Author's Notes: Nothing much to say here, except yeah, the Utonium family done goofed. I felt like their reactions should be the shortest of the chapters.

Chapter 3

Guilt

The night before Buttercup's ultimate disappearance, Blossom and Bubbles had crept upstairs to their bedroom, finding their sister already under the covers with her body turned away. It wasn't like her to take such an early bedtime (she always bragged about one day being old enough to take on the late night scene), and her earlier subdued behavior had the two of them grossly worried.

"Buttercup?" Blossom called out to her softly, checking to see if she was still awake. It didn't seem probable for her to fall asleep so quickly. Her brows were curved with worry. "Sis?"

"Buttercup?" Bubbles reinforced from behind her. She adopted a more teary voice. "We're sorry for being so mean."

The raven-haired girl didn't answer them. There was absolutely nothing from her, which was worse than if she were actively lashing out. The two sisters shared troubled glances with each other before ultimately joining their sister in bed.

"We love you, Buttercup." Blossom said above her, still getting no response. She hoped that she heard that though. It was one of the most important things to hear since she meant every word.

Bubbles started to tear up as she snuggled underneath the blue section of her comforter blankets, while Blossom remained dry-eyed but still supremely worried for her catatonic sister. It wasn't like her to shut them out like this. Perhaps they had truly gone too far this time. Perhaps it was stupid to even try to enact their own form of "justice" on her. It only ended up causing her pain in the end.

She lowered the green section of Buttercup's covers a bit and took a hold of her hand, squeezing it tightly. This was sometimes a ritual for the girls - sleeping with their hands held like this. It also made Blossom think of when the girls had to walk home in the rain after waiting for hours for the Professor to pick them up from school. They had no idea he was in jail and they all felt the subtle sting of abandonment. Blossom reminded them that they weren't allowed to use their powers, so they all held hands and tried their best to find their way home. Even though they were miserable, they were still all together, and their bond even back then had been unbreakable.

She hoped that their bond wouldn't fall apart now.

In the morning she had learned of the awful truth. Buttercup had left, and according to her letter, she wasn't coming back.

She was in denial at first, when they had first waken up. When they didn't see Buttercup in bed with them, Blossom first suggested that she might be in the bathroom, but that was shut down by the fact that none of them could hear any running water. They didn't hear the flush of a toilet either. They heard nothing at all as far as activity back there. Next Blossom suggested she could just be downstairs having breakfast or watching Saturday morning cartoons. They hoped to find their sister comfortably doing just that, being safe and sound in the house while relaxing, but there was nobody downstairs either.

That was when they started panicking, searching every inch of the house. Checking the laundry room, the kitchen room, their bedroom again, spare rooms, the laboratory, pantries, cupboards, closets, and every other nook and cranny they thought their sister could possibly, even hypothetically be hiding in.

"Buttercup?!" Blossom called.

"Buttercup!" Bubbles shouted.

They never found Buttercup but they did end up finding a letter at the foot of their bed, a letter that they showed the Professor with pale faces when he finally woke up, and that he read out loud in the kitchen with trembling hands.

To the Professor and my sisters,

Thank you for taking care of me. We really had some fun. But I can't take being the problem child of this house anymore. You all deserve better than to have a bad apple like me around only to spoil the whole bunch. I'm taking off to somewhere where I won't be able to hurt anybody else. I know I need to get my act together before I can ever face you again. I hope you're able to do well without me around to screw everything up.

Thank you and with love,

Buttercup Utonium.

A heart could not physically, biologically, or realistically sink, but Professor Utonium thought he knew what that expression truly entailed at that very moment. A heart sank when one received news so sickening, so devastating, and so crushing, that the only way to describe someone's state of being after the fact was to say that their heart sank.

"Oh my God," The Professor whispered in desolation, covering his eyes with his hand. "What have I done? My sweet, darling Buttercup..."

Professor Utonium... had failed. He'd failed as a father and he'd failed as a man. He knew that a father's duty first and foremost was to make sure every last one of his children felt wanted and loved. That special feeling of love was more important than anything else for a child to have from their parent. It was more important than providing clothes, more important than providing food, and more important than providing shelter. He hadn't made Buttercup feel that way at all. Instead he'd made her feel, unintentionally or not, like she was nothing more than an eyesore.

He remembered the cold and disappointed look he gave her in the dentist's office, not even bothering to ask her if she felt okay after such an awful trauma had been inflicted on her. Regardless of whether he was disappointed in her or not, he could've at least given her that.

He hadn't given Buttercup any form of comfort as she was sitting in the dentist's office with him. He hadn't even looked at her for a very long time while they were waiting for their turn to be seen by Dr. Payne. At the time, he thought that this was the best way for him to show his disapproval for her and all the things that she had done, but now he realized just how cold it was to not even ask her if she was okay as she was most likely sitting there in pain, wondering if her father gave a damn about her being beaten to a bloody pulp...

Those feelings she articulated about her lack of self-worth... how she felt like she was only a mistake... those didn't come out of nowhere. They had been festering for quite some time. How could he have been blind to such self-hatred for all this time?

Oh Buttercup, how can I ever make it up to you?

"No," Blossom whispered, feeling her throat closing up at the awful words that were read out loud to her in the kitchen, the truth laid out for her in how much she had failed as a sister and as a leader. She took a step back, her mouth feeling dry. "What have we done?"

She could remember her own smug smile as Buttercup sat in the waiting room of the dentist's office, covered in various injuries. She didn't show much sympathy for her sister getting hurt; if anything, she practically relished in it, believing that Buttercup had gotten her "just desserts" for doing wrong. But it was a cruel thing to do to her and Buttercup never recovered from such dehumanizing treatment.

If she thought real hard, she thought she could remember seeing Buttercup's shoulders violently shaking with barely repressed sobs in the back of the family car when they were first coming home from the dentist's office. Her head was held down and her face wasn't shown, but it was plain to see that she was trying to hide her tears.

Blossom hadn't teased her at all for the remainder of the day after she saw that, and Bubbles didn't either. Instead they had tried to comfort her for the rest of the evening, but that had proved too little, too late.

All Blossom could ever remember now was having fights with Buttercup, even from the very beginning. She couldn't remember the moments of praising her, sharing high-fives with her, or playing games with her. Instead all she remembered was the first time she had ever yelled at her on that damn asteroid and blamed her for all of their problems when Blossom hadn't been an innocent victim either.

"Well if it wasn't for you, we wouldn't be in this stupid mess!"

All she could remember was calling her "insubordinate" for failing to follow orders and zapping her with her eyebeams, attacking her own sister, simply out of pure frustration for her. She would've never done anything like that to Bubbles, but she did it to Buttercup without a second thought.

(This was ignoring the time Bubbles thought she was Mojo Jojo and Blossom had been willing to attack her after Bubbles hurt her first.)

"I've had it with your insubordination!"

All she could remember was screaming at Buttercup to "shut up" in their fights and shutting down each and every last one of her potential ideas.

"SHUT UP, BUTTERCUP!"

"Just listen to me next time!"

"Always the violent way, eh Buttercup?"

"Sorry Buttercup, an eye for an eye..."

"I was always fighting with her..." Blossom whispered, unable to find the bright spots in all the chaos and dysfunction. "I n-never had one good thing to say about her! I was always fighting, and yelling, and screaming at h-her!"

Even if that wasn't strictly true, that was all that Blossom could remember doing after that letter was read out into the open in the kitchen, detailing all of her sister's inner loathing and anguish.

"I should've been there for her..." Bubbles quietly wept too. "I should've been nice to her! But all I did was make fun of her!"

She had reveled in Buttercup's pain too. She had participated in that plan to have her beaten to a pulp for her behavior. Even though she had justified it by calling it 'retributive punishment', what it really was was a chance at revenge, at least for Bubbles. She wanted to get Buttercup back for trying to knock her teeth out all day just the week before. Even after the Professor had stopped her from continuing, Bubbles hadn't been satisfied. She leaped at the chance to make Buttercup pay for what she had done to her.

She even blew raspberries at her in the dentist's office, sticking her tongue out at her and showing her no kindness or comfort at all. If that had been Bubbles sitting with a swollen mouth at the dentist's office, she'd want someone to hold her and hug her and reassure her in some manner that everything was going to be okay. But she hadn't treated Buttercup the way she wanted to be treated.

"I k-kept blowing those stupid raspberries and I stuck my tongue out at her! I even laughed at her for her blanket, even though I always play with Octi!"

That had been another thing that came up missing along with Buttercup: her blanket. It seemed obvious the reason why. Since Buttercup couldn't get any comfort from a person, she chose to get it from a soft, green blanket. The thought of that was heartbreaking.

"I'm a terrible, terrible parent!" Professor said. "I've been failing my daughter this entire time!"

No. There was something more than all of that. Blossom and Bubbles knew what had been the straw to break the camel's back. They knew what they had done to drive Buttercup over the edge, and it was something they had to reveal to the Professor now lest it eat them up inside and haunt them for the rest of their lives.

"P-Professor. There's something we need to tell you." Blossom swallowed. What she was about to confess to felt even worse than the time she had to confess to committing a crime and stealing those golf clubs. Her tiny body shook and she felt tears gathering in her eyes. She even started sweating with anxiety, her stomach doing flips as she wondered how the Professor would take this information.

"W-We worked with the other villains to have Buttercup beat up. Back at that museum."

"Y-Yeah." Bubbles squeaked in an equally tiny voice. "We did it... on purpose."

The Professor's mouth dropped. These words made no sense to him. His daughters working for their enemies?

"We worked out a deal with Mojo and the others to where they could take revenge on Buttercup by knocking out her teeth! It was only supposed to be her teeth, but it was still so cruel..." Only now was she realizing this. Now when it was arguably too late.

Professor Utonium didn't say a word. He was absolutely shocked. The way he stared at them after this reveal of information was like he had never seen them before a day in his life. Here he'd thought Buttercup had suffered natural consequences for her behavior when she had been set into a trap this whole time.

It was as bad as that day when Mojo announced to all of Townsville, "I'd like to take this moment to thank the little people who helped make this day a smashing success!" then took his finger and pointed, "Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup! I couldn't have done it without'cha!"

This was even worse than that. That time there had been no mistake. No naivete. They weren't unintentionally aiding the other villains this time; they were aiding them directly and intentionally.

"Girls..." He finally voiced. "Why...? Why would you...?"

"We weren't thinking!" Blossom insisted. Her eyes were wet. "We thought we could handle a punishment by ourselves! We should've came to you but we were so confident that we knew what to do..."

"We're sorry, Professor!" Bubbles apologized, when she saw the devastation written plainly over his face. He hadn't worn a look like that since he thought the girls were evil way back when Mojo first manipulated them into doing his dirty bidding. "We didn't know what we were doing!"

The man dropped down to his knees, carrying that same shell-shocked face. "Have I really been failing that badly...? My own kids... trying to do the parenting for me?"

"This isn't your fault, Professor!" Blossom insisted, flying over to his prone form and gesturing emphatically at herself. "It's ours! We're her sisters! We were supposed to be there for her!"

He finally rose his head, but he looked like the dead. "Girls, we need to find your sister, and we need to find her fast."

And when they did, they would have to tell her how much they loved her and that they never meant to hurt her.