Epilogue

10 years later

Rhonda never did quite forgive Helga for the crimes leveled against her, although for the most part she did stay true to her word and ignored her existence. Helga realized that by the time they graduated, nothing that happened in high school seemed to matter as much as when she'd been stuck there seeing the same people day in and day out anyway.

From what Helga had heard around town, Curly was still running his own shady operations out of back alleys, having given up on the idea of Rhonda after her parents bought her way into an upscale ivy league school several states away.

Lila and Lorenzo dated for a while, and Lorenzo even became class president their senior year of high school, much to Rhonda's chagrin. They'd parted ways amicably, as only Lila could do, and both had gone to universities to earn their degrees and change the world in their own ways, her through humanitarian work and he through business.

Phoebe and Gerald steadily dated until they graduated college, and when Phoebe was hired to do remote statistical work for NASA, Gerald popped the question at her celebration dinner. Last year when they'd had their first daughter, they'd named Arnold and Helga godparents.

After Arnold and Helga graduated high school, they decided to spend the year traveling, just as she had once told him she wanted to do. Arnold quickly discovered along the way that even though they didn't have a lot of money to work with, Helga was rather good at wheeling and dealing with whoever she came across. Whether it was getting a room at an inn for the night in exchange for doing dishes or weeding a yard, she had no problem surviving on what was available to her. Arnold had to say, he was impressed by her resourcefulness. They were able to travel all over Europe with little more than what they could carry on their back, savoring little-known and untouched places in nature, and visiting unique hole-in-the-wall places in the cities.

Near the end of their year abroad, Helga surprised Arnold with a trip to the jungle where his parents had last been seen. He took his dad's old journal and together they went to all the places his parents had been, ending in the last spot he'd written about and finding nothing but stone ruins that had been long abandoned to the jungle. Helga had sat for a long time there on the stone steps with Arnold, letting him mourn the renewed loss and knowing she couldn't do anything but be there. She thought of the first time he'd held her in her bedroom when they'd talked about her parents, and she was glad she could at least be there now with him as he thought about and laid to rest the memory of his own parents.

It was also around that time hundreds of miles away that Helga's parents separated. And even though part of her had expected and even hoped for it, she wasn't prepared for the anger and guilt that would ensue when she returned. She felt like so many of her parents' years together had been wasted on fighting and hating each other in her presence. And for what? To keep the family together? It had taken some convincing on Arnold's part, but she started going to therapy again, on the condition that he wait outside to take her home after every session.

Home. Their home. The home she'd never had but always wanted and hoped for. That's what they created together. For all the things she hadn't had as a child, her home with Arnold gave her: safety, love, feeling wanted. In return, she entertained him with her poetry and spontaneity and an insatiable hunger for life. It was the place she'd written three books of poetry, and the place he came home to after teaching conflict resolution and life skills to at-risk youth.

For the first time in her life, she could look around and tell that she lived there. There were pictures of her smiling, really smiling. There were pictures of her and Arnold traveling, of them double dating with Phoebe and Gerald, and visiting Jake and his boyfriend in Portland, and with Arnold's grandparents, who had taken her in as their own daughter. They even had the selfie Arnold had framed and put into her locket on display, in her old, dinged-up precious locket she'd carried in her pocket for so many years. Her favorite picture though, was the ornately framed one that held their wedding picture. In it, Arnold was misty-eyed and staring at Helga, who was dressed in white lace and smiling the smile she'd always reserved just for him.

Of course, things weren't always perfect. They still had their problems, even if they had each other. When they fought, she went all in, and her pride often caused him to retreat into himself. She'd come to realize that she still had those open-mouth-insert-foot moments where she got angry and hid behind her old walls, and for a while she wasn't sure how to communicate her anger without feeling as though she'd messed everything up for good. Then Arnold's previous advice about writing to Rhonda came back to her, and she decided to try it out in their relationship. She'd write to Arnold until the knots between them came unraveled, and she found that most of the time it was a childhood wound or fear rearing its ugly head that kept her from apologizing. By the time she was done writing, she'd find him in another room and apologize, knowing no fight would ever be as important as preserving the love between them.

She'd also found other useful ways to use her writing, including the situation in which they found themselves on a Sunday afternoon. Arnold was holding Helga in his arms on their bed, as they basked in the sunlight streaming through their window and wondered what to do with their day. Helga pulled back from him.

"Well, I do have a new poem for you," she said, raising her eyebrows suggestively.

Arnold looked at her, smiling. "Oh? Are you going to perform it for me?" he asked.

"Of course," she said. She climbed off the bed and retrieved her little pink book, then returned and crawled slowly on all fours toward him, until she was perched over him, her long hair forming a curtain around them.

"Okay, it starts like this," she said, then cleared her throat dramatically.

She lowered her voice and said in a sultry tone, "Let me sit this ass on you." She dropped her hips, her thighs hugged around him as she started grinding slowly on top of him. He traced his fingers up and down her thighs, watching her.

"Show you how I feel," she said, biting her lip and thrusting against him once. He groaned. "Let me take this off," she said, slipping one strap off her shoulder, then the other. "Will you watch me?" she asked in a whisper. He watched as she slowly took off her shirt and threw it aside, revealing a black bralette beneath.

"Grab ahold, don't let go, let me know that you're ready." He traced his fingers up her arms and grabbed them, pulling her down until her lips brushed against his. "Then rock right up to the side of my mountain, climb until you reach my peak-"

"Wait a second," he said, pulling back from her. "Isn't that a Beyonce song?"

She pretended to look offended. "Are you accusing me of something?"

"Plagiarism?" he said, raising a brow in question.

She shrugged. "I mean, it's not like I need to reinvent the wheel here. Her words are just as good, probably better."

"But they're not yours." He crossed his arms and she sighed.

"Alright. Permission to approach the bench, Your Honor," she said.

He rolled his eyes. "Granted."

She crawled seductively over to him, then straddled him comfortably and stared down at him. "Now, we've had a lot of sex over the years, right?"

"Yeah, I guess so-"

"And I mean a lot of sex. Sex in cars, dressing rooms, the high school pool, on the beach, that one time in the library-"

"Is there a point to this?" he asked.

Helga stared off into space. "Nope, that part's pretty much for my own satisfaction." He opened his mouth to speak, but she continued in dramatic fashion, "The point is, we've had a lot of sex, much of which can be directly attributed to my poetry. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Yes-"

"Poetry that I've written specifically about you and to you for the sole purpose of creating metaphorical fireworks in the bedroom. And in all those years of reciting poetry for your kinky pleasure, have I ever once taken the liberty of using someone else's words?"

"Well, no, but-"

"No! So what I'm saying, Your Honor, is that don't you think the only reason your doting wife could possibly have to use someone else's words would be to heighten the passion, to explore new depths, to create and act out new fantasies you never in your wildest dreams could have imagined?" She paused her impassioned speech to look at Arnold, who was trying his best not to laugh.

She cleared her throat and, said, with the utmost seriousness, "To sum it up, your wife - as questionable as her methods may be - was in service of one goal: getting you off. Now are you really going to turn down sex - mind-blowing sex, I might add - on the simple, if morally ambiguous, grounds of plagiarism?"

He started laughing uncontrollably. She smiled and pulled out her phone, wiggling her hips on him in excitement. "And, if that's not convincing enough, read the lyrics and tell me my actions were not justified."

He took the phone and read a few lines. His eyes widened then he smirked up at her. "How could I have ever overlooked such selflessness? Permission granted."

She grinned. "Good, 'cause I get the feeling this'll be the best performance yet."

"I'm sure it will be," he said, rolling her over so that she was the one pinned down. She laughed and pulled him down to kiss her.

"I love you, Arnold," she said, just before his lips touched hers.

She gazed up at him, the person she'd loved all her life. She knew in that moment, as some part of her had known all along, that all her daydreams, monologues, and poems hadn't been a cry made in vain to the universe but a bid of faith to build this reality she now lived in. In this life she had love, for herself and for him, and all she'd had to do was tell the truth about herself, the actual truth, as he'd said that afternoon before their first dance in high school, so they could feel the thread connecting them.

"I love you, Helga," he said.

He kissed her, deeply and with all the heat and tenderness he felt for her. He thought of all the poems she'd written since they were kids, and how every word told him who she was to him, and how alive and truly inspired he could be when they were together. Hearing her words that first day of their English class, some part of him had come alive and recognized that thread between them. And with every word after, it had become clear: she was his person.

He pulled back and smiled down at her, waiting for words to form on her lips, just for him.

The End

loreana222: Guys, I can't believe this is over! T_T I've had so much fun writing it! I couldn't have written it so fast if you weren't enjoying it as much as I was! Thank you to everyone who read every chapter and reviewed as I was writing it- you helped me stay accountable to finishing my very first fanfic and I'm so grateful for your support and encouragement! :) So, a little background: When I was growing up, Hey Arnold! was my favorite show. I related so much with Helga and had the biggest crush on Arnold. I was bullied and slut-shamed by girls I thought were my friends in high school- even though I'd never even had my first kiss at the time. I'm also a survivor of narcissistic abuse. My mom used to tell me that no one would ever want to put up with me, and that I was lucky she did. For most of my life, I felt alone and unlovable. If my own family couldn't love me, who could? I always had the theory that Helga suffered from narcissistic abuse from her family, too (In a narcissistic family structure, Big Bob is the narcissistic parent, Miriam is the enabling parent, Olga is the golden child, and Helga is the scapegoat- much like my own family). Then seven years ago I met someone, and in so many ways he reminded me of Arnold. He was kind and soft-spoken, a patient do-gooder and a dreamer. Whenever I was angry, he'd look at me with compassion and ask me why I was sad. When I stopped writing, he told me how beautiful my words were until I picked up a pen again. That guy turned out to be my husband. We said 'I love you' after 3 days of knowing each other, and after 6 months he proposed to me with a poem he wrote and performed on stage, because he knew words were so important to me. In it, he said he wanted to remind me every day that I deserved not only all the love he could give but also all the love I could give myself. He showed me what real love is, by loving the real me, and taught me how to love myself despite the people who didn't. This fanfic doesn't just exist because of a TV show I love; it exists because my husband gave me the ending I always wished it had. Even as I write this in lockdown with him, he's quietly supporting me from the other side of the living room. I hope that you all are staying safe and healthy out there during this crazy time in the world, and I hope reading this distracted and entertained you for a little while. More than anything though, I hope you have people in your life who love you, the real you, just as you are- because you deserve nothing less.