Revenge
Summary: Slight AU – They had pushed her too far. They had hurt her for the very last time, and now, no one was around to stop her from taking her revenge. They weren't scared of her yet. But they would be.
The Powerpuff girls do not belong to me either and as always, they have human appendages. Also, this was heavily inspired by The Last of Us Part II's "Through the Valley" trailer.
Slight Greens, if you squint.
Revenge
Noun: The action of inflicting hurt or harm on someone for an injury or wrong suffered at their hand.
Empty house.
That's all it was now. Just an empty house.
The soul and all of the cheerful energy that used to flow though the walls had dissipated, and now all that was left was an eerie silence. Everything was too still… too dark… too quiet.
Three of the house's occupants were missing. One would be gone for an unspecified amount of time, and two would never be coming back at all.
A tall woman with long, tangled jet-black hair, and green eyes that once been vibrant, but were now dull and cloudy, sat in the middle of her old multi-coloured bedroom that she had shared with her sisters when she was younger. She stared blankly down at an old photograph of her family together – the only light in the house was cold moonlight coming through three circular windows on the far side of the room.
She hadn't spoken to anyone in days and had barely moved from her spot on the floor. Too tired to move, too numb to feel anything outside of grief.
Blossom, her fearless leader, and Bubbles, the joy and laugher of everyone's lives, were no more.
Gone. In some freak "accident" that had been caused by Human's no less – the very people that she and her sisters had sworn to protect.
She felt hysterical laughter build up in the back of her throat at the thought but forced it down. The so-called "Toughest Fighter" couldn't even save her own sisters – the very people she cared about most in the world.
First there was three… now there was one.
She wasn't a fool – she knew that there were plenty risks doing what they did, and the stakes were always high, but she didn't expect it to happen – not like this anyways. Never like this.
They had been called to save the day – nothing different there – but instead of fighting monsters like they normally did – they found themselves up against supposedly "normal" people – Terrorists of some kind, mind you – but compared their shared status as meta humans, it didn't phase them. All they cared about was keeping their city and its inhabitants safe.
They had immediately charged into battle when reasoning with them clearly wasn't going to work. They had to be careful when dealing with humans – they were fragile, unlike the monsters that they so often faced – and it wouldn't take much for them to kill a normal human. They didn't have many rules or regulations when they fought that they had to follow, but they did have one golden rule when it came to people: Never, under any circumstances, do you kill a human.
They had always prided themselves on the fact that while many a person had ended up on the receiving end of their punches, they had mercifully never killed anyone. Even if some of those people really had deserved it.
At first, they thought that they could take the terrorist group down easily without too much damage done to the surrounding city, but soon all three of them had quickly discovered that the terrorists were in possession of what looked to be like a tank-like creation. For some reason, seeing it put them all on edge, but none of them could figure out why at the time.
What they hadn't known, was that the cannon was prepped to fire Antidote X. A lethal amount of the stuff – enough to bring down a Powerpuff girl.
She had found that out too late.
It happened so suddenly she didn't even register it for a couple of minutes. There had been an explosion, and she knew that the odd tank thing had fired and had launched a projectile at both of her sisters, plowing them into the ground before either of them knew what was happening, sending up a strange cloud of translucent mist and dust. She had seen it happen and she had panicked at first, but she had pushed it off and it made her sweep through the opposing group even faster then she normally would have, because nobody touched her sisters and got away with it.
Besides, she reasoned, they always got up anyways. This time would be no different.
Only this time, they didn't.
She saw the projectile hit her sisters. She them fall. She dispatched the unsuspecting humans with her overpowering speed and strength and demolished the tank while she was at it, as she waited for them to pick themselves up like they normally did, but after the dust had cleared and they still hadn't moved from the small creator that the impact had caused, she knew something was wrong.
She had only managed to avoid the projectile herself as Blossom had ordered her to split from them and disable the tank. Doing so had saved her life in the end, but it had cost her sisters theirs.
She remembers forgetting all about the group of men and jetting over to Blossom and Bubbles, screaming for them to wake up. They were covered in some sort of clear substance and they weren't responding to her at all. The stinging of the liquid on the exposed parts of her skin told her immediately that it was Antidote X, and that was all she needed to know as her blood ran cold.
How people like temt managed to get that amount of Antidote X, when it was supposedly all locked up was beyond her, but even she could tell that it was more then enough to send her into shock if she made direct contact with it.
But it had done far more then put her sisters into shock. The damage it had done to them was irreversible. And just like that, they were taken from her. To add insult to injury, in her panic, she had forgotten to tie up the group of humans, and they had bolted before the military could intervene.
Her sisters where dead, and she had let the human's who had done it escape.
She went numb.
She doesn't remember much of the events that followed directly afterwards. She knew that she stood over her sister's bodies for hours afterwards, not letting anyone go near them. She hadn't been able to protect them then, so she sure as hell wasn't moving an inch now. People took pictures of the scene, she didn't move. The news crews begin to file in, she still didn't move. She's pretty sure that one of the reporters had the balls to try and ask her questions before being ripped back by the police, but she didn't say a word – too wrapped up in her grief and rage. They didn't matter. None of them did anymore. It was Human's who had done this to them after all.
She had finally allowed the coroner to gently load them into an ambulance – with her watching intently – and allowed them to be taken back home as she herself floated close behind, all the while lost in her own thoughts.
Just how in the hell was she supposed to live without her sisters? And what the hell was she going to do to the humans who had done it?
Her father was a different story.
She had always believed that she knew what true pain felt like, but after watching her father break down and sob unconsolably at her sisters' funerals – clutching her like a life line – she could truthfully say that she had no idea.
She felt her heart break right down the middle as he held her close and cried, leaving a gaping, empty void in her chest, becoming larger and more painful until she herself felt silent, hot tears run down her face as she tried to keep it together for him.
She had brought him home not long after and had resigned herself to looking after him, making sure that he ate and bathed because god knows if she didn't make him, he wouldn't have.
After a week, she reached her breaking point.
She couldn't stand to see the look of pained grief on her beloved father's face anymore – it reminded her too much of her failure to save them – so she had sent him away with her Uncle from out of state because she just couldn't look at him anymore, and she knew that he couldn't stay in the house without her sisters – the agony would eat him alive.
She also wanted him gone for another reason, but she didn't want to tell him about that one. She could barely vocalize it herself.
It was something that needed to be done. Her sisters must be avenged, and she must have her revenge, but she can't do it alone, and she certainly can't tell her father – if he isn't completely broken already, what she's about to do certainly will break him, and she can't have that. She loves him too much.
Creak.
There is a tiny sound downstairs, and she can hear the slightest of movements creep towards the staircase. In another time, she would have bolted up off the floor and sent the intruder flying out the door with two black eyes and no teeth. But she is not that person right now, and she thinks that she knows who it might be.
There's footsteps outside the room, her super hearing picks up on them right away and she can hear them clearly now, but she doesn't move. They're familiar to her, and she knows exactly who they belong to.
The footsteps come closer before stopping abruptly, and she doesn't have to turn her head to know that there's someone standing just inside the doorframe leading into the room. She can feel the eyes on the her back – watching her crumpled form carefully.
There's adrenalin coming off the person, she can sense it. But there's also an air of caution – which is odd, considering who it is.
"What are you doing Sunshine?"
Butch.
She knew he'd find her eventually. The two of them were so in sync, they've always kinda known where the other is at all times – she attributes it to the fact that they're counterparts. When she was younger, she used to think it was annoying – now she's grateful for it.
For some reason, he's the only person that she wants to see right now.
She doesn't bother explaining to him what happened. He definitely knows at this point, either from the news or maybe even through some of his old contacts in the criminal underground.
She doesn't approve of his connections with them, and he knows that, but she's not going to argue about that with him right now. He keeps out of the spotlight for the most part, preferring to work under the radar of most law enforcement agencies in Townsville – and that would be enough to fool most people into believing that he's retired from his life of crime – but she knows that he still doesn't have a very clean record.
And yet somewhere along the lines, the two of them managed to strike up a mutual respect for the other, and allowed it to slowly grow into a stable friendship over the years. She never thought that she'd say it, but she trusts him – and that's exactly the reason why she wants him here, because she has to tell him something. Something that can never be heard by another soul.
Something that a part of her doesn't want to acknowledge – something that she wants to burry deep down in her chest where her hidden demons sleep and never think of again – but she can't, and she feels the need to tell someone.
She slowly stands from the floor and turns to face him, saying nothing – her long, wild hair hangs in front of her face, but she doesn't make a move to brush it away, Butch does that for her.
"How are you holding up?"
She wants to laugh. That's a hell of a question and he knows it. She feel's like she's dying. She and her sisters were created as three separate entities that together represented a full person: Blossom was the mind, Bubbles the spirit, and she, the body.
Now that the mind and the spirit were gone, the body was nothing more then an empty husk.
"I'm numb." She mutters finally. "It's not going away. I'm numb… but I'm angry. Really fucking angry."
She looks up at him, right into those rare green eyes of his, and she knows that he's reading her like a book based on his expression.
Good. Maybe she won't have to say the thing that's really on her mind out loud.
Just as she expected, she doesn't have to.
His eyes are getting darker she notices, and it takes him a minute, before he finally sighs and levels with her.
"You really gonna go through with this?"
There are several reasons why he asks, and she knows them all. Namely it's because what she's about to do goes against everything that she's ever stood for, but it's also because he speaks from experience.
She didn't just call him here for comfort after all.
She backs away from him and turns her head to the side to glance out the window, towards her grieving city. Her hair hangs in front of her face, obscuring her eyes from view. It takes a moment for his question to fully sink in, but when she does answer, her voice is tight in her throat, but firm.
"I'm going to find them. The ones who took my sisters from me. I'm going to find them, and when I do…"
She looks up him – blazing green eyes filled with hate, drilling into dark forest irises – making him raise a brow slightly.
"I'm going to kill every last one of them."
And there it is. The thing she didn't want to say. It's out in the open. She's going to do it. The monsters that disguised themselves as mere humans had taken something irreplaceable from her, and now she was going to wipe them off the face of the damn earth.
To hell with the unbreakable rule that stated that she and her sisters couldn't truly harm a human. Humans had fucking murdered her sisters. All bets were off now.
She just felt like letting him know.
He is silent for a long time after that. He doesn't say anything to her – just stares at her reproachfully with those forested irises that she knows so well, until she can't stand it.
"Okay." He finally says, and it's enough to make her want to laugh bitterly.
Okay. She should have known that's all he would say to that. Butch isn't a good person. Not in the way that most people would classify good anyways. She knows that better than anyone. He doesn't blow up the city with his brother's anymore, but she's also smart enough to know that he never fully ended up leaving his crime life behind him.
She knows he's done things. Terrible things that she doesn't dare mention out loud, because both know that it would drive a stake through them, and they've always prided themselves on keeping a decent relationship with each other. They don't talk about what he does in his free time when they see each other, but now is different. Now she needs his support, because he gets it. He understands.
She brushes past him roughly. He doesn't move out of her way, but he doesn't try to stop her either. He knows better than that.
She knew he wouldn't stop her. As much as he might have calmed down in their adult years, she knows that he still longs-for carnage, violence and blood, much like he did when they were younger – and its hard to turn your back on your roots. She knows that better than anyone.
It might kill her to do this – to go against everything that she was raised to believe and protect, but she loves her sisters more than anyone could possibly hope to understand, and she cannot let them go unavenged. Not like this.
She always was the least forgiving of her sisters.
She turns to look at him. He hasn't moved from his spot in the doorway, but he's watching her intently – waiting for her next move. He's waiting for her to make her move. Her next decision will determine everything, and she alone will have to be the one to make it.
She doesn't hesitate.
She wordlessly extends her hand to him and in a voice so quiet that you'd have to have super hearing to make it out, she asks. "Are you with me?"
He pauses for a fraction of a second, almost as if her choice has surprised even him, and maybe it has, but she can't bring herself to care. There will be time for that later, but for now, all she has is one thing on her mind.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Butch pauses, but she notices that a familiar darkness has entered his eyes. He pauses but its Butch, and she knows he will do anything for her if she asks him to – and sure enough, he crosses the room and takes her hand in his large, cold one.
"I'm with you." He rumbles quietly – forest irises, so dark all she can see are shadows. "Let's go hunting Sunshine."
And as much as the part of her that is still good in her hates to admit it – it's the best thing she's heard all day.
They had pushed her too far. They had hurt her for the very last time, and now, no one was around to stop her from taking her revenge. They weren't scared of her yet. But they would be.
After all – she had him by her side to make sure that they would.
Authors note: Slightly darker then my normal one-shots but I enjoy divulging into other AU's from time to time. On another note – Happy New year to everyone! I hope the new year treats you all well.
Miss. RoseGold xoxoxox