There was a tap on the girls' bedroom door. "Blossom?" The Professor. "Honey?"
She lay curled up on the bed, trembling. The door creaked open. She felt the bed sink under the Professor's weight as he sat down, and his arms pulling her gently to him.
Blossom swallowed. When she spoke her voice was hoarse. "Professor, I'm so--"
"Sorry. Yes, I know." She had said it countless times.
The girl was fighting hard to keep from crying; she had cried herself to sleep almost every night since The Disgrace. "I'm grateful for what you're all trying to do...it's just that...when Bubbles showed me her drawing..."
"Yes?"
"I only saw myself in prison clothes!" She broke into sobs. "Oh, Professor! The looks people gave me! When I was picking up trash, they'd shake their heads at me, and one little boy stuck out his tongue and his mother laughed, and -- "
"Now honey, no one has any right to point fingers at you. Besides, it was really my fault. If I hadn't put so much value in material possessions, this never would have happened."
But it didn't drive Bubbles or Buttercup to steal, she thought.
The Professor said, "You made a mistake -- "
"And everyone makes mistakes, I know." He had reminded her of this almost as many times as she had apologized. "But they're just everyday people, not Powerpuffs. They're not expected to be heroes or examples of everything good, and I let you down and I let my sisters down and I let the whole town down and how can anything ever be the same again?"
Silence. Blossom listened absently to the beat of the Professor's heart, thinking: He must be wondering this himself.