A / n: Usual thanks to Kaci, MinecraftPrincess, Lady Bender and Forgotsurname.
Happy new year, everyone! Celebrate with this bumper chapter and a six pack of Lo-Brau, on me.
Lars was woken by the ping of his wrist device.
"You've got mail," it said in a suave, Hollywood actor-type voice.
The device had been Cahill's originally and she had set the voice operating system as some actor she liked. The 30th century version of George Clooney or somebody. Lars had never worked out how to change it.
It wasn't so bad, except that it sometimes came out with incredibly cheesy "Thoughts of the Day", like this one :
"Remember," the velvet voice purred, "you're only as beautiful as you feel. Be radiant today."
This managed to be monumentally embarrassing even though he was the only one around to hear it. Lars covered his face, groaning.
The email had no subject line, but it was probably spam. Did he really need to read another message advertising human horn or telling him Bender B. Rodriguez was "1000% Certified Great!"? No . . . but the dimwit curiosity he'd had as Fry was hard to shake, and Lars had clicked "open" before he knew it.
"My name is Turanga Leela. I was born in the state of New New York . . ."
There was no mistaking that voice. There was no mistaking that face, even in poor light. That was Leela.
Lars sat bolt upright and watched in horror. Then he flexed his hand, grimaced at the pain that proved he was awake, and forced himself to watch the video message again.
His brain seemed to have stopped working.
Leela had just told the entire world she was a mutant. But she couldn't have done.
But she had.
Leela.
He fumbled for the remote. Once he'd got the TV on he mashed the buttons desperately, searching for local news. Maybe it was some kind of hoax, or a hallucination? TV would see him right. It always had in the past, after all.
Only this time the TV seemed to be playing along with his nightmare.
"- frightened residents have besieged Citihall, where Mayor Poopenmeyer has appealed for calm. We interviewed Mrs Astor, the Mayor's largest campaign contributor, to see what she thought of this evening's events."
The newscaster turned to an elderly woman in a mink stole, who looked so far down her nose at the people around her she was practically cross-eyed.
"Simply unacceptable," she sniffed. "We pay our taxes to keep those things down in the sewer where they can't spread disease. I demand - "
Lars changed the channel.
A gaggle of anxious people filled the screen, some holding placards like "MONSTERS OUT" and "SAVE OUR CHILDREN".
A mother pressed a group of children to her bosom and said plaintively "It's not safe!"
Another woman nodded fiercely. "Flush 'em out!" she cried.
"Clean up our streets!" someone else yelled.
A man nodded his agreement. "This is our city," he said harshly. "Real people. It's time we cleaned up the scum!"
This got a rousing cheer from the mob. Most of it, anyway. Lars couldn't help noticing a group of teenage Neptunians – who had been laughing and enjoying the show a moment ago – had suddenly gone quiet. A hulking green blob didn't look as if it liked the sound of the words "real people" either.
He turned over again.
Mayor Poopenmeyer was standing at a podium, looking harassed and trying to keep the sweat from dripping off his forehead onto his notes.
" - assure you there is no cause for concern!" he shouted over the roar of the crowd. "The mutant Turanga Leela was arrested immediately and deported to the sewers where she belongs! The situation is -"
But Lars had stopped listening at the word "arrested".
Arrested?
He ran to the door, panicking - and almost collided with Leela coming in the opposite direction.
"Leela! You're here!"
Leela smiled faintly.
"Hey yourself."
Lars gestured at the TV.
"They said you'd been arrested!"
"Really?" Leela glanced at the box. Then she shrugged. "That's politics, I suppose. Lie to the public first, sort out the fine detail later." She sighed at the look on his face. "They haven't arrested me yet. But they're going to."
"When?"
This was all too much, too fast for Lars.
Leela crossed to the window and peered out.
"In about five minutes. Smitty and URL are coming up the street."
"What?"
"I'm sorry! I was going to explain but everything happened so fast and there just wasn't time." She held out his jacket. "You still want to help?"
It took Lars a minute to realize she was talking about the last time they talked. He'd known she was going to do something crazy but he hadn't expected it would be this crazy. Still, there was no way he was letting her do this alone.
He took the jacket.
"What's the plan?"
"Just follow my lead," Leela said.
She headed to the kitchen and sat down at the table, arms folded neatly in front of her. She'd taken off her communicator, Lars noticed suddenly. Of course – they could probably track her with it. Lars slipped off his own device and put it on the worktop. Leela continued to sit staring calmly in front of her.
Lars lurked awkwardly by the door, not sure what to do.
"Um. Leela?"
"Yes?"
"You're . . . you're not going to let them arrest you, right?"
"No."
"Oh. Good. Just checking."
There was a note stuck to the microwave. Lars picked it up and read it distractedly.
You weren't there, he read.
You. Not "he".
He glanced at Leela. She was still staring at the door with that eerie sense of calm about her. It would worry him less if she wasn't about to be arrested. Or if she would blink, come to that.
He looked down at the note again. You. It wasn't the first time Leela had done that. She had called him Fry once before, when she was half-asleep and near-delirious, and her mind had kept coming back to things like the coma and her eye operation and the first time she met her parents - all the little things that had meant more to her than he ever realized. She'd kept on insisting they mattered, and he had wondered, even then, which Fry she really wanted to tell. He suspected it wasn't him.
And then there was the other thing. Without Fry, Leela was becoming . . . unstuck, in a way. She was angry. Impulsive. Erratic. It was like he'd pulled a thread loose somewhere, and the old together Leela was unraveling. Most of the time she only seemed half there.
It didn't take a genius to work out where the rest of her was.
Lars tucked the note into his shirt pocket.
"So . . . Fry wasn't there?" he said cautiously.
Leela's perfect composure faltered, just for a second. Her mouth tightened and she touched her stomach briefly - then her hand jerked back and she began to twist the silver bracelet on her wrist instead.
"He's gone," she said shortly.
"Where?"
"I don't know."
"Are you-?"
"I'm fine."
Leela smiled. Her mouth moved, anyway. It was probably supposed to be a smile.
"I'd prefer not to talk about it," she said quietly. Lars was about to press the issue, but -
BANG. BANG. BANG.
"POLICE! OPEN UP! WE HAVE A WARRANT!"
Lars jumped.
"Should we get that?" he asked.
Leela shook her head.
"They'll break it down," she said.
The prospect didn't seem to worry her all that much. Her unnatural calm had returned. Unwilling to take his eyes off her, Lars groped behind him for something that could be used as a weapon. He came up holding a whisk, which wasn't all that menacing, but the robot URL had smashed the door in with one blow and there wasn't time to hunt for anything else.
The two officers burst into the room, Smitty skidding to a stop just in front of Leela.
"Turanga Leela?" he panted.
"That's me."
"I'm arresting you on suspicion of being a mutant! Do you deny the charges?"
"No. I'm a mutant." Leela laid her hands on the table, palms up, waiting for the cuffs. "You got me," she said, and Lars felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. She was being too calm, too helpful. This was about to go bad. He could feel it.
Smitty couldn't. He had pulled out the cuffs and was reading Leela her rights – which didn't take long, as all he had to do was say : "You're a mutant and under state law you have no rights". He leaned in . . .
. . . and Leela caught his wrists, quick as lightening, and flipped him over her head.
"Aw, no," URL drawled. "Looks like we have ourselves a mutant resisting arrest-"
Leela came flying over the table and delivered a roundhouse kick so forceful URL's head spun off its axis. The officer staggered and Lars – feeling like he should do something – hit him with the whisk. It bounced ineffectually off the robot's metal chassis.
Leela glanced at him, bewildered, and Lars shrugged.
"Sorry," he mouthed. He balled his fist and punched instead, sending URL reeling back into the microwave, just as Leela popped the door open and cranked the dial up to high. There was a loud metallic screech and – BANG! - the robot's head exploded in a shower of sparks.
Lars winced. Even knowing URL could download into a new body and wasn't actually dead, it was still nasty to watch.
On the floor, Smitty groaned. His hand inched towards his weapon, but Leela got there first. She kicked it away, smashing it against the wall, and then her boot came down hard on his hand.
Smitty screamed.
Leela bent down.
"If you want to arrest me," she said, "try harder."
"Leela!" Lars tugged urgently at her arm. "We have to get out of here. Now!"
That had not been quiet. It was only a matter of time before someone came to investigate, or before the cops sent reinforcements. Either way, they couldn't afford to stick around.
"Good point." Leela straightened up and pushed him ahead of her. "The back gate," she said. "Go!"
"Not without you," Lars insisted.
Leela looked over her shoulder. The coast, for now, was clear.
"Fine," she said. She took her jacket off the back of the chair she'd been sitting on, and reached into the pocket. "Help me with this then," she ordered, passing the video camera to him. "Hit the red button to record."
"Okay."
Lars hit the button without asking questions, and aimed the camera lens at Leela. One of the stray sparks from the exploding URL had taken out the light above their heads, but the orange jack o' lantern glow of the street lamps outside streamed in through the open window. It showed up the still-fizzing wires in URL's neck, and gave the weakened Smitty a sickly hue.
It made Leela look edgy and dangerous.
"Hello New New York," she said calmly. "So . . . I hear the mayor says I was arrested immediately."
There was a glint in her eye, and it got brighter when she smiled. She spread her hands, gesturing at the mess around her.
"Ask yourselves this: do you still think they tell you the truth?"
She stared into the camera for a long moment, then took it from his hand and snapped it shut.
"Time to go."
Lars ran through the streets without asking where they were going. Leela had gripped his arm and tugged him in the right direction any time he veered off-course. They had smashed through a couple of neighboring yards and the back lot of a nearby mechanic, and were now most definitely in the seamier side of town. The graffiti on the walls had stopped being artistic and become gang or porno-related, and the garbage cans got emptied much less frequently. There was so much brown beer bottle glass on the ground his shoes crunched with every step. Still, they hadn't stumbled across any discarded needles yet. That was a positive.
It was only when they turned into an alleyway and Leela dropped to the ground that he realized what she was planning.
"Wait, we're going to the sewer?" Lars asked, confused. "But . . . that's where they wanted to take you!"
Leela heaved the manhole cover off and pushed it to one side. Rank air rose to the surface.
"How long do you think we could hold out for, if they sent reinforcements to the house?" she asked. "The sewer is sensible. I know my surroundings there, and they don't. We can hide out, plan ahead. We might even win some of the mutants round to our cause. " She shrugged. "It's worth a try."
"But if we were going there anyway-"
Leela looked up, her eye flashing.
"I'm going to the sewer because I want to," she snapped. "Not because someone dragged me there. It might not seem like a big difference but it matters to me, okay?"
She moved to swing down into the sewer but Lars stopped her, feeling guilty.
"Let me go first," he said awkwardly.
"Why?"
"I . . . the ladder might be rusted."
Leela shrugged. Maybe she didn't feel in the mood to argue. Maybe she thought there wasn't time. Either way, she decided to indulge his Stupid Ages chivalry and moved aside, letting him go first.
Lars regretted it slightly when she pulled the cover back over their heads and he found himself fumbling for footholds on the slimy ladder. The air was a dense, fetid fug, like dead things rotting in raw sewage. The harder he tried not to breathe it in the more it seemed to worm into his lungs. Clearly the mutants didn't use this opening. You could tell when a manhole saw traffic, even if it was just the occasional visitor. The air down here felt like it hadn't been disturbed in years.
"Do the mutants know you're doing this?" he asked.
Leela's voice floated down from above him.
"No," she said. "I don't even know if they'll go along with it-"
It happened fast.
One second he was talking to Leela, the next his foot punched through a rung that was suddenly as weak as paper and he reeled backwards. His hands slipped, fighting for grip, and then he was falling.
Leela shouted something, but he'd left her behind too fast to know if it was his new name she yelled or his old one. He felt sick, like his guts were trying to force their way up his throat as the foul air rushed past his face. His arms flailed wildly, but there was nothing to hold onto, just the slick walls of the tunnel. He kept missing the ladder and it suddenly occurred to Lars that he was going to die here. This should be the bit where his whole life flashed before his eyes, he knew, but he could only think of one thing.
It was Leela on Xmas Eve, with snowflakes melting in her hair.
He landed on something thick and semi-liquid and cannoned through it, the shock rattling through every bone in his body. His head smacked off something solid, and there was a crack. It might have been his skull.
The world went black.
He came to lying in a puddle of sewage. Leela was leaning over him, white-faced, and he ached.
"So many lizards . . ." he mumbled.
Leela flinched.
"What?"
There was a length of rope hanging behind her. Of course. Leela kept rope in her jacket. She could lower herself down.
His clothes were soaked with greenish viscous gunk. When Lars sat up they made a sucking sound.
"You're safe," he croaked.
Leela stared at him in disbelief.
"I'm safe?" she said. "I'm safe? What happened?"
"I slipped. Leela, it's okay. It was an accident."
Leela shook her head. She had her lips pressed together like she was trying not to cry, and her eye was shining in the gloom.
"I can't – I – you scared me," she managed.
Lars raised a shaking hand and touched her cheek.
"Leela. I'm fine."
He felt the shaking die away as he pulled her in, resting her forehead against his own.
"I thought you were dead," Leela said quietly.
"So did I, for a minute. Ooof!"
Lars was surprised when Leela buried her face in his neck and hugged him tight.
"Don't ever do that again," she growled.
Lars smiled weakly.
"Is this your pregnancy hormones talking?"
Leela pulled back.
"I don't know. Maybe. These damn hormones intensify everything." She grimaced. "I cry at the drop of a hat these days."
"Yeah, I noticed."
Leela ignored this.
"I just - I don't like it when you're hurt," she said simply. She worried the bracelet on her wrist again, not looking at him. "I never have."
Lars frowned.
"You mean when I was Fry?"
Leela met his gaze, then looked away again.
"Yes."
Lars nodded.
"I guess that makes sense," he said. "I was the dumb kid from the Stupid Ages and you always had to save me from myself. It must get to be a habit. But you don't have to worry so much." He found her hand in the gloom and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "I'm not that stupid kid anymore."
"I know."
Leela tugged her hand away and stood up.
"I can't turn it off," she admitted. "I see you hurt and I think I should have stopped it, or I should fix it. It's hard not being in control anymore. I'm supposed to be the captain, the responsible one -"
Lars wheezed out a laugh.
"It must be driving you crazy, not being the boss of everyone."
"I'm not that bossy," Leela complained. "I have a lot of respect for other people's autonomy. Well, most of the time."
She helped him up.
"You are bossy," Lars informed her, as they limped through the sewer. "But that's you. I always liked it. It saved me having to think. We both know I'm not good at that."
Leela looked at him sidelong.
"You survived twelve years without me," she said. "You must have been doing something right."
Lars laughed.
"I just kept asking myself what you would do. And I had my lucky clover for most of it. I had some close calls though." He frowned. "A lot of close calls, actually."
"Oh."
They limped on, Lars trying not to put too much weight on Leela; which was hard, as blood loss was making his head spin and it felt like his chest was being crushed in a vice.
"He'll be okay," he said at last.
"Who?"
Lars had to hand it to her - Leela did a pretty good job of pretending not to know what he meant.
"Fry," he clarified. "He'll be fine. He won't get himself killed or anything. He'll come back."
"I know," Leela said, in a tone which wasn't all that convincing, but made one thing clear – the topic was not up for discussion. She had freaked out when she thought he was dead, and maybe the shock had opened her up briefly . . . but now her emotions were back under lock and key, and there was no getting them out.
Her faraway expression was the only hint they were there at all.
Leela left him in a building she called the mutant medical center. It didn't look like any hospital Lars had ever been in. If anything, it reminded him of the shack his dad had always used for ice-fishing. Plank walls, pitch-tarred roof, falling to pieces. Most of the furniture was broken, or made out of discarded crates. There was some medical paraphernalia (which looked like it had been new last century) and an effort had been made to brighten up the place with homemade posters on the walls. They depicted smiling, colorful mutants urging the denizens of the sewer to pre-boil their water and not to go out on the lake alone.
Leela had called some kind of town meeting, and it seemed like every mutant of importance was there. That included most of their medical staff. Lars had been left in the hands of a girl who looked like a lizard, who Leela said was some kind of nurse. She didn't say much at all; just stared at him with large yellow eyes and rasped in a sharp, nervous breath every time he tried to talk to her.
She bound up his ribs while his foot tapped impatiently. It usually didn't take this long to apply bandages. Then again, most doctors weren't so afraid to touch him. This girl cringed away every time her fingers came into contact with his bare skin. At this rate the mutant meeting would be over by the time Lars got there.
"Hi," he said, smiling in an attempt to put her at ease. "I'm Lars."
The girl flushed a deeper shade of green.
"I know who you are," she mumbled. "You're married to Leela. You're from the surface."
"I was," Lars confirmed. "I guess I'm not any more. Married to Leela, I mean. I don't know about the surface thing. It wasn't the surface when I was born, it was just New York." He smiled. "Times change, huh?"
The lizard girl blinked rapidly, her fingers fumbling over the spool of bandages.
"They . . . they do?" she asked, bewildered.
In the sewer, apparently not. Lars decided to change tack.
"What's your name?" he asked.
The girl flushed again.
"Skreem," she said.
"Oh. Er. That's a pretty name . . ."
"It's not." Skreem shook her head miserably. "It's because that's the first thing people do when they see me. They scream."
"What, even your parents? That's mean."
"I never knew my parents," Skreem said quietly. "My mom never told anyone she was pregnant. I think she was a teenager and she got scared, maybe. If she saw me I don't blame her." She smiled sadly. "I was dragged up in one of the fishing nets when I was a few hours old. I think she threw me into the lake."
Lars stared at her.
"Wait, what? She threw you in the lake?"
"She was scared."
"And you're okay with that?"
Lars struggled to wrap his head around this.
Skreem shrugged.
"I work here," she said quietly. "I see a lot of scared pregnant women. I see a lot of babies that die, and a lot of pregnancies that don't work out, and I understand now how someone could be that scared. I mean . . . I think I understand."
"That doesn't make it right," Lars argued. "You can't just toss a baby in a lake like throwing back a catch. You're a person, not a – not a – I don't know! It's not right!"
The girl's eyes had gone as wide as coins. She was staring at him like she'd never seen a human before. (Oh, right, she probably hadn't. But still.)
She blinked very quickly, as if resetting her brain.
"It's okay," she said at last. "Like I said, they fished me out really quickly. Then they gave me to Brynda to look after, here at the hospital. I think they were hoping someone would come forward for me. But they never did and no-one else wanted me, so I kind of became hers." She smiled, her lips cracking painfully as she did so. "It was the best thing that ever happened to me."
"Who's Brynda?" Lars asked, mostly because he didn't want to say 'the corner of your mouth is oozing'.
"The midwife. The lady with all the teeth? Oh. Maybe you haven't met her yet." Skreem shrugged. "Most people don't think so, but she's the kindest person I know. I grew up here in the hospital. She taught me to swim and to dress wounds, to do all kinds of things. Useful things."
"Like bandaging ribs?"
"Uh-huh."
The girl ducked her head. He liked her, Lars realized. She was sweet, even if she did look like something out of an old-school horror movie.
"How old are you?" he asked curiously.
"Fourteen," she said.
"Fourteen? Wow. I couldn't do anything useful when I was fourteen. Well, I could do a septuple head spin," Lars mused. "But that probably doesn't count."
The girl laughed. It made her sound like a spice weasel with asthma, but in this case, Lars decided, that was a good thing.
He waved a hand at his ribs.
"Am I done?"
Skreem stepped back and surveyed her handiwork. Lars had bandages on his ribs, and a thick wad of cotton soaking up the blood on the back of his head. She had given him a crutch to take the weight off his sprained ankle.
The mutant girl nodded.
"You're done."
"Great!"
Lars swung himself off the table and heaved his weight onto the crutch, wincing. He held out the other arm to Skreem with what he hoped was an enticing smile.
"Could you help me to this meeting everyone's gone to? I don't think I can make it that far on my own. Plus . . . I don't know where it is. So there's that. Two problems, for the price of one!" He paused. "I could really use a hand."
Skreem moved towards him nervously, like she was still afraid to make bodily contact with a surface person. When Lars put his arm around her shoulder, she flinched. Then she realized he wasn't going to hit her or reject her, and a smile broke out across her face.
She hugged him around the waist – Lars was careful not to give any indication of how extremely painful this was – and they set off.
The meeting was being held by the lake. The mutants ringed the shore; a circle of densely-packed, anxious faces. The mayor and Mouth Mutant stood on a plinth, conferring in urgent whispers. Leela stood a little way behind them. She was flanked on either side by her parents.
Even at this distance Lars could tell she was tense. He wanted to touch her, he thought sadly. He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her until the tension drained away, and he couldn't and it was his own stupid fault.
He sighed and nudged Skreem.
"What's happening?"
"They're counting the votes," she whispered."Then they tell the announcer and he tells everyone else." She pointed at Mouth Mutant. "He's the announcer, because he's the loudest."
"Makes sense."
Mouth Mutant cleared all his throats at once. The noise sounded like machine gun fire, and it made the already quiet crowd even quieter. Silence rolled out over the sewer.
All eyes were on Mouth Mutant, but Lars could only see Leela. He could only watch her face as the multiple voices of the announcer boomed out:
"The will of the mutant people . . . is war!"