Author's Notes: Someone once asked me if I could tackle an aftermath fic for "A Very Special Blossom" and this is about as close as I could get as far as originality. I truly think the author Dougster did the best job imaginable with "Blossom After the Disgrace. I also think this ties in perfectly to the guilt that Blossom feels for the way she handled Buttercup's fall from grace because she was treated kindly while her sister simply had the book thrown at her.

Also, I love Blossom to pieces. I find it unfair how so many people dislike when she has so much pressure put on her as the "perfect" one. I've tried my hardest to give her so many humanizing moments because I don't believe she's a bad person. She's just a five-year-old trying to handle more responsibility than a girl her age really should with an incomplete sense of morality since you know, she's a freakin' preschooler.

Chapter 4

A Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Blossom Utonium had just gotten home from the courthouse.

Beforehand, she had to hold up a prison ID number card with her hair messed up from her previous brawl with Bubbles and Buttercup to get out of admitting to her crime. She had to get her fingerprints (somehow) taken for identification. And she had to accept the worst type of uniform she could have ever imagined: the damning orange of the common criminal.

The judge decided to sentence her to 200 hours of community service in the end. He slammed down his gavel and that was that. Blossom figured she should probably be grateful to avoid any real jail time but instead all she felt was shame for being a "hero" who fell from grace.

Her father was cooking dinner for the girls just downstairs but Blossom didn't feel worthy enough to join them so she decided to punish herself by just skipping supper altogether. She put on her pink nighties and took an early bedtime, knowing she had a long day of picking up trash tomorrow.

The Professor came upstairs to check on her a little bit later. He knocked on her door first, but it was already open.

"Blossom, honey?"

"I'm going to bed." The girl answered curtly. Her face was turned away from him and she was buried underneath the covers.

"Without having your dinner first?" The Professor asked worriedly. "We're having ravioli and garlic bread tonight."

"I'm not hungry." Blossom said back, right before her growling stomach betrayed her. He didn't see her blush but he did see her try to curl deeper into herself to hide her moment of weakness.

"You sound pretty hungry." The Professor stated matter-of-factly, and then he furrowed his brows with sympathy and spoke to her compassionately. "Blossom, I know you made a mistake but starving you was never part of the punishment. Why don't you come downstairs and have something to eat, honey?"

"Can't." Blossom lied. "My head hurts." She hoped that this excuse would get him off her back but instead it only made him want to check up on her more.

"Your head hurts?" he asked worriedly, making great strides to her bed side. He was just about to place a hand over her forehead as he said, "Then let me feel-"

But Blossom whirled on him suddenly and said with tear-filled eyes, "Just g-go away, Professor! Leave me alone!"

It hurt him greatly to see his daughter's tears but he did as she said and left her alone. At least for now.

...

"So where's the little jailbird now?" Buttercup asked sarcastically from the kitchen. This made the Professor frown at her and he quite sternly said, "Your sister is not a jailbird. She's not spending any time in jail at all. She's simply being asked to give her services to the community."

"So basically she'll be picking up trash by the roadside!" Buttercup laughed, adopting a very snide and mocking attitude.

"And she's still gonna have on the uniform of a jailbird! She's got the orange prison overalls and the hard hat and everything!" Bubbles joined in.

"Serves her right! When she's hanging around those dogs, I hope she's waking up with fleas."

The Professor felt himself grow angrier though he forced himself to stay calm. He sat at his spot at the table, having his own helping of food in front of him.

"To answer your original question Buttercup, Blossom won't be joining us for dinner." He sighed as he remembered her words. "She said that her head hurts."

"I bet that hard head of hers does hurt." Bubbles sniped, and that was when the Professor officially lost his patience.

He slammed down his fork on the table hard enough to rattle everything on top of it and fixed his two daughters with a gaze that was uncharacteristically fierce. They could only gape at him in shock, startled at this sudden change.

"That's enough, girls!" He finally shouted. "Your sister made a mistake and that is something we will all make throughout the course of our lives! I made a mistake when I put more value in a material possession than I did the love of you three girls!"

"But the one thing you will not be allowed to do is treat her like a criminal! She may have broken the law, but that does not make her any less human!"

He gave each of his children in front of them a hard gaze. "Bubbles, you have no room to talk!" He began first. "You may not have stolen anything, but you did assault many innocent civilians including a dog simply because you thought you weren't being treating seriously enough!"

Bubbles looked down with shame at this blatant reminder of her own wrongdoing and she didn't have anything to say. The Professor was right.

"And Buttercup, it may not be against the law to refuse to take a bath, but you caused a great inconvenience for the good citizens of Townsville as well with them having to endure your stench!"

Buttercup took the time to reflect on the Professor's words too, realizing that it was pretty hypocritical to call Blossom hard-headed when she herself could have a stubborn streak that spread for miles.

"How dare you judge Blossom for one mistake she's made when you two have made several and we've all forgiven you!?" This was the most fired up the Professor had ever been and he wasn't even close to finished. He stood up now, hands splayed out on the table.

"Do you know the real reason why Blossom didn't want to come downstairs for dinner? It's because she feels so ashamed for what she did that she thinks she deserves to go to bed hungry! Do you know what it was like for me when I was a kid? I didn't always get a choice in the matter! My parents didn't always make great money so that meant that there wasn't always enough food to go around. It kills me to see one of my own kids willingly going through a painful experience like that when they don't even have to, simply out of guilt!"

After he was finished with his monster of a rant, he ran his fingers through his hair and sat back down, taking calming breaths. "I don't mean to yell girls." He finally apologized. "But I don't like to see any of you go against the other. I've seen enough fights in my childhood to last me a lifetime."

There was now a more thoughtful silence as Bubbles and Buttercup shared a guilty look amongst each other, looking next to the stairwell where their sister lie just beyond those stairs on an empty stomach.

...

Several minutes later, Blossom heard the door to her bedroom gently open. She pretended to be asleep and gave no acknowledgment to the sound. She didn't hear any footsteps, but she did feel a hand briefly coming down on her shoulder before the distinct aroma of food filled her non-existent nostrils and a plate of leftover ravioli and garlic bread was placed on top of her nightstand.

Blossom sighed. Leave it to her father to be a complete softie at times like this. No matter how much she would've deserved it, he just couldn't let her go to bed hungry. To her surprise however, when the light clicked on, it wasn't her dad's voice she heard speaking up to her, but one of her sisters.

"Eat it, Blossom." Buttercup said, she in fact being the one who had brought up the food along with Bubbles who readily agreed. "Yeah, eat it, Blossom. We're not leaving until you do."

Why the sudden change? Just a moment ago they were both accosting her with judgmental comments and looks.

"I thought I was a jailbird."

"You are. But even prisoners get food." Buttercup said.

"Yeah. Three square meals a day to be exact." Bubbles concurred.

"We all make mistakes, kid. Nothin' to get all bent out of shape about."

This was a damning memory for Blossom to recall now as she searched high and low for her sister, getting the Mayor, Ms. Bellum and the entire Townsville police department involved with her dad to look for her.

When she had messed up, she had received kindness, even after her mistake. Her sisters came up to bring her food and they wouldn't allow her to do anything to hurt herself.

But she hadn't shown that same kind of understanding to Buttercup. She hadn't given her an ounce of humanity. Instead, she treated her like the scum of the earth and allowed her to be beaten to a bloody pulp by a gang of the absolute worst of society. Blossom's punishment had been fair. She did have to pay for her crimes, but she wasn't treated in a cruel or unusual way. Buttercup had received all of those things: a cruel, unusual, and twisted retributive punishment.

It was written in the Bill of Rights itself, the eighth amendment exactly that such a thing should be prohibited. That a person should not be subject to torture or any kind of barbaric treatment to try to pay back their debt to society. Every human had their basic, unalienable rights. How could those people have figured things out in the 1700s while Blossom didn't realize her folly until now, in what was supposed to be the 21st century?

"I'm so sorry, sis." She whispered into the air, even knowing that she wouldn't be heard from where she was. She just prayed to whoever was up there that Buttercup was safe. That she was being taken care of or found by someone better than her.

Oh, if she only knew...