“I don’t understand why you don’t just break out.”

“It does not surprise me that such a plebian thought would pass through your plebian mind, clearly showing to me that you do not think things through and find the obvious solution—”

“I am thinking things through,” Bubbles said, interrupting Mojo’s tirade, “which is why I asked you. If I hadn’t thought about it I wouldn’t have thought to ask.”

Mojo was momentarily dumbfounded.

“I suppose,” he finally conceded, taking a drag from his cigarette, “that your explanation makes a certain amount of sense. By reaching a question, the implication is that one has thought enough about a subject to even have a question to ask. There are, however, some questions that can come from a much smaller amount of reflection and thought, and that question that I would like to question of you is, why do you constantly question me? For a week now you have badgered me with queries and inquiries, and me alone!”

“You’re the only one here who’ll talk to me,” said Bubbles with a shrug. “Everyone else hates me.”

“Are you brain dead?” Mojo spluttered. “I hate you!”

“I know,” said Bubbles levelly, “but at least you’ll still talk to me. So I don’t think you hate me as much as everyone else here.” She smiled. “Either that, or you just love to talk more than anyone else here!”

“How dare you insinuate that I somehow enjoy hearing my own voice, and, along with that allegation, am narcissistic and egotistical in that I enjoy and take pleasure in hearing myself talk? I talk, speak, and converse in no more words than are necessary and needed to get my point across, and do not over-accentuate my speech with unnecessary words that are not needed! I carefully select the words and phrases I use in order to insure maximum comprehension in as compact a sense as possible! And furthermore—”

“Alright, you win,” Bubbles interrupted. “You just like talking, that’s all.” She giggled.

“Foolish child!” Mojo spat out. “You dare to chortle and find amusement at the care to which I give words, when you should be grateful that I deign to give you a fraction of my time to answer your silly, inane questions that I still do not understand why you insist on asking so many of—”

“When did you take up smoking?” Bubbles interrupted.

Mojo was again speechless for a second or two, the abruptness of her question catching him off-guard.

“A couple of years ago,” he finally answered. “I am not certain of the exact number.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because memory is a faulty tool, selective in its own confusing manner, and only with limited space for—”

“I don’t mean why don’t you remember, I mean why did you take up smoking?”

“Oh.” Mojo actually blushed for a split second in brief embarrassment of his misunderstanding. “To calm my nerves,” he answered.

Bubbles raised her eyebrows in surprise. “That’s it? Your answer is just half a sentence?”

Mojo sighed in irritation, putting out his cigarette in the ashtray next to him. “Again, you are not thinking. My answer should have been more than sufficient if you only stopped to consider all the stressors I have suffered at the hands of you and your sisters. As my tensions mounted, the few things I had done in the past to relieve them were quickly diminishing in effectiveness. I had to come up with something else, because you accursed Powerpuff Girls were not letting up! In short, Bubbles, you drove me to smoke!”

“That’s terrible,” said Bubbles, but in a tone that was more chiding than full of pity. “Smoking wasn’t your only option. There are plenty of ways you can calm your nerves that don’t involve destroying your body in the process! Don’t you know how dangerous smoking is?”

Mojo snorted. “What do you care?” he said.

“What do you mean, what do I care? You’re going to get lung cancer or emphysema or something! Of course I care!”

Mojo again stared at her, uncharacteristically silent. Bubbles, also a little confused by Mojo’s confusion, leaned back in her chair at the cafeteria table and waited for a response.

The past few weeks, as Bubbles had continued to visit the prison, it got harder, not easier, to even converse with any of the inmates. Any attempts at conversation she started were rudely rebuked, to the point where they would move away from her before she could even say one word.

Only Mojo spoke to her—in fact, he even initiated conversation with her. That is, if remarking “you are a fool” counted as initiating conversation, but Bubbles took what she could get. The first few days of this, she simply let Mojo ramble about everything that irritated him—the majority of this relating to the Powerpuff Girls—but she eventually found herself unable to hold her tongue. But it wasn’t from anger that she found herself speaking up—it was curiosity. Curiosity, and, strangely enough, a feeling of pity for the simian.

“You are a frustrating paradox, Bubbles,” Mojo muttered, finally breaking the silence, looking away from her.

“What do you mean?” Bubbles asked.

“You are my enemy. You are good and I am evil. It is in my nature to cause destruction, mayhem, and turmoil to the world, or at least the city, and it is in your nature to stop me, which typically involves beatings and other violent means to throw me in this hellhole called jail. You show no compassion to me when you do this. But now you seem genuinely concerned for my health because of my smoking habit?” He took a deep breath and looked back at her, looking positively incredulous. “Does that not seem conflicting to you?”

Bubbles thought this over for a moment.

“No,” she finally said. “When you destroy Townsville and try to take over the world and all that, you’re doing something bad to everyone else, and you need to be punished for it. But when you smoke, you’re just doing something bad to yourself, and that means that deep down inside you’re lost and—”

“STOP!” hollered Mojo. “I do not wish to hear your idealized and false beliefs about the good person who is deep down inside of me and any other outrageous lies you are about to say. Even if what you said about harming myself was true, why should you be concerned? If I harm myself enough I will no longer be a threat to Townsville, and thus your beloved citizens will all be safe from me. So everyone wins!”

“But not you,” murmured Bubbles.

“Of course not.” Mojo leaned over the table and gave Bubbles a small, cruel smile. “I am the villain. I never win. That is the way you have made it.”

“No, that’s the way you’ve made it,” said Bubbles. “I don’t care what you say, Mojo. I think that there’s a good person somewhere inside of you… and I don’t think you have to be a villain.”

Mojo snorted in laughter. “Your naiveté grows to new heights everyday. I cannot change, Bubbles. Just as you cannot change. Which reminds me—if the reason you are here is to toughen yourself, then why are you wasting time and being counterproductive in trying to soften me?”

“I’m not wasting time,” snapped Bubbles. “For one thing, someone’s well-being and happiness is never a waste of time. And for another thing, I’ve toughened plenty!”

“Oh, that’s a good one,” Mojo muttered, rolling his eyes. “You are Bubbles. You are bubbly. You are sweet and caring and kind and gentle and everything that we are not. I have yet to see you be anything else.” He lit another cigarette.

“I can be all that and still be tough, too.” Bubbles protested. “You see, I’m not scared of you anymore. And I’m not so sensitive about what other people say to me, after everything I’ve heard people here say while I’ve been here. And I can change. I have changed, I think. And I can be tough with you, and try to make you happier, and at least a little nicer, because I think you can be! You talk to me. You don’t walk away from me like everyone else. You listen to me. You might tell me I’m foolish, but you still listen. So I think that you maybe care about me, just a little.”

“Why of all the—”

Bubbles didn’t let him finish. “And since I’m tougher now, I can make you be softer. I’m not going to let you continue to ruin yourself because I care about you too! I can be tough and still be caring, don’t you see? That’s what I am!”

Mojo angrily swiped the ashtray at Bubbles, covering her with ashes and cigarette butts. “SILENCE, you weak-minded little liar!”

Bubbles coughed and rubbed her eyes frantically. “Mojo! Why did you do that?”

Her voice was hoarse, of course, because of the ashes that had invaded her breathing air. Her eyes were watering, of course, because of the same ashes collecting in her eyes. But even as she coughed, and even as she rubbed the ashes out of her eyes, Mojo couldn’t help but notice that stray tears were still leaking out, that her nose was sniffling, that her voice seemed to be caught with more than cigarette ashes.

Sensitive little fool, he thought.

But even as he thought that, a small pang was growing in his chest as he watched Bubbles pull the cigarette butts out of her hair, a few tears still on her cheeks.

Odd.

“Do not make a mess of yourself,” he chided, standing up and moving to her side, picking a cigarette butt out of her hair and putting it in the ashtray.

“You should talk,” Bubbles muttered, her voice only catching for a second. “You’re the one who did this to me in the first—”

“And put the rest of them in the ashtray too!” Mojo demanded harshly.

Bubbles glared at Mojo. “Why did you call me a liar?” she asked.

“More questions.” Mojo rolled his eyes again. “I called you a liar because you are one. You claimed to care about me, but once my jail term is up and I am back to my villainous ways, you will beat me to a pulp as you always do. Even if you can truly change yourself, as you claim, you cannot change our cycle.”

Bubbles looked at him, her glare softened a little but not entirely gone. Mojo smirked. “What do you have to say to that?” he asked her.

“Nothing, but I have another question.”

“More questions!”

“Actually, it’s one I asked before but you never answered. Why don’t you break out of jail if you hate it here so much?”

“Why do you insist on asking questions with such obvious answers? What would I gain if I broke out? I would simply be speeding up our cycle. I would simply be thrown in here again, thanks to you and your ‘violent compassion’.”

He smiled even broader and nastier at Bubbles, whose glare was entirely gone now, replaced only with a look of confusion and fear. “It of course will happen either way,” he said, leaning right into her face, “because our cycle cannot change. But I would like to have a little peace first. And here is the only place I can get peace—at least, here was the only place I could get peace until you insisted on barging in here and ruining it.”

Bubbles took a breath before looking Mojo squarely in the eye and answering him. “You don’t have to talk to me, you know.”

“You will not shut up.”

“You won’t shut up.”

“Perhaps, in time, you will understand me well enough so that we will both shut up.”

Mojo moved away from Bubbles, picking up his cigarette and taking a drag from it. Bubbles winced without thinking. “Please, will you at least stop smoking? While I’m here? It… bothers me.”

Mojo raised his eyebrows in complete shock. “You truly are a puzzle, Bubbles.”

…………

“BUTTERCUP!”

Blossom, who was sitting at the kitchen table late that night working on her advanced physics homework, winced and dropped her pencil to cover her ears. She wished Bubbles would remember just how super-sonic her screams could get.

Buttercup, in the next room over watching a gory movie on TV, just groaned. “What’s the beef, Bubbles?”

Bubbles, dressed in her pajamas, zipped down the stairs in a flash, holding a large blue brush with some noticeable black hairs caught between the teeth. “You used my brush! Why did you use my brush? You have your own!”

“Jeez, don’t have a cow!” Buttercup snapped back. “The teeth in your brush are further apart than mine—I thought they might work better on thick hair like mine, and they did. I was just testing it.”

“Testing it?!” Bubbles shrieked. “You could have asked me first, Buttercup!”

“Hey, you’ve been wearing my clothes! Why shouldn’t I be able to use your brush?”

“I asked you first—well, after the first day. But you got your hairs all in my brush, and now I’ll have to—”

“—pick them out, oh no! The world is ending! Come on, Bubbles, I won’t do it again. It’s just a few hairs!”

“It’s not that, it’s the whole principle of the thing—it’s common courtesy to ask!” Bubbles took a deep breath before continuing in a slightly more level voice. “Just ask next time, okay? I probably would have said yes, but I don’t like unexpectedly finding black hairs in my brush.”

“Very well, your highness—”

“Wow, Bubbles, I’m impressed.” Blossom was smiling, genuinely approving of what she had just seen.

“Impressed? She gave me crap over a friggin’ brush!” Buttercup protested.

“She stood up to you… and she didn’t entirely lose her temper and go crazy like she has done before.” Blossom gave Bubbles a playful smirk. “She was reasonable, but still firm. I think your jail time has paid off, Bubbles.”

Bubbles grinned. “I think so too, Blossom. I mean, I don’t care much anymore if I hear someone say a bad thing about me. If I make a mistake, I don’t cry about it, I think about how I can make it better.”

“Jeez, that’s it? That’s all she had to do?” Buttercup asked in surprise. “Yell at me because my black hairs were ruining her brush?”

“It’s not just that,” said Blossom. “It’s been a variety of things. For this past week or so you’ve just seemed more confident, Bubbles. You’ve taken a step in the right direction. I think you have toughened up quite a bit… in a short amount of time, too.”

“What, do you think she doesn’t have to go to jail anymore?” Buttercup asked.

“Oh no, I have to! I want to!” Bubbles blurted out.

Blossom stared at Bubbles. “You want to?”

“I’m… not tough enough yet… and… there’s still… some other things I want to do there,” Bubbles stammered.

“Like what?” Blossom asked.

“Um…” Bubbles’s voice trailed off.

“Bubbles, frankly, I’ve been uneasy about the whole thing from the start,” Blossom said, “and with how well it’s worked for you, I think you should call it quits before anything bad happens to you.”

“But it was your idea!” Bubbles said.

“And that’s just enabling her!” Buttercup added. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve thought this whole thing was crazy from the get-go. But finish what you start, Blossom! If this is really what’s working for her, you have to keep her there long enough for the results to be permanent.”

“I don’t even care about my results anymore,” Bubbles said, “I care about…”

“What?” Blossom asked quizzically.

Bubbles didn’t answer, but not because she hadn’t heard Blossom’s question, or even because she didn’t want to finish her sentence. What made her pause was a very strange realization of something that she had known for a long time now, but only just now was becoming aware that she knew. Despite being shunned by everyone at the prison except for Mojo, and despite his frequent sneering at her…

…she realized that her time spent at the prison was her favorite part of her day.

…………

(AN: Holy crap, this story lives.

Kind of.

I had tried writing this chapter about a year ago, but I didn’t get very far. Then I spent my summer abroad and when I got back to the States, I was both busy with school and occupied in other fandoms, not sparing a thought to PPG. However, recently I felt the need to try writing this chapter one more time. I threw out what little I had and started over in a different direction, and that seems to have made the difference—this chapter only took about a week to write.

This story is still on hiatus, though. I still don’t know where to take it from here—especially now, actually, because I’ve realized how silly my original idea was. (This is why, from here on out, I’m only posting completed stories.) Also, even if I did, I’m graduating from college in about a month and have TONS of stuff to do before then, including two rather large research projects, among other things. I really have no time for fanfiction right now.

Oh, and I might as well reveal the pairing now, if you haven’t figured it out. Two years ago, when I wrote a lot of Mojo/Blossom, I got flamed to the hills for my pairing choice, and while I laughed them off at first, after thinking about it, I realized, “Wow, yes, Mojo/Blossom is truly an abomination, it is sick and wrong and I should not be writing that filth any longer!” Hence, this story is Mojo/Bubbles, a far more acceptable pairing. Thank you, flamers, for helping me see the light!

…Heh, I’m joking. About the Mojo/Blossom thing, anyway—they’re still my OTP. :) But I’m not joking about this story being Mojo/Bubbles. I’ve always had a soft spot for this pairing, and have yet to see much in the way of it.

Again, if this story is updated at all, it probably won’t be for another… well, maybe not one and a half years, but certainly not for a few months at the very least. I’m sorry about that, really. And I’m grateful for anyone who still remembers me and is willing to put up with me. Of course, reviews of any kind are always welcome. And while I cannot guarantee there will be a chapter four, I certainly hope there will be one, and I hope to see you all there. :))