Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

You’re toxic, I’m slippin’ under

With a taste of a poison paradise

"Toxic" -Britney Spears

The world has changed, is what Captain Planet thinks to himself. But he’s never not been a warrior and, if there’s anything he knows, at the core of his being there is resiliency and hope.

He just wishes he could make his Planeteers laugh right now. Something to brighten the dour looks on all of their faces. Planet grimaces, trying to turn his lips upwards. “A sticky situation, right guys?”

Wheeler has enough energy to offer a nod. He then reaches out for Linka’s hand. His hand takes hers but she makes no move to hold his. Linka hasn’t stopped glaring at what used to be the village, her mouth set in a hard frown at what aggressive deforestation has wrought.

Gi and Ma-Ti are working with the villagers that are left to help dig out those who were buried under the rubble. Planet watches as they pull out a small child, their skin caked in mud. Gi leans down to listen for a heart beat. Then she panics. She starts performing CPR. Ma-Ti prays over the child.

“It wasn’t enough,” Kwame remarks. He’s not looking at Planet though. He’s staring off at all the mud, all the earth. “I couldn’t stop it.” He stretches his hand out to stare at his ring. Earth, that was the domain Gaia asked him to take care of.

Captain Planet doesn’t have anything to say. He couldn’t stop this either. Sure, the logging company left but for how long? That was the problem nowadays--too many problems in too many places. The Planeteers couldn’t be everywhere at once, even if they split up.

“It’s not your fault, Kwame,” is the only thing Planet can think of to say but the moment it comes out, it feels foolish.

Kwame just gives him a sad smile. And then stares.

Ma-Ti is holding Gi who is sobbing. The child lays still and caked in mud.

Captain Planet has never realized it before but the Planeteers aren’t young anymore. All of their eyes are decorated in creases, their mouths outlined by parenthesis. “How old are you, Kwame?”

Kwame raises a brow and frowns. “Forty-eight. Why?”

Forty-eight ? Planet can’t quite believe it. Humans don’t live long, do they? “I don’t know,” he admits. “I’m going to make sure all the loggers are gone.”

Before Kwame says anything, Planet springs on one foot and propels himself into the air, flying far above the patchy canopy of trees. Planet hadn’t realized that the Planeteers had been doing this for almost thirty years. And for what? Even when science caught up with passion, the people largely responsible for the devastation of the planet were still allowed to kill the planet and its people with reckless abandon.

In the beginning, it seemed like a manageable problem: pollution and over-consumption and irresponsibility. But now?  Laws protected everyone corrupt. In the early 2000s, the Planeteers had been arrested and detained for three months.

By the time they were able to summon him again, it was hard to explain. It was hard to understand why so many people thought the law was equal to morality.

They begged him to speak to Gaia because, even with the power of the elements on their side, Captain Planet and the Planeteers were no match against the rate at which technology allowed humans to expel everything they were working to clean up. He tried talking with her, the literal spirit of the earth. He’d found her leaning on a column, looking out at the sea. A dove was perched in her hair.

“Gaia?” he’d pressed softly. “What should I tell them?”

Because Captain Planet wanted reassurance too, that this would all be okay at the end.

And the spirit of earth replied, “At the end, earth will continue to live.”

Back then, he’d take it as a sign of hope, resiliency. He’d packaged it to the Planeteers as a sign that as long as they continued their work, everything would be okay.

But now he’s beginning to wonder if maybe that wasn’t what Gaia meant.

Planet is flying over bald patches, felled logs hatching the the rainforest floor. There are animals running, scrambling. He can’t tell what is alive and what is dead: plant or animal. He swings down to investigate the area. Or at least that’s what he tells himself. Really, he just needs a moment.

Because it wasn’t until now that he’s feeling guilty. He’s as old as the spirit of the earth herself and he can’t shake the feeling that this is his fault. Humans come and go. The Planeteers hadn’t. If Gaia had recruited older humans, would they have dedicated their entire lives to this cause? Because, as it stands now, the Planeteers have no more life to spend. No families, no children, no jobs, no… anything .

Nothing but this cause that the rest of humanity sees as a waste of time.

They may not summon him all the time but he’s seen newspapers, the news. Heard people whisper.

The five teenagers from 1990 who were all over stickers and lunchboxes were replaced with bans on plastic straws (“It makes no sense,” Linka cried. “Industry and corporate factories place the fault of their own making on the disabled? The elderly?”) and a lack of education among the general public (“ Genetically modified organisms aren’t all bad, you idiots!”  Kwame once screamed at a television).

In the early aughts, someone started a blog and then, later on, a podcast of how they were deranged and homeless idealists who were a dying breed. “And natural selection ain’t favoring them!” the man had proclaimed over the internet.

Planet hears something. It’s an animal. Something else. He flies over to the sound and finds a woman fighting with a jaguar. A full-grown and angry jaguar.

“Let me help you, you   stupid cat !” she’s screaming at it. Her brown-red hair is long and wild, twigs and vines intertwined. She’s wearing a pair of cargo shorts, hiking boots. She’s got on a t-shirt and a huge plaid button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. “ Don’t make me restrain you further.”

The jaguar hisses, it’s ears flat. It takes a useless swipe at her, claws extended. It’s back legs are anchored down by thick vines.

“Hey, hey! What’s going on?” Planet swooped in between them. “Everything okay?”

The woman sneered at him. The jaguar sat up, relaxed a little. It regarded him with suspicion.

He turned towards her. Maybe it was the light. Her skin looked slightly green.

“This bastard won’t let me get a splinter out of his paw,” the woman grumbled, pointing at the big cat. The jaguar narrowed its eyes at her.

“Well?” Planet asks the jaguar. “Is that true?”

I don’t know her , it spits at him. She tied me up.

“You tied him up?” He frowns, examining the jaguar. “With what?”

“The vines ,” the two of them reply at once.

Captain Planet arches a brow.

The woman rolls her eyes and snaps her fingers, another vine shooting upward in front of her.

“Oh!” Planet grins. “You’ve got a green thumb!”

He can hear both of their thoughts. Neither thought him amusing.

Planet squats down and offers his hand. “Lemme see whatcha got.”

The jaguar glared at him but dropped his paw into his palm. Tell her to let me go . She isn’t listening to me.

Planet examined the paw. “I don’t think she understands, bud.”

“She’s right here,” the woman snarled.

“Sorry.” Planet looked back to her. “He’s asking if you can loosen up?” Her eyes went ablaze. “The vines! The vines! Sorry, sorry.”

Tension left her shoulders and she waved her hand. The jaguar’s back legs were free. “There.”

“He says thanks,” Captain Planet lied.

The jaguar narrowed his eyes at him but then hissed as he plucked out the thick splinter. The cat thanked him and darted off into a tree.

“Guess Speedy has somewhere to be,” Planet tried breaking the ice. “Are you alright?”

She turned on a heel and hiked off in the opposite direction.

“Hey!” Captain Planet hopped again and flew to match her pace. “Sorry, I just wanna make sure you’re okay. This area isn’t exactly up for sightseeing right now.”

She stopped and he flew a little past her. He landed and jogged to her. “I’m fine . Leave me alone.”

Planet saluted her with two fingers and nodded. If she said she was fine and to leave her alone, that was all he needed. “Alright, well just yell if you need anything. We’re over about a mile out, dealing with a mudslide.

He was about to fly off again when she cried out, “Wait!”

“Yes?” He had one leg ready to spring off.

“That’s where I’m heading.”

“Oh! Do you need a lift? We can always use more help.” He held out a hand to offer her transportation.

She grimaced. “Your costume is worse than the ones I used to wear.” She snapped her fingers again and ground moved beneath her. “Besides, I only stopped to help that ingrate.”

“So, why did  you want me to wait?”

She cocked her head. “I know who you are. You aren’t like one of the disgusting humans trying to destroy the plant life. Animals I can tolerate. Humans? They did this,” she motioned around them at the fallen trees, the broken bones of the floor. “To themselves.”

Planet frowned. He opened his mouth. He wanted to disagree. “You know who I am then you know the Planeteers.”

“I suppose they’re… alright ,” she finally caved. “Your group saved the Black Forest a few years ago.”

“We did!” he beamed. “So, you’ve got me at a disadvantage. You know me, but I don’t know you, Green Goddess.”

Something about that made her give him a small smile. “Poi--” she caught herself, cleared her throat. “Dr. Pam Isley.”

He smiled and extended his hand. “Dr. Isley! It’s great to see an academic getting their hands dirty. We’ve got a hard time convincing the larger universities of the world to do their part to save the planet.”

Dr. Isley grinned. “Oh, I think the planet will probably be just fine in the end. It’s the humans who keep ruining everything, even for themselves.” She waved a few vines up to reach his hand and shake on her behalf.

“You talk like you’re not a part of them,” he commented. “Not that I have any room to speak,” he quickly amended.

She took a moment to find an answer. “I feel more connected to the flora of this world. The fauna are merely there. Humans? Humans are…”

And she felt like Gaia, the spirit of the earth, the May Queen, and life. Captain Planet felt at ease. So at ease that he finally admitted, “A little annoying.” He smiled but it was shaky. Gaia would have been disappointed in him for saying such a thing aloud.

“Right ?” Dr. Isley agreed.

She sounded proud.

Chapter Text

Off the Gulf Coast of the United States, nearly four thousand oil platforms set up shop drilling for petrochemicals. All of the companies were subject to state and federal regulations. Unfortunately, money was an invincible blade that could cut through any barrier.

Hundreds of volunteers were spread out over the beach, rain and wind tearing at their windbreakers. The Planeteers all wore brightly colored ones. While the others were coordinating younger volunteers, Gi and Captain Planet ran up and down the coast, keeping the tide from pulling beached oil back into the sea.

“About two kilometers east!” Gi shouted against the wind. “Possibly a pelican?”

“On it!” he replied and flew off in the direction she’d indicated. Sure enough, a pelican was flapping its wings wildly in the water. It’s feathers were oil-logged and the water shone like a rainbow. Planet swooped down and blocked the gigantic wingspan with his arms. “Buddy! Calm down! No need to get your feathers ruffled!”

The pelican screeched at him.

“Fair,” Planet agreed. “No time for bad jokes."

The bird was barely cooperative as Captain Planet reached his arms around the its body and hoisted it out of the water. Around it were dead fish, floating sideways on the surface. The bird thrashed and squawked while being flown back to the surface.

As Planet brought it down, three of the volunteers grabbed the unhappy patient. All of them wore windbreakers with ECO on the right side of the zipper and GEEK on the left side. Planet frowned. Fans of the Planeteers. “We’ve got it, Captain Planet!”

Planet saluted them and grinned. “Counting on you!”

He didn’t want to think about how many times he’s said that today. He was counting on them--he also knew that this problem was out of everyone’s control. The most they could do was save what animals they could, clean them up, see if any rehab places had room to care for them while the majority of the oil was cleaned up.

Slapping Band-Aids on arterial bleeding was their only job.

Captain Planet flew back over to where Gi was. “Everyone else doing okay?”

She sighed and wiped her bangs out of her eyes, stray hairs plastering themselves every which way. “Yeah. Linka is over with the vets, keeping the wind at bay. I think Wheeler and Ma-Ti are probably Group B. Kwame said something about seeing if the DNR needs anything”

He nodded. “I’m gonna do another sweep along the coast, see if we need anyone else further out.”

Gi nodded and went back to work keeping the tide at bay.

Planet run across the sand, heels digging in as he leapt into the air. The coming storm bothered the humans but not him. There was no difference between him and the Earth--the rain was a welcome reprieve from the grime of human greed. Humans could do a lot but they couldn’t control the weather.

Not yet, at least.

He worried about that sometimes. Human pride and greed knew no limits; it was always a few ruining it for everyone and everything else. Humans put other, smaller humans in compulsory education only to teach them that competition and survival were the only ways to exist. Very few places taught and practiced the value of cooperation.

All the Planeteers refused to go to college. A waste of time and action, they’d all agreed in their youth. If given another chance, if they knew that there was no real salvation for the world, would they have chosen to give their lives to something else?

“Don’t think like that,” he muttered to himself. “We can always save something.”

And as if Gaia herself were giving him a sign, he saw someone along the coast. Brilliant hair flying in the air, defying the bleak grey around it. Near the person was nothing but green blobs coiled in the sand. It couldn’t be.

Captain Planet eased up on his speed, and stepped down from the air into the sand, attempting to jog as he slowed toward Dr. Isley. “Doctor! What a pleasant surprise!”

Sitting cross-legged in the sand, debris and seaweed strewn in her windswept hair, she glanced up at him before muttering, “Maybe for one of us.”

He cocked his head and studied the tangled masses around her. “Seaweed?”

She nodded. “Mostly. I’m trying to save what I can. See if I can get them to my lab and treat them, keep them alive.”

Planet blinked. “I’ve never, ever seen anyone care about the plants.”

The doctor’s hands worked furiously but gently to work the oil from the leaves, her chlorokinesis pulling what pure plant she could from the unwanted chemicals. “You really don’t get out much, do you?”

“Technically, I’m everywhere all the time,” he boasted. “Y’anno, literally the earth?”

“Uh huh,” Dr. Isley uttered but didn’t look up at him, still engrossed in her work. She flicked some oil off into the sand and it clumped up into tight little balls next to her. “Well, good luck with earthing and whatnot then.” She shooed him off.

And he was going to leave. He really was. But she sounded annoyed. “Are you upset with me?”

Dr. Isley snorted. “Your powers of observation are as sharp as your mankini is tight.”

“My…” Planet looked down at his suit and his boots. “I’ve worn this outfit for decades. The humans didn’t like me without clothes.”

She stopped what she was doing to arch a brow at him. “What I’ve seen and heard is this: you are the anthropomorphic manifestation of this planet. You not only allow humans to treat this planet in detrimental manners, but also defer to them as to how you present yourself?” The doctor shook her head. “Quite pathetic.”

Captain Planet had been called pathetic before. Lots of times and by lots of different people.

It just never hurt before now.

He furrowed his brow and raised his hands. “I can do whatever I want, whenever I want,” he declared. Planet breathed in. The rain stopped. He exhaled. The entire ocean went still.

Dr. Isley stared out at the ocean and slowly rose to her feet. She didn’t watch him. She didn’t say anything. She was waiting, wanting to see if he could deliver on the promise he was making. He closed his eyes, still fully aware of his audience of one.

Time only matters if you’re a human. Everything else exists on a different scale of being. Now was then, then was will be, will be was now, now is then. Planning eat, reproduce, and raise offspring were human concerns. For Captain Planet, everything existed now, then, and will be. First came the oxidation, then the combustion, then the heat. Every long chain of carbon and hydrogen existed in him and by him.

He stopped breathing.

Breathing was a human concern.

The world was on fire and it was probably better that way.

Humans couldn’t breathe when the fire took all the oxygen.

His eyes snapped open when he realized that some of the humans were people he cared about.

The world had gone back to the way it was except for two things: Dr. Pam Isley was staring at him in awe and above the ocean, filling the sky, was a massive sheet of oil. It covered the entirety of the sky, blocking the sun out.

“I-uh...” Captain Planet stared at all of the petrochemicals he’d neatly extracted from the sea. “I-I… l-l-let me take, um,” he tried getting something out. “I’ll be back,” stumbled out and he flew off. He parted the oil, flew through it, and took all of it with him.

Past the troposphere, the stratosphere, the mesosphere, the thermosphere, the exosphere. Meteors flew by him, he barely missed a satellite. Time was a human concern. Temperature was a human concern.

Planet flew back to earth and knew exactly where he’d left Dr. Isley.

She stood there, arms crossed. Almost amused.

Captain Planet didn’t know what to say. Big changes were not in Gaia’s plans for helping the humans keep the planet in balance.

The doctor smiled and then beckoned the limp seaweed to wrap around his legs, lightly squeezing them. Did he have a heart? If not, what was beating against his chest so loudly?

“Sorry,” she pointed up and down at him. “You look too much like a human man.”

He’d burned all his clothes off, he’d realized.

But she wanted to hug him.

He felt so free, so right. Instead of responding, his mouth went dry. Instead he too beckoned the seaweed, all of it, to take the shape of something vaguely bipedal with two appendages to act as arms. He didn’t have enough to give it a head. He made it stretch out its arms.

“Better?” he asked, his whisper carried away by the ocean, now back to washing ashore and back out again.

Dr. Isley didn’t say anything. She practically pounced, her arms hugging it tightly. And because he was it and it was him, he could feel it all. Her hands gripped in between the leaves, holding on tightly. She breathed in deeply and, being so close to her now, he felt something different. She breathed the same way the seaweed did. When the world burned hot, the rest of the humans crying out for oxygen, she’d be unaffected. She and the plants spit out oxygen, preferring carbon dioxide instead. Water, sunlight, something to keep her grounded.

Humans were difficult and they did everything to hurt themselves. 

He could have held onto the doctor’s perfection forever.

Chapter Text

Captain Planet knows every animal and plant because he is them and they are him.

But he doesn’t really know them and Dr. Isley is making that very clear.

“And this darling one is Lemanea fluviatilis,” she marveled, as if meeting someone she greatly admired for the first time. Bending over, her hand stretched out towards its bristle-like extensions. They gently waved at her. She beamed.

Dr. Isley looked over at him and whispered, “Oh, my! It’s usually so shy!” She gave it a final stroke before turning her attention back to Planet, plopping down and crossing her legs.

Captain grinned. “I have that effect on plants.” He smiled at the algae, waving back. It waved enthusiastically at him. The doctor slapped her hands to her mouth, her body bouncing up and down.

“I should introduce you to my recovery wing.” She gave him the softest of smiles and he could feel the molten lava beneath them flow faster through his non-existent veins.

“R-re, um…” he cleared his throat. “Recovery wing?” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Sounds intense.”

Dr. Isley shook her head. “Oh, no,” she assured. “Everyone in there has been abused. I took them in, took care of them.”

He frowned. His heart that wasn’t there hurt. “Oh.”

The doctor had invited him back to her lab after the incident on the coast. It wasn’t even a question. He told the Planeteers they wouldn’t be able to summon him for a while. They didn’t ask where he was going. All of them just looked tired.

“Is it close?” Planet had asked.

“No.” She wiggled her hand in front of him. A blue-colored metal ring flashed. “I usually just teleport.”

“Neat-o!” He’d never heard of such a ring that could do that. “Where’d you get it?"

She shrugged. “I stole it.”

“Stole it? But…” he thought about it for a moment. His initial response was that stealing was bad, stealing was wrong. But where had he learned that from? Humans. And before humans? Plants and animals just took what they needed because theft was something based on ownership and property.

Human things.

Planet settled on: “That’s an interesting thing to learn.”

She’d laughed. The sound roared over the wind.

So she’d teleported them both to her giant greenhouse, her lab. It was several stories tall and covered at least a few kilometers. Inside she showed him where she performed biochemistry experiments, working to make plants genetically stronger against anthropogenic threats.

Then she took him upstairs to one of her many hot houses which is where she kept some of her freshwater roommates.

“I hate how humans get to tell plants what they are and aren’t,” Dr. Isley sighed, stroking the leaf of a coffee plant.

He walked closer towards her but not too close. He hated seeing her sad so he bid the leaf to curl around her finger and hold it. She looked up at him, surprised. “So, you’re a doctor. That’s really… cool.”

Dr. Isley grinned.

Was that a stupid word to use? Really… cool. Lame. Wait. Lame was lame too.

She interrupted his thoughts, more serious now. “I am a doctor. I wish I wasn’t.”

“Why?” When she sighed, Planet immediately corrected himself. “You don’t have to answer that. I’m sorry. You’re just so intelligent and spunky and… amazing.”

The doctor gave him a smirk. “I wasn’t even trying to be charming, blue boy.”

He beamed. Then he bent over with laughter. “See? Blue boy! Love it.”

“When I was in my twenties, I studied botany and toxicology. My parents and I weren’t close but we had a lot of money. They didn’t let me have animals so I started keeping plants. I was ecstatic when I was accepted to a doctoral program in botanical biochemistry under a man.” She looked down at the coffee plant. Captain Planet didn’t do anything--all by itself, it stroked her hand as if in sympathy.

“You don’t like men.” He nodded. “If you don’t want to tell me, please don’t. I don’t want to see you in pain.”

The doctor didn’t look away from the plant. “Why do you have to look like a man?” she whispered. “Out of all the things you could look like, why a man?”

No one had ever asked him that before. There had been many Planeteers. He can only remember one or two times when the group of humans had not made him in the form of what they called a man.

“I could call myself a woman,” he offered. “Would that be better? Sometimes women look like me.”

The doctor arched a brow, frowning and meeting his eyes. “Are you that desperate to make me happy?” Then, as if nothing had transpired, she grinned. “What a sweet, stupid man you are.”

Planet opened his mouth to protest, just a little, but then he realized that it was the first, sincere compliment she’d paid him. “Aaaaaaw, you think I’m sweet.”

Her smile dimmed a bit and she went back to gently stroking the leaf that had been comforting her. Dr. Isley didn’t say anything. She just studied the plant, gently raked her fingernails across the top of the soil.

And he felt…

Off. Or maybe he felt right?

Seeds. That’s what this was, a seed. The epicotyl finally breaking through the seed coat to become a fully-realized shoot that pops out of the ground and there it is:

The warmth of the sun.

Hot. So very hot.

And Captain Planet wanted more. More heat. More shoots through the dirt.

Her nails gently raking across the top of his soil.

“Everything alright?” she breaks into his fantasy.

Is it just his imagination or is her skin more green, her hair more brilliant?

Captain Planet shakes his head. “Yes? No?” He thinks about it for a moment more. Then he grasps, “You really… love the earth, don’t you?”

Dr. Pamela Isley stops paying attention to the plant and turns her focus to him. She crosses her arms and sighs. “You can just tell me you want me to like you.”

He can’t keep anything from her, “So badly.”

She closed the space between them too slowly. He wanted to move but he was frozen. When there was less than a meter between them when she turned her hand over and used her index finger to beckon him.

Planet felt the desert in his lungs. He gave her his hand, palm in her hand and forearm exposed to her. “You think I’m sweet,” he rasped. He swallowed, sand and dry air the only thing flowing through him. He desperately needed moisture. This heat was causing him great pain. “Do you think I’m… other things?”

And when the doctor took one hand and held his arm, a drizzle came down. When she took her other hand and gently raked her fingernails from the crook of his elbow to his wrist, he drowned.

“Stupid,” she repeated, looking up at him. “But powerful. And capable. Willing. Ready.”

“Willing, able, and ready,” he gasped for air as she continued to touch him. Captain Planet had never wanted more. Now, he was willing to die for a taste of what more could feel lie.

Willing, able, ready, willing, able, ready, willing, able, ready all for the brilliant, beautiful, botanically-inclined doctor who wasn’t quite human but wasn’t quite not human either.

The planet had never wanted to rid itself of any human who wasn’t her until now. If he couldn’t have her, then he wanted no one.

Chapter Text

No one else has ever understood the way he has known unity, oneness, togetherness, and joining. Humans have kissed him. He and other humans have engaged in sexual intercourse. It’s a clumsy, graceless thing that evolution has allowed. But people want to name parts of things. They want to name how parts go together. They want to name how things are fixed, how they are broken.

The doctor might have been born a human but she was a better human now: part of the earth, part of him. There are no words. The trees are already moving to hold her arms, he’s already grafting his hands into the wood. He’s calling the water and the sap and the poisons. Captain Planet wants to feel castor oil flowing between them. He wants to gnash the bones of men between his feet and brush the dust through her scarlet hair.

“Tell me,” he gasps. “Tell me how the world begins.”

“With the end,” she moans.

They roll into the mud and cocoon themselves as the mud hardens, millipedes tiptoeing over their eyes and into their mouths while grass grows between their fingers, and time stops each time they breathe. 

“The end of the humans,” he gasps.” He doesn’t mean to say it aloud. But it feels amazing, the way the words roll off his tongue. What good had they been the entire time they’d been alive as a species? Maybe in the beginning there was hope but not now. Even if humans started to improve themselves, the world, would that guarantee that they would keep the good habits of previous generations. 

But the idea of humans shifting like tectonic plates? They could shift back into the magma, rising back up to harden into new lands, and then trying again. 

It could begin with the end. It could be new and wonderful and it could be done all over again with no mistakes. 

He is yanked out of the moment with the realization that not every human has been a mistake, a horror.

“The Planeteers.”

“What?” Dr. Isley asks. They come apart. Two voices now, two identities and entities.

“I don’t want the beginning to mean the end of everyone .”

She lies there, naked and covered in weeds. “I don’t understand.”

“The people who’ve given their lives for me,” he explained. “They don’t deserve to end.”

Tiny sprouts of moss grew on her arm. She watched them flower and rubbed the soft fuzz that eventually carpeted all of her skin. “I understand.’ Gently, she raked the back of her fingernails against the moss. Captain Planet shivered in delight. “There’s a woman here that, in other dimensions loves me the way I love her.” Before he asks her how she knows this, she holds up her hand and wiggles the ring from before. “I’ve traveled to other realities and have seen it for myself. Dr. Harleen Quinzel. But in this dimension, she only has eyes for a horrible man and no matter what I do, she will never leave him.”

Planet asks, “Is it alright if I touch you?”

Dr. Isley nods.

He strokes the moss against her arm. “It’s okay to not want her to end either.”

A single tear rolls down her cheek. It sticks as it rolls down and is green against her reddish, purple cheeks. “Please hold me?”

And the world reaches out and holds her.

Chapter Text

Within a week, the human problem solved itself. Dr. Isley had once toyed with the idea of becoming a full-blown ecoterrorist and calling herself Poison Ivy at one point. By herself alone she could have turned the world against the human beings. Captain Planet just made sure that all of her ideas went exactly as she envisioned them. Trees, plants, and weeds grew at dizzying speeds wherever they could. Buildings crumbled. Bodies crushed beneath them. Cactus spikes skewered anyone foolish enough to remain in their way.

Planet made fungus breakdown anything dead to provide food to all the new growth. Whenever Ivy felt weak, he gave her whatever she asked for. The world wasn’t enough. The sun didn’t burn bright enough for her. If he had the power, he would make the sun burn like a supernova in the sky to give her more and more and more. Lately, her skin had perked up to a more lush green. It was as if the first time they’d met, her skin was a sickly, pale color and only now was he seeing her healthy.

Ivy kept the crops from growing, rescued any plants from being eaten by people. Captain Planet turned the animals to their cause. Humans had a strange idea about horror. They used animals such as crows and wolves in their stories to be creatures of fear. Chickens and pigs were much more effective tools to clean up people. 

And those were just the first two days.

During that time, Planet had also made sure that access to food and water was being cut off. The hardest part was rooting out the survivalists, the apocalypse hobbyists who’d been prepping for this moment for all their lives. Of course, the obsessed hadn’t considered the very earth turning against them. Those survivalists didn’t expect the ground underneath them to open up and swallow them whole. It’s surprisingly quick and easy when collateral damage isn’t a concern.

Day four all the humans of the world had resorted to cannibalism and it amused Ivy to no end. “ Now they think to be resourceful,” she mused. “Over eight billion humans and more than enough resources for all of them to have lived happily and peacefully.”

“Why did I think they could ever change?” Captain Planet asked himself.

Poison Ivy was the only one who would listen when the world spoke. “Because you loved

them too much. They were never going to make you a priority in their lives. As long as you gave, they were going to take.”

A month before the world began, Captain Planet and Poison Ivy took the people they didn’t want to end to Gaia. Planet begged, “Six people in exchange for the world?”

Dr. Quinzel was dressed in some jester costume, bells on top of her head. “Wha’s all this, Red?” She clung to Ivy, kissing her cheek and pouting. “Sum’ sorta suh’prise party?”

The Planeteers started arguing, demanding to know who Ivy was and what was going on.

Gaia ignored them. “It was my mistake for have ever letting them get as far as they had. But I suppose I could acquiesce to your request.”

Planet blinks.

And now, instead of six people, there are now six pigeons cooing in front of him and Ivy.

“Pretty,” Planet complimented. The pigeon where Harleen had been standing began

hopping around and shrieking. “Can they understand what’s going on?”

“Of course,” Gaia smiled. “Feel free to visit them any time you’d like. I was becoming quite bored with doves.”

Seven days after the world began, Captain Planet took off his ridiculous clothes and stopped breathing. “It feels good to stop pretending I’m one of them,” he admitted. Water sloshed at his feet and he let wind roll over his skin. “I like this.”

Poison Ivy admitted, “I never noticed how much noise they made.”

He dug his feet into the ground and stood straighter, taller. Then taller, then taller. Patches of skin thickened into bark. “Pick any tree.”

She looked out at the ocean for a moment before settling on, “Ash. They’re so easy to talk to. She looked back at him, extra arms sprouting from his back and stretching towards the sky. “Like you.”

He shakes his branches where blooms have sprouted and petals fall into her hair. “I know you have work to do but I’ll always be listening, no matter what.”

She picks a flower out of her hair, puts it in the palm of her hand, closes and then opens it to reveal a sprout. “And you’ll always be with me. You are the planet, after all.”

“You’ve given myself back to me,” he rasps before he is completely consumed.

Ivy coaxes the sprout to stand a little more confidently before weaving it into a lock of her  hair.

And the world began.