A / N : How to explain this fic . . . there's a long version and a short version, and the short version is, I spent some time in the hospital recently without access to the notes for any of my other fics (and not really trusting myself to write anything that mattered). But I got bored, and now we have this. This being a Groundhog Day!Freela fic no-one asked for, the basic idea for which has been kicking around in my mind for about five years now. There are seven chapters to it in total and I plan on posting one every week or so while I work to catch up on my other fics.
There's not a whole lot to know going into this. It's a Freela fic, obviously, set after the end of the original series but before Bender's Big Score. Contains some fairly major angst (don't say I didn't warn you) but like most of what I write, it's not as big a downer as it seems.
You're all amazing, as always. Enjoy!
I would love you ten years before the flood
November 23rd 3004 doesn't seem anything special.
New New York is in the grip of a dull gray smog, but Momcorp is trying to weaponize the weather, and so it is that Leela is woken at 8 am by a hailstone the size of a softball crashing through her window. (She knew windows were a bad investment.)
She picks the thing up before it can melt into the carpet and dumps it in her shower, running the hot water over it until it washes down the drain. Then she has to clean up the broken glass embedded in her floorboards, tape newspaper over the broken window, and feed Nibbler his morning bowl of Kibbles 'n' Snouts. By the time all this is done she's running late for work. So she skips breakfast, though she knows she'll pay for it later.
She skids into Planet Express with her stomach growling. The Professor has prototyped some new kind of syringe, and he wants the crew to deliver three crates of them to a private hospital for testing. Scruffy has already loaded the ship by the time Leela gets in, but Fry and Bender are, as usual, even later than her. The whole delivery will be behind schedule now, but it gives Leela the opportunity to run across the street for coffee, so she can't bring herself to care all that much.
It looks like the super-sized hailstones hit the Robot Arms Apartments too. When the boys arrive at last, Fry has ice chips in his hair and a tiny cut on his cheek, and Bender's chassis is dented in three different places.
The robot is still complaining about it when they reach their destination three hours later. He cheers himself up by stealing candy and balloons from a coma patient. This is the kind of appalling moral lapse Leela would normally chew him out for – but it's been a long day and she's hungry, and before she knows it she's eaten three pieces of salted caramel crunch. After that it seems hypocritical to object.
"It's not like Coma Guy is gonna eat them," Fry points out. "We're doing him a favor. Now he has more room for flowers and stuff. Cards. Whatever."
Leela sighs.
"You have a point."
Fry grins.
Later – after – Leela will remember that. The lazy unfurling of his smile will stick in her mind. Not because there is anything unusual about it, but because it's so ordinary. It's the smile he gives her a dozen times a day, the smile she takes for granted – hardly even looks at – because she knows she'll see it again before the memory has time to fade.
She can't remember what they talk about after that. TV and work and Nibbler, she supposes. The same old empty topics friends always fall back on when they run out of things to say. Eventually Bender takes over the conversation anyway, the way he always does, and Leela just tunes out and focuses on flying. Occasionally a word floats past her - "travesty" and "robot Adonis" and "scratch-free finish my ass"- from which she surmises the robot is complaining about the damage to his chassis again.
Suddenly Bender tugs on her elbow. The ship spins off-course and Leela has to swerve sharply to avoid an incoming hover-truck. She scowls back at the robot, once she's sure it's safe to do so.
"Bender! You could have killed us all. I don't know what you're playing at, but -"
Bender, as usual, waves away her criticism.
"You need to reboot Fry," he says.
"What?"
"Restart his operating system, or whatever you flesh-sacks do."
He gestures at Fry. Leela glances back. Fry looks a little paler than he normally does, but otherwise okay. He seems annoyed.
"I'm fine," he insists. "I told you, Yancy."
Leela starts.
"See?" Bender says. "He keeps calling me that. Me. Bender!"
It's clear he can't think of anything more offensive.
Leela's first thought is that this must be some kind of joke, but Fry's expression changes her mind. He looks genuinely frustrated.
"That's your name," he says. "Leela, tell him."
Leela frowns.
"Fry," she says carefully, "Yancy was your brother. Remember? And Bender is, well . . . Bender. I'm sure you can appreciate the difference."
It doesn't help.
"That's what I said," Fry insists. "Yancy is Yancy. Your name is Yancy. His name. My name. I said . . ." He breaks off and moves his lips soundlessly, like his mouth won't obey him.
Does he look paler? Is it her imagination? Leela makes up her mind in an instant.
"Bender, take control of the ship," she orders.
She moves over to Fry and crouches down in front of him, trying to get a good look at his face.
He is paler. She's not imagining it.
"Fry? Fry?" She shakes his shoulder. "Hey. Talk to me."
When he meets her gaze, Leela can see the panic in his eyes.
"I feel . . . don't." His voice is thick, slurred like he's drunk. But he's not. She'd know if he was. "Words," he mumbles. "I can't word."
"What?"
"Pizza. Yancy. Robot. Jelly."
The words are coming faster now, but they don't make any sense. It's gibberish, all of it.
"Slow down," Leela tries.
"Werecar. Nibbler. Egg salad!"
"Fry . . ."
She's at a loss. Whatever Fry is trying to tell her, it won't come out right.
"Sewer penguin stinger!" he gasps. He grabs her hand and grips it hard. His eyes are wild and desperate.
And then he blinks, confused, and blood starts to run from his nose.
Leela goes cold, all in an instant. After that, everything happens too fast to process.
She screams at Bender – something's wrong and get him to a hospital and now! - and she tries to stop up the bleeding with Fry's shirt, but she can't. It won't stop and it won't slow. It just keeps coming. He's getting paler and paler, twitching spasmodically, but he won't let go of her hand, and he won't stop trying to talk.
They're too far from the hospital. There's too much blood.
The realization hits her in a wave of sickness, and it hits Fry too. Leela is never sure what happens next. She starts screaming at Bender again, she thinks, because the blood is coming faster now and Fry is still trying to talk through it, his jaw working furiously on a single word.
"Leela!"
Leela has no idea if her name is what he meant to say, or if it's just more nonsense. Fry gasps – a single strained gulp – and then he seizes up and falls forward.
When Leela pushes him back his eyes are open, staring at nothing.
Underneath her, the hull of the ship scrapes across asphalt. Bender says something. Voices sound outside. Cool Earth air floods the cockpit. It all seems faint and far away, like it's happening to someone else.
Paramedics pry her hand out of Fry's, look him over and shake their heads.
And pain slices into her chest – real, physical pain, which doesn't make any sense because she's fine. She's okay.
Fry's the one who . . . Fry's the one who just . . .
Died, her mind supplies. Fry is dead.
The pain flares in her chest again, and her world goes dark.
She wakes up, and doesn't know how long she was gone for.
She wasn't asleep – she knows that much. She's been sitting in this plastic seat while Amy talks at her. There's a paper cup in her hand and a fuzzy coffee taste in her mouth. She's been sipping hospital coffee, and listening to Amy talk, but until this point – this moment of awakening right now – she hasn't noticed any of it.
The inside of her head has been screaming white noise, because Fry is dead.
Fry is dead.
"Fry," she manages. Her voice cracks on the word, but Leela keeps going. "Fry is dead."
Amy stops mid-sentence.
There is a long silence.
"Yeah," she says at last. "Yeah, Leela, he's . . . he's pretty dead."
Hermes pats her hand sympathetically. (Hermes is here?)
"His brain is basically soup."
"The doctors don't think he suffered," Amy puts in quickly. "The language and communication centers of the brain broke down first, but it was all so fast, Leela, really. The doctors say it was as if his brain just forgot to give the orders – you know, breathing and heartbeat and stuff. It didn't hurt. He just . . . stopped."
Leela stares blankly back at her. All she can see is the terror on Fry's face, the way he gripped her hand and tried so desperately to tell her something before the blood started running from his nose.
"He knew," she croaks. "He knew something was wrong."
She feels numb, inside and out, but when she thinks of Fry – scared, and looking for her to help him somehow – the pain in her chest flares up again, becomes a hot knife of anger.
"What happened?" she demands. "He was fine! Someone did this, someone – was it Momcorp? Was it the Professor? Or Zoidberg! I bet it was Zoidberg. Did Zoidberg unleash some alien disease on him? Tell me! Tell me the truth!"
Amy backs away, looking scared.
"Leela, no-one knows!" She spreads her hands wide, in a gesture of complete bewilderment. "The doctors say it was a pathogen. Some new bacteria that has a hemorrhagic effect on human brain tissue."
"What?"
"They were studying it at the hospital. They had a patient there, Patient Zero, this guy in a coma." Amy hesitates. "Bender says . . . Bender says he broke into a coma patient's room to steal his candy. He says Fry was with him. That's how he got infected."
"No." Leela cuts her off. "That's not possible. I ate that candy. I'm not sick."
Amy looks at her, her gaze sad and pitying.
"Leela," she says softly. "You're not human."
It's the first and only time someone has ever had to remind her, and it breaks something in Leela.
"There must be something we can do," she says wildly. "We can clone him, the Professor can clone him -"
"He wouldn't be Fry," Amy interjects. "Cubert isn't the Professor and if we cloned Fry, he wouldn't be Fry. Just some kid who looks like him." She pulls at the sleeve of her pink sweatsuit. "He wouldn't remember us."
Pain flares in Leela's chest again. She feels like she's caving in on herself.
It's funny, she thinks, how easy it is to kill hope stone dead. You can do it with only four words.
"I'm gonna take you home," Amy says gently. "You'll feel better if you get some sleep."
"No." Leela can't dredge up a more animated response than that. All she knows is that she won't leave here. She won't leave Fry. "No."
"Leela . . . Leela, he's gone." Amy's eyes are shiny with tears. "You can't help him anymore, he's -"
"No!"
Leela's arm jerks, slopping vending machine coffee onto Amy's sweatpants. It must be cold, because the other woman doesn't react.
Instead she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a slim adhesive square.
"The doctor gave me this," she says, peeling off the protective paper backing. "I didn't want to use it, but . . ." She slaps the patch onto Leela's neck. "I'm sorry, Leela."
Leela reaches up, scratching wildly in her attempt to peel it off, but the sedative in the patch must act fast. Her fingertips are already too thick to obey her. She can't find the edge, can't move them fast enough, and her vision is beginning to dim.
She falls out of the chair and as her knees hit the floor, Hermes and Amy rush to stop her falling.
"No," she says weakly, but there's no fight left in her, and when her head hits Amy's shoulder it's as soft as a pillow, and she sinks into it, into pink polyester and cloyingly sweet perfume, and arms that won't let her go.
There's a night sky on the other side of her broken window, and she's back in her apartment. Nibbler is fussing at her, and Amy is pushing cups of camomile tea at her and telling her to eat something, please, keep her strength up, and it's all unreal somehow, more lost time, more inexplicable mundanity, and -
Fry is dead, her mind reminds her.
Amy is still talking, but she must realize Leela has stopped listening, because eventually she stops. She clears away the uneaten food and piles more blankets on top of Leela, and then she talks to someone on the phone – she's catatonic and it's not sinking in and I don't know what to do and then I love you, I love you so much, if it was you I can't even imagine what I'd . . .
Leela stops listening again, and a little while later Amy hangs up the phone and turns out the light.
Her friend lies down on the couch in the other room, leaving the door open between them, and then she cries little snuffling cries until she falls asleep.
Leela lies awake and stares at the ceiling, and wonders if she'll ever sleep again.
Hours later, Bender breaks in.
He does it quietly enough not to wake Amy, and he doesn't steal anything. Or say anything. There's a beard of rust creeping along his jawline, and Leela knows instinctively that he's sober. He hasn't had a drop of alcohol since it happened.
She wonders how long he can go without it until his system shuts down.
She wonders why she doesn't blame him.
He pushes something at her. It's cool from his chest compartment, and the fabric is gray in the dark, but it smells like Slurm and stale sweat and Fry, and she doesn't need light to know what it is. To see the color red.
Leela clutches it tightly and Bender leaves, as silently as he arrived.
There's a stick of gum in the pocket of Fry's jacket, and a ring of keys, and the tab from a can of Slurm.
Leela digs her fingers in deeper and traces the outline of each item, over and over again, until she knows them by heart.
The teeth of the keys. The loop of the tab. The worn-down foil on the gum.
She traces them again and again, and thinks of nothing, and eventually, somehow . . . she falls asleep.