Skreem was dead. Skreem was dead, and Bender was gone, and Lars had never felt so uselessly, angrily ashamed to be human.

What was the point? Of any of it?

No-one in the sewer had cared for Skreem more than him, but that hadn't saved her. Lars couldn't even remember the last time he'd seen her. Not for sure. He hadn't checked to make sure she was safe, before the kill-bots arrived. He'd just told her to get to safety, and assumed she would. As though she didn't have a history of following him right into the fray. As though she ever listened and stayed put when she thought she could help someone.

Lars had let her down, just like everyone else. He'd been all she had, and he'd let her down.

And not just her.

He hadn't paid enough attention to Bender either. No-one in the world knew Bender better than he did – but Lars hadn't seen it coming when the robot tried to overclock himself. He had been so convinced he wasn't the friend Bender wanted anymore that he hadn't even tried to tell him he still cared. And maybe that would have been enough. Maybe that would have distracted Bender, before he got so hung up on this crazy scheme he nearly melted every processor in his head. Maybe it would have been enough to make him stay, when he came back from the dead. But Lars hadn't said anything, and now Bender was probably mixed up in one of the Professor's crazy experiments, and he could be anywhere.

Just like Fry.

Because if Lars was being really honest, then it didn't matter what he told Leela, or what he told himself. He had no way of knowing if his other self was really alive or not. Fry could be dead in a ditch on some unknown planet, for all Lars really knew. But all he did, day after day, was sit in front of Leela and tell her Fry would come back someday. Because he was so sure he knew what Leela wanted, and he was so sure that was Fry.

But now he didn't know anymore.

Because he'd kissed her, in a moment of crazy, grief-driven instinct. And she'd returned it. Gently at first, and then with more need; the heat of her skin turning his mind miraculously blank. Making him forget, for almost enough time.

Lars groaned, letting his head fall back against the slimy alley wall.

Leela had always had that ability. She grounded him, when no-one else could. He had never been able to explain it – not to Bender, not even to her – but it had always been there. Like something chemical between them, some weird physical alchemy even the Professor wouldn't have been able to explain. Leela gave him focus, when the world around him was too distracting to let him settle on a thought. And he calmed her down, when she was overthinking herself or losing her temper or feeling nervous (which used to happen a lot more, but had mostly faded away by the time she met him as Lars). When he'd kissed her on their wedding day, he thought he'd finally understood it, all those corny greeting cards saying "you complete me", and "you're my other half". Leela was his missing piece, even now.

The baby should come between them, he knew. It should be a reminder of Fry, or of his own mistakes. Of Leela's, even. But Lars had never seen it that way. He had never been able to feel anything about the baby but dizzying, knock-the-air-from-your-lungs love for it. It had hit him like a freight train, the first time he felt her move, and that was the kind of feeling that never went away, that kept its hooks in you until your dying day. There was nothing he wouldn't do for her, this tiny thing that was part him and part Leela.

What if he was doing the wrong thing, waiting for Fry to come back? Writing himself off as unfixable and leaving Leela alone, when for all he knew, Fry wasn't coming back?

Why wasn't he fighting for her?

Because you lied to her, he told himself. Because she can't forgive you for that.

Because she doesn't love you like she loves Fry, the same way you never loved anything the way you love her.

That was what he had been, Lars thought. Something Leela could love instead of what she really wanted. Something to fill that empty space inside her, the way she'd tried to do with Nibbler; the way he'd tried to do with Leelu and Skreem. It wasn't that he hadn't loved them. He had. Losing them had ripped his heart out. But it wasn't the same as what he felt for Leela. It hurt, but he could go on. If anything ever happened to Leela, there would be no going on. Life would never mean anything again.

Maybe that was why he kept insisting Fry would come back. Because he knew, on some level, what would happen to Leela if he didn't.

Lars had gotten a little too close to crazy for comfort, over the years. Most people, he'd realized, were closer to it than they thought. Stop sleeping, live alone, stop recognizing yourself in the mirror, and it could creep up on you.

Leela was the same. There was something in her that made Lars think if she ever broke, she'd break harder than anyone.

He dragged himself to his feet.

This wasn't helping. He needed to talk to someone, and if he couldn't talk to Leela and Bender wasn't here, that only left . . .

"Amy?"

Amy had been in the same room for a week, doing math on the walls. Even if she had decided it didn't matter anymore, she couldn't leave the sewer unless Leela let her out, and she didn't have anywhere else to go, so Lars felt sure enough of finding her still there.

He wasn't expecting to find her drunk and blaring out 21st Century music on his old iPod.

It was definitely his. Lars recognized the green color, and the Brooklyn Aquarium stickers paved over the speaker set.

He also recognized his pre-2012 musical tastes, which had been . . . a long way away from Walking On Sunshine, to say the least.

" . . .never mind I'll find, someone like youuuu . . ."

Amy was waltzing around the couch, slopping Lo-Brau onto the rug as she bawled along with the words.

"Amy."

" . . . don't forget me, I beg, I'll remember you saaaaid, sometimes it lasts in lo-oove, but sometimes it -"

Lars raised his voice.

"Amy!"

"- hurts inst . . . Eep!"

Amy squeaked at the sight of him, knocked into the couch, and toppled back over onto it. She landed on her back, giggling hysterically.

"Lars!" She hooked her knees around the arm of the couch and pulled herself into a sitting position. "Goops. I mean, Fry."

"Lars," Lars corrected her.

Amy shrugged.

"Spo-kay. Whatever you say. Hey!" She waved her beer can gracelessly in his direction. "I have a question. An nimportant question." The speakers crackled as they were flecked with beer foam. "Was your whole time this depressing? Or just you? Because schmeepers, you people knew how to be sad."

Lars took her hand, and helped her swing round to face the front.

"No," he said heavily. "That was just me." He frowned, gesturing at the music player. "Where'd you find that, anyway?"

Amy hiccuped.

"Bender stole it from your old place," she explained. "In Old New York. He does that, you know. Takes your stuff. Collects it. Like he's collecting you." She laughed, and drained the last of her beer. "He listened to this thing over and over. It was such a mood killer." She wrinkled her nose. "I think he was trying to understand you. Or humans. How humans can be so sad, about love."

She reached for another beer from the nearest six pack.

Lars frowned, trying to picture what she'd just described. Although Bender liked divas as much as Fry did (he liked his singers like he liked his actors: as overblown as physically possible), when the emotions got too human, they lost him. Then he did what he always did with things he didn't understand: laughed at them, or tried to destroy them. The idea that Bender would try so hard to understand anything about what Fry might be feeling was an alien one.

But then, maybe not. Fry had never left Bender like this before. Only once - when he'd been Lars. Maybe Bender had thought understanding this old Fry was the key to understanding his Fry, who had left him for pretty much the same reason.

You could've just asked me what he was thinking, Lars thought. I would've told you. I always explained human stuff to you.

But Bender didn't talk about feelings, because he pretended he didn't have any. Or maybe, as a robot, he wasn't supposed to have any? Fry had never figured out how that worked, exactly.

"Do you think he's okay?" Amy was watching him, wide-eyed and upset. "Bender," she clarified. "He just disappeared."

Lars sighed. He sat down on the couch next to Amy and rubbed her arm reassuringly.

"It's Bender. He'll be fine."

Amy disregarded this, still lost in her own world of misery.

"I didn't know what would happen," she sniffed. "I swear I didn't know. And now he could be anywhere, and it's all my fault. He's damaged. He could be malfunctioning, he could be -"

"He'll be fine."

Lars took a deep breath, shoring himself up with a confidence he didn't really feel.

Amy didn't need to hear his fears that she was right. Neither of them could get to Bender, so who would it help? It would only upset her.

"It's Bender," he said again. "It'd take more than some fireworks in his brain to bring down Bender. And you know he wouldn't die without making sure we all knew about it."

"Right." Amy smiled weakly. "So we could plan the perfect funeral."

Lars patted her on the knee, reassured by her smile.

"Exactly. He'll be back."

Amy smiled at him. Then her pretty features crumpled.

"You're so – sweet," she choked. "It's not fair."

Lars blinked. Sweet. That had always been Leela's word for him. Once, it had frustrated him. He had been so sure she meant it dismissively – that it was a way of patting him on the head and sending him away, a sign she didn't take him seriously. It had taken him a long time to understand she meant it as a point in his favor. That she dwelled on it because it mattered to her.

Apparently it mattered to Amy too, though he couldn't think why.

"I . . . think you're drunk," he decided. "C'mon." He pried the beer can out of her hand. "You've had enough."

Amy protested, pouting as she tried to wrest back the can. When Lars held it out of her reach, she suddenly changed tactics. She flung her arms around him and held on tight, her face buried in his chest.

"I . . . hey . . . Amy," Lars spluttered helplessly. He rocked back on his crutch. "C'mon."

Amy sobbed something that sounded like "you're my friend". Lars sighed and wrapped his arms around her.

"You're drunk," he said tiredly. "But you're my friend too."

Amy pulled back. Her face was blotchy and tear-stained, but defiant.

"You were always my friend," she sniffed. "Always. We could talk about – about junk. And – and stuff. All th'others . . . they didn't . . . they were so serious."

Lars rubbed her shoulder.

"I'm serious," he pointed out. "Now."

Amy nodded.

"I know. I thought you were soo boring, for the longest time. Leela likes boring guys, see? Because they're safe. And they don't make her feel too much." She tried to raise an eyebrow. "She likes that," she said conspiratorially. "Because she's so repressed."

Lars sighed, and pushed her gently onto the couch. When Amy got drunk, she got gossipy. But she wasn't wrong.

"I know."

Amy flopped back, and smiled wickedly up at him.

"But she likes not safe better. Secretly she's dying to be, impulsive, or, or . . . exciting. That's why she likes you. Fry-you. And this you. This crazy you that – throws yourself in front of kill-bots and – and – tries to jump in the lake -"

Lars groaned at the memory, and Amy's smile grew sharp.

"See? You think you're so different now, but you're not. You never changed. You got old, but you're still there. Underneath. You're still Fry." Her smile dimmed. "My friend."

Lars frowned.

"You keep saying that like it's a bad thing."

"It is." Amy turned away. "If I couldn't see that, then I wouldn't feel so bad. If I still thought you were – Leela's boring husband -" Her voice cracked. "I wouldn't miss you so much. I wouldn'tnahave tried so hard to save you."

Lars felt a sudden chill run through him.

"Save me," he echoed. "From what?"

He grasped her shoulders and spun her round, forcing her to look him in the eye.

"Amy, what are you saving me from?"

A single sob burst out of her, like a hiccup, and then Amy clamped a hand to her mouth and made herself still.

"You're going to die," she said in a tiny voice. "A time paradox duplicate is always doomed. I'm so sorry, Lars."

Lars sank down onto the rug in front of her. His ears were ringing, a high-pitched whine cresting over ballooning silence, like tinnitus after an explosion.

"No," he felt himself say. His mouth moved, anyway, even if he couldn't hear the word.

Amy was saying something too, her lips forming a shape that looked like "I'm sorry" again. She was touching his cheek, his shoulder, trying to bring him back somehow, but it wasn't working.

At a loss, she poured a shot of something and pushed it into his hand. Old Fortran Malt Liquor, from Bender's stash. Some part of Lars recognized the smell. Or maybe he just recognized the eye-watering fumes.

He stared down at the amber liquid.

Leela wouldn't have given him this.

Yancy wouldn't have given him this.

But Amy didn't know not to. And the shot glass fit in his hand like an old friend. It was almost a reflex to raise it and swallow.

The burn spread through his chest, warm and familiar, and pulled him back to the present.

"That's what Nibbler said," he managed at last. "He said I was going to die. But . . . he was wrong. Or, he lied, or . . ." His voice cracked. "I can't die. I'm not even sick. You said so."

"I didn't know what you were asking me," Amy mumbled. "I didn't know you were a duplicate."

"So? Who cares if I am? That doesn't mean . . . I can't just . . ." Lars snapped his fingers, to indicate dropping down dead. "Amy, that's crazy."

Amy shook her head.

"That's how it works," she explained miserably. "The universe . . . does something. Makes something happen, to kill you. It's like those movies. Final Destination, where the kids are 'sposed to die, and they try and run away but they all die anyway. 'cause that's the way it has to happen. The universe, it – it course-corrects, to fix the mistake. It finds a way." She pointed at his leg. "You break a ladder and you fall. Or killer robots come and start choking you." She gestured at his neck.

"That was just bad luck," Lars argued.

"Uh-uh. It's not," Amy insisted. "It's the universe trying to close the paradox. It doesn't like you and Fry existing at the same time – in the same time."

"But it won't kill Fry?"

Amy looked miserable.

"He's the original," she said. "He's not causing the paradox, Lars. You are. It's the duplicate the universe tries to schmop up."

Lars laughed – desperately, humorlessly.

"But it's been . . . I don't even know how long. And I'm still here. If the universe is out to get me, why's it taking so long?"

Amy shrugged.

"I don't know. I think it's the schmariables. Variables." She caught the blank look on Lars's face, and elaborated. "You were in the wrong timeline. Maybe that was confusing. And then you nearly did die, when Nudar nearly killed you, but Fry gave you his blood and he's the orig-"

"Wait," Lars interrupted. "Fry did what?"

This was new.

Amy blinked, cut off unexpectedly.

"He gave you his blood," she said cautiously. "You didn't know that?"

"No."

"Really?"

Lars shook his head.

"He never said."

"And Leela never said?"

"Leela knew?"

"Um. Yes. She never told you?"

Lars frowned.

"She said they gave me blood. She didn't say it was Fry's blood." He struggled, trying to put it all together. "Why would he do that? He hates me. He's always hated me."

There was an awkward silence.

"C'mon," Amy said at last. "You know why."

Of course.

"For Leela," Lars murmured.

His younger self had learned a lesson it had taken Lars twelve years to learn. But he had still learned it too late, learned it only when Leela was already married and leaving him behind.

It had been too late for Leela too, he realized. By then she had been in love with Lars – or had convinced herself she was. And Leela wasn't the type to leave a dying man. So she hadn't said anything. She'd just locked it away, with the opera and the coma and all the other things Lars hadn't realized she still thought about.

All the things he could have drawn out of her years ago, if he'd stopped trying to find the perfect romantic gesture and just talked to her instead.

Lars wondered if there was any version of him, in any universe, that had ever figured that one out.

Amy was nodding.

"Yeah, for Leela. That's what he told me." She poured herself a shot, evidently uncomfortable with how close she was coming to sobering up again. "He said he did it for her. Because you're right. He does hate you. Super, white-hot hate." She snorted. "He's jealous."

"I know. I remember."

And suddenly Lars remembered something else. A wave of cold nausea flooded into him.

"Amy?" he said faintly.

"Yeah?"

He swallowed.

"What if this was my baby?"

"What?"

"I mean . . . the baby. She could've been mine, if . . ." She nearly had been his, and now Lars found he couldn't let it go, this horrifying possibility. What he could have done. "What if she – what would've happened? To her?"

Amy's eyes widened.

"I don't know."

"If I'm doomed and I'm not supposed to exist . . . I mean, what would the baby - "

Amy shuddered.

"Don't," she said. "Don't even think about it."

There was a long silence.

Lars poured himself another shot. And then another.

He stared into the empty glass.

"I never thought I'd be so happy someone else slept with my wife."

He gave a desolate laugh, and Amy looked at him like she thought he might be going crazy.

"Maybe you should slow down," she said nervously.

She reached for the neck of the bottle, to take it away from him, but Lars took another swig and danced it up out of her reach.

He couldn't remember how high the proof was in Bender's liquor, exactly, but his head already felt pleasantly cloudy, the sharp edges of the world blurring out of focus. Maybe if he could get them blurry enough, his problems would seem less urgent.

Maybe if he got drunk enough, he'd forget for a while.

There was a little voice in his head trying to remind him that this had never worked before, but another gulp washed it away, and he didn't care anymore.

"I kissed her," he heard himself say.

"Leela?"

Lars nodded.

Amy whistled.

"Wow-eee. Why?"

Lars shot her a look. It was supposed to be reproachful – for some reason, Amy always managed to make it sound like kissing Leela wasn't something anyone with eyes dreamed about doing, like she wasn't knockout beautiful - but his face had turned numb and wouldn't co-operate.

He sighed.

"I forgot she wasn't my wife anymore." He sank down onto the crate Amy had been using as a table. "And I still love her."

"Then you should tell her," Amy said suddenly.

"What?" Lars stared. "What? No. I can't do that. I'm – like Bender said. I'm a dead man walking."

He stopped.

"Bender knew," he realized.

Suddenly a lot more of yesterday made sense.

Amy nodded.

"That's why I overclocked him," she admitted. "I thought if he had extra processing power, he could think of a way to save you. With his super computer brain." Her bottom lip wobbled dangerously, and she bit down on it. "But he couldn't."

Lars felt his throat tighten, and took another swallow of alcohol to conceal it.

He shook his head.

"Then how can I tell Leela I still love her? Even if she does – even if . . . I can't tell her that and let her . . . No!"

Amy threw her hands up in the air.

"Yes, you can! And you should. You love her," she said petulantly. "And she loves you, and you're dying. You should be with her while you still can. You should be happy -"

"I said no, Amy."

"But -"

Amy began to protest and Lars shut his eyes, blocking her out. He was grateful when she fell silent at last.

"Amy?"

"Yeah?"

Lars swallowed.

"You're my friend," he said. "And Bender's not here. So if I have to die, can you just . . . be my friend, and get wasted with me one last time. Like a true friend. Please?"

Amy considered this. At last, she leaned forward and kissed him wetly on the cheek.

She flashed him a watery smile.

"You bet."