A / N : Thanks saffronraymiecorinna and cartoonlover27 for the feedback. Always appreciated. And yeah, Fry and Leela will definitely reunite down the road, but not for a while yet. Fry has something to do first, which has been hinted at a couple of times over the course of the story and should become more obvious soon. (The hints, if you missed them, were Nibbler's feeling something is really wrong in the universe – it is – and Leela's prank-call pizza delivery in chapter 31, which is worth taking a second look at. It's more important than it seems.)

The mutant medi-center was small and shabby, like everything else in the settlement. Leela was shown into a waiting room by a young mutant girl. Her skin was green and flaking, as if it was drying out. It crackled when she pulled out Leela's chair and she scratched furiously at her arm, shedding bloody flakes on the floor.

"Sorry," she said quickly. "I'm not supposed to scratch, but it's so itchy." She smiled nervously at Leela. "You're Mrs Turanga's daughter, aren't you? From the surface?"

The mutant girl had large, wide-set eyes with whites so yellow they looked jaundiced, and irises so yellow they looked gold. She didn't seem to blink as much as she should, and the rims of her eyes were crusted with gunk. They were painful to look at, but it seemed rude to look away. For the first time, Leela had a sense of how strangers must feel when they looked at her own eye.

"Leela," she managed. "I'm Leela."

The girl beamed. "I'm Skreem." She ducked her head nervously. "You're just as pretty as everyone says."

Leela blinked. "What?"

Skreem rubbed at her other arm, fighting to urge to scratch. Her breath came quick and fast, like she was scared.

"You're so pretty," she babbled. "Like a surface person. Your skin, it's so pink . . ."

She put out a hand – a crusted, oozing hand. Leela pulled away before she had time to think about it. She hated herself an instant later, when Skreem cringed back.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you . . . I just don't like being touched," Leela said truthfully.

Skreem shook her head.

"It's my fault, I shouldn't have touched you," she babbled. "I'm really sorry. I'll go, I'm sorry . . ."

"No, you don't have to-"

The door swung shut behind her before Leela could finish the sentence.

"Go," she said quietly.

She sighed. When she shifted in the chair it wobbled on one leg. Leela scowled. It was broken, like everything else down here. The trash the surface threw away.

"Turanga Leela?"

The voice behind her was brusque and businesslike, but at least it wasn't afraid.

"Yes," Leela said quickly. "That's me."

She turned around, and swallowed a scream. The mutant midwife was short and squat, with a broad, homely face, and straw-textured hair thrown up in a bun. And she was covered in teeth. They protruded from her stomach and sides ; sharp, jagged canines that made Leela wince just looking at them. When she moved into the light Leela saw lumps and bumps straining beneath the skin, where new teeth were waiting to break through. The woman's hands and forearms were clear of teeth, but pitted and pockmarked where she'd pulled them out.

"Safer for deliveries," she said shortly, following Leela's gaze. "So, you're Turanga Leela. The least mutated mutant ever born. You came along before I started practice, but I've heard of you, of course."

"Of course?" Leela echoed.

"Mmm. You were a case study. Down here genetics has a more practical application than on the surface. I'm not just a midwife – I'm also a genetics counselor. MD. Not that any institution on the surface would recognize the qualification." The midwife sat down at her desk. "So, you're pregnant."

"Yes."

Leela couldn't stop staring at the woman's teeth. Had she been born with them, she wondered? She couldn't have been. How would you give birth to a baby covered in teeth? It would chew you up from the inside out. The cyclops paled, and put a hand to her stomach.

The midwife seemed to know what she was thinking.

"Don't worry," she said wryly. "I didn't cut my teeth until I was three months old. 'Course, after that they never stopped, but on the whole I count my blessings – and I'm sure my mother does too. I'm Dr Brynda Coeb, by the way. You can call me Brynda."

She stuck out a hand and shook Leela's. She seemed to have delivered her name as an afterthought, and she was already moving on, her eyes roaming over Leela's form as she sized her up, taking mental notes. It was disconcerting, but Leela decided she approved of her efficiency. The midwife looked like she had more important things on her mind than making small talk.

"How far along are you?" she demanded.

"Eight weeks. No, nine."

"I see. Well, I'm going to need samples. Blood, urine, the works. And a physical exam, of course."

The physical exam proved uncomfortable. Providing samples wasn't much better.

Leela watched the midwife snap on gloves and draw her blood.

"How do you have clean needles?" she asked. "And gloves? No offense, but seems like those things would be hard to come by down here."

Brynda snorted. "Our masters on the surface are kind enough to donate what their clinics don't use. It keeps us quiet, and stops us dying and clogging up their precious sewer system, which they really don't want. It must be hard to deny mutants exist when we're washing up dead in their drains. Hence the hospital. We were supposed to just treat the workers if a pipe blew, but they started bringing their families to us, and we couldn't turn our backs. We're not as inhuman as they are on the surface."

She huffed as she labelled Leela's blood and put it into an ancient, humming cooler.

Leela stared at her, feeling sick. She'd known for years that those in power in the city knew mutants were real, and that they covered it up. They used the mutant population as cheap labor for the sewage system. As money had no worth down here, it made sense that the mutants were trading that labor for medical supplies instead. But people were dying and in danger in the sewers, and the best the city could do was donate its cast-offs?

"That's all they give you?" she asked. "Needles and gloves?"

Brynda shrugged. "We have an old ultrasound. No neo-natal equipment, of course. No-one fights to save a mutant baby if it's born premature."

"That's barbaric."

"Yes. But don't worry. The city ensures we always have the necessary equipment to terminate a dangerous pregnancy, so at least they do some good. Granted, they're probably thinking it's one less mutant festering under their feet, but if it saves the life of a woman who comes to me for help, I don't care why they do it – just that they do."

Leela swallowed. Her mouth had gone dry.

"How often does that happen?" she asked. "How often do you have to . . .?"

She couldn't bring herself to say it. She hadn't wanted this baby, hadn't expected it at all . . . but now she was faced with the prospect of losing it, and all she felt was panic.

She thought of Fry, shutting the door in her face. Of herself, dreaming she'd lost him and waking up sick with fear because in the dream, the light had drained from her world without him. She thought of Lars, the day she realized he wasn't Lars and never had been. The day she understood that he was Fry, even if he didn't think so anymore . . . and that she still loved him, for exactly that reason. She thought of the day they signed the divorce papers and tore themselves in two again. The day she found out Fry was gone.

The baby was all she had left of him. It was the only part of him she would ever let herself have. She couldn't lose it.

Brynda's expression softened a little.

"We'll talk about that if we need to," she said. "We won't know what we're dealing with for sure until we get a look at your scan. That'll be twenty weeks. But we should be able to get a rough idea what we're up against from your genetic screening."

"How does that work?"

"We take a sample of your DNA and scan for any problems. Just because you have a mutation, doesn't mean you're guaranteed to pass it down – which can be good news, obviously. But by the same reckoning, you don't know what you might be carrying."

"Carrying?" Leela echoed.

"Mmm. Genetically. You could be a carrier." The midwife sighed at her blank look. "I'll break it down to a grade-school level for you. Some genes are recessive," - she laid her right hand on the table - "and some are dominant." She brought her left hand down to cover it. "Say you have blue eyes and your partner has green eyes. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the baby doesn't end up with one blue eye and one green. Either your blue beats his green, or his green tops your blue. But if your grandaddy had brown eyes, baby might surprise you all by taking after him. Your blue eyes" - she raised her left hand, so that the right was revealed again beneath it - "might not be all you had to give. Not the whole picture. You see what I'm getting at here?"

"Yes," Leela said. "I think so. So . . . what you're saying is that even though I'm healthy, there could be something horrible lurking in my gene pool?"

"Or the father's." Brynda looked at her sharply over her notes. "Who isn't with you, I notice. He needs to get his ass over here."

"That could be a problem," Leela admitted. "I don't know where the hell he is."

"What, he ran off?"

Leela grimaced. "It looks that way."

Brynda clicked her tongue impatiently. The look on her face suggested she thought Leela was an idiot.

"Well, find him!" she said. "It's not like he can go far."

"Well," Leela snapped, "he has the whole universe. That seems far enough to me. I've been looking for him for weeks."

Brynda froze. The color drained from her cheeks.

"Please tell me," she said slowly, "that a mutant fathered that baby."

She gestured at Leela's stomach, her face suddenly tight and unreadable.

Leela frowned.

"Fry? No, he's human. Does that make a difference?"

Brynda dropped her chart like it was red-hot. She swore under her breath.

"And he knows you're here? He knows you're doing this?"

"Uh . . ." Leela shifted uncomfortably. "No. Not yet. I told you, I can't find him. Is that a problem?"

"Yes," Brynda said furiously. "It's a big problem!"

"Why?"

Brynda shook her head. "Because," she said shortly, "I can treat you, but I can't lay a hand on something that's half human. You understand? I can't do anything to that baby he doesn't want to do."

"That's crazy," Leela objected. "It's my body. It's my baby. Surely I -"

"Surely nothing. You're a mutant. You get found out, you get deported right back where you came from. And I hate to break it you, but where you come from, you have no rights. You understand? He has rights. You don't. If lover boy wants his DNA out of there, it goes. If he wants to see how the whole thing turns out and take the baby – tell people it's an alien, stick it in an orphanarium, whatever the hell he wants – he can do it. There is no court on the surface or under it that will find in your favor. Do you understand?" She gave a bitter laugh. "You're a mutant. To them, you're nothing."

Leela felt dizzy, like the breath had been knocked out of her.

"That's not true," she said furiously. "Not -"

Not to Fry, she thought. She had never been nothing to Fry.

But the midwife was busy shaking her head in disgust.

"You'd better hope he sticks around long enough to even have that conversation, once he finds out he's been bedding a mutant. And you'd better not get too attached to the fetus, because if I know anything about the way they think on the surface, he's going to want to destroy the evidence as fast he can. Fraternizing with a mutant is a crime, and I doubt he's willing to do time."

She laughed again, and it was that bitter, cynical little laugh that tipped Leela over the edge. A white-hot rage was coursing through her, making her shake. Her relationship with Fry had been wrong for a hundred reasons, but not one of them had been that she was a mutant and he was human.

"He already knows," she said coldly. "He's always known. He doesn't care."

"Is that what he tells you?" Brynda sighed. "Look, sweetheart, you wouldn't be the first to be taken advantage of by-"

"I'm not an idiot," Leela interrupted. "I think I'd know if he was lying." She calmed down a little. "Really," she admitted. "He's a terrible liar. He can be an idiot."

She smiled in spite of herself – in spite of her anger, and her fear, and the horrible, crushing loneliness she felt whenever she thought about Fry. He still had the power to make her smile. It felt like a miracle, and it lent her unexpected strength.

"He's an idiot," she said firmly. "But he's a good man, and he loves me." It had taken her a long time to believe it, but it was the one thing Leela was sure of now. It was inescapable. "He'll want the baby, and he'll want to help. Just tell me what you need him to do."

The midwife considered her. The idea that a normal, non-mutated surface-dweller could honestly be in love with a mutant seemed impossible to her, but something in Leela's face or in her voice must have struck a chord, because she stopped arguing the point and settled for looking discomfited instead.

"Find him," she said at last. "I won't touch you until you do."