It's New Year, and Victor's Village is frozen over. When Leela breathes out, her breath fans out in front of her, a sheet of icy white.
She left her gloves inside, and her hands are turning numb.
She could go back inside for them, Leela knows . . . but that would mean facing her mother, and finishing her packing, and . . .
They leave in an hour.
She breathes in. Holds it. Breathes out again.
You can do this, she tells herself.
It's just pictures. It's just dinners. It's just speeches.
She can do this.
Leela shivers, and tells herself it's just the cold.
Her stylists have her dressed for the first stop on the Tour already, in a white angora sweater dress and hideous polar bear fur boots. Leela is trying not to think about how many animals gave their lives to make this outfit. Or how many families the silver-and-moonstone pendant around her neck could feed back home in the sewer.
"Hey."
Leela looks up, and realizes Fry is sitting on his doorstep. He's watching her, head tilted slightly to one side.
How long has he been doing that? How long has she been out here? Leela realizes she has no idea.
She tries to straighten up, by tiny, unnoticeable degrees.
"How long have you been out here?"
Fry shrugs.
"A while. Kif said I was getting in the way."
"Kif is packing for you?" Leela says incredulously.
Fry shrugs again.
"He said I wasn't doing it right. I wasn't putting my shoes on the bottom. Or on the top. Whichever one it was supposed to be. And he wanted me to roll my socks" - he pulls a face - "and pack ties. I can't even tie a tie. At the orphanarium all the ties had elastic that went under the collar, and they smelled like old man. Warden Vogel had a whole box of them. He used to give them out every year on picture day. Did you have picture day in the sewer?"
"No."
"Oh." Fry considers this. "No-one told me they have polar bears on the moon," he says suddenly.
Leela blinks. She's getting better at following his train of thought, but every so often Fry takes a wild swing into new territory, and she finds herself lost.
The shoes, she realizes. He's transfixed by the furry abominations on her feet.
"I think they're supposed to be fashion," she explains.
"Oh. Well, they're ugly."
Fry stands up and takes her hand, helping her navigate the ice as she climbs his porch steps.
"And we match again," he notes.
They do, Leela realizes. Fry is wearing dark blue pants and his shoes are suede, but he's wearing an angora sweater the twin of her own, and a little silver-moonstone pin. They've done something to his hair too – swept it back off his face and crinkled a curl through it, like some old world movie star. There is so much product involved Leela thinks it might crunch if she touched it. Overall, Fry looks as unlike himself as she does.
"Why do they always do that?" he's saying.
"Do what?"
"Match us." Fry gestures between them. "Like we're married. Or twins." A horrifying new thought seems to occur to him. "Or married twins. It's creepy."
Leela shrugs and feigns ignorance. In truth, she knows why Amy and the stylists do it. They're trying to make her and Fry seem like one entity; two halves of a whole, instead of two individual Victors. They want people to forget that awkward fact, and the rebellious closing act to the Games.
The wind picks up. Snowflakes are sticking to Leela's cheek now, and she's starting to lose all feeling in her face. Fry's hand, in hers, doesn't feel much warmer.
Once again, she wonders how long he's been out here.
A little lull of silence has fallen over them both again. Fry squeezes her hand gently, as if trying to pull her back from far away.
He could kiss her, Leela thinks. He's standing close enough to do it.
She wonders if a kiss - out here - would feel the way it did at Xmas.
But Fry doesn't try and Leela doesn't know how to ask, so they stand facing each other instead.
Hand in hand. Waiting.
"Are you nervous?" Leela hears herself ask.
Fry's hand contracts in hers at this allusion to the Tour - a tiny spasm she knows he doesn't intend. A shadow falls over his face.
"I don't know," he says. "But I know I don't want it to start. I keep waking up in the night," he admits. "All sweaty and like I can't breathe. Like I'm back in the arena."
"I get that too," Leela admits.
Fry nods.
"I don't know how to make it stop. But" - he hesitates, then plunges on - "if I have to go on the Tour, then I'm glad we have to go together. I mean . . ." He colors. "I'm not glad you have to go, but I – I'm glad you'll be there. With me."
Leela nods slowly. As much as Fry struggles to put his point across, she thinks she understands what he means. If you have to face horrors, she thinks, it's better not to face them alone.
"I . . me too." She wets her lips. "Fry - "
She stops, frowning. There is a sound at the edge of her hearing, a thrum in the air she recognizes from her last day in the sewer; from her stomach-churning ride to the arena; from those last nightmare moments of the Games.
It's the engine of a hovercraft.
Fry is frowning too. He's trying to speak now, but the engine is right overhead, and the noise is unholy – engine and rotor blades and howling wind, a maelstrom of sound that drowns him out. Not that Leela needs to hear him. He can only be expressing what she knows herself – that the hovercraft shouldn't be here for another hour, and it's supposed to be white and gold, and . . .
The seal of the empire is printed on the side, matte against the shining black. Leela barely has time to absorb it – Earth, ringed by the tiny stylized planets of the Empire – before the hovercraft touches down, and Peacekeepers dressed in beetle-black come pouring out.
Body armor. Leela recognizes the basic concept from the Peacekeepers she knew in the sewer, though theirs never shone like this, and they never had real helmets. And they never pointed their guns with such cold precision.
Fry is still staring. Leela yanks him back – into the shadows, out of the way – but his movements are too slow. He's not used to Peacekeepers, Leela realizes. The orphanarium had its own jailers. And he's human. He doesn't know how it feels to have a passing Peacekeeper kick you for fun. He's never seen them shoot out windows out of boredom, or spit at kids, or get drunk and trash someone's home to let off steam. He doesn't know the rules of engagement with Peacekeepers.
Make yourself invisible. Stay out of their way. Never make eye contact. Never talk back.
Fry doesn't know these things.
"Get down," she hisses, but it's too late. The Peacekeepers are upon them.
They drag Leela up by the arm. Her stupid fashion boots skid uselessly on the ice and she can't get her balance, can't keep up . . . she goes down hard, hip bone smacking painfully against the crazy-paving of the garden path. Fry cries out and there's a meat-sounding smack; a rifle butt against soft flesh. When they pull Leela up, Fry is doubled over. They either hit him in the back or the stomach – from this distance, it's hard to tell.
Not the face, she notes, and a chill runs down her spine.
Another Peacekeeper steps out of her house.
"Sweep's clear," he says to the one holding her, and then he moves off, talking in code into a little black box on his arm. A radio, Leela thinks.
They march her mother out of the house, over to Fry's front porch, where Kif is standing with his hands up, staring warily down the barrel of a gun. More Peacekeepers are shouting inside the house. Looking for Amy, probably. But Leela doesn't get to see her mentor brought out, because the Peacekeepers are already herding her and Fry back into the house.
They jostle her on – guns prodding into the small of her back – but it brings her closer to Fry, and Leela is able to grab his arm as they're pushed together. He's still wheezing from the blow, but his fingers find hers somehow and they lock, tight, together.
They're in the kitchen now, backed against the wall. Waiting.
The Peacekeepers take up point positions – two with their guns trained on Leela and Fry, the rest covering windows and exits – and the lead turns his blank, helmeted face to the door. They're waiting too, Leela realizes. She can hear a wheezing for breath suddenly, one that isn't just Fry anymore, and then there are heavy dragging footsteps in the hallway.
And there is a smell. It's chemical, preservative, and . . .
Mutt, she thinks illogically. That's not right, that's not possible . . . but there is an underlying smell of death in the room, and from the way Fry has tensed up beside her she knows he can sense it too.
The lead Peacekeeper is speaking as he pulls out a chair. He salutes.
"Mr President," he says. "Sir."
And Leela is face to face with the figure of President Nixon.
He's ghoulish. He's awful, and suddenly Leela knows what the chemical smell was. It's formaldehyde, preserving him – because the head in a jar is gone.
He's found himself a body somewhere, and grafted himself onto it. Surface medicine is so good she can't even see the line of stitches at his neck – but she doesn't need to, because in every other way, it's clear this body isn't his. It's like it's fighting him. Or failing him. His every breath is a struggle, and his extremities are blue. His fingernails are turning slowly black, stuck on the end of clumsy swollen fingers, and there is a pale lavender tint to his lips. He's not getting enough oxygen. Either his lungs or his circulatory system won't obey the commands of his brain. Leela has seen some desperate surgery carried out on mutants after pipe explosions in the sewer, but she's never seen anything like this. That's his head, on a dead body.
No wonder she thought of mutts. Nixon has turned himself into a mutt, experimented on himself in some grisly attempt to prolong his artificial life. Or maybe just to flatter his vanity.
There have been rumors about the president, as far back as Leela can remember. No-one knows what he owes his life to, in reality. Some people say he was artificially frozen, like Fry, but it was done too long ago or he wasn't defrosted right, and his body didn't survive the process. Others say he's an experiment himself; the illegal clone of a dead Earth president. They say he has weekly electro-therapy treatments to stimulate his brain, they say he has injections of human growth hormone every day, they say . . .
They say, they say.
They never said this. Even the fevered imagination of the sewer never came up with this.
Behind her, Fry sounds like he's trying not to retch. Leela swallows hard herself, and keeps her breathing shallow to fend off the smell. Fry's hand is slippery in hers - he's sweaty and nervous - but she only grasps it harder. If she has a hold of Fry's hand, Leela thinks, she can control him a little, and they both might make it out of this alive.
In the flesh, Nixon's flubby lips look like a pair of dead fish. But then they sharpen suddenly and pull taut, and Leela sees that President Nixon smiles like a shark.
"Oho! My tributes," he rumbles.
He drags the r sound out the way he does in his speeches on TV - ttrrrrriibutes - and that awful smile widens. He's enjoying this. He's enjoying their fear.
The worst part is that Leela is afraid. She can't help it. She was raised for this; raised with Nixon's voice booming down at her, and his face projected house-high on a screen, and with heavy boots kicking out at her in his name. She was raised to fear President Nixon. And it worked. There is a part of her that looks at him now and remembers she's genetic scum, she's less than dirt, she doesn't have the right to look him in the eye. She hates it, but it's there. It's what life in the sewer did to her. It made her feel small and powerless, and it taught her that the only way to survive was to make herself even smaller, to run away and hide so no-one notices her.
It's why she ran from the Cornucopia on the first day of the Games, despite all her plans. It's why she stayed hidden after that and just waited to die. She's a coward. She was lying to herself. She's pathetic, she's nothing, no-one . . .
Fry pulls closer to her. He doesn't say anything - Leela doubts he even knows what she's thinking - but just the presence of him, the nearness of him, is enough to shake her out of it. No, her brain whispers. You're not a coward. You went back for Fry. You fought for him! You never let Nixon make you what he wanted. You left the sewer! You saved your mother! You signed up for the Games!
Something in her cracks open again, the way it did in the Games, and suddenly Leela isn't filled with fear anymore. She's filled with hate.
Nixon is still talking.
"The peacenik who knows all about Halley's Comet," he says disparagingly. "And little miss mutant with the big ideas. You know how much trouble you caused me? Hrrmm?"
Fry shakes his head.
Leela can't move. It's her Nixon is looking at. It's her he's really talking to, she knows.
"You might have sucked in Charlie Chump here with your little lovesick act," he says, "but I see through you, missy. I know what you're really about, oh yes I do. Trrrrouble. I see it. I know. You didn't want to die for this slack-jawed junior hippy. You just wanted to stick it to me, didn't you? On national TV, where I'd have no comeback to your little games. You thought you could hit Tricky Dicky where he's weak! Thought you could stir up some of that old Watergate feeling, hey? Well I wasn't born yesterday!"
Fry is shaking his head more fervently now.
"No," he says. "No, that's not what happened, Mr President! Lord President! Emperor . . . President . . . Supreme of the . . . um . . ."
"Can it, peabrain! I'm talking to the brains of the operation."
Fry tails into silence, and Leela realizes it's all on her now. She has to do something.
"That's not what happened," she hears herself say.
The words sound hollow, even to her.
"Don't lie to me," Nixon growls.
Leela feels it again, that flare of fury blazing a straight line through the center of her chest.
"I'm not lying."
Nixon's arm lurches. It hits the table in one clumsy motion, the dead weight of his hand smacking against the wood. Fry reels back instinctively, tugging Leela back a half-step too, but she plants her boots and won't let him pull her any further. She holds her ground, staring into Nixon's cold black eyes.
She knows this game. She played it that first night in the Tribute Center, after all.
Show no fear. Hide your feelings. Make yourself a threat.
Time to play again.
"I'm not lying," she repeats, in a tone as cool as she make it.
She raises her chin and Nixon's face twists, his mouth contorting as if he's swallowed something sour.
"And I'm not buying it," he snarls. "Your little love story didn't fool me, missy. Don't you forget - I've seen the raw footage from those Games. Every unguarded moment. Every careless word. Every look on your face that didn't make that sappy final cut." Leela's expression freezes, and the president smiles an ugly smile. "You think about that," he says. "And then you tell me that little stunt with the darts wasn't your revenge."
Time seems to stop.
Fry has gone very still beside her. He won't like this, Leela knows - he hates the cold side of her, how ruthless she can be sometimes - but she can't let that stop her now. She's in survival mode.
She needs to play the game.
So she takes a steadying breath - in through her nose, slow, so it won't be as obvious - and prays he won't give her away.
"You're right," she tells Nixon. "I wasn't in love in the arena. I just saw my shot, and I took it. I was out of the running when I allied with Fry. I needed sponsors and I manipulated his feelings to get them." She affects a shrug. "I don't feel bad about it. For all I knew, he was faking it too."
Fry is barely breathing beside her, and this is cruel, this is twisting the knife in an old wound . . . but she has to keep him safe. She has to keep him alive.
Alive and hating her is better than lovestruck and dead.
"But once I started working the love angle," she goes on, "I had to see it through. I mean, it was obvious Fry wasn't going to make it. But if I left him to die, sponsors would have hated me. And it kept me interesting. I knew the Gamemakers would leave me alone if I gave them a soap opera. I just had to play it right. Wait it out. Cry on cue." She tosses her head back, arrogant. "You have to make them love you. Amy taught me that. I was her favorite, right from the start. Celgnar had the brawn, and Fry had the human factor, but I had the brains. I could lie. I could plan. I knew how to play the game." Another bolt of inspiration strikes her. "My little meltdown on Day One? We planned that together, so the Careers would underestimate me." She laughs, a horrible, twisted thing. "They regretted that."
Nixon is watching her intently.
"And the darts?" he demands.
I'm sorry, Fry, Leela thinks. I'm so, so sorry.
She holds the president's gaze. Arrogant. Indifferent. If Amy ever taught her anything, let it have been this. Please, let it have been this.
"I was angry," she says. "Angry I needed to work out an exit strategy. I wasn't thinking about you at all. I was thinking about how to save my own skin." She hates herself, as she stretches her lips in a sardonic smile. "I knew Fry wouldn't be able to kill me. I was bluffing, don't you see? If Doubledeal had waited a half a second longer, I'd have pushed my dart into Fry's heart. And he would have dropped his. I knew exactly how it would play out. It's not my fault your Head Gamemaker lost his nerve."
Nixon says nothing. Just watches her, like a snake lying in wait.
"You want a liar," Leela says, desperation tinting her words. "You want someone who knows how to play the game, who can play happy ever after on the Tour and fix Doubledeal's mistake. I can be that! Haven't I proved I can be that? Just let us live. We'll sell the romance, be your sideshow. Whatever you want, we can do it."
"And Lover Boy?"
Leela takes another breath. She hasn't looked at Fry since this began. She doesn't dare.
"He does what I say."
Nixon snorts out a laugh.
"Ohoho, you are a good liar. Very good, missy." Abruptly, his hand smacks against the table again. "VT!" he barks.
Leela jumps, but he's not talking to her. One of the Peacekeepers steps forward at his words, and sets a holovid projector down in front of them. He presses the button on its smooth black surface, and suddenly Leela is looking at a holographic projection of herself and Fry.
The Games, she thinks - but she's wearing a dress like crushed starlight, and there is no bandage on Fry's leg. The footage is grainy, brightened up from night vision, but Fry is leaning against a wall, as if he needs it to hold him up. Leela says something inaudible, and then his hand settles on her hip, just shy of her waist, and she falls into him. Her lips crash into his, hands fisting in his hair, and -
In the real world, Fry lets out a small sound of pain, and Leela realizes she has just crushed his hand in hers under the table.
This isn't the Games. It's that night outside the Splendor, when Amy doped Fry and he . . . and they . . .
Her face is on fire.
On the tape, Fry is mouthing at her neck, and the best actress in the world couldn't conjure up the expression on her face.
Leela shuts her eye, horrified.
Nixon's laugh starts as a low rumble, deep in his chest. It builds and builds, and then it bursts free, reverberating around the room until he runs out of breath and retreats into what sounds like a wheezy coughing fit. Tears stream down his blue-tinged cheeks. Spittle sticks to his chin.
"Brr-ravo," he says. "Brrrr-rraavo! Now, you listen to me, you one-eyed little freak. I don't care what you want. I don't care why you did it. But you know what I want on this Tour, and you're going to deliver. You're going to put on a show - love's young dream, loyal to the last. PG-rated. And if you don't" - his eyes narrow - "I'll snap your commie boyfriend's neck. And if he falls out of line" - his gaze falls on Fry, and his lips curve in a cruel smile - "I'll snap yours." His voice lowers. "One. Wrong. Move."
Leela swallows. Her mouth is suddenly bone dry.
"I understand."
Nixon snorts. His cold stare is still fixed on Fry.
"And you?"
Fry opens his mouth. Closes it again.
At last, he nods.
Nixon smiles, satisfied.
"Good," he rumbles. "And if you ever feel like forgetting this deal of ours, pulling more of that Romeo and Juliet crap, remember this."
He leans forward, and that dead, chemical smell washes over Leela again. It's all she can do not to gag.
"I know where your mother lives. All alone, in this house I built. And I know about your whore of a mentor. I know where she goes at night, and where she gets her supply. Don't think I can't find her. Don't think I can't arrange a trragic overdose." His eyes flicker, dead and mad, a nightmare in the waking world. "Don't think I won't."
