Trying - Chapter Four
Feb. 7th, 2009 03:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stillthekeyTitle: Trying
Fandom/Universe: Hey Arnold!
Character(s): Helga, Arnold
Rating: Teen
Chapters: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7
Everything sort of clicks into place and Helga finds that she can breathe again. Next thing she knows, she’s leading Arnold back down the hallway, crosses the living room and stops by a window at the back of the building. He raises an eyebrow at her.
“We’ll climb out, cut through the back alley and then run.”
He shakes his head.
“Not good enough. They’ll be on us the second we step foot on the ground. And we need an actual vehicle in order to lose them.” He turns to lean his back against the wall and threads his fingers through his hair. Helga rubs an elbow, before sighing and sitting down next to him.
“I think you owe me an explanation or two, Arnold.” She tells him. He grunts noncommittally as a response. She figures that’s good enough for the moment. “You’ll tell me once we get out of here.” She continues. “In any case, I don’t have any mode of transportation besides my feet and the bus. And the next shuttle isn’t due for another -“ She glances up at the clock on the wall. “Twenty-three minutes.”
“It wouldn’t be a good idea to use public transportation anyway. We should avoid people as best we can. We don’t want to get anyone involved.” His eyes are closed and she notices that he’s no longer shaking.
“We?” She asks, startled.
He tilts his head just a tiny bit in her direction.
“For now anyway.” He sighs heavily, before standing up straight. He turns to her. “Are there any other exits?”
“Well, there’s a fire escape out the upstairs bedroom window, but the ladders gone. It snapped off awhile back and no one came around to repair - hey!” Arnold’s already headed for the stairs, not even bothering to glance back at her. Helga scrambles up the steps behind him, grabbing for her purse on the way up. “Could you slow down, you big idiot? We can’t get down from the fire escape! At least not without breaking our legs.” She’s getting more than a little fed up with having him run circles around her. It’s been less than hour that he’s been brought back to life and she’s already annoyed with him - she wishes she had time to stop and laugh at that.
He’s already across the bedroom and leaning out the window when she enters the room.
“Get back in here!” She yells. Her hands are clenched into tight fists and she’s wondering if now’s a good time to bring Old Betsy and the Five Avengers out of retirement. Years ago, she would have never been able to bring herself to lay even a single hand on this golden boy, but apparently things have changed, because right now she wants nothing more than to pound him to the ground and force him to explain himself. She feels like she’s running around without air.
“Perfect.” She hears him say. He looks back at her. “You ready?”
She just stares at him.
“Helga,” The tone of his voice changes so that it sounds like he’s speaking to a small child or a very dumb animal. “We’ve got to go, okay?”
“Arnold,” She says, matching his tone. “There’s no way that I am jumping off the fire escape.”
He narrows his eyes.
“Don’t be stupid, Helga.” He points up. “We’re climbing onto the roof.” Suddenly his expression softens and he crosses the room to where she stands. She flinches as he reaches out a hand to her arm. “And you need to wrap this up.” She tilts her head to see that her arm is still trickling blood. Right, she’s been shot. She’d forgotten already.
She pushes his arm away.
“It just grazed me. I’m fine. Anyway, what do you mean climb onto the roof? We’ll just be trapped up there! How is that going to help us escape?” She crosses her arms over her chest and glares at him. He doesn’t waiver and she thinks, briefly, that maybe he hasn’t changed all that much. He was never afraid of her.
“We’ll pull up the ladder that goes to the roof and use it as a bridge between your house and the one next door. Then we’ll crawl across.” With that he scrambles out the window and begins his ascent to the roof. Helga blinks, while her insides freeze.
“What?”
She stumbles out onto the fire escape and looks up at him, still gaping.
“Are you crazy?” She tries to sound bold, but her voice gets caught and she only just manages to squeak the words. He grins at her, but doesn’t say anything else. Only disappears completely from view. She can hear him moving about up on the roof. She doesn’t move.
Another shot rings out.
Helga screams and Arnold’s face reappears.
“Get up here now!” He shouts. She scampers up the ladder in two seconds flat. The world tips onto it’s side as she rolls onto the roof and lies down on the warm concrete. She’s shaking all over and Arnold starts prodding her, turning over her limbs and examining them. “I don’t think you’ve been shot Helga. I don’t even think they saw you.” He says.
“Well thank fucking god for that you big dumb asshole! I could have been killed!” He pats her hand and then turns from her. She watches as he pulls a small screwdriver out of his back pocket and sets to work on unscrewing the ladder from its rightful place at the fire escape. “We’re really going to do this?” She sort of doesn’t want to know.
“Yeah.”
With a sigh, she pulls herself upright and tries to calm herself down. She’s always been prone to hysterics, but this definitely isn’t the time.
“Hey,” He says softly, shooting her a half-hearted smile. “At least there’s no rats.”
She grunts.
“Oh thanks so much, Arnoldo. I feel ever so wonderful now.” She does her best Lila imitation (she’s gotten rusty over the years, ragging on Lila got infinitely less fun when Arnold was a thousand miles away). Surprisingly, however, Arnold laughs. Helga feels just a little bit lighter.
The last screw falls to the fire escape below and she watches as he pauses. His hair hangs down over his eyes and he looks exhausted.
“Helga, I’m sorry.” He says softly. She clucks her tongue.
“Whatever, let’s just… get this over with,” And with that she leans down beside him and together they lift the ladder up and onto the roof. Grunting, they manage to lay it across the long drop between her rooftop and the next one over. They stop to stare at the distance between.
“You should go first,” Arnold says. “I’ll keep you moving.”
“I’m not afraid,” Helga bluffs.
Neither one moves.
“Arnold,” Helga whispers. “What are we going to do when we get across? Won’t they just move to attacking Mrs. Grant’s house? Arnold, she has a family.”
He grabs onto her shoulder.
“They haven’t noticed us yet, Helga. I’m pretty sure that last shot actually hit the front door.”
“Yeah, well.” She rubs her elbows and closes her eyes, inhaling deeply. When she opens her eyes again her whole expression has changed. Her face is lined with determination. She turns to him. “All right, let’s do this.” She moves towards the ladder and carefully maneuvers herself onto one of the rungs.
Arnold is right behind her.
“Just don’t look down and you’ll be fine.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“Helga.”
“Whatever.”
She ignores him then and forces herself to look straight ahead. She isn’t stupid enough to try walking across the metal bars. She opts for a very slow crawl and attempts to pretend that she is simply crossing a grown up version of the monkey bars. It helps a little.
“Helga, you have to go faster.”
She doesn’t turn around to look at him, but his voice tells her all that she needs to know. He’s nervous.
“Scared, football head?”
“You’re still calling me that stupid name?”
“Well, seeing as how the shape of your weird-o skull hasn’t changed in the past ten years….”
“Just hurry up, okay?” His voice catches. She nods and tries to pick up the pace, before stopping dead.
“Arnold, my purse - I left it on the fire escape.”
He groans.
“Just move.”
“But….”
“Helga.”
She makes a face, but he can’t see it from his spot behind her. She lets out a small sigh as she finally reaches her neighbor’s roof.
A few seconds later, Arnold is scrambling off the ladder. He lands beside her and rubs hands up and down his arms. He’s shaking again and she leans down beside him.
“You’re going to pass out again, aren’t you?”
“No, I just….” He stops. His teeth are chattering. “Need to… the ladder….” He chokes out.
“I’ll do it. Just relax for a bit, okay?” He nods as his eyes close and his head falls back against the wall.
She grabs hold of the ladder and attempts to lift it up, but without Arnold’s help, the weight of the ladder is too much for her to drag back across the gap. She gasps as the ladder slips from her grasp and goes clattering down to the ground, heavy and loud enough to startle the whole neighborhood. Her hand flies to her mouth, and the next thing she knows, Arnold’s got his hand around her wrist again and is leading her to a skylight window. He breaks the glass with his foot and then scrambles around for a latch. He manages to get the window open and pulls her down into a musty smelling room stuffed with boxes.
“You should have waited.” He whispers angrily as he glances around the room for a door. She spots it first and heads for it.
“You’ve been rushing me around since you woke up. I thought speed was our top priority.” She snaps.
“I think it’s pretty obvious that not dying is our number one priority.” He shoots back with a scowl as she opens the door. They step into a small hallway. Helga leads him down towards a stairway.
“Your dismissive tone is really starting to bug me, Arnold.”
“Miss Pataki?”
They both freeze and turn around to find a small, brown-haired woman staring at them all bug-eyed. She’s wringing her hands nervously.
“How did you get in here? A-and those shots from earlier! I heard you scream and I thought that you were… I called the police, but they haven’t come yet and....” Her voice waivers as she finally seems to realize the strangeness of having two people randomly appear in her upstairs hallway, without any consent on her end. “What is…. What’s going on here?”
“Mrs. Grant,” Helga says gently, “I’m sorry for barging in like this. We’re on our way out anyway. J-just stay in here and keep the door locked until the police come and everything will be fine, okay Mrs. - Arnold no!”
It’s too late, Arnold catches Mrs. Grant in a sleeper hold and a second later her whole body sags into his arms. Gently, he lays her on the ground and then turns back to Helga.
Just in time for her to land a well-aimed punch to his arm.
“You jerk! Who the hell are you? What are you thinking?!”
“I’m thinking,” He huffs, “That we’re going to need her car and that if the police are coming then we really need to go. Now.” He points towards the stairs. Helga scowls, but doesn’t say anything else. Only silently fumes as she leads him out to the garage, grabbing Mrs. Grant’s keys off of the hook on her way out. Out in the garage, Arnold heads for the driver’s side, but Helga cuts him off.
“No way. The last thing we need to deal with is you passing out at the wheel. Passenger side for you, bucko.”
“You don’t have your driver’s license.” He glares.
“Yeah, well I’m already committing grand theft auto so what’s it gonna matter if we get pulled over anyway?” She snits as she throws open the door and sits down at the wheel without another word. Arnold sighs and goes to the other side.
Inside the car they pause to stare at the garage door, Helga’s fingers drum against the opener but she doesn’t push the button.
“What’s…. Where are we going?” She asks quietly.
He doesn’t look at her, but he does gently grab the remote from her hand and hit the button with a very firm push. The garage door lifts and sunlight pours in.
“Home.” Is his one-word reply.
Helga sets a course for the boarding house.
a/n: I was actually planning on pushing this chapter a little bit further, but things seemed to be winding down so I decided to cut it off. Damn, it takes them FOREVER to get from point A to point B. Also, I was originally going to have them just ending up on a street and either Helga or Arnold would hotwire a car, but it didn't pan out that way. Sorry Mrs. Grant.
Also, I love action. And characters getting snippy at one another.
Next Chapter: Helga and Arnold make a pit stop or two and then plan out their next destination.
Fandom/Universe: Hey Arnold!
Character(s): Helga, Arnold
Rating: Teen
Chapters: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7
Everything sort of clicks into place and Helga finds that she can breathe again. Next thing she knows, she’s leading Arnold back down the hallway, crosses the living room and stops by a window at the back of the building. He raises an eyebrow at her.
“We’ll climb out, cut through the back alley and then run.”
He shakes his head.
“Not good enough. They’ll be on us the second we step foot on the ground. And we need an actual vehicle in order to lose them.” He turns to lean his back against the wall and threads his fingers through his hair. Helga rubs an elbow, before sighing and sitting down next to him.
“I think you owe me an explanation or two, Arnold.” She tells him. He grunts noncommittally as a response. She figures that’s good enough for the moment. “You’ll tell me once we get out of here.” She continues. “In any case, I don’t have any mode of transportation besides my feet and the bus. And the next shuttle isn’t due for another -“ She glances up at the clock on the wall. “Twenty-three minutes.”
“It wouldn’t be a good idea to use public transportation anyway. We should avoid people as best we can. We don’t want to get anyone involved.” His eyes are closed and she notices that he’s no longer shaking.
“We?” She asks, startled.
He tilts his head just a tiny bit in her direction.
“For now anyway.” He sighs heavily, before standing up straight. He turns to her. “Are there any other exits?”
“Well, there’s a fire escape out the upstairs bedroom window, but the ladders gone. It snapped off awhile back and no one came around to repair - hey!” Arnold’s already headed for the stairs, not even bothering to glance back at her. Helga scrambles up the steps behind him, grabbing for her purse on the way up. “Could you slow down, you big idiot? We can’t get down from the fire escape! At least not without breaking our legs.” She’s getting more than a little fed up with having him run circles around her. It’s been less than hour that he’s been brought back to life and she’s already annoyed with him - she wishes she had time to stop and laugh at that.
He’s already across the bedroom and leaning out the window when she enters the room.
“Get back in here!” She yells. Her hands are clenched into tight fists and she’s wondering if now’s a good time to bring Old Betsy and the Five Avengers out of retirement. Years ago, she would have never been able to bring herself to lay even a single hand on this golden boy, but apparently things have changed, because right now she wants nothing more than to pound him to the ground and force him to explain himself. She feels like she’s running around without air.
“Perfect.” She hears him say. He looks back at her. “You ready?”
She just stares at him.
“Helga,” The tone of his voice changes so that it sounds like he’s speaking to a small child or a very dumb animal. “We’ve got to go, okay?”
“Arnold,” She says, matching his tone. “There’s no way that I am jumping off the fire escape.”
He narrows his eyes.
“Don’t be stupid, Helga.” He points up. “We’re climbing onto the roof.” Suddenly his expression softens and he crosses the room to where she stands. She flinches as he reaches out a hand to her arm. “And you need to wrap this up.” She tilts her head to see that her arm is still trickling blood. Right, she’s been shot. She’d forgotten already.
She pushes his arm away.
“It just grazed me. I’m fine. Anyway, what do you mean climb onto the roof? We’ll just be trapped up there! How is that going to help us escape?” She crosses her arms over her chest and glares at him. He doesn’t waiver and she thinks, briefly, that maybe he hasn’t changed all that much. He was never afraid of her.
“We’ll pull up the ladder that goes to the roof and use it as a bridge between your house and the one next door. Then we’ll crawl across.” With that he scrambles out the window and begins his ascent to the roof. Helga blinks, while her insides freeze.
“What?”
She stumbles out onto the fire escape and looks up at him, still gaping.
“Are you crazy?” She tries to sound bold, but her voice gets caught and she only just manages to squeak the words. He grins at her, but doesn’t say anything else. Only disappears completely from view. She can hear him moving about up on the roof. She doesn’t move.
Another shot rings out.
Helga screams and Arnold’s face reappears.
“Get up here now!” He shouts. She scampers up the ladder in two seconds flat. The world tips onto it’s side as she rolls onto the roof and lies down on the warm concrete. She’s shaking all over and Arnold starts prodding her, turning over her limbs and examining them. “I don’t think you’ve been shot Helga. I don’t even think they saw you.” He says.
“Well thank fucking god for that you big dumb asshole! I could have been killed!” He pats her hand and then turns from her. She watches as he pulls a small screwdriver out of his back pocket and sets to work on unscrewing the ladder from its rightful place at the fire escape. “We’re really going to do this?” She sort of doesn’t want to know.
“Yeah.”
With a sigh, she pulls herself upright and tries to calm herself down. She’s always been prone to hysterics, but this definitely isn’t the time.
“Hey,” He says softly, shooting her a half-hearted smile. “At least there’s no rats.”
She grunts.
“Oh thanks so much, Arnoldo. I feel ever so wonderful now.” She does her best Lila imitation (she’s gotten rusty over the years, ragging on Lila got infinitely less fun when Arnold was a thousand miles away). Surprisingly, however, Arnold laughs. Helga feels just a little bit lighter.
The last screw falls to the fire escape below and she watches as he pauses. His hair hangs down over his eyes and he looks exhausted.
“Helga, I’m sorry.” He says softly. She clucks her tongue.
“Whatever, let’s just… get this over with,” And with that she leans down beside him and together they lift the ladder up and onto the roof. Grunting, they manage to lay it across the long drop between her rooftop and the next one over. They stop to stare at the distance between.
“You should go first,” Arnold says. “I’ll keep you moving.”
“I’m not afraid,” Helga bluffs.
Neither one moves.
“Arnold,” Helga whispers. “What are we going to do when we get across? Won’t they just move to attacking Mrs. Grant’s house? Arnold, she has a family.”
He grabs onto her shoulder.
“They haven’t noticed us yet, Helga. I’m pretty sure that last shot actually hit the front door.”
“Yeah, well.” She rubs her elbows and closes her eyes, inhaling deeply. When she opens her eyes again her whole expression has changed. Her face is lined with determination. She turns to him. “All right, let’s do this.” She moves towards the ladder and carefully maneuvers herself onto one of the rungs.
Arnold is right behind her.
“Just don’t look down and you’ll be fine.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“Helga.”
“Whatever.”
She ignores him then and forces herself to look straight ahead. She isn’t stupid enough to try walking across the metal bars. She opts for a very slow crawl and attempts to pretend that she is simply crossing a grown up version of the monkey bars. It helps a little.
“Helga, you have to go faster.”
She doesn’t turn around to look at him, but his voice tells her all that she needs to know. He’s nervous.
“Scared, football head?”
“You’re still calling me that stupid name?”
“Well, seeing as how the shape of your weird-o skull hasn’t changed in the past ten years….”
“Just hurry up, okay?” His voice catches. She nods and tries to pick up the pace, before stopping dead.
“Arnold, my purse - I left it on the fire escape.”
He groans.
“Just move.”
“But….”
“Helga.”
She makes a face, but he can’t see it from his spot behind her. She lets out a small sigh as she finally reaches her neighbor’s roof.
A few seconds later, Arnold is scrambling off the ladder. He lands beside her and rubs hands up and down his arms. He’s shaking again and she leans down beside him.
“You’re going to pass out again, aren’t you?”
“No, I just….” He stops. His teeth are chattering. “Need to… the ladder….” He chokes out.
“I’ll do it. Just relax for a bit, okay?” He nods as his eyes close and his head falls back against the wall.
She grabs hold of the ladder and attempts to lift it up, but without Arnold’s help, the weight of the ladder is too much for her to drag back across the gap. She gasps as the ladder slips from her grasp and goes clattering down to the ground, heavy and loud enough to startle the whole neighborhood. Her hand flies to her mouth, and the next thing she knows, Arnold’s got his hand around her wrist again and is leading her to a skylight window. He breaks the glass with his foot and then scrambles around for a latch. He manages to get the window open and pulls her down into a musty smelling room stuffed with boxes.
“You should have waited.” He whispers angrily as he glances around the room for a door. She spots it first and heads for it.
“You’ve been rushing me around since you woke up. I thought speed was our top priority.” She snaps.
“I think it’s pretty obvious that not dying is our number one priority.” He shoots back with a scowl as she opens the door. They step into a small hallway. Helga leads him down towards a stairway.
“Your dismissive tone is really starting to bug me, Arnold.”
“Miss Pataki?”
They both freeze and turn around to find a small, brown-haired woman staring at them all bug-eyed. She’s wringing her hands nervously.
“How did you get in here? A-and those shots from earlier! I heard you scream and I thought that you were… I called the police, but they haven’t come yet and....” Her voice waivers as she finally seems to realize the strangeness of having two people randomly appear in her upstairs hallway, without any consent on her end. “What is…. What’s going on here?”
“Mrs. Grant,” Helga says gently, “I’m sorry for barging in like this. We’re on our way out anyway. J-just stay in here and keep the door locked until the police come and everything will be fine, okay Mrs. - Arnold no!”
It’s too late, Arnold catches Mrs. Grant in a sleeper hold and a second later her whole body sags into his arms. Gently, he lays her on the ground and then turns back to Helga.
Just in time for her to land a well-aimed punch to his arm.
“You jerk! Who the hell are you? What are you thinking?!”
“I’m thinking,” He huffs, “That we’re going to need her car and that if the police are coming then we really need to go. Now.” He points towards the stairs. Helga scowls, but doesn’t say anything else. Only silently fumes as she leads him out to the garage, grabbing Mrs. Grant’s keys off of the hook on her way out. Out in the garage, Arnold heads for the driver’s side, but Helga cuts him off.
“No way. The last thing we need to deal with is you passing out at the wheel. Passenger side for you, bucko.”
“You don’t have your driver’s license.” He glares.
“Yeah, well I’m already committing grand theft auto so what’s it gonna matter if we get pulled over anyway?” She snits as she throws open the door and sits down at the wheel without another word. Arnold sighs and goes to the other side.
Inside the car they pause to stare at the garage door, Helga’s fingers drum against the opener but she doesn’t push the button.
“What’s…. Where are we going?” She asks quietly.
He doesn’t look at her, but he does gently grab the remote from her hand and hit the button with a very firm push. The garage door lifts and sunlight pours in.
“Home.” Is his one-word reply.
Helga sets a course for the boarding house.
a/n: I was actually planning on pushing this chapter a little bit further, but things seemed to be winding down so I decided to cut it off. Damn, it takes them FOREVER to get from point A to point B. Also, I was originally going to have them just ending up on a street and either Helga or Arnold would hotwire a car, but it didn't pan out that way. Sorry Mrs. Grant.
Also, I love action. And characters getting snippy at one another.
Next Chapter: Helga and Arnold make a pit stop or two and then plan out their next destination.
