Immediately after Blossom was admitted to the hospital, Brick walked into the waiting room, brushing aside medics' protests and insisting that he was fine. There, he found his brothers. Boomer was sitting in one of the seats, his elbows on his knees and his forehead rested on his clasped hands. Butch leaned against the wall, his foot braced against it and his arms crossed, his head angled downwards.
Then Butch turned to Brick and tried for a smirk. "Whoa, look at you. You look like you walked into a burning house."
"As a matter of fact, I did," Brick said, placing his hands on his hips. Boomer raised his eyes slightly to look at Brick. "I was saving a suicidal idiot from dying in a burning house that she set herself." He looked at Butch. "What about you?"
"I found Buttercup in Roseford Middle School," Butch said, his smirk fading from his face. "Found a canister of pills I didn't give to the doctors. Why don't you take a look? I'm damned if I know." He removed a small canister from his pocket and tossed it to Brick, who took a look at the label.
"It says it has diphenhydramine. These are sleeping pills. She was probably trying to OD." When he saw the confusion on Butch's face, he added, "Overdose. Happens if you take too many pills."
"Oh my God..." Butch ran his fingers through his hair and took the canister back, looking at the prescription. "It says it's thirty capsules." He took a deep breath and exhaled, covering his mouth and looking away. "She took it all." He turned to Boomer. "So how'd you and Bubbles go?"
"Well..." It was evident Boomer was simmering down from an anger tantrum judging by how he seemed to have drained from energy.
That and the two broken holes in the wall.
"Bubbles tried to slit her wrists. Caught her when she made the first cut."
"I still can't get over it," Brick sighed. "Suicide because of us."
"Can you believe what Dexter told us?" Butch asked his brothers. "We died a year ago and the girls had been in a downward spiral ever since." They remembered the conversation clear as day.
"Yes, I remember what I was thinking," Boomer sighed when Dexter asked the three of them if they remembered what they were thinking sacrificing themselves.
Dexter had specifically asked to talk to them alone, and they sat in Dexter's living room. "So what were you thinking?" Dexter asked. He seemed to speak with patience, as if he knew they'd be in a confused state when they wake up from death. And they were. After an argument about what happened, it was Dexter who got them to calm down by saying the Powerpuff Girls needed them.
"I was almost dead, just waiting to die. But when I saw Bubbles look so... lifeless in that thing's claws, I thought it'd be better me than her. I just hoped I could get her to realize people needed her." Boomer shook his head slowly. "More than they needed me. I didn't want her to be messed up because I died so I thought if I apologized, she'd know I wasn't holding her responsible. I guess I just made it worse."
Dexter then turned to Butch. "What about you?"
"Yeah, wouldn't you like to know?" Butch said, throwing an arm across the back of the sofa. "I was half-dead and still fighting. But when I saw Buttercup like that, I don't know what came over me. I just felt like I had to protect her from it, even if I died. I remember taking that shot to the chest and... and last thing I remember was telling Buttercup not to cry."
"And you, Brick?"
Brick just shrugged, apparently in no mood to call Dexter his usual nickname. "It's pretty simple. I saw Blossom and she looked... pretty helpless. She was about to die and I knew it. In fact, she was waiting for the blast. And, this'll sound really stupid, I realized I didn't want her to die. So I pushed her and took the hit. That's all I remember."
"That's better from what happened before," Dexter assured them.
"Can you just tell us why the Powerpuff Girls needed us?" Boomer asked. "You told us they did."
So Dexter told them everything. Their depression, their cutting, their attempted suicide, their send-off, and finally, how they were doing the past year.
"Shit," Butch cursed. "I can't believe it."
"I can't either," Brick agreed. "I thought they'd be sane, being superheroes and all."
"Shouldn't have they moved on?" Boomer asked quietly. "I mean, we died before and they moved on easy. What's different now?"
"It wasn't because you died," Dexter said. "Partly that. But it was because we couldn't revive you guys. What had been done before couldn't be done again. That's what broke them. And..." Dexter paused for, perhaps, half a second. "I also think that something changed between the six of you."
All three brothers straightened their spines to stare at him.
"I feel like something did. The depression, the crushing pain... It wasn't like when I lost DeeDee. It wasn't even like when someone loses a friend. It was... It was like when you lose someone so unbelievably precious, it's like you can no longer function without them. That's how they seemed to me."
Dexter's proclamation seemed to have shaken the Rowdyruff Boys into complete silence, leaving them to mull it over.
"Someone precious..." Boomer mumbled. "So unbelievably precious, you can't function anymore afterwards..."
While they mulled this over, Dexter went on. "For the past year, I'd been trying to revive you because I knew they needed you guys. But a friend of mine, Richard Fromm, did the stupid decision of reviving you using voltage to restart your hearts."
"I remember," Butch said, pressing two fingers to his eyes. "That explains the bright light I saw."
"Thanks to the stress of suddenly coming back to life, you exploded into pieces and we could recreate you. The only mistake was because Dr. Fromm killed himself because of the explosion." Then Dexter noticed Brick, and his furrowed eyebrows. "Brick, what's on your mind?"
"You said that every quarter of a year or so, you and a few scientists would do a psych evaluation."
"We do," Dexter said. "It's mainly to see how they're coping and making sure they're not committing suicide. They seemed happy. They were like their old selves and would speak of you boys fondly but would never say that you were dead. But at least for the past year, there weren't any suicide attempts or any cutting injuries."
"When is the next evaluation?" Brick sounded awfully serious.
"Uh, tomorrow."
"Get up," Brick told his brothers as he stood from the sofa. "I said get up." Boomer and Butch looked bewildered but stood up. Brick turned to Dexter. "Give me their routines."
"Not until you tell me what's going on," Dexter said, standing up. "You have me baffled."
"Then let me make it simple for you. When did we die?"
Dexter was perplexed, but gave them the date anyways.
"Our deaths were a week ago. Exactly why do you think they call those things death anniversaries?"
It took Dexter about three seconds to catch his meaning. It wasn't so hard to understand. The Rowdyruff Boys' deaths were imprinted on their minds. No matter how hard they would try to cope, no matter where they are, it would always come back to them the most on their death anniversary. And that would be when everything they'd been smothering would come back, and they'd remember... and be the most susceptible to going back to their past doings.
So without further hesitation, Dexter gave them as much as he was able to give.
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I forgot this disclaimer last chapter, but there are ELEMENTS OF SUICIDE AND SELF-HARM! Just to put that out there. So now, we've seen the Rowdyruff Boys' perspective during the time they died, and how they knew what the Powerpuff Girls planned. Thank God, they saved them, before something really awful happened.
But what do the Powerpuff Girls have to say for themselves? I wonder what they'll tell them... (¯―¯)
Mandatory links (although it seems I've only been working on DeviantArt LOL):
My Blog:
blackandwhitepersona.wixsite.com/penandink
My DeviantArt:
www.deviantart.com/bwpersona
- BlackAndWhitePersona