She liked the water.
She liked the way it was so dark no one could see to the bottom, and she liked the way she could stare down into the depths for hours and have it not change.
She hated change.
She hated how the villains were trickling off one by one, due to old age, or boredom, or permanent injury leaving them incapable.
She hated how Blossom and Buttercup were going off to college, and dating, and leaving her behind.
She hated herself.
She leaned down, trailing her fingers in the icy December water, moving too fast to form ice but still cold enough to make her cry out.
She forced her hand in the water, holding it there. Her thoughts wandered.
"So when are you going to bring home a boy, Bubbles?" the Professor had asked a week ago. She had nearly choked, and her stomach had clenched painfully. She was saved from answering by Blossom immediately protesting.
"How do you know it'll be a boy?! Maybe Bubbles likes girls, Professor! How could you be so insensitive to her life choices? She's a person just like you and deserves your respect no matter what gender she chooses to bring home and-"
"How much you wanna bet that Blossom's a lesbian?" Buttercup had whispered, making a weak, sickly smile cross Bubbles's face. She'd excused herself hastily.
But the truth was, she wasn't into girls. She wasn't into boys. She wasn't into anyone. Or anything, really. She drew sometimes, but more out of a sense of obligation than because she really wanted to do it. It was the only thing that made her feel normal, since she didn't date, and since she was still living in the Professor's house instead of going to school. Lately, she had been drawing the water, making heavy black and brown swirls on the paper, replicating the dappled way the sun got absorbed into the surface and vanished.
It was beautiful, even if she was the only one who liked them.
But beauty wasn't enough. It didn't make up for her shortcomings as a person.
Beauty didn't change the fact that she constantly had dark circles under her eyes from many sleepless nights, dreading her future. It didn't change the fact that her ribs protruded grotesquely and her cheeks were hollow no matter how much she ate. It was like she was empty.
Beauty didn't give her normal emotions. It didn't make her anything more than a shell of what she was supposed to be, what they expected her to be.
She was utterly devoid of anything, except the water and the way it stirred her in a way nothing else could.
Nothing except... crime-fighting. Right, Bubbles? Isn't that what this is about?
A strange sound filled her ears. Sharp and high, slicing her heart and her stomach and her lungs to shreds. She was... screaming. She never screamed. Not anymore. Not after she realized that it didn't matter how much she screamed, because no one would ever hear her. No one would ever understand. All she would accomplish was being a nuisance. She forced herself to stop, and the sound was replaced by heavy breathing. Tears prickled absently in her eyes, but she couldn't feel them. She wa distracted by the numb, uninhabited feeling in the chambers of her heart.
She wondered if it even pumped blood anymore.
She wondered if it was too frozen.
She wondered if her body did anything right at all.
She already knew her mind didn't. If it did, why would she feel so devoid of... everything?
Why would she be so obsessed with the past?
Everyone except her had known that crime-fighting wouldn't last forever. The punches would stop rolling because somebody would give up or somebody would die.
But she'd thought it would last forever. She thought that she and her sisters would always be able to fight crime, in Townsville or elsewhere. She never thought there'd be anything else. She hadn't cared growing up, never developed any skills. Buttercup was a natural athlete, Blossom was a genius, but what did she have to nurture new skills anyway? She was cute. That's all she'd ever been. And cute didn't make her useful.
Nor did the beauty of the lake.
Maybe that's why she liked it so much. It was nothing, she was nothing. They were just two frigid, empty nothings staring into each other.
She pulled her hand out.
There was no permanent damage. No frostbite. No consequence for her actions.
She was unnatural. She was a monster. And she hated herself for it.
She was never going to change, or grow. She would always be the cute one. Nothing special. She had never been anything special.
She wondered how many people who loved her would never get the chance to realize that, because she could never die an unnatural death.
So she just stared at the water, trailing her fingers in the cold, still surface.
She bit down on the anger, and the self-loathing, and the overabundant uselessness that she embodied.
And she smiled.
Because that's what the cute one does in the end.
And in the end only one thing mattered.
She liked the water.