"Sara, you've been talking in circles for twenty minutes now. If you're not ready to tell me what you want to tell me, maybe it can wait until tomorrow." Phillip almost got up, but this time Sara really did grab his arm.

"No, wait." He sat back down, a little annoyed. Understandably so; Sara would have been just as irked if it was the other way around. She had been going at this for over a quarter hour now, ever since she walked Phillip over to the living room couch and told him to brace himself. Sara needed to tell him about Bubbles. She really did. But how?

"Sara, it's okay." Phillip put his other hand on Sara's, right where she was grabbing him. "Listen, I know I was being a little pushy at dinner, and I'm sorry about that. But it's okay. If it makes you too uncomfortable now, maybe you should wait a while, and then tell me."

"It'll never be comfortable," Sara said cryptically. How would she even begin an explanation of the monster she was? Blast something? He'd have a heart attack. Drop the statement 'I am a Powerpuff Girl' like a bomb? He wouldn't believe her. Roll out her plan to move away with Paul? He'd be confused as hell. Why could there just be an easy way to do this?

"Well?" Phillip was trying to be a good listener, as far as Sara could tell. He really was. But he was getting antsy, waiting so long for nothing, just thinking of his spaghetti get colder and colder. Sara didn't blame him – she had eaten nothing besides a cup of coffee and half a banana that whole day, and she was hungry too.

But this was no time to get sidetracked. She had Phillip's attention. She'd had it for some time now. But how would she start? Maybe she could start with Paul, or a backstory of some sort… but she wouldn't know how Phillip would react to those.

"Sara?" Okay, he was still listening. Pull yourself together, Sara! See, even in her head, she had been trained to call herself Sara. How could she tell Phillip when she didn't even want to tell herself?

Paul, that's how. Sara didn't want Paul getting hurt, and she didn't want Paul to hurt Phillip, with all his recently expressed powers and all. That's why she could kill the lie that she had told Paul for seven years, and that she had told herself for twenty. But she had to know how he would react first, so Sara decided to start with that. "Phillip?"

"Yes?" Finally, she says something, his expression said.

"Would you still like me if you found out something about my past? Something you didn't like?"

"Of course." He probably thought she was going to tell him how her 'parents' died. If only, Sara thought.

"What if you really didn't like it? What if it was hideous, what I did, and how I did it, and you could even think of me without thinking of the things that happened?"

"I'll love you no matter what, Sara." Those would probably be empty words, after Sara said what she needed to say.

"What is those things, those horrible things, were built into who I am, and were passed on from me to Paul? What if I've ruined your only child?"

That last part was a bit excessive, and Phillip winced. Not because he was anxious, Sara thought, but because he couldn't see why she would think such a harsh thought. He was about to. "I've already said that I'll love you to the ends of the Earth. And that goes for Paul too."

Sara wasn't convinced. Sure, he'll say that when his wife isn't a chemical murder machine. But it didn't matter now; predicting Phillip's reaction ahead of time was a futile attempt. Did it matter, anyways? She had to barrel through the confession head first, and just say it. The worst he could do is not believe her. "I'm a Powerpuff Girl," she said quickly and bluntly, to get it over with.

"You're a what now?" See? Disbelief.

"A Powerpuff Girl," Sara repeated. "Sara Bellum? That was never my name. It's Bubbles Utonium."

"A Powerpuff Girl?" Phillip reiterated. "Like, a Powerpuff Girl? Those five-year-old crime fighters from two decades ago?" So he knew who they were, apparently. He left out the part about the Incident.

Bubbles sighed. Disbelief. "A Powerpuff Girl."

"So I'm married to Bubbles? Bubbles, of the Powerpuff Girls? The blue one?"

"Bubbles Grey, now… I guess." Bubbles took a step back. "I'm sorry, Phillip, that I never told you. I never told anyone. But it's the truth. Seriously."

He looked straight at her perfectly blue eyes. "Bubbles?" he said in a softer voice.

"Please don't make me say it again." She kept looking at him, and he kept looking at her – at her blonde hair and blue eyes – for verification.

Once the minimal evidence successfully trumped his disbelief (given the circumstances, it was truly phenomenal how quickly Phillip believed Bubbles), Phillip was shocked. Of course. But it was more a shock of amazement than a shock of horror. He sank into the couch. "Well, that explains it," he said mostly to himself.

"I know it's-" Bubbles froze. She wasn't expecting Phillip to surprise her, really; she had been nearly certain that the shock would be sent strictly in one direction. "It explains what?"

"I'm not blind, Sara. Bubbles, I mean." Phillip cleared his throat. "Sorry, I'm just not used to it. But all those times you start glowing blue in the middle of the night – at first I assumed that it was some flashlight you used, but eventually I noticed that your actual body was glowing. I've seen that happen more than a couple of times… it's when something hits you on your left side, isn't it?"

Bubbles picked up her dropped jaw. "You knew? All this time, you knew my true identity?" Bubbles hated calling it that; she wished that Sara Grey was her 'true identity.'

"No, I didn't," Phillip admitted. "I knew about the light show." Bubbles wished he hadn't called it that. "But I couldn't figure out why. You're a Powerpuff Girl, and that's why you can glow. It makes sense." He threw his arms up into the air, finally overwhelmed at the revelation. "Perfect sense."

"Why didn't you tell me that you knew about the glow?"

"I had figured that you would bring it up if you wanted to talk about it. And so you have." He had a point.

"And so I have," Bubbles tacked on needlessly. Now what? "So, what you were saying before, about still loving me and all-"

"I meant every word." He said it with noticeably less enthusiasm than before, though. As expected.

"But I lied to you. For seven years, I lied to you, and I'm a monster on top of it all. Don't you hate me?"

"Why would I hate you?" Phillip scratched the back of his head. "If I was in your place, I wouldn't have had the guts to say that at all. I don't blame you." But I agree that you're a monster, he conveniently left out.

"But you know all the horrible things I did, don't you? Everyone does." Maybe he simply didn't know about the Incident. It would explain why he wasn't freaking out.

Phillip nodded slightly, very slightly. He knew. "But that's in the past, isn't it? You can't blame yourself for what you did when you were five." What you did rang back and forth in Bubbles's mind. "You're an adult now, you have a family, and everything's going great. There's nothing to worry about." He looked at her teary blue eyes, and smiled a little. "Bubbles, then? I guess I'll have to get used to it." He was trying to be lighthearted about it, which Bubbles appreciated, but it didn't really work.

"No, you won't have to get used to it," Bubbles said way too seriously. It was time for the plan, then? Bubbles winced. Rip off the bandage, Bubbles.

"Would you rather me call you Sara?" Phillip asked sincerely.

"Remember when I said that I'd ruined your child?" Bubbles cut right to the chase. "Paul has the same curse I have, laser eyes and all. But he can't control it."

"The same… curse?" Phillip almost kept talking, but an intense glare from Bubbles's strikingly blue eyes – were they bluer than Sara Grey's eyes? – shut him right up.

"I don't want anyone getting hurt. Paul blasted a bowl with a laser beam today, and I don't want him doing anything to you. That's why I have to break up the family, and take Paul as far away from you as possible, at least until he can control his-"

"Sara, don't be stupid!" Phillip suddenly shouted. Great, that's exactly what she wanted to hear. "You're not leaving me, and neither is Paul." Phillip was standing up now, staring Bubbles straight in the face.

Bubbles backpedaled. So that's how he would react. A plan to protect him from horrible dangers he had just minutes ago been introduced to, and could much less understand, and he meets it with anger. Bubbles let a stream of tears flow from each eye, just so Phillip could see that his response was making her worst fears about coming clean a reality.

Phillip sighed. Obviously, he saw that he had stepped too far. Overreacted at something that wasn't even an action yet, but just words. "Bubbles?" he asked, suddenly remembering something.

Bubbles wiped her face on her sleeves. "What?"

"Can I show you something?" Phillip was back to his sane self. He had just freaked out a little when she said she was going to break up his family, Bubbles realized. That's all. Nothing to do with her being… Bubbles.

Bubbles nodded, and before she knew it, Phillip had grabbed her wrist and was walking gently for their bedroom. He opened the door quietly, incase Paul was asleep. He wasn't, though – Paul was sitting upright in his crib, sucking on some square rubbery block, as babies tend to do. Normal ones. Why there was a block in the crib, Bubbles had no idea.

Phillip walked over to his nightstand and, after turning on a bedside lamp, opened the bottom most drawer. From it, he pulled out an old piece of notebook paper, folded in quarters and tucked away in some little corner. He sat down onto the edge of the bed and invited Bubbles to do the same.

"So… you're not scared of me?" Bubbles asked awkwardly. It wasn't the right time, but luckily, Phillip brushed over it.

"I drew this when I was in kindergarten." Phillip blushed a little. "It's pretty spooky, when you think about it," he said as he handed the slip to Bubbles.

Bubbles opened it. On the page, drawn crudely in thick streaks of crayon, were a boy and a girl holding hands, with a heart on top. The girl had yellow hair – that was the closest to blonde that there was in a standard pack of crayons – and blue eyes.

"I was convinced back then that I was going to marry Bubbles when I grew up." His cheeks were burning red. "I guess my dream came true, huh?"

Bubbles inspected the page, and what Phillip had said. He was in kindergarten when he drew it, and he and Bubbles were the same age… "The Incident hadn't happened yet when you drew this, had it?"

"No," Phillip admitted. "But that doesn't change anything. I still got to marry the girl of my dreams, even if I thought she was someone else for seven years." He looked at Bubbles mischievously and with a toothy grin. "Actually, I never married Bubbles Utonium, did I? I married Sara Bellum." Phillip took Bubbles's right hand and saw that she had her wedding ring on. He slipped it off casually.

"What are you doing?" Bubbles was so confused, she almost forgot that she had just revealed the biggest secret of her whole life to the man whose son she was about to run away with.

Phillip inspected the ring, twiddling it around his fingers. "You know what, Bubbles? I married a cute little orphan girl named Sara about seven years ago, a girl with blonde hair and bright blue eyes and the biggest promise of adventure that I had ever seen in a person. And she didn't disappoint." Phillip snorted so lightly that Bubbles mistook it for a laugh. "Bubbles Utonium. That's a neat trick, but honestly, that isn't the biggest adventure I feel like I've had with Sara. The biggest one's sitting in that crib over there. But I have to admit, revealing yourself as a Powerpuff Girl is a strong second."

Sara relaxed off of one tension and onto another. Phillip was completely accepting the fact that she was Bubbles, the Powerpuff Girl, and was not completely panicking at the sound of it. She hadn't a clue what he was doing now.

Phillip stood up. "But I don't care about anything that happened in the past, Bubbles." Bubbles winced. The Incident. He had to bring it up at some point. "And I don't care if I get hurt trying to raise Paul. He's my son; I'd do anything for him. And you should know after seven years, Sara, that I'd do anything for you. I'm sorry I yelled at you earlier, Bubbles, when you were just trying to spit out the thing you've been hiding for years, but I couldn't stand the thought of losing the thing I care about the most in the whole wide world – our family." Phillip paused and took a breath. "You were the most wonderful girl I had ever met as Sara, and you're just as amazing in the form of Bubbles." Phillip lowered his voice to a joking whisper. "I would call you my favorite person, too, but I think Paul would get jealous."

Bubbles just had to laugh a little at that.

"Anyways, Bubbles," Phillip continued, "I don't think it's fair, now that you've told me who you really are, that I married the wrong girl. To you or to me. So, Bubbles Utonium." Phillip got down on one knee, and used his hands as a makeshift clamshell box to present the same ring Sara had worn for seven years. "Will you marry me?"

Bubbles's heart swelled with glee. To hell with her 'plan.' They were in this together, Phillip and she, no matter what the circumstances. Till death do us part. Whether she was 'a cute little orphan girl,' as Phillip had called her, or if she was a town-destroying Powerpuff, whether she was a mild-manned housewife or an undercover chemical concoction, Phillip would be there to support her. As long as she didn't try to rip herself or Paul from his accepting arms, he would be there. Bubbles answered Phillip's question with a resounding "Yes!"

As Phillip slipped the ring back on to Bubble's finger, which she had laid out for him in preparation, a quiet clack sounded from behind. Bubbles turned her head to see that Paul's toy had fallen through the bars of the crib and landed on the floor; Paul promptly began to cry.

Phillip smiled. "Our adventure calls, Bubbles. Adventure calls."