When Gi returns, she's wearing her Planeteer uniform and a satisfied smile upon her face. She looks at peace and content, almost serene, and she cuddles Linka happily.

'Look at us,' she breathes into Linka's ear. 'It's just like old times, isn't it?'

But Linka cannot return either the sentiment or the gesture. Instead she stands, rock still, her arms and shoulders tense, waiting for Gi to let loose of her.

Wheeler must sense her distress, because within seconds he's pulling her from Gi's grasp, wrapping his arms around her and resting his head on her shoulder.

Gi rolls her eyes, though she still looks delighted. 'Definitely just like old times,' she says. 'Watching the two of you go back and forth like the tide. Strange, I used to be so jealous of you both,' she muses, looking at them, her head at an angle. 'I used to think, 'I wish I had someone to go back and forth with,' or 'I wish someone would look at me like that,' and other such things,' she adds, with a wistful sigh. 'But then, once we were apart, I mostly just missed watching you together. I missed your dynamic... the arguments, the take downs, the secret kisses when you thought no one was watching...' Gi shakes her head, giving a rueful smile. 'Well, it's all ahead of us again.'

Linka feels a deep well of sorrow for Gi inside her, ready to spill over. 'You could have found someone,' she says painfully. 'You could have spent all these years looking forward, rather than behind.'

But the look Gi gives her is indignant. Gi nods to Wheeler, still resting his head on Linka's shoulder, his arms locked protectively around her. 'What, like the two of you did?' she scoffs. 'How's Trish doing, Wheeler?' she asks, and Linka feels Wheeler's body stiffen. ' And Linka... how's that boyfriend of yours?'

'That's none of your fuckin' business, Gi,' Wheeler hisses.

But Gi shrugs. 'Maybe not. But neither of you are in a position to lecture me about not looking forward when the two of you have never been able to shake off the past either.'

Linka feels stung, and she looks down. But Wheeler... Wheeler can never help himself in an argument, and he glares at Gi vehemently.

'We're in love,' he spits at Gi. 'We've always been in love. Some things you don't move on from, Gi.'

Linka watches as Gi straightens, her face firm. 'I was in love too,' Gi replies, her voice hard. 'With all of you, and our life, and our mission. I was in love too. So you're right, some things you don't move on from, Wheeler.'

For a moment, Gi's eyes sweep over them all with something akin to disgust.

'You - the three of you - you all just walked away,' she says angrily. 'You just... you all just gave up. I didn't understand it... I still don't understand it. Ma-Ti was our brother, and you all just left him. Like he meant nothing to any of you.'

Wheeler's mouth gapes open, his fists clenching, and Linka clasps one of his hands, stroking the taut flesh. 'Yankee,' she whispers to him. 'Do not rise to it. She knows not what she says.'

But Wheeler, it seems, is not the one Linka needs to worry about. Because Kwame steps forward, pulling himself up to every inch of his imposing height, glaring at Gi with undisguised fury.

'She knows what she says, Linka,' he says evenly, his voice cool. 'We did not just leave him, Gi. He died. We loved him, he was our brother, but he died.'

'No,' Gi begins, 'No, not really -'

'Yes,' Kwame says firmly. 'He died. Barbara Blight murdered him. It was a tragedy, Gi. For him, for his family, for his people, and for us. He died.'

Gi pales. 'No -'

'Yes,' Kwame says again, taking another step towards her. Linka reaches out, trying to move towards her friend, but Wheeler pulls her back.

'Don't, babe,' he whispers to her gently. 'Let Kwame do this. Let him say his piece.'

'We did not just leave him, Gi,' Kwame continues. 'We loved him, we mourned him, and we still grieve for him now.' Kwame gestures to his heart. 'He sits in here still, Gi. Just as he did in life. He will always be here.'

A tear tracks slowly down Gi's cheek. 'We left his body on the floor, like he was nothing-'

Kwame shakes his head slowly. 'We left his body, yes,' he admits, and Linka can still hear his lingering regret. A regret they all share, she knows. 'We had no way of getting him home, Gi. Not to Hope Island, or to his people. So yes, we left his body. But we never left him. We all took a piece of him home within ourselves. Sometimes I still hear his voice,' Kwame admits, his voice breaking slightly. 'When I am troubled, or bewildered, or overwhelmed, I hear his voice, as clear as yours, in my head. It is but one word. A word he knows meant something to me. Resilience, he says. Kwame, resilience. It is like a mantra, and I cling to it in dark times, letting it lead me forward into the light.'

Gi is crying softly now, wiping at her eyes with her bubblegum pink nails. Linka feels an ache build within her, and she wants nothing more than to step forward and take the former water Planeteer in her arms. In that moment, she is not Gi, Blight's minion, she is Gi, Linka's friend, and right now, her friend is hurting. But Wheeler's arm is still clamped around Linka tightly, and she can sense his continuing unease.

She knows he won't let her anywhere near Gi until all threat of danger has passed.

So, she offers Gi what she can from the confines of her lover's arms.

'I have a word, too,' she tells Gi softly. Kwame spins to look at her, and Gi's eyes open warily.

'Do you, babe?' Wheeler asks gently, and she nods.

'Yes,' she says slowly. 'It is 'trust'. Ma-Ti... he was always telling me to trust. To trust in other people, trust in the future, trust in myself,' she angled her head towards Wheeler's slightly. 'To trust in you, and your feelings for me.'

'Smart kid,' Wheeler breathes, and Linka nods.

'Yes. He knew more than he ever let on, I believe.'

She looks up, directly meeting Kwame's earthy brown eyes. Their gazes lock, and a moment or pure understanding passes between them. Kwame is silently making sure she is okay, and Linka nods, silently sending him the same query. He nods too, and she sighs, back into Wheeler's arms.

'He gave me a word too,' Wheeler offers, his voice uncertain, and Linka squeezes his hand.

'Yes,' she murmurs. 'I know it.'

'Yeah, you do,' he agrees, pressing a kiss to her head. 'Colorado.'

'Colorado?' Gi asks, still snivelling, still mopping up her tears.

'Yeah. For me, it was another word for hope, I guess. I've clung to it these past few years. When I left Linka... when I married Trish...' Linka felt him swallow hard. 'And then, when I divorced her. During all the lonely years, all the empty ones. And then when Linka came back, and gave me a second chance. Gave us a second chance. I've clung to that word more than anyone realises,' Wheeler stops, burying his face into Linka's neck. 'More than I realise too, I think. It was such a gift, that word. Ma-Ti... he was...'

But Wheeler stops, and Linka knows he's trying his best not to break down. Still trying to be the pillar of strength he inevitably and irrevocably always is.

So she turns, gathering him closer to her. She can be a pillar of strength too, she decides. He doesn't always have to carry the burden.

Not now he has her to lean upon too.

'Smart kid,' she says gently, running a hand through Wheeler's hair, watching him close his eyes at her touch.

'Yeah,' Wheeler says shakily. 'He sure fuckin' was.'

'Did he leave you with a word, Gi?'

Kwame's words, spoken quietly into the open stillness of the hall, make Gi pause. Her face contorts, almost with pain, and she looks at them all with open eyes.

Watching Gi struggle, Linka feels hope rise within her. Because maybe, just maybe, this is a way to bring Gi back to them, she thinks. If anyone can talk Gi around, it is Kwame, Linka knows. He brought her back from the edge, she recalls. When she was at her lowest, he brought her back to the world.

'Did he?' Kwame presses.

Gi's eyes go dark, and a shadow passes over her face.

'No,' she snaps. 'No. He didn't.'

Linka's hope shrivels within her, like a leaf of promise, fallen from a tree of possibilities, and left to dry in the sun.

'And fucking words aren't going to bring Ma-Ti back,' Gi continues, her tone sharp. 'I'm going to do that. Me. I'm not going to leave him behind. I'm not going to forget him. I'm going to bring him back, and we're going to go back to Hope Island, and it will be like this whole thing never happened.'

Once again, Wheeler's arms tighten around Linka, and silence falls over the room.

'Words,' Gi spits, with a venom so unlike her previous personae that Linka shudders. 'Words don't help anyone. But the doctor... the doctor will help us all. And she's waiting. So move.'

Linka burrows into Wheeler so tightly she's no longer sure where she ends and he begins.

'Yankee,' she whispers.

'I'm real and I'm here,' he whispers back. 'And I'm not going to let anything happen to you, babe. I'm gonna get you outta here.'

'Us,' she corrects him firmly. 'All of us.'

'Yeah,' he says, but something to his voice makes Linka stop, her head glancing up to look at him.

His face is set into determined lines, his hands are firm and unshaking. Something about his voice is familiar and frightening all at once, and Linka clings to him.

He doesn't always have to carry the burden, she tells herself. He doesn't always have to be the hero.

But something about him in that moment tells her that he's damn well going to try.

The room to which Gi leads them is surprisingly... bland. It's large and clinical, all stainless steel and polished surfaces, and it smells of industrial bleach and cleaning products. Harsh strip lighting hangs above them while machinery hums, the noise almost soothing. Linka tries to take it in, tries to remember the details in case any of them come in useful during an escape attempt. But it's impossible to concentrate, because in the middle of the room, lying on a bed, is Ma-Ti.

He's attached to wires and machinery, his chest rising and falling, the thump of a heartbeat steady in the air.

'Is he breathin' on his own?' Wheeler asks, his eyes glued to their fallen friend.

'I do not know,' Linka answers truthfully. 'I have only been here once before and I fainted as soon as I saw him. I did not have time to ask any questions.'

'You gonna faint again?' Wheeler demands, though his tone is gentle. He doesn't look at her, his eyes still on Ma-Ti, and Linka shakes her head.

'No.'

'You feel ill at all, and you tell me, okay, Lin?'

She nods without looking at him. She can't tear her eyes from Ma-Ti either.

But Kwame...

Kwame moves silently towards Ma-Ti, until he stands next to him. His eyes rake up and down their friend's body, and he looks over to Gi.

'Oh, Gi,' he says mournfully. 'What have you done?'

'What was necessary,' she replies instantly.

But Kwame shakes his head. 'No,' he says slowly. 'No. Nothing about this was necessary, Gi.'

Gi does not reply, watching Kwame examine Ma-Ti.

'What is this?' Kwame asks finally, laying a finger on Ma-Ti's arm. 'Is he dead? Does he live? Is this sleep? What is this, Gi?'

Gi swallows nervously. 'The doctor calls it a kind of in between phase. He was dead, but now he breathes. He was dead, but now the heart within him beats again.'

'The heart within him?' Kwame says doubtfully. Linka shudders.

'Most of his own organs were damaged beyond repair,' Gi admits. 'But there's nothing to worry about,' she quickly adds. 'The doctor has given him back what death stole from him.'

'How?' Kwame presses her. 'Where did this heart come from, Gi?'

Gi shrugs. 'I didn't ask. I don't need to know. All I need to know is that I asked the doctor to save him, and she did. We were lucky, when we left his body -'

'- lucky,' Wheeler exhales in disbelief, shaking his head.

' - Blight had him put in extra cold storage,' Gi carries on, as though Wheeler had never spoken. 'She froze him. That saved his life.'

'Oh, Gi,' Linka could not help but cry out. 'She did not save him... she murdered him, right before our eyes.'

But Gi shakes her head. 'She froze him, so she could bring him back.'

'Why would she do that?' Kwame asks, tracing a vein in Ma-Ti's wrist. 'Why would she freeze the body of a man she herself killed?'

'I... I... umm...' Gi splutters, but Kwame shakes his head.

'It does not matter,' he says quietly. 'Where Blight is concerned, I have long since stopped trying to make sense of the world.'

Gi seems to come back to herself, giving Kwame an irritated glare. 'I'm going to get the doctor,' she replies coldly. 'Stay here, the three of you. Don't try anything stupid - especially you, Wheeler.'

But Wheeler remains still, seemingly frozen with shock as Gi leaves the room.

But something inside of Linka stirs, and she steps forward, away from the safe embrace of Wheeler's arms.

'Lin -' he says, but she stops him.

'I need to see,' she whispers. 'Let me look at him.'

With more bravery than she feels, Linka steps forward again. One foot in front of the other, the sound loud in the mechanical quiet of this lab, until she is next to Ma-Ti.

Kwame rests his hand on her shoulder.

Ma-Ti's eyes are closed, and if it weren't for the breathing tube in his mouth, the wires in his body and the IV lines attached to him, she might have imagined he was only sleeping. He looks peaceful, and her eyes fill with tears, remembering the boy who trusted her before any of the others. Remembering the boy who understood her quiet awkwardness. Remembering the boy who knew her better than she often knew herself.

'Oh, Ma-Ti,' she said with a sigh. She bent down to kiss his cheek, and his flesh was warm to the touch.

'Lin,' Wheeler says again, his voice tight with pain, and she turns to him.

'I need to do this,' she tells him.

'I can't,' he says, and his face is white, his body shaking. 'I just can't, babe.'

'Then do not,' Linka reassures him. 'Do not upset yourself, moya lyubov.'

She turns back to Ma-Ti, staring at him, at the lines and wires in and on his body.

'Why would Blight not let you sleep, friend?' she whispers to him, and Kwame turns to her, his face pensive.

'You are thinking, Linka.'

'Yes. Yes, I am,' she replies. 'I am thinking there is something here. A plan of sorts.'

'What plan?' Kwame asks.

'I do not know. But why would she kill him, only to immediately freeze him? If she wanted one of us gone, why not dispose of the body?'

Kwame shakes his head, utterly perplexed. Linka continues to look at Ma-Ti, her gaze sweeping from his head to his shoulders, and then from his shoulders down to his arms, her eyes finally settling on his fingers, long and lean and still inexplicably young looking -

She stills, her eyes snapping up to Kwame's.

'She wanted this,' she says abruptly, her face blank with horror. 'She wanted us here, bargaining with her.'

'Who? Gi?'

'No. Blight. She planned this, Kwame. From the very beginning. She tore us apart, murdered one of our own, and then froze him, knowing that one of us would eventually snap and go to her. This was her plan all along.'

'I do not understand,' Kwame mutters under his breath. 'She could not guarantee that one of us would ever go to her... she could not guarantee that...'

'No,' Linka muses. 'She could not guarantee it. But she knew, destroying us in the way she did, that it was a possibility. She just had to wait for one us to... what is the word? Crack?'

Kwame nods.

'And even if we did not, even if one of us never went to her, even if we all went our separate ways and lived our lives without ever seeing her again, she still had an insurance policy of sorts here in Ma-Ti. Not quite dead, not quite alive... the power of heart would always be diminished, even if the ring chose a new bearer.'

'This is madness, Linka,' Kwame says, his face weary.

'Yes. But this is Blight we are talking of. She is madness.'

'I will not argue there,' Kwame breathes out. 'So, say you are right? Why did she want us to come to her now, in our uniforms, with our rings? Why not destroy us completely?'

Linka ponders that. With a final caress of his still cheek, she steps away from Ma-Ti, returning to Wheeler's side and the comfort of his arms. She nestles into him, and she feels his breathing ease at her presence.

'I can't see him, not like this, babe,' he apologises, his face still wretched. Linka offers him a small smile.

'I know,' she says. 'You do not need to. Remember him as he was, yes?'

'Yeah,' he mutters, closing his eyes and running a hand through her hair. His hand is firm and warm against her scalp, his ring hard and -

And Linka pales.

'The rings,' she says, her voice an exhale.

'What, babe?'

'The rings,' Linka says again. 'What is the one thing that Blight always wanted?'

'Our rings,' Kwame breathes, and Linka nods.

'Yes. Our rings.'

'But she has given them back to us, useless though they are -' Kwame begins to argue. But Linka shakes her head, her eyes wide.

'Not useless. Merely diminished in their capacity. All five rings are like Ma-Ti,' Linka looks over to his body helplessly, 'caught in an in-between world. Not quite ours, but not quite belonging to their next holders either. But that does not even matter,' she adds. 'Blight never wanted the rings, not really. She wanted what they could do. What they could bring, and -'

'Captain Planet,' Kwame whispers. 'She wants Captain Planet.'

'Fuck,' Wheeler exhales. 'She wants Cap?'

'She always has, always did, probably always will. Why has she given us back our rings? Why would she do that?' Linka asks, though she already knows the answer.

'Once Ma-Ti's awake, she's gonna make us call Cap,' Wheeler mutters. 'Fuck.'

'Yes,' Linka nods. 'She murdered Ma-Ti, and then traded with Gi for the return of his life. Gi is trading Captain Planet for Ma-Ti. That is the trade.'

The room falls silent as the three take in this news.

'I would put good money,' Wheeler abruptly says, 'on there bein' some kinda storage place here for Cap when he arrives.'

Linka nods. 'She has been planning this for many years. I would put good money on that too.'

'What do we do?' Kwame asks quietly. 'We cannot let this happen. The next generation of Planeteers are depending on us. Gaia is depending on us.'

He speaks with such clear cut passion that Linka stares at him. Kwame is thinking of Haya, she understands. His daughter, the next Earth ring bearer.

Her hand once more drifts to her own stomach, feeling something, small but pure, light within her.

The next generation of Planeteers.

Wheeler sees her hand, and his gaze, when she meets it, is just as passionate as Kwame's.

He knows, Linka realises. He knows what their children will become.

'We aren't gonna let it happen,' Wheeler says firmly. 'If the last thing we do as Planeteers, it's this. Blight isn't gettin' her cold, clammy hands on Cap.'

'It's such a shame you feel that way,' a voice cuts into the room. 'Since giving me your precious Captain is the only way any of you are getting out of here alive.'

It's like a breath of icy wind in the laboratory, and Linka looks up. Her mouth falls open and instinctively she reaches for Wheeler's hand.

Because here before them, in all her pink, blonde and mottled glory, stands Barbara Blight.

'A roomful of eco-brats,' Blight smiles, her pink lips curving menacingly. 'Well, my morning just got a whole lot more interesting.'