PPG - Cold (Part 3)

"-...was soooo cute! Kewwwwtt! And I petted it, and petted it, and then we played tag, and then its brothers and sisters were there, and I petted them, and petted them again, and...-"

Bubbles' giddy storytelling of her time at the zoo that day seemed to go on forever. The hyperactive toddler stuck in a teen's body went on, not even noticing when Blossom and Buttercup initiated a low-key conversation beneath her.

"I...kinda forgot how bad it was," Buttercup sighed under her breath.

Blossom shot her a look, as if to express, 'What did I tell you?'

"What are we supposed to do with her?" Buttercup whispered incredulously.

Blossom shrugged wildly back, just as much at a loss.

"Well," Buttercup mumbled shakily. "You're the smart one, here. You don't have any ideas?"

"Remember how you said you were tired of fighting?" Blossom quietly reminded. She poked at her own head. "I'm tired of thinking."

"We can't just do nothing."

"We have a bigger issue to consider right now, Buttercup..."

Buttercup's face lost its sting of attitude at this remark, and she let her head flop back into the couch's cushion.

The two quietly sat, enduring Bubbles' squeaky, speedy gibberish as they stared with dire resolve into blank space.

"-so I named her Twiggy, and she was the nicest little giraffe – so cuddly-wuddly! And then Twiggy the bear and Twiggy Jr. the baby bear played hide-and-seek with me, and I won every time, and then we...-" Bubbles stopped on a dime, glaring at her two siblings across the room. Those blue eyes seemed to flash with an ice-cold look. "Are you even listening to me?!" Bubble snarled, her voice changing pitch as her cry blew the couch backward, tumbling the two sisters to the floor and into the wall behind them.

With an irate groan, Blossom fumbled to her knees, casting a backward glance to the wall. Aw, boy. There was a nice couple of head-sized cracks in the wall now. Another thing to fix later.

With a light gesture of the edge of her arm, Buttercup tipped the couch back upright, drearily floating herself back into the same seated position she'd been in. Blossom slowly approached Bubbles, who was breathing with a ragged agitation.

"Bubbles? Hey..." Blossom placed a gentle touch on her sister's back. "You OK?"

Bubbles' anger swiftly dissipated into a lip-wobbling glower.

"You guys were ignoring me," she whimpered, beginning to choke on sobs.

"I know," Blossom cooed nervously. "We're sorry. Right?" Blossom glanced expectantly at Buttercup, who grimaced awkwardly.

"Sorry, Bubbles," Buttercup muttered half-heartedly, her cheek lazily propped against her 'hand.'

"We're just...worried about some more important things," Blossom explained cautiously.

"What's more important than cute animals?" Bubbles puffed out in exasperation.

"Uhhh, well...-" Blossom's voice peaked as she eased Bubbles to occupy the seat of the couch opposite of Buttercup. She then took the center cushion, and the three sat in graceless quiet for a couple of seconds. Buttercup respired audibly through her mouth and dropped her propped up arm, turning to the others.

"We gonna talk about this, or what?" she asked, rubbing at one eye with a small yawn.

"Talk about what?" Bubbles innocently chirped, wriggling her legs to and fro with anticipation.

Sullen and unsure, Blossom tapped at her lips contemplatively.

"It's...about Daddy," Blossom began.

"Ohhh, The Professor!" Bubbles sang out. "Is he finally gonna take us on a trip? It's been for-everrrr since we went on a trip!"

"Um, n-no, Bubbles," Blossom hastily corrected. "Daddy's sick, remember?"

"Whaaat?" Bubbles squealed with disbelief. "Nuh-uh! We just saw him a few hours ago, he looked great! He was-"
"That was a statue, Bub-"
"-all shiny and smiling, and everybody was clapping 'cuz of how smart he is, and-"

"Blossom, she doesn't get it," Buttercup scoffed.

"I-was-talking!" Bubbled shrieked in her frightening 'hard-core' voice, causing the room to shudder. Blossom and Buttercup both froze, teeth grit and wide-eyed. Bubbles followed up: "Don't-be-rude!"

Bubbles' second supersonic growl caused another tremor, followed by the crashing of a nearby lamp. Without its light, the late-night living room grew dimmer, lit only by the distant light of the kitchen. Bubbles yelped out a tiny, shrill squeak of fright at the darkness that enveloped them.

"Whoa, whoa, it's OK!" Blossom immediately babied her, inviting the whimpering girl into her arms. Buttercup snorted as she flew to the light-switch, illumination the ceiling lamp.

Bubbles' sniffles died down, and Blossom granted Buttercup an appreciative nod. As Bubbles sighed a breath of relief, Buttercup dropped herself back onto the couch. Frowning bitterly as she blinked at the empty television, Buttercup crossed her arms and sat silently as Blossom continued to coddle their sister.

"See, Bubbles? Look what happens when you use your outdoor voice in the house. We talked about this, remember?"

"Uh-huh," bemoaned the brain-washed blond, wiping her face dry with the nearest decorative pillow.

As Blossom patted Bubbles' shoulder tenderly, she couldn't help but notice Buttercup's distant scowl. A misjudgment would cite that Buttercup was frustrated with her baby-ish sister, but Blossom knew the real feeling that rested beneath those enraged, emerald eyes. Buttercup was infuriated that this had happened to their sister, not at the afflicted sister herself.

"Buh-Blossom," blubbered the blue-dressed girl with a loud sniff.

"Huh?" Blossom snapped her head back from one sister to the other.

"...I'm hungry."

"...Oh," Blossom muttered, fidgeting with her poofy ponytail as a wary sigh dropped out. "Um, w-well, I guess there's-"
"Can I have some ice-cream? Pleaaaassse~?"

The blond Bubbles smacked her stumps for hands together in a pleading gesture, and Blossom couldn't help but feel disconcerted by the image: her elongated pigtails were frayed and coming undone, her blue dress – the same one worn at the status ceremony – was speckled and stained with dirt and grass, and her gestures and intonations hearkened back to an older time when they were younger.

When Blossom's stupefied face offered no answer for a couple of seconds, Bubbles burst out in a quick, snappy growl.

"I-said-please."

Blossom's eyes lulled upward with disapproval while Buttercup sat in a stoic state of ire.

"OK," Blossom caved in reluctantly. A blink of blue flashed across the house, and Bubbles was instantaneously transported to the kitchen, perusing the freezer.

Some distance between them and the afflicted girl, Buttercup finally looked away from the lifeless television. She noticed Blossom tiredly tilting their coffee table upright, collecting the strewn assortment of books and manuals that had been blown about. Buttercup's sharp-sensing eyes managed to scan the book titles just quick enough before Blossom whisked them upstairs in a beam of bright red.

{Bipolar Disorder: Myths and Facts}
{Dealing With Dementia}
{Alzheimer's Disease}
{Unlocking the Past: Memory Repression}

Sitting alone in the living room space, Buttercup tuned out the sounds of Bubbles scarfing down a pint of ice cream echoing off the kitchen tiles. Buttercup looked across the room, noting the pieces of broken lamp littering the carpet off to the side. She then noticed the corner of a book peeking out from beneath the couch. She pressed the edge of her hand against the softcover book, summoning it to follow her arm and to her eye level.

{Living With Depression}

In a blink, Blossom was back, hurriedly swiping the book from Buttercup's hand. Rather than immediately zooming back upstairs, Blossom instead stared at the book, a look of shame cresting over her face. In that instant, Buttercup understood who this last book was for.

"Blossom," she whispered with some sympathy. A bar of red light was the reply, trailing upstairs. Buttercup sunk her head into the couch cushion and waited for a couple of seconds until their leader returned with a dustpan and brush in hand. "Hey," Buttercup started up again, watching Blossom sweep the lamp pieces up.

Another flash of red, and Blossom was discarding them into the kitchen wastebin.

"H-hey, Bubbles, how is that...ice cream, there?" Blossom asked, distraught by Bubbles' messy face.

"Mmmm hm-hm-hm," Bubbles hummed out a sadistically satisfied laugh, her cheeks puffed up with dessert.

"Oh, looks...good," Blossom weakly complied, leaving the hungry girl to finish her snack and zipping back upstairs. No more than a second later, and the red-head had returned to the couch, the dustpan put back in its proper place, no doubt.

"Hey," Buttercup tried a third time. She patted the seat beside her, and Blossom let her eyelids drop, relaxing herself beside Buttercup. Buttercup's previous scowl had melted a layer off, revealing her guilt and sympathy. To her surprise, Blossom reached out one arm across Buttercup's shoulder – an intimate gesture, as if out of gratitude simply to have her sister at her side. Buttercup reciprocated, and the two warily watched Bubbles finish up. The girl dunked the emptied carton into the trash like a basketball, daintily dropped the spoon into the sink – it clattered noisily with the other contents – and swiped up a napkin from the kitchen counter, wiping her mouth clean.

"'Kay!" Bubbles chirped pleasantly, a prideful smile about her as she floated into the living room.

"Ah," Blossom detached her connection from Buttercup and sat upright. "All right, so, Bubbles, about Daddy – we need to talk about how we're-"
"The Professor's down in his lab!" Bubbles casually explained, continuing to drift on by. "I'm too sleepy for serious stuff, why doncha go talk with him 'bout it? I bet he could help..."

Blossom's mouth hung open in disappointment as Buttercup just blinked in a befuddled silence. They watched Bubbles stretch out her arms and eke out a teeny-tiny yawn.

"G'night!" Bubbles bid them sweetly from the open second-floor balcony. She left the bedroom door open a crack to allow some light to trickle in.

Blossom and Buttercup exchanged concerned looks.

"Wh...-?" Buttercup was at a loss for words.

"We should talk in private," Blossom sighed under her breath, flying up from the living room and heading off for the basement laboratory. "Come on."

Buttercup hesitated, lifting her weightless body up to the second floor and peering at the dark crack in the bedroom door. A moment later, she sunk back down and headed for their Father's lab. What greeted her there did nothing to improve her loss for words.

An assortment of equipment was out and about, not in the proper places – the girls had tidied up the Professor's lab when he'd fallen sick, but this was clearly a lab that was being put to use. The large overhead marker board was scribbled with all sorts of formulas and foreign symbols, but it was definitely not the Professor's handwriting: it was Blossom's.

The books, the lab, caring after Bubbles...While Buttercup had been using her fists to feebly try and generate a solution to their mess, Blossom had been using her brain. Neither, it seemed, had found any success to their ails.

"It's useless," Blossom whimpered, her bleary red eyes glaring up at the board. "I've been trying, inbetween everything else, to try and help the doctors..."

"Huh? Help with-...Wait, what?"

"Daddy's condition," Blossom cited, her head hung in acceptance of her failure. "I've tried using everything he taught me, everything the doctors have given me to work with, but...it's just not something we can cure."

"W-well, but...we already figured he would just...get better with time, right? I mean...-"

"Buttercup," Blossom darkly huffed, looking to her sister. "He's not. I told you – he's been comatose for weeks."

"I thought he wasn't getting worse, though" Buttercup grasped at hope.

"He's not," Blossom acknowledged testily. "He's also not getting better. Not a bit. He's just...a vegetable at this point." She barely managed out the words, shaking her head in sorrow. "This is what I've been saying, Buttercup – they think we should...-" Blossom's eyes went to the floor and she shrugged meekly. "-...you know...pull the plug."

Buttercup took in a sharp, startled breath at the thought. She'd been sitting atop her throne of power lately, vanquishing villains – for good – left and right, driving off the rest in fear, effectively doing what Bubbles had been: trying to forget this horrific problem.

"We...we can't," Buttercup winced, her pitch spiking. "We can't give up."

"We're not giving up," Blossom defended fiercely. "This-...It's moving on. This is like you said earlier: what's done is done. That was exactly how you put it, right?"

Buttercup was paralyzed at her own words being re-fashioned in this context.

"It's over," Blossom cited firmly. "Daddy's gone, and...and we can't do anything about it. We're just...-" She shivered, blowing out a shaky sigh of ice-breath and coughing on a pre-emptive sob. "I just feel like we're pro-longing his pain, Buttercup. I can't live like this – with everything else – and that weight on my shoulders."

Buttercup squinted her eyes and chewed at her lip, pushing out a single tear and hastily wiping it off. She opened her eyes with some determination.

"Then I'll help you carry it," Buttercup decided, understanding her sister's intentions. "Whatever...-" She paused, clenching her stumpy hands on her hips as she processed the weight of their situation. She nodded to herself – there was no need to overthink this, especially when she knew Blossom had already done so thrice over. "Whatever you think is right," Buttercup conceded. "I don't know where I'm going to be in a few days after this trial happens...But I do know I won't let you do this by yourself. We're a team."

Blossom's face contorted, unable to find a balance between sorrow, relief, appreciation, and pain.

"OK," was all Blossom could manage. She nodded, taking deep, saturated breaths, frigid vapors inadvertently puffing out from her freezing lips. She didn't understand why her powers were acting in this way, and she hugged at herself, feeling cold to her bones. It was a deep, awful sensation in the pit of her stomach. Shivering, she sought comfort from the warm body of her sister.

"I'm sorry," Buttercup sniveled over their embrace. "I'm so sorry..."

"Muh-M-Me, too," Blossom chattered, letting her strong sister's grip warm her up.

"We'll-...This is gonna work out somehow," Buttercup flailed around for the bright side. But she was blind to the pessimistic logic that Blossom could see plainly, literally written on the wall behind them.

As her body's temperature settled into its normal state, Blossom could at least appreciate Buttercup's earnest emotion and headstrong hope in that moment. It wasn't like Buttercup to play the optimist, but she was doing it for Blossom's sake, and that wasn't without merit.

"We'll get through this," Buttercup decided. "Together. All three of us."

"Yea," Blossom mumbled. "That's...that's the PowerPuff way."

The three girls stood before their father. They were twice as tall as they had been when he'd first brought them into this world, but they were dressed in the same manner they had been at the moment of their creation – blue, red, and green, with perfect little tights and perfect little shoes and perfectly styled hair.

The man laying in front of them, on the other hand, looked quite uncomfortable in his hospital bed, hooked up to tubes and needles. In his unconscious, unresponsive state, he looked in pain, even – though that could've been Blossom's imagination. It made the situation a bit easier for her to cope with if she could convince herself he was hurting.

"Awww, he looks so peaceful when he's sleeping."

Bubbles' description of their ill Father was not quite how Blossom would've put it.

"Um..." Blossom pulled her gaze from the bed-ridden Professor and toward Bubbles, who had her head tilted to one side, an awe-inspired smile on her face. It was as if Bubbles was gawking at a napping puppy instead of a dying man. Blossom shook this discomfort off, asking, "Does...does anyone want a minute alone...with him?"

Bubbles' looked confused at this question. Buttercup's eyes were hollow, blankly staring at the floor with languid tranquility.

"N-no?" Blossom mumbled, distraught at their disconnected responses. "Neither of you?"

"Why would I want to sleep with Daddy?" Bubbles whispered with aversion. "That's kinda gross..."

Blossom's lips tremored with conflict at her sister's ignorance.

"Why don't...-" Blossom gently eased her levitating blond sister toward Professor Utonium's head. "-...you give Daddy a good-night kiss, then?"

"OK," Bubbles peeped merrily, leaning her body sideways as she floated over his face. She planted a fragile kiss upon the man's pale, wrinkled forehead. "Good-night, Dad," Bubbles twittered quietly to him. "Sweet dreams."

Blossom smiled weakly, unsure if Bubbles would ever even be able to remember this moment, but hoping that if she did, it would at least be a farewell of some sort.

As Blossom eased Bubbles toward the sterile hospital hallway, she lingered in the doorway, glancing back to Buttercup, who was motionless all this time.

Buttercup flinched, a quiet bawl dripping out as she slowly slipped through the air toward the grizzled face of her Father. She reached up her fingerless hand and slid it across the grainy hairs on the Professor's cheek.

Standing across the room, Blossom watched Buttercup drop her forehead into the Professor's chest. She quietly closed the door behind her, leaving her still-somewhat-sane sister to some privacy as she waited in the hallway with Bubbles. Blossom could have used her super-hearing to eavesdrop on what Buttercup might've said, but she resisted.

"Do we get lollipops?" Bubbles squeaked, padding her handtips together.

"Why would...-?"

"We're at the Doctor's," Bubbles reasoned. "And we've been good! We should get lollipops."

Blossom's eyes were wide, heavy with remorse and confusion as her nerve-wracked brain bounced around to a hundred places, a hundred possibilities, a hundred 'What if I'd...-?' scenarios.

"Can we, can we, can we?" Bubbles was chirping at her.

Quite keen on not creating a scene, Blossom recollected herself and zipped to the nearest lobby desk, swiping a lollipop from a colorful mug and popping right back to her sister's side.

"Ohhhh, thankies~" Bubbles giggled merrily, untwisting the candy pop and slurping away.

Blossom watched the wrapper slowly drift to the sterilized floor of the hallway. She couldn't help it – she had to clean it up. After the split second that this took, Blossom was back at Bubbles' side. After a few more moments of awkward hovering and frying synapses, Blossom was jarred from her mind as Buttercup exited the room. Blossom could detect the defeat in those green eyes, the stains of water at the edges of those cheeks, the way those bottom lip was wobbling, struggling to keep sorrows quiet.

Buttercup nodded solemnly to Blossom, who nodded back with an equal measure of melancholy. The two swapped places, and Blossom lingered at the door to the hospital room.

Bubbles suddenly gasped, drawing both of her siblings' attention.

"No, no," she panted, attaching her hand to Blossom's shoulder. "Don't leave me with her, she's...she's going to be mean to me...!"

Blossom quickly realized that Bubbles' was referring to Buttercup, who was now wearing an expression of guilt and shame for her recent actions.

"No, Bubbles," Buttercup meekly defended. "I'll...I'll be nice. I promise."

Bubbles spun around and shot Buttercup a wary glare with narrowed blue eyes.

"Pinky swear?" Bubbles dared.

"Wh-?...We don't have pinkies," Buttercup muttered under her breath, baffled.

"Pinky-swear," Bubbles hissed out her command, shoving her hand in Buttercup's face.

In an act of self-defense, Buttercup pressed her hand against Bubbles', nodding hastily.

"Pinky swear! I pinky swear," Buttercup desperately whispered, not at all wanting to draw un-needed attention.

"See?" Blossom nervously encouraged. "It's...it's all going to be fine."

"Yea, I'm not gonna run away again," Buttercup insisted shakily.

"Yay~!" sang Bubbles, offering Buttercup a tight hug. "We'll be one happy family again."

Blossom exhaled frost through her nose unintentionally, unsure as to how to feel over...well, any of this. Sad. Yes, sad was at least one fitting descriptor. But if the three of them were together again, that was at least a step in a positive direction. Maybe, if they worked together, they could reverse what HIM had done to Bubbles somehow, at some point.

But it was too late for Father.

Blossom entered the isolated room, devices blipping and bleeping, the Professor motionless in his bed. Blossom felt another shiver set over her, but she ignored it.

"Hi," she whispered to her Dad. She gave pause, contemplating what to say. She hugged at her stomach as it agitated from the stress of this scenario. "I...I tried, Daddy," she mumbled, letting the immediate tears trickle down her face. "I really did. It's-...Everything is so hard now. Without you. I can barely keep us together. I...I can barely keep...keep m-me together." Clouds of frost were slipping out along with her words. "Wuh-what am I supposed...t-to do?" She shuddered, the tears on her cheeks frozen to her cold skin. She took a deep breath and tried to find that center she'd managed earlier. She envisioned Buttercup's embrace, Bubbles' smile, and she exhaled a normal sigh as the tears slipped off her face.

"I'm sorry I couldn't save you," she whimpered, blinking off more salty drops. "I...I want to promise that...that I'll save my sisters. I know you'd want that. And...I'm sorry. I just-...I can't. I don't know. I'm not so sure anymore what I'm even capable of doing right now. But I will try. You made me to be a leader. And I've failed at that, so many times. But you made us to be a family. And I'm going to do my best to keep us that way, no matter what."

Blossom's mind reeled with possibilities of things to say, or do. Questions she would ask if she could, things she would make sure he knew could he hear her. But he couldn't hear her. And he couldn't reply.

So she dried her tears, and she swallowed her pain.

Blossom carefully laid her stump of a hand inside the palm of her Dad's, using her other hand to curl his fingers around it. She stared at the sight intently for a few seconds, as if wishing and gawking would make that hand move of its own accord. She couldn't tell if her body was still reacting to cold depression her powers were expressing, or if his flesh was really that lifeless.

All the same, Blossom savored that moment as much as she could – the last time she would feel Father's human fingers encasing her mutant stump of an arm, making her feel natural, human, and whole when all reason and logic that she valued so much defined that she was none of these things.

"I love you, Daddy. We'll miss you."

Knowing that no matter how long she sat there, nothing would change, Blossom lifted her body from the ground. She drifted away, letting go.

She took one last glance at him before exiting the room, where Buttercup and Bubbles were joined by the lead Doctor who'd been in charge of the Professor's care. Blossom wedged herself between her two sisters, wrapping her arms across their backs as the physician laid information on them, clarifying this and that and going over the paperwork and technicalities that would need to be attended to. Condolences, the 'I'm sorry for your loss' stuff...it all washed together.

Even Blossom's logical mind couldn't wrap itself around all of it in that moment. For right now, all she could focus on was that they were ending Father's suffering, and that now she had to start to putting her energies into the two remaining family members still with her. They were each slipping from her in their different ways, but Blossom was determined to hold on for as long and as hard as it took for her sisters.

"Blossom?" the Doctor checked, having noticed that she seemed to have lost attention. "Are you...going to be all right?"

Blossom tugged at her sisters, hugging their sides. Bubbles merrily laid her temple against Blossom's, and Buttercup rested her head on Blossom's opposing cheek.

"We'll get by," Blossom assured, nodding slowly.

"I'm sure you will," the Doctor carefully replied. "You're...the PowerPuff Girls."

"And once again," Bubbles cheered, "the day is saved! By us!"

"Uh, we...we'll tough it out," Buttercup agreed, off-put by Bubbles' merriment.

"If there's one thing he taught us," Blossom solemnly explained, "it's that we always have each other's backs."

Blossom nuzzled her head against her sisters' faces and took a steady, warm breath. Her eyes were watery as she put on a brave smile and concluded:

"We're Utoniums."

-Fin-