Fanfiction - Hey Arnold! - Trying - Chapter 2
Title: Trying
Fandom/Universe: Hey Arnold!
Character(s): Helga, Arnold
Rating: Teen
Chapters: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12
It takes her a good twenty minutes to drag him from her stoop to the couch. She spends another five struggling to lift him up and onto said couch.
“Jesus, what have you been eating, Footballhead - bricks?” She grunts as she finally manages to roll him onto the sofa. Arnold does not respond to the insult, or anything at all really. He’s out.
She’s not really sure what to do now.
“I am not really sure what to do now,” She says aloud as she rubs her elbows. She decides to sit down on the floor beside the couch and look up. Not the most active plan in the world, but she doesn’t really trust herself to make any real decisions at the moment. She moves from rubbing her elbows to running both hands up and down the entirety of her arms. She has goosebumps.
And she’s shaking.
Crying too.
“Dammit” She whispers as she sobs into her hands. “Dammit dammit damn fuck.” She realizes that she’s incoherent, but Arnold doesn’t seem to mind (he doesn’t really seem to be doing much of anything save breathing actually). She feels like her whole world has been tipped on its side and is also spinning in circles at an impossibly fast rate - oh, and it's on fire. She’s panting like she’s just run a stupid marathon and she can’t stop crying.
She bolts into the kitchen and doesn’t turn around to look at him.
It’s times like this that she wishes that she could drink life away like her mother did, because she imagines everything would be a whole hell of a lot easier to deal with. She is not prepared for this.
She lets her head fall back against the wall.
“You’re supposed to be dead, you idiot.” She breathes as the tears leak down her cheeks. “You can’t be lying comatose in my living room, because you died three years ago, Arnold.” She remembers the day she heard the news all too well.
She’d been late for work that day too.
And then, right before she’d managed to make it out the door, the call came through. Phoebe, of course.
Her best friend had only managed to get two words out before Helga understood.
“Helga…he’s….”
She’d hung up before Phoebe could say anything else.
Now, here she is three years later with a rather not-dead Arnold passed out on her living room sofa.
Crimeny.
She steals the tiniest sliver of a glance back towards the couch to assure herself that she isn’t dreaming.
She’s not.
But she doesn’t really feel any better.
She’d put him behind her as well she could. Even before he ‘died’, she’d basically given up all hope on Arnold and her whole entire little dream world. After all, she hadn’t even spoken to the guy since he moved away back at the end of seventh grade.
(right before she’d cut off all her hair, she remembers)
And even before then…. It’d been nothing but a fantasy. That’s why they’d broken up back when they were just kids, right? She wasn’t Lila and he wasn’t perfect and they kept expecting each other to be something else and how was that fair?
But still, there’d always been this… something. She still doesn’t really know what. But it kept her moving forward.
As long as there was Arnold there was hope.
And then he went and got himself killed (or so they’d all thought) and even though she hadn’t talked to the boy (man) in over seven years it still felt like somebody had ripped out her insides and ran them into the ground.
The shaking has stopped for the most part, but her breathing is still sort of uneven. She gets herself a glass of water and tries to focus her mind on anything other than Arnold.
It doesn’t really work.
She sighs heavily as she makes her way back towards the couch. She plops down on the ground beside him and rests her head on her arm. She absentmindedly watches him breathe in and out while her brain shuts down almost completely.
“It’s like you’ve come back from the dead.” She says softly to her very first love.
Then, ever so slowly, she lifts her other arm up and moves it towards his face. His hair is falling onto his eyelids and she never thought that she’d see him again.
Not in a billion years.
She’s about to brush a few wayward strands of his hair aside, when his eyes flutter open.
Helga stops dead, her hand still hovering over the top of his forehead.
Arnold is awake.
a/n: Depressing, eh? Oh well, it happens. There's some bare-bones as far as backstory goes now, which is pretty sweet I suppose.
Oh and the next chapter is where things will finally start HAPPENING. Are you excited for that? I AM.
Also, I'm pretty sure chapters are going to end up getting longer as I go along. So uh, you've been warned I suppose.
And, thank you guys so much for the feedback so far! I wasn't really expecting more than like one or two people to even notice this.
Oh, I'll also probably have bits of extra stuff to show you involving the story, because I'm a super visual person so I like to sketch out parts of scenes and things like character design will come along too, because I have fun with that. :3
Fandom/Universe: Hey Arnold!
Character(s): Helga, Arnold
Rating: Teen
Chapters: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12
It takes her a good twenty minutes to drag him from her stoop to the couch. She spends another five struggling to lift him up and onto said couch.
“Jesus, what have you been eating, Footballhead - bricks?” She grunts as she finally manages to roll him onto the sofa. Arnold does not respond to the insult, or anything at all really. He’s out.
She’s not really sure what to do now.
“I am not really sure what to do now,” She says aloud as she rubs her elbows. She decides to sit down on the floor beside the couch and look up. Not the most active plan in the world, but she doesn’t really trust herself to make any real decisions at the moment. She moves from rubbing her elbows to running both hands up and down the entirety of her arms. She has goosebumps.
And she’s shaking.
Crying too.
“Dammit” She whispers as she sobs into her hands. “Dammit dammit damn fuck.” She realizes that she’s incoherent, but Arnold doesn’t seem to mind (he doesn’t really seem to be doing much of anything save breathing actually). She feels like her whole world has been tipped on its side and is also spinning in circles at an impossibly fast rate - oh, and it's on fire. She’s panting like she’s just run a stupid marathon and she can’t stop crying.
She bolts into the kitchen and doesn’t turn around to look at him.
It’s times like this that she wishes that she could drink life away like her mother did, because she imagines everything would be a whole hell of a lot easier to deal with. She is not prepared for this.
She lets her head fall back against the wall.
“You’re supposed to be dead, you idiot.” She breathes as the tears leak down her cheeks. “You can’t be lying comatose in my living room, because you died three years ago, Arnold.” She remembers the day she heard the news all too well.
She’d been late for work that day too.
And then, right before she’d managed to make it out the door, the call came through. Phoebe, of course.
Her best friend had only managed to get two words out before Helga understood.
“Helga…he’s….”
She’d hung up before Phoebe could say anything else.
Now, here she is three years later with a rather not-dead Arnold passed out on her living room sofa.
Crimeny.
She steals the tiniest sliver of a glance back towards the couch to assure herself that she isn’t dreaming.
She’s not.
But she doesn’t really feel any better.
She’d put him behind her as well she could. Even before he ‘died’, she’d basically given up all hope on Arnold and her whole entire little dream world. After all, she hadn’t even spoken to the guy since he moved away back at the end of seventh grade.
(right before she’d cut off all her hair, she remembers)
And even before then…. It’d been nothing but a fantasy. That’s why they’d broken up back when they were just kids, right? She wasn’t Lila and he wasn’t perfect and they kept expecting each other to be something else and how was that fair?
But still, there’d always been this… something. She still doesn’t really know what. But it kept her moving forward.
As long as there was Arnold there was hope.
And then he went and got himself killed (or so they’d all thought) and even though she hadn’t talked to the boy (man) in over seven years it still felt like somebody had ripped out her insides and ran them into the ground.
The shaking has stopped for the most part, but her breathing is still sort of uneven. She gets herself a glass of water and tries to focus her mind on anything other than Arnold.
It doesn’t really work.
She sighs heavily as she makes her way back towards the couch. She plops down on the ground beside him and rests her head on her arm. She absentmindedly watches him breathe in and out while her brain shuts down almost completely.
“It’s like you’ve come back from the dead.” She says softly to her very first love.
Then, ever so slowly, she lifts her other arm up and moves it towards his face. His hair is falling onto his eyelids and she never thought that she’d see him again.
Not in a billion years.
She’s about to brush a few wayward strands of his hair aside, when his eyes flutter open.
Helga stops dead, her hand still hovering over the top of his forehead.
Arnold is awake.
a/n: Depressing, eh? Oh well, it happens. There's some bare-bones as far as backstory goes now, which is pretty sweet I suppose.
Oh and the next chapter is where things will finally start HAPPENING. Are you excited for that? I AM.
Also, I'm pretty sure chapters are going to end up getting longer as I go along. So uh, you've been warned I suppose.
And, thank you guys so much for the feedback so far! I wasn't really expecting more than like one or two people to even notice this.
Oh, I'll also probably have bits of extra stuff to show you involving the story, because I'm a super visual person so I like to sketch out parts of scenes and things like character design will come along too, because I have fun with that. :3