. "Forget about me, what about Paul huh? What about him? What about that little thing you have growing inside you? What about them? You expect them to fend for themselves? I made a promise to Paul that I would be there to protect him, always." Helga caught herself starting to shed a tear, thought she didn't want to look weak, this was her family now, and once again she'd be left alone and forgotten.

"Helga, Paul is loved, he is safe, he will always be. I don't want you to live your life thinking you owe us anything. I want you to make your own choices and just live."

Live, Helga was laughably horrible at that. Was she expected to be on her own when she constantly made terrible choices unprovoked? Olga was setting her up for ruin. "I can't afford to live in New York."

"We will leave you the condo, Helga. We might even rent out the extra room. You and Phoebe can stay, and you guys can come visit, and we will visit you. This isn't a goodbye."

"It sure feels like it."

"I feel like there's something else that's bothering you."

Olga had a way of always knowing when Helga was hiding something. It was a weird big sister sixth sense. There were very little things Helga could hide from her, but she couldn't tell her the truth, that she had not only had sex with her ex boyfriend but had developed weird feelings for him against her will. No, there was absolutely no way she could tell her the truth.

"Is it the wedding?" She asked.

Fuck. She always knew. "What?"

"Helga, you can't honestly think I wouldn't know seeing your ex love get married would hurt you. I'm surprised it's taken you this long to accept it."

Helga was shocked, it truly sounded worse when said out loud. Was she really so stupid to believe that this wouldn't phase her one bit? "I don't…"

"Is that why you came home drunk?"

"What's drunk?" Paul's curious high pitched voice asked from the doorway.

Olga gasped dramatically at the sight. "Young man, it is bedtime, what are you doing up?"

Before Olga could go to him, Paul ran to Helga's arms, knowing that he was always safe with his favorite tried not to get emotional, but if her family moved to London she would miss Paul's hugs and watching him grow up.

"Arnold is downstairs," he announced to the room.

Helga and Olga looked at each other in surprise. She was not expecting that one. Criminy, she was not ready to face him. "I'm not here, gremlin. Tell him I moved to Siberia."

Before Helga could say anything else, Paul ran out her room and came back in pushing Arnold inside. His face was red as tomato and he couldn't look Helga in the eye. What was he doing here, especially so late? This had to be crossing a line, if there were even any more lines they could cross.

"Get out," Helga ordered.

Though she was talking to Arnold, Olga took Paul by the hand and escorted him out of the room. "Aunt Helga needs some alone time, buddy. Let's get you back to bed."

"Goodnight Arnold," Paul said.

"Goodnight Paul."

Olga shut the door behind her. "I told you to get out," Helga reiterated.

"We need to talk." He had his hands in his pockets and he still wasn't looking her in the eyes. This felt so weird. Why did seeing him always make her feel weird now? Like she just wanted to get back to a point where she could look at him and feel nothing. She wanted to punch him in the gut, maybe that would be what finally drove him away.

"You and I can't be seen together anymore. OK, we need to stop this before anything else happens, since we clearly can't be trusted alone."

"Please, Helga, I need to talk to you. I'm like totally freaking out here and I feel like everyone hates me, and the wedding is soon, and I don't think I can do this. Not if there's any hope with you."

It was time to rip the bandage off, she couldn't let him have any more hope for them. She didn't want to ruin Lila's life, if she ended things now, then maybe they could go back to how things were. She could disappear again, and this time never come back. "I can't drop out of the wedding, but I don't want to see you. There is nothing between us Arnold, there will never be. We don't have a future together. You might as well just forget about it."

"You don't mean that," he said it so confidently that Helga almost believed him.

"Arnold, please just go," Helga said in a low voice. "My family is here, this is not a good time."

"I'm sorry for barging in and blindsiding you, but please I can't talk to anyone else and I just need to say how I feel. I can't keep thing bottled up like you."

She groaned. "Listen, the walls here are paper thin and I don't want Paul or any of my family to hear what happened."

Arnold perked up at that. It meant that Helga was at least willing to talk. "I know somewhere we can go."

It felt like they had been driving for hours when they finally made it to the hillside parking lot at the entrance of a hiking trail. They had driven a town over and from that height they could see Hillwood below them. They didn't talk on the ride there, Helga was just staring out the window in a melodramatic sort of way. Arnold concentrated on driving the old Packard and tried to keep his eyes on the road and not get distracted seeing how the moonlight backlit her face angelically.

There was a bench at the top of the hill to enjoy the look-out. Arnold turned off the car and and turned to his confused passenger. "No one is going to see us here," he promised.

He got out of the car and walked over to the other side to open Helga's door. She looked at him with a typical Helga scowl that he grew to like. She rolled her eyes before she shoved him out of the way to get out of the car. "It's freezing tonight."

She was rubbing her bare arms trying to warm herself up. They walked out and Helga didn't grab a sweater on the way out. Arnold opened the door behind Helga's and found a crew neck sweater he had stashed away back there for emergencies. He handed it to her and she reluctantly took it and put it on. It fit her oversized and her hands were lost inside the sweater. The bottom hem hit her mid thigh, swallowing up her shorts. It looked like all she was wearing was the sweater. There was no use in trying to convince himself that she didn't look absolutely adorable.

"Don't look at me you weirdo." she growled.

"My apologies Miss Pataki," he joked.

Helga sat on the far right of the bench and Arnold took the left, but he didn't sit as far away from her as she did. The view was his favorite part. It made him feel like he had the whole world at his feet. He hadn't brought anyone here yet. His class came to this hiking trail on a school field trip a few months ago and it stuck with him.

"I'm sorry for getting so drunk and jealous," Arnold finally said. "And kissing you."

"You should be sorry, you're getting married," Helga reminded him.

"I only proposed to Lila because I thought you were never coming back. It's always been you," he assured her.

Helga turned her head to finally look at him. Her eyes were glossy as if she was trying to hold back tears. Arnold knew her very well, and even though she might have felt that way, Helga would never cry in front of him if she could help it. "Do you think that somehow makes me feel better? Like that's any consolation, Arnold. You think I can just drop everything for you. You keep forgetting that this has been torturing me for years."

Arnold angled himself to face her completely. She was looking him directly in the eyes, that firing angry stare that brought him back to their adolescence. "You forget you disappeared off the face of the earth."

"Arnold, I have loved you since I was a toddler, I waited for you. I always waited for you, and you picked Lila." Arnold was stumped, he didn't know what to say. "Oh did you forget? Of course you did. When you transferred back from San Lorenzo, you chose Lila, you started dating my best friend. I had waited for you, I was still madly and completely in love with you, and you chose her…You chose her twice. And you expect me to feel bad about what I did? I had to put myself first, because not one person in this hellhole of a town ever did. I'll always be second best, so don't say it was always me, because we both know that's a lie."

"Will you ever let me prove that my love for you was stronger than anything I ever felt for Lila?"

"It couldn't have been that strong if you still after everything chose to ask her for her hand in holy matrimony, Arnold."

Arguing with Helga was impossible, she would always win."This isn't fair, you and I know we feel this way for each other, and you don't even want to give it a chance."

Helga scoffed, "are you joking? Arnold, even if you call off your wedding and we start dating, you don't think it will hurt me knowing the entire town would know I'm a fucking whore? None of our mutual friends will ever speak to us again. You're basically sentencing us to social exile." Helga took a big breath and paused for a moment, as if gathering all her thoughts to compose the perfect argument to finally shut him up. "Arnold, when I got my depression, I slit my wrists in the bathtub. I felt like I was drowning and not good enough. Talking to you on the phone only made me feel worse because even though you were my boyfriend, I couldn't have you. I was in New York alone and not having you there broke me. There came a point where I finally realized the problem was you . I don't ever want to feel that way anymore. So sorry if I'm not jumping for joy waiting for you to call off your wedding."

Arnold was finally silenced by her words. She hadn't told him the full story of what happened to her, he wasn't expecting it to be so graphic. He had done this to her. Fuck he had done this to the person he loved th most. It was like everything he did just hurt everyone around him. He wished he could reset his life and start over but undoing it was impossible.

"I don't want to marry Lila, but I don't know if I can tell her. My mom hates me. Gerald isn't talking to me. You hate me. I don't know what I'm doing with my life."

"You know how I feel all the fucking time," she announced "Feeling like the scum of the earth and like you will never have that happy ending people talk about."

"We had that once." He reminisced on the memory of their first kiss (well the first one in their teenage years). He remembered that overwhelming excitement of getting the girl and feeling like he was on top of the world.

"For a little while. Being 17 and living for the bliss of the moment, never knowing that life would hit us like a bulldozer. That childlike wonder was still present in us, feeding us hope for dreams that never came." She brought him back to reality. "Then we woke up adults in a world with every intention to make us suffer until our inevitable and comforting death."

Arnold smiled a half smile even at the idea of death. She noticed him do that and her eyes started shifting. "The one thing I won't forgive you for is not becoming a writer. You have such a talent you know."

"Well you haven't read the 3 journals I have full of dark prose and metaphors about love and death. Not sure there's a market of mentally ill and masochistic individuals willing to read the fragments of my mind that should have never been put to paper."

They sat in silence for a few moments. All they could hear was the wind blowing around them and the occasional airplane over their heads. The isolation was actually the exact comfort they both needed.

"Helga, if you don't want to pursue a relationship with me again, do you think we could ever be just friends? Like in high school?" He didn't know why he asked that when he already knew the answer.

"No," Helga admitted. "I could never look at you in a strictly platonic way Arnold. My love for you will never really go away. So let's be civil, continue with this wedding, and once you've said I do , I'll go back to New York and maybe I'll unblock you on instagram. But I'll never be able to be in your life and see you build a family with Lila, it will shatter me."

"I don't know if I can go on with the wedding," he sighed.

"Well that's your choice, but don't do it with the hope we'll get back tougher. I'm not waiting for you anymore."