Leela wakes up three days after the crash to find an insurance representative sitting by her bedside. She would be offended, but knowing the Central Bureaucracy, she's amazed they waited this long.
The man beside her is a Level Six. Small and twitchy-looking, like a ferret, with an over-large bald head that looks like he's polished it. Leela stares at him and briefly imagines buffing his scalp with a chamois cloth.
Wax on, wax off, she hears Bender say, sing-song, in her mind.
The nurses have cut down on her morphine since they wised up to Bender's habit of overriding the machine whenever it appears she's in pain. Leela suspects she's still on a heavy regimen of painkillers though. She may not be hallucinating dancing snails anymore, but the world feels distinctly woolly around her, and she can't seem to muster the ire she knows she would normally feel at this intrusion to her recovery.
"Ms Turanga Leela?" the man says.
Leela notes the delicate stress on Ms, categorizing her as both too old for a Miss and definitively Not Married. Under normal circumstances, she knows, she'd take offense at that.
But for now, she doesn't.
"Yes," she says instead. Dull and disinterested.
"I have some questions, regarding your recent accident."
Leela says nothing, which the man seems to interpret as an invitation to go on.
He clicks down the nib of his pen.
"What would you characterize as the cause of the crash?"
Leela frowns.
"Don't you know?"
"On-board surveillance was non-functional at the time of the crash."
"It was?"
"Records show it had been damaged some months previously by a robot owned by the company. A bending unit."
"Bender."
"As you say. What do you remember of the crash?"
"Not much," Leela admits.
The man consults his notes.
"Your employer has stated the crash occurred when you lost consciousness at the wheel."
"Yes," Leela says, before her brain catches up with her. Lost consciousness, she notes, is not the same as fell asleep.
"The bureaucrat of record, Hermes Conrad, had stated that you appeared ill that morning and he regrets allowing you to fly. His account is corroborated by your colleague Miss Amy . . . Wong . . . who states that you reported hallucinations shortly before the crash. The medical opinion is that you became hypoxic due to illness and lost consciousness, at which point you also lost control of the vehicle. Does that sound accurate to you?"
It's bull, Leela thinks. I fell asleep. And I hallucinated Fry because I've gone half crazy with grief. But she can't admit that without admitting the crew lied for her. Silently cursing them, she nods.
"I see." The bureaucrat makes a note. "Why were you flying alone?"
Leela stares blankly at him.
He makes a noise of impatience.
"You are aware that you hold a special category pilot's license. The stipulations of which include a windscreen adapted for depth perception, and your agreement that you will fly only in the presence of a fully-sighted overseer."
"What?"
The windscreen isn't news to her, but the rest of it . . .
"I never agreed to that."
Hermes had asked for her signature on thirty different forms, when she first came on board as captain, and she vaguely remembers the windscreen being one of them. But this . . .
"I never agreed to a babysitter," she says forcefully. "And I've never needed one! The crash had nothing to do with my eye. I am perfectly capable of flying the ship on my own. Usually."
The bureaucrat gives her a patronizing look.
"Well, you've had one," he says. His tone is prim. "The signatory of record is one Philip J Fry."
Fry. It hits her like a body blow.
"That's . . . not true. It's not true."
The bureaucrat makes an irritated noise.
"I assure you it is."
He hits a button on the top of his clipboard and a hologram springs into the air between them. Dimly, Leela recognizes the interior of Hermes' office, as it was almost four years ago. Fry himself is slouched across from Hermes, making a chain out of Slurm tabs and paperclips.
As Leela watches, Hermes pulls the remaining paperclips out of his reach.
"So you understand what I'm asking?" he says.
Fry blinks, distracted by the sudden disappearance of the paperclips. The unfinished chain hangs forlornly from his fingers.
"Huh? Oh, no. Not at all."
"You don't understand?"
Fry shakes his head.
"I can't fly a spaceship."
Hermes actually chuckles at that.
"Oh, no. No-one would trust you with the ship," he says, as if the very idea is insane. "No, no no. You won't be flying it. Your job is to watch Leela fly, and scream if it looks like she's about to hit something. You can do that, can't you?"
Fry looks doubtful.
"I guess. Maybe. Unless I fell asleep or something. But . . . I don't know."
"You don't know," Hermes echoes.
"I just . . ." Fry squirms. "Look," he bursts out. "The thing is, I don't know Leela that well. But she seems kind of . . ."
"Proud?" Hermes suggests.
Leela has a sudden vivid flashback to the long speech she'd given Hermes when he suggested the modified windscreen. She had been emphatic in her insistence that her eye was not a defect and not an impediment, thank you very much, and anything a captain with two eyes could do, she could do better, and anyone who implied otherwise . . .
She winces at the memory.
In the video recording, Hermes is wincing too - at what is, for him, a much fresher memory.
"I noticed that," he says delicately.
"She can be touchy about the eye," Fry goes on. "And this seems like the kind of thing she'd get mad about. Have you ever had Leela be mad at you? The day we met I made her mad. She probed me in places no man should be probed! Then she chased me across town with a laser gun. It's like a regular gun, but with lasers. Pew, pew!"
He acts out the firing of the laser gun, for reasons known only to himself.
Hermes receives this information neutrally.
"I see."
"I don't want to make her mad at me. Leela can be kind of uptight and scary, but right now she likes me, and I want to keep it that way. And -" Fry fidgets with the paperclip chain, bending it out of shape "- if she gets mad, she might leave. And . . . I don't know. I think it could be fun. Me and her and Bender, seeing the stars."
His hand twitches, a reflex motion he moves guiltily as if to hide.
He's remembering Old New York, Leela realizes. How she put her hand on his in the ruins of the city, the day they met. It's obvious the memory meant something to him, even back when it was fresh, when he hardly knew her.
Leela swallows. It mattered to him, the way it mattered to her.
On the recording, Hermes is eyeing Fry over his clipboard, with a shrewd, half-interested expression.
"I understand," he says soothingly. "Don't worry. I have a solution to all our problems." He clears his throat. "The solution is: we don't tell her. I'll bury the stipulation in sub-clauses, and we'll tell Leela you're the ship's navigator."
"You think she'll buy that?"
Hermes chuckles aloud at this.
"Relax, mon. She'll think it's a job title we made up to make you feel important. She won't suspect a thing."
"Oh. Well, in that case . . ." Fry brightens. "Where do I sign?"
Leela watches, dumbfounded, as he signs his name on another clipboard.
Fry lied to her. All this time.
All those times she caught him watching her as she flew the ship, he was checking up on her. All those times she'd thought . . .
Leela clamps down on the stupid, girlish emotion. So what if Fry wasn't checking her out? He was doing his job. She ought to be proud of him.
What had she thought? Really? That he was sitting there mooning over her all these years? Half the time he wasn't even awake, or was busy playing Rock, Paper, Scissors with Bender.
But in her mind's eye she watches Fry's hand flex again. Sees him turn faintly pink, even through the grainy low-res of the holo-video. It could be fun, she hears him say again. Me and her and Bender, seeing the stars.
The bureaucrat is talking to her. With an effort, Leela drags herself back into the present.
"What?"
The bureaucrat breathes in through his nose, nostrils flaring white, in an act of supreme patience.
"I said, it has been four years since this conversation. Mr Conrad assures me you were made aware of the requirements in the intervening years, in accordance with bureaucratic protocol. You confirm this to be true?"
Leela hesitates, then nods. What else can she do? Hermes will be demoted if the Central Bureaucracy finds out he broke protocol, and it's not his fault the Leela of four years ago was too proud to accept her own limitations. Rank means everything to a bureaucrat. She just can't do it to him.
The Level Six nods and checks a box on Leela's file.
"Mr Fry died in November," he continues. "It is now February. Why have you not replaced him?"
Leela stares.
"As far as I can see," the bureaucrat goes on. "He possessed no special skills. Anyone could have filled his position. Why did you not replace him?"
Leela just stares, again. She has the sudden sense that this fussy, officious little man has stopped speaking English. His mouth is forming words, but they don't make any sense.
"Replace him," she echoes.
"Yes. Why didn't you?"
"Replace . . . Fry."
There is a long silence, as the bureaucrat waits for Leela to give some indication she understands the question, and she continues to stare blankly at him.
Eventually, he seems to become uncomfortable. He probably thinks this is a side-effect of the crash, Leela realizes. That she's too doped up on morphine to comprehend him.
"If - you - want - to - fly - again," he says slowly, as if speaking to a toddler, "you - will - need - a - new - signatory. Do - you - understand?"
Leela's mouth twists.
"I understand." She takes a deep breath. "But that won't be necessary. None of this is necessary. I won't be flying again."
Leela's decision causes uproar among the crew. Amy bursts into tears, Hermes begs her to reconsider, and Bender rants and rages at her for an hour: all of them determined to make her see sense.
Leela is too tired to argue, but she sticks to her guns.
"I'll repair the damage I caused to the ship," she says. "I'll pay for parts, and I'll do the repairs with my own hands. But when it's done, you can find a new captain. I'm sorry. I'm not coming back."
More objections, loudest of all from Bender. Leela shuts her eye and lets it wash over her, feeling weary to the bone.
Eventually Bender gets so out of hand Amy has to drag him away to calm down, leaving Leela alone with Hermes. She doesn't realize he's still there until she opens her eye.
"You're not yourself, Leela," he says gently. "I don't think you should be making decisions like this when your brain is still roasted with grief. Take some time. Think about it. Don't cut off your nose to spite your face, mon."
He makes a snipping motion, by his own nose, and tries for a smile. Leela can't quite return it.
"I won't change my mind."
Hermes sighs.
"If you say so. But we can't hire a new captain until the ship is repaired, so I'm making an executive decision to postpone your resignation. I choose not to accept it. At this time."
"I doubt the Professor will agree to that."
The Professor hasn't been back to see her since the crash. It's clear he hasn't forgiven her, and Leela doesn't blame him. In fact, she's relieved. Someone should be angry at her. Someone should hold her accountable for her self-centeredness, her damage to company property, the sheer reckless endangerment of it all.
Hermes just humpfs.
"Let me handle the Professor."
Leela doubts he'll get far, but she gives a one-shouldered shrug, conceding the battle as one she doesn't have the strength to fight. If Hermes wants to fight her corner, he can do it alone. And if the Professor doesn't want to forgive her, so what?
It doesn't matter anyway. None of it does.
She won't fly again, and sooner or later even Hermes will have to accept that.
"I saw the holovid," she says instead. "Navigator, huh?"
Hermes blinks, caught off guard. He hesitates as he tries to read her expression.
Leela sighs.
"I'm not mad. Well. Maybe a little." She swallows. "Fry . . . he lied to me, Hermes."
Hermes pats her hand.
"He lied for you."
"Is there a difference? He sat beside me every day for three years and he lied."
Leela shakes her head, furious at the tears she can feel constricting her throat.
"He lied, and now he's dead and it turns out he had all these secrets, and I can't ask him about any of them. He was my best - my best friend," she says tightly. "And -"
She can't get any further, but the unspoken half of the sentence hangs in the air anyway.
Sometimes I wonder if I knew him at all.
"Fry was a good friend" Hermes says. "He never wanted to hurt you." He pats her hand again. "If it makes you feel better . . . he probably forgot all about it. I did, until that shiny-headed Level Six reminded me."
Strangely, this doesn't make her feel any better.
Leela shuts her eye again, giving in to the exhaustion.
"I should rest," she says, and if Hermes is unhappy at her cutting the conversation off like this, he doesn't push her.
"You never needed it," he says simply. "You were the best pilot Planet Express ever had. Until today. And you never needed a babysitter." He pauses. "Until today."
He pats her hand again - a vaguely useless gesture he can't seem to stop - then promises to bring her a supply of medical grade marijuana when she gets out of the hospital.
Leela accepts mostly to get rid of him, and pretends to be asleep for the rest of the afternoon.
It doesn't matter. She has nothing to get out of this bed for anyway. She's not a spaceship captain anymore.
She's not anything, anymore.
Just Turanga Leela, hospital patient. Turanga Leela, insurance fraudster. Turanga Leela, unemployed.
Turanga Leela . . . total nobody.