"Tell me, Pamela, what led you to the Goddess?"
"Oh... That's a very old story. I'm not sure I can say for certain when it was. I first became interested in neo-pagan belief before the 'incident' with Dr. Woodrue, but it was more a minor hobby than an actual desire to practice. Intellectual light reading, if you will."
"I see...And this all changed after what Dr. Woodrue did to you?"
"Of course!" Ivy exclaimed in surprise, as if any other possibility were absurd to consider. "Jason Woodrue changed everything about me. I may not like the methods, but I cannot deny that his experiment opened my eyes to the world...And it's eyes to me."
"How so?"
Ivy sighed and leaned back, tilting her head back so the sun splashed across her face and neck, caressing her skin with it's warmth. She gave a light, dreamy sigh and brought her handcuffed hands up over her chest, resting her palms over her breath as if yo hold her own heart. "It was a revelation... a miracle... Divine intervention! Call it what you will, it happened for me! Apollo has his Oracle at Delphi, God had Abraham, and Gaea... She has me."
"So, you see yourself as a prophet for nature?"
"That and so much more, Hazel! Oh my dear, you think so small. If only I could show you what it's like!" Isley exclaimed, springing from her cushion, moving to the wind to press her fingers against the reinforced glass with a longing smile. To hear her, to smell her, to touch her every waking hour; why, even in my dreams, I'm still in touch with her... Except for when I'm here. Trapped; in this pitiful excuse for a hospital, stewing in a dank, cold cell, while the plants get quieter, and quieter..."
"So, mother nature talks to you?"
"No, no, you misunderstand... It's not like Christ appearing to someone and giving them a directive. We aren't separate individuals... We are one. I am an extension of her being, her will. I am her eyes and ears on the mortal plain. When Woodrue opened me to the natural world, I finally understood by true purpose doctor, I finally understood why I was on this planet!"
"And what is that purpose, Pamela?"
"To save the world, of course!" she replied, sounding mildly irritated that she was having to spell it out so plainly for Dr. Birch.
"To save the world..? But, Pam, I don't understand; all the people you've hurt, doesn't that fly in the face of your goal?"
A sharp laugh escaped the patience lips before she caught herself and calmed down again. She looked back at Dr. Birch with a patronizing smile. "Oh Hazel, you misunderstand... you're looking at this from a human perspective." She turned back to the window, gesturing out towards Gotham city in the distance. "When you look at Gotham, what do you see?"
"Well... I see buildings, homes, and businesses, and from a less literally point of viewed I see people; families, mothers, fathers, children, and the lives they-"
"I see a graveyard." Poison Ivy interrupted icily, jarring Hazel in mid-sentence.
"A... A graveyard?"
"Where Gotham now stands there was a beautiful new england forest... Before the silver rush struck the region in the early 1800s this land was nothing but forests, cliffs, streams, wild flowers, the homes to thousands of plants and hundreds of animals who help preserve the delicate balance of nature. You look at Gotham City and you see homes... I look at Gotham city and I see homes destroyed. The habitat for thousands of innocent lives, all crushed to make way for human greed. Those buildings are homes, they're head stones. For every skyscraper in that skyline over two dozen trees were destroyed."
Poison Ivy turned away from the window and looked to her Psychiatrist. Dr. Birch was stunned to see tears in the villainess's eyes as Pamela slowly walked back to her cushion and sat down. She lifted her head to look sadly at Hazel as she shed a single tear down each cheek. Around them Hazel now smelt the scent of citrus, the typical scent Isley exuded when she was upset about something.
"I am sorry for the lives I have taken, Hazel, I truly am... But when I look out there, I can't see what you see. I can't see human lives, and human families... All I can see is the pain they've brought to other living things. When I walk along the Gotham Harbor and my feet touch the sand, and I listen to he waves, I do not feel peace or tranquility... I feel pain. I hear the earth screaming in agony from the polluted water lapping at it's shores. When I walk in Robinson park and sit in the shade of an old Elm tree, I don't feel contentment, I feel condemnation, because all I can sense is the anger of that tree, confined to the width of the park, it's roots longing to stretch out and be free, but they are held in and kept from growing by hundreds of concrete sewer tunnels running through the earth beneath the city." Pamela explained, her voice quaking, the tears now flowing freely down her cheeks. "There is no human created place I can go on earth where I do not feel the pain and anger of mother nature."
"And you... believe you are mother nature?"
"If I say yes then it means I'm crazy and then I can't be made a candidate for rehabilitation.."
"Not necessarily, Pamela... It all depends on your point of view. From what your describing it doesn't sound like you believe yourself to be the one and only god-"
"Well of course not!" Isley replied testily. "I'm not a fool doctor, I've been outside Gotham, I've encountered more than just the Batman, I've seen things that prove to me there's more to this world than just humans and nature. There are more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in our philosophy."
"Then tell me more, Pamela... Explain what you mean when you say you and mother nature are one..."
The red head side and cradled her head in her hands for a moment. "It's difficult to explain... To begin with you have to understand the concept behind it all... Goddess myth dates back hundreds of years-"
"Yes, and shows up in many different cultures; almost every culture in the world, in fact."
"I'm impressed with your knowledge." Pamela said idly, her tone suggesting she wasn't impressed at all. "Tell me doctor, what do dragons, mother earth, and visitors from the sky all have in common?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"What do they have in common? Can you figure that out?" Pamela asked, looking at Hazel curiously.
Hazel stopped to consider this, then the answer came to her and a slightly intrigued expression crossed her features. "They all are present in nearly every civilizations folk lore."
Pamela smiled. "No matter how remote, no matter how isolated from other people and places... Almost every culture on earth has myths and stories about visitors from the sky, mother nature, and dragons; many cultures from different areas on earth have stories that are almost identical to each other. They say every story of fiction has a basis in truth; don't you find it odd that civilizations that have never met can have stories that are so similar?"
"You're suggesting these tales are more truth than fiction?"
"I'm suggesting they're as close to truth as a humans can be when talking about something they don't understand. In mother nature's case the story is almost always that mother nature came, and from her came the next chain, of gods, and from them the next followed. Even when Christianity became the most popular religion on earth, Mother Nature endured; she even has Earth Day, the spring equinox. You see, she endures because she must... She has given to much of herself to the inhabitants of this world, to give up now would be to admit defeat. That's why I am here... To be her incarnation, her human host... I am the Goddess, but the goddess is also me. I am the vessel through which she makes her will manifest. I am the force that ensures she doesn't have to give up hope." Pamela explained with a growing smile. "You see, contrary to the opinions of the Batman and your esteemed colleagues, I don't want every human on earth destroyed... No, indeed, I believe many of them are quite capable of redemption. There are those who have made steps in the right direction, those who deserve my mercy."
"And what decides whether a person deserves your mercy, Pamela...?"
"Oh that depends... Have they learned? Have they adapted? Are they aware of how quickly humanity is killing the earth, and are they making steps to stop it? For example the Amish... The Amish never take more from the world than they need, and for what they destroy they often give back. Traditional native americans, the ones who have stayed true to their ancestry and not abandoned their roots, they are very caring toward the earth; for anything they take from her they give back twice as much. Many modern neo-pagans, the very people who worship the goddess, are constantly striving for better protection of mother earth. Humanity is not without it's redeeming members, they're just over shadowed by the blight that is the common human."
"Pamela... Reconfirm this for me. You are saying you do not believe that all of humanity need be destroyed; in fact you just said every human is capable of redemption, yes?"
"Do I really need to repeat myself?"
"Yes!" Hazel replied, suddenly snatching her miniature recorder off the nearby coffee table, clicking the record button and holding the device up towards Pamela. "Repeat it for me, Pamela, please."
Suddenly a look of understanding entered Pamela Isley's eyes and she smiled at her psychiatrist. "Very well... I believe that humanity is capable of redemption. I believe the world can be saved, and humanity can be saved along with it, if they could only learn to protect their planet rather than destroying her. I believe every child of the earth is capable of redeeming themselves, they simply need someone to show them the way. Someone like me..."
Hazel clicked the recorder off just as Pamela finished speaking. The Psychiatrist was beaming at her patient now and she reverently set the recorder back down, as if it were a priceless and rare artifact from archaeological dig. As she set the recorder aside she looked to Pamela with a glimmer of excitement in her eyes. Pamela was now smiling just as wide and seemed to show equal excitement in her own expression.
"We're on the right track, Pamela. If we keep this up, I think you're going to make it out of here, and make it once you get out too." Hazel paused a moment, then she nodded as if in confirmation to some unspoken thought of her own. "I'll even sponsor your rehabilitation."
"You'll what?" Isley exclaimed, doing a double take. "Dr. Birch, no! You can't, if something goes wrong, even if I don't mean to do something, even if I'm merely pushed over the edge by circumstance... If you sponsor me now it could be the end of your career if things don't work!"
"It could have been the end of my career if you'd told the guards that I was the fool who inadvertently exposed you to plant pollen; but you didn't tell them. You didn't let me down then, and I don't believe you'll let me down now." Dr. Birch smiled at her patient and inclined her head gently. "I trust you, Pamela."