(AN: Wow… what can I say about THIS baby? I guess I needed a break from all of my Mojo/Blossom output! (Leave it to me to come up with the weird pairings…)
The idea was sort of a joke, but I made it not joke-ish here… it's hard to explain. Nothing explicit, however. And if you find the need to flame even after I clearly listed the pairing, I'll have absolutely no sympathy (or respect) for you. Capiche?
The Powerpuff Girls belong to Craig McCracken and Cartoon Network. God help the show if it were left in MY hands.
Hope you enjoy. :) )
O.o.O
It was beautiful outside, the type of day Bubbles would normally love to spend outdoors. Or, at least, the kind of day she would have used to spend outdoors.
As far as anyone was concerned, the thirteen-year-old girl, one of Townsville's saviors, was the same as she had always been—the cheerful Powerpuff Girl, the one who loved nature, who loved people, who loved life. Innocence in blue. That's our Bubbles. Bubbles let everyone continue to believe she was still like that. She even tried to fool herself.
But nature was tarnished. Man's encroachment was evident almost everywhere she looked. And even in those remote untouched places, nature was just as violent as the world of men. It was a constant struggle for survival. The strong prospered, and the weak perished. It was even worse than the urban environment that Bubbles lived in and protected.
Ironic, then, that her sense of solace was at the heart of the city, the center of the political happenings, that office where she and her sisters had heard of so many crises, Bubbles couldn't even begin to guess the number. But the smell of the mahogany desk, the leather chair, the Mayor's pickles, alone could raise her spirits, even if the Mayor himself was absent.
"Would you like a pickle, Bubbles?"
The Mayor held out one of his beloved pickles to Bubbles, who was sitting on the bay window, looking out at the city. She smiled and took it from him. "Yes, thank you, sir," she said politely.
"You're quite welcome!" The Mayor handed her the pickle and pulled one for himself out of the jar. "I've turned you into quite the pickle connoisseur, haven't I? You've come by just about every day for the past couple of weeks!" He took a bit of his pickle and everything else paled in color. "Mmm… pickle…"
"It's not just for the pickles," Bubbles murmured under her breath. Luckily the Mayor didn't hear her, he was so enraptured by his pickle.
As the whole world had fallen to pieces as Bubbles grew up, one thing and one thing only could be counted on, and that was the Mayor's simple pleasures. No matter what calamity was tearing Townsville apart, the Mayor could always be counted on to be his same pickle-obsessed, happy-go-lucky, carefree self. Somehow the Mayor had been able to escape really growing up, something that even Bubbles had been unable to do.
Only with the Mayor could Bubbles still feel like the innocent, sweet Bubbles she once was, the innocent, sweet Bubbles she was still expected to be.
Funny it would work out that way. Everyone still thought Bubbles was innocent… well, she mostly was. Mostly. But that innocence was being slowly chipped away, in more than just her losing her naiveté about the world. The first man she had ever seen naked was, of course, the Mayor. Not that he had intended that… and not as if the Powerpuff Girls had been trying to see that. And yet it went further than that. The Mayor was the first man she had ever touched. But hey, she was a five-year-old girl suddenly stuck in the body of a much-older male! Who wouldn't be curious?
She sometimes wondered if he had done anything to her body.
"Mayor," she blurted out, "I was wondering—"
The Mayor turned from his pickle. "Yes?"
Bubbles blushed. "Uh, nothing… I forgot what I was going to say," she lied.
"You know, that happens to me all the time! Yes, even us intelligent politicians!" The Mayor leaned in to Bubbles, as if about to tell the world's juiciest secret. "Do you know what I do then, when I'm giving a speech and forget what it is I'm talking about? I make stuff up!"
"Oh really?" Bubbles forced a laugh.
"Yeah—like stuff about pickles! Oh, it happens more than you might think, Bubbles. You have no idea the pressures I'm under every day!"
Bubbles smiled softly. "Opening that pickle jar is tough on your arthritic hands, isn't it?"
"Exactly!" The Mayor abruptly stood up and shuffled his way back to his desk. "Well, I've got very important documents to sign, and I'm sure you have homework to do or your hair to curl or whatever it is you little girls do, so you'd best scuttle on off now!"
"Yeah," murmured Bubbles. It was ridiculous, ridiculous of her to keep coming to the Mayor like this, as if he were her pick-me-up drug of choice.
The Mayor kept his eyes on Bubbles perhaps a bit longer than he should have. There was something interesting about that girl. Blossom fought crime because it was her duty; Buttercup because she liked beating people up. But why Bubbles? Crimefighting seemed a far too violent profession for a girl like her. And yet it hardly fazed her. She was still the sweet girl she had always been.
The professions one chose could be detrimental on oneself in later years, the Mayor reflected as Bubbles hovered out the window. It had broken him down, making his need for pickles become overbearing—but they were the only things that seemed to keep joy left in his world. Pickles and… Bubbles.
Bubbles was long gone from the Mayor's office, but she still heard his words, carried up to her ears by a light breeze, tinted with the scent of pickles.
"My life is a lie."