A / N : Happy New Year, everybody!

Leela blinked, hard – but when she opened her eye again, Lars was still snoring in her parents' guest bedroom.

The cyclops thought it over for a second. Then she shrugged.

What the hell. A sharp jab to the solar plexus ought to do it.

"I feel no guilt over this whatsoever," she told herself. "Heee-ya!"

The blow found its mark. Lars shot up, gasping, and clutched briefly at his head and throat, before he managed to orientate himself and noticed Leela.

"For the record," she snapped, "that felt pretty good."

"Uhhh . . ." Lars shook his head to clear it. "Leela!" he said blearily. "You're here! Honey, I'm so glad to see you . . ."

"Leela!" Morris shouted from behind her. "Don't go in – uh-oh."

Leela rounded on him.

"Uh-oh? Is that all you have to say for yourself? Uh-oh? What is he doing here?"

Morris held up his hands, cringing. "Sweetheart, I can explain . . ."

"How could you let him stay here? He lied to me, he -"

"I know, I know! But he had no place else to go! His boss wanted to throw him in the loony bin and he couldn't go home – you needed space! Where else could he go? We couldn't just let him sleep on the streets." Morris spread his hands in a conciliatory fashion. "I mean," he stumbled, "we're talking about the surface here. Who knows what could've happened to him?"

Leela snorted. "Not you, that's for sure."

"Exactly!" Her father nodded fervently. "Anything could happen up there. To be honest, I was never 100 per cent about letting you live there. You'd be a lot safer in the sewer."

"Dad!" Leela wailed. "Stop fussing over me! I'm mad at you!"

"Oh. Sorry, honey. I'll try and be a less attentive parent."

Leela groaned. "Just . . . just give me a minute alone with my husband, please. Maybe stand outside and put your fingers in your ears." She rolled up her sleeves. "I don't want you to be disappointed in me when I beat the crap out of him."

Morris opened his mouth to object, but closed it again at the look on her face.

"Well, alright. You know best. But don't strain yourself! And mind the furniture. And . . . could you keep it down, maybe? The neighbors are really getting up my ass -"

"Dad!"

Morris threw his hands up in self-defence. "Alright, I'm gone! Sorry, honey. Go fetal!" he hissed at Lars, as he ducked out.

Leela scowled, but before she could say anything Lars held his hands up.

"You're right," he said.

"What?"

Lars sighed. "You have every right to be mad at me. And if you want to take it out on me physically, I completely understand. But don't be mad at your parents – they were just trying to help me out. They're good people."

Leela blinked. "I know they are," she retorted. "And you – you took advantage of them! How could you?"

Lars nodded. "I know. I'm not proud of it, but this was the one place I'd knew you'd come when you'd calmed down, and I needed to see you. I owe you the truth."

"Oh," Leela huffed. "I see. Now you owe me the truth!" She narrowed her eye. "Well what makes you think I want to hear it?"

Lars hesitated. "Uh . . . that's a good point." He scratched the stubble on his chin awkwardly. "I guess I was just hoping you would."

Leela hit the bedpost in frustration.

"That is so, so . . . Fry! It's such a Fry thing to say!"

"Sorry."

"I can't believe I never noticed it. All this time . . . you're him, and I never even noticed. What's wrong with me?"

"Um." Lars shifted his weight from one foot to the other, off-balance. "Was that a real question, or one of those phoney trick questions you already have the answer to?"

"A rhetorical question?"

"Yeah, those."

Leela sighed. "It was a real question. I just can't believe I didn't see it."

Lars reached out to touch her shoulder, but she flinched away and he pulled back. He sighed.

"Honestly, Leela . . . I don't know. I kept thinking you'd figure it out. Every time I couldn't shut my mouth in time and something dumb came out, I thought you'd got me for sure. I mean, I looked different and I sounded different, and I gave up Slurm and video games and all that stuff I knew bugged you, but I couldn't make myself any smarter." He stared at his shoes, glowing faintly green in the sewer. "I'm not smart. Hell, I'm the dumbest person I've ever met. I don't know how you didn't know."

Leela felt her heart twist uncomfortably. "I loved you," she said softly. "It didn't matter if your head was on another planet sometimes. It wasn't important, so long as it was a planet orbiting me." She took a deep breath and hardened her voice. "You've got five minutes to explain. It had better be good."

Lars nodded. "I never knew I was Lars," he said quickly. "You have to know, I never planned any of this. When I went back to my own time, I had no idea Lars was me. I thought he was just some putz you were in love with for some reason. You thought he was the best thing since sliced baloney, and I hated him." He laughed. "When I went back to the past, that was all I could think about. I hated Lars, and I hated the future. I hated my life, so when I turned up in the past again, I thought . . . why not stay?" He grimaced. "I didn't realize the other me was back in the future, not at first. But when he didn't show up, when I realized it was just me in Old New York . . . I figured he'd had time to think it through. To get back to you, somehow."

"Wait, wait!" Leela interrupted. "Hold it. What do you mean, the other you? How was there another you in the first place?"

"He went back in time for pizza."

"What?"

Lars shrugged. "I guess he was hungry. I told him it was stupid."

Leela gaped at him, half-forgotten memories shifting to the surface as she started to put it all together. "You were Fry's duplicate!" she gasped. "The one he told us about in the park, at his memorial. Bender said the duplicate lived 12 more years and then he killed him."

"Not exactly. I mean, Bender's right, I did spend 12 years there, and he did try and blow me to mush - but he didn't kill me." Lars flashed her a tired smile, running one hand across his throat and another over his head. "My hair, my larynx . . . it was a pretty badass explosion. But I lived, and when I looked up, I realized . . . I was Lars. I was Lars, and that meant that someday in the future, you were waiting for me to show up." He smiled again. "I couldn't let you down. So I froze myself. I made sure to unfreeze a couple years early though, so I had time to get it right."

Leela stared at him blankly. "Right?"

"Well, sure. I mean, I had a lot to learn. This was my one chance to be with you – to make you happy, like you deserved. I couldn't afford to stuff it up." Lars put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a pen. He started to click the top on and off absently, as though he wasn't aware he was doing it.

Click. Click. Click. The sound set Leela's teeth on edge.

"It was weird at first," Lars went on. "Watching your life and not being a part of it. Sometimes I'd see you on the news, or in the street. I wanted to talk to you so badly, but I knew I couldn't. You couldn't meet me yet, or it might stuff everything up. I wasn't going to mess with time again – no way. I had to make sure it all happened the way it was supposed to, so I didn't say anything." He stared into the distance, smiling faintly. "Sometimes I'd see me, and that was the weirdest thing – seeing stuff I remembered doing again from the outside. But it got better. I got better, at being me, I mean. After a while, I wasn't Fry-pretending-to-be-Lars anymore – I really was Lars. And then when we met that day at the Head Museum . . . everything was perfect, Leela."

He took a deep breath.

"When the other me – the younger me – disappeared, I hoped he wouldn't come back. But I guess in the back of my mind, I knew he would."

Leela mulled this over. "So when Fry showed up at his memorial . . ."

"I knew I could never tell either of you the truth. I'd have to stay Lars forever."

"That is not a good enough reason for lying!" Leela protested. "Admit it - you just didn't want me to know the truth, did you?"

"No!" Lars wrung his hands. "I mean . . . I didn't want to lie to you. But I was okay with being Lars forever. I am Lars," he said simply. "I know you don't believe me, but I'm not Fry anymore. So who would it help if I told the truth? I was never Fry to you. You didn't fall in love with the old me, and I wasn't him anymore, so what difference did it make?" He hesitated. "And Fry . . . he didn't deserve that. He couldn't stop loving you any more than I can. He'd do anything to win your heart. He just didn't get the time I did to figure out how."

Leela absorbed this. "By pretending to be someone else," she said flatly. "That's how you won my heart, Lars. By lying to me! You've been lying to me since the day we met! You might not think it matters, but it does – it matters to me. I trusted you. And now I have all these feelings about Fry and you, and I don't know what's real or what came first . . . ."

Lars chewed the inside of his cheek. "But . . . I came first," he said slowly. "Right?"

"Oh, sure," Leela said bitterly. "Which you?"

"Me-me. Lars-me. I came first."

Leela didn't answer.

Lars watched her for a few minutes, waiting for a reply, and then something she'd said earlier seemed to filter through at last, and shock flickered across his features.

"You have feelings about Fry?"

Leela shook her head, bemused. "What?"

"You have feelings," Lars repeated. "Fry feelings. You just said so."

Leela colored. "I. . ."

But Lars was warming to the topic now, his brain shifting into gear. "Before, when you said you slept with him, you said it was impulsive and weird and horrible-"

"It wasn't horrible," Leela interrupted. "It was a horrible decision, but it wasn't horrible."

Lars gaped at her. Then he sat down heavily on the bed. "Oh."

Leela felt her cheeks burn. "I didn't mean it like-" she began, but Lars interrupted her, holding up a hand.

"Stop," he said wearily. "I'm thinking something, and I think it's important, but I . . . I need a minute to put it together."

He frowned intently, kneading his forehead.

"Okay," he said at last. "It's like this. When you said you slept with Fry, and you didn't know why, I felt bad. I thought it was me, that even if you didn't know I used to be him, it had messed with your head somehow, with your . . . your . . ."

"Subconscious."

"Right, that. I thought it was my fault."

"It was."

"I know. I thought that too. But then I got to thinking some more, and now I'm not so sure."

Lars had started to fiddle with his pen again, twisting it between his fingers as he thought.

"You never talk about him," he said quietly. "Every time I tried to talk about him, you'd just change the subject. And you stayed at Planet Express, all this time."

"So? I like it there."

"Why?" Lars shot back. "It's not the Professor or Zoidberg you're staying for, and you and Bender hardly talk anymore."

"Of course we don't," Leela snorted. "What are we going to talk about? The only thing we ever had in common was-" She pulled up short.

"Fry." Lars finished the sentence for her. He sounded tired. "Leela . . ."

"What?"

"Do you . . ." He stopped, shook his head, and tried again. "Did you . . . if we weren't . . ." He shut his eyes and finished the question like that, as if that might make it hurt less. "Do you love him?"

The question hit her hard enough to make her dizzy.

"No," Leela said, annoyed. "Why does everyone keep asking that?"

Lars opened his eyes, searching her face.

"I don't know," he said at last. "Other people ask you that?"

Leela made a non-committal sound, hoping to downplay the admission.

But Lars persisted. "Who asks you that?"

You. My mom. The evidence was damning enough that Leela didn't want to give it. Over the last few weeks, everyone she cared most about had asked her pretty much the same thing. Amy and Nibbler had skated around the issue too, hovering over questions they'd eventually backed away from.

When she didn't answer, Lars sighed.

"Okay. But tell me something. You have to tell me this." He took a deep breath. "Did I have a chance with you?"

"What?"

"Did I have a shot? I mean, before I went back to the past." Lars was fidgeting with his pen again, getting agitated. "I had no chance, right? I was right about that? You didn't . . . you didn't have feelings for me back then?"

"No! Of course not."

Leela's denial was a little too quick. She felt her cheeks burn, her pulse jumping like she'd been caught in a lie.

She was lying, she realized. Oh, god. She was lying.

Leela sat down beside her husband, but she couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye. Instead she found herself staring at a patch of mold on the wall, pretending to be captivated by it.

"There were some feelings," she said carefully.

Her heartrate slowed, and muscles she hadn't even known were tensed loosened up a little.

It was just a shame she felt like throwing up again now.

"You had feelings for me?"

Lars sounded incredulous. Leela didn't really blame him. She couldn't believe what she'd just admitted either.

"Since when?"

"Huh?" Leela shook her head, trying to gather her thoughts. "Oh . . . I . . . uh . . . "

There was a long pause, and Leela realized she was thinking about Fry in the ruins of Old New York, telling her he didn't know anything about the future but she obviously did, so she should just go ahead and give him the career chip. She was thinking about the look on his face.

"You know," she said weakly, "I can't really . . . uh . . ."

She tailed off.

"You're staring at me," she said uncertainly. "What? What's wrong?"

Lars coughed. "Nothing."

He looked like he was about to say something else – like he was wrestling with another major question – but Leela cut him off quickly.

"Good," she said, standing up. She couldn't handle any more uncomfortable revelations, not for a few days at least.

For a second she thought Lars might argue. It would have been a first for him, and Leela wasn't sure how she might react to it. But she was spared having to find out when her stomach gave an unsettled lurch. She swayed slightly, bile rising in her throat, and Lars jumped up, instantly concerned.

"Leela? Are you okay?"

Leela shook him off, embarrassed. "I'm fine. It's the air down here. They must be pumping in something toxic, I don't know. I'll feel better on the surface."

"But you're sick, you can't go. I mean," Lars floundered, "I could come home and look after you."

"No."

"I mean, we don't have to – I just – you're sick. You look sick. Are you sure-?"

"No," Leela repeated, more forcefully this time. "I'm fine. And I don't want you to come home. Thank you."

Lars deflated. "Okay."

"I don't want you to stay here either."

"I won't."

Leela nodded. "Okay then."

They held each other's gaze for a long moment, both at a loss for what to say next.

Leela turned away first.