Fry woke with a gasp.

"Yancy!" he said, and then "ow!", as his head smacked against the car roof.

"Bender," a voice said. It sounded bored. "I keep telling you. Ben-der. Ben-der. Say it with me now."

"Bender," Fry said, bemused. "Ben-der. Ow!"

The car horn had just blared right in his ear. There was a barrage of blaring horns, and then a swooping sick feeling in Fry's stomach as Bender swung the car suddenly over to the left.

He had gone very still.

"Meatbag?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you really awake?"

"Uh . . ." Fry did a brief inventory of his physical state. Head: pounding. Ribs: throbbing. Mouth: dry. "It hurts," he ventured at last. "A lot. So, uh . . . probably."

Bender narrowed his optics, regarding him suspiciously.

"I thought you were awake before," he said at last. "But you weren't. And then I thought you were asleep, but you still wouldn't quit your yapping. How's a robot supposed to tell the difference with you humans?"

Fry rubbed his head.

"Sorry," he said. "I think I talk in my sleep, lately. That's what everyone says."

He frowned down at his arm. The crook of his elbow was black with bruising, as if someone – who didn't fully understand the human concept of veins – had been trying to give him injections.

He sighed.

"Also, I think you've been giving me morphine."

Bender hunched his shoulders, defensive.

"Hey, it said painkiller. And you said you were hurting!"

"Yeah, but morphine is for, you know . . . dying hurting. Like if you hacked off my leg, or shot me. Or if I got mauled by a bear. But I just hit my head."

Bender snorted.

"You say that now. You didn't see you four days ago. It was pathetic, meat bag. You couldn't stand up without falling down. And you went all white and sweaty. Real sweaty. And you wouldn't knock off the shivering even when I stole you some blankets. Premium blankets too. Got 'em off the Don-Bot's racehorse. Nothing but the best for my meatbag."

"I was probably in shock," Fry sighed. "Or concussed. It was . . . before you showed up . . . I had a really bad day."

He touched his neck. It still felt tender where Yearling had yanked the belt around his throat.

Bender followed the movement.

"Yeah," he said. "Well, you owe me. I took good care of you, stole you everything you needed, and you didn't even have the decency to put me in your crazy fever dreams. I've been listening to all kinds of crap for days, Captain this and Yancy that and Leela everything, and did good ol' Bender show up? Nope, not even once -"

"I dreamed about you," Fry interrupted. "You were in all my dreams! You were a Terminator on my wall, and we were driving, and . . . and there was a girl." He frowned. "You were hiding her. You were fighting with her." His frown deepened, as he struggled to recapture the memory. "I think she had a baby."

Bender made a cuckoo sound, a whistling noise under his breath.

Fry rubbed his head again.

"I know," he groaned. "I know it was just a crazy dream. But it felt real. They all did! And you were there, so I don't know why you're mad anyway. I did dream about you. I missed you -"

"You did?"

Fry blinked.

"You're my best friend," he said slowly.

Bender stared out over the dash, watching headlights flick past on the interstellar highway.

"You left," he said accusingly.

"Not because of you."

Bender scowled.

"Yeah, because of Leela, precious -"

"No, because – because of me." Fry tugged at his hair, searching for the words. "Because – I caused this. All of it." He shook his head. "And then I couldn't deal with it, so I ran away. Like I always do."

Bender snorted.

"Since when?"

"Are you kidding me?" Fry stared at him, incredulous. "Since always." He raised a hand, checking them off on his fingers. "I ran away from Michelle. I ran away from Colleen. I ran away from whatserface, the mermaid. I run away from everything. I'm a coward."

There was a long silence.

Cars were playing on the radio. It must be 80's Hour, Fry thought vaguely.

Bender chipped at the dashboard, scoring a clean line through the plastic with one metal thumb.

At last he spoke.

"This is the longest you were ever away."

"I -"

Fry stopped. Bender was right, he realized. This was the longest they'd ever been apart.

All this time, he'd been wondering who he was without Leela and Bender, and feeling lost without them. But Bender and Leela themselves had been fixed entities in his head. It had never occurred to him that they might feel just as lost without him.

It had never occurred to him that maybe he defined them, the way they had come to define him.

In his head he suddenly saw Yancy again, the way he'd been in the dream. "You were always Mom and Dad's favorite", he'd said. And "I had to run around after you my whole life – you were never even grateful for it". It was true, wasn't it? He'd always been so consumed by his own mistakes – so sure he wasn't important to anyone – he never even stopped to think that maybe, in his own way, he was. Maybe there were all these people orbiting around him, his whole life, and he'd never even noticed.

"I'm a jerk," he murmured.

"Huh?"

Fry swallowed.

"I said, I'm a jerk. And I . . . I'm sorry. I didn't mean . . . I thought I'd come home. Like I always do. I didn't think I'd be away this long. But it doesn't matter." He shook his head. "It doesn't matter what I meant. I disappeared, and you were scared." He exhaled slowly, a long breath that made his ribs burn in protest. "I'm sorry."

"Huh." Bender shifted awkwardly in his seat, metal fingertips tap-tap-tapping against the dashboard as he thought it over. "Well, at least you admit you're a jerk."

Fry knew an opening when he saw one.

"I am," he said hurriedly.

"But then" - Bender appeared to mull it over - "you are only human."

"Right."

"So it's not your fault. Humans are jerks. It's built into your design. It's probably in that DNA gunk you all have."

"Probably," Fry agreed. "Definitely."

Bender considered this.

"But," he said, "it's not your fault you're not a robot."

"Bender, you know I would if I could."

Bender sighed.

"I know. I blame your parents, really." He narrowed his optics and studied Fry for what felt like forever. Then he appeared to make up his mind. "Alright, fine. I forgive you. Because I'm just that great."

He hooked an extendable arm around Fry's neck and suddenly dragged him over the cup holder, into a one-armed hug.

Fry's eyes watered – his neck still really hurt – but he clenched his teeth and endured the pain, because Bender was making that happy little noise he made sometimes, like a kid hugging a puppy, and Bender deserved to be happy.

"I missed you," he wheezed.

When Bender released him at last – and Fry could take a breath again - he frowned. Now that he really looked at him . . .

"What happened to you? You look terrible." He appraised his friend, taking in the beard of thick rust that had spread across his neck, and the dents in the robot's once-shiny metal chassis. "You look sober."

Bender pulled back, edgy again.

"I'm drinking," he said evasively.

"Then you're not drinking enough," Fry insisted. "You need to drink more, or – or better. Top shelf liquor."

"It wouldn't make a difference."

"Then -"

Bender brushed him off.

"My fuel converters were damaged. They only work at half capacity now."

"What does that mean?"

"Means I'm always a little bit sober, no matter how much I drink."

Fry blinked.

"Bender . . . that's awful. I'm so sorry." He hesitated. "Can you fix it?"

"No."

"But . . . you can live with it, right?"

Bender snorted.

"If you call it living."

His flippancy was reassuring, and Fry let go of the breath he'd been holding.

"Oh. Well. Sorry."

"Whatever, meatbag. Are we gonna get this show on the road, or what?"

Fry blinked.

"Oh. Sure. Hey, uh . . . can I drive? I don't think I can sleep again, now. And I want . . . I need . . . something to distract me. For a while." He touched the cool gold of Captain Glottus' data chip, then pulled his hand away. "I don't want to have to think."

"Since when do you think?"

"Since . . . I don't know. Lately."

Bender shrugged, but he opened his car door on the oxygen bubble of the hard shoulder and stepped out, letting Fry slide over to the driver's seat.

"Suit yourself, sausage link. I could use some sleep anyway. Wake me up if we run out of gas."

"Okay -"

But Bender's visor was down and he was already asleep, the soundtrack of his artificial snoring rumbling through the car. The sound made Fry feel strange, but he couldn't remember why, and when the memory still wouldn't come to him, he started up the car again and pulled back out onto the freeway.

It was easy to drive – and harder not to think.

Fry drove for an hour, following the line of the Interspace 1105. It had been a long time since he drove on a freeway. Captain Glottus had always stayed away from people, and now . . . Fry was feet away from strangers on every side, and it was making him feel hunted. He wanted to be away from them, to lock himself in a tiny room somewhere where no-one could get hurt and the Brainspawn couldn't follow him.

The brains had been real, on Erosh. He knew that now. They'd come for him, just like they'd come to Trisol for him, and to the Gas'n'Go, to kill Captain Glottus . . .

He wondered, bleakly, if there was anyone left alive on Erosh.

Part of him wanted to change the station on the radio and listen for the news. More of him didn't. That was the part that still saw memory when he closed his eyes – Brainspawn boiling out the sky, and Candy bleeding and limp in Mort's arms, and Captain Yearling smiling – and in the end that part won out. He left the radio on Ancient FM, and left his memories in the dark behind his eyes.

He drove on instead, until his vision blurred and his hands started to cramp on the wheel. The billboards alternated around him, and the fuel gauge dipped, but the stars didn't seem like they were getting any closer. Sometimes Fry wondered if he was moving at all. Maybe he was just dreaming again, and Bender hadn't told him.

He glanced over at Bender.

The robot was still snoring. When Fry pried his vision visor open a crack, his optics were dim and powered-down underneath. He didn't respond either – not even a twitch in his sleep. Fry had never seen him this tired. Maybe it was that fuel burner thing, like he'd said.

Or maybe he was just exhausted. They were really far from Erosh now. And . . . days, Bender had said. Fry had been talking in his sleep for days. Had Bender been driving all that time? Had he stayed awake all that time? Robots didn't need sleep the way humans did, Fry knew, but still. They needed some sleep.

Now that he thought of it . . .

What had Bender been doing on Erosh anyway? He should have been at home, on Earth. With Leela. That was what Mort had seen, and as freaky as Mort's card-reading abilities could be, Fry trusted them.

He frowned. His hand had gone to the data nugget again, the way it did now when he was feeling lost.

There was a Fishy Joe's approaching. Fry almost drove right through the billboard, and decided it was probably a sign he should stop to eat.

He pulled in.

Bender was still sleeping, but Fry ordered for him anyway, and fished a twenty out of his chest compartment to pay. Bender didn't eat human food, but he hated not being included, and he wouldn't notice if his fries went cold. (Hot and cold, in relation to food, were concepts Bender had never fully grasped. He didn't think they were important, probably because he couldn't actually taste how the temperature affected the food. Fry – like the rest of the crew - had long ago learned to fake enthusiasm for boiling hot ice cream and frozen soup.)

When Fry had eaten as much of his own burger as he could stomach, he left Bender asleep and went to lie out on the hood of the car. It was the nearest he could get to being alone.

He snapped the chain around his neck and pulled off the data nugget, staring at it in the flat white light of the parking lot. It swung gently from his fingers.

Back.

Forth.

He could throw it away now, Fry thought suddenly. Just toss it out onto the highway and watch it sink into the blackness of space.

He pressed the button, and watched the hologram of the names begin to scroll again.

You all died because of me, he thought. Because whatever I did before, to beat the brains, it wasn't enough.

He swallowed. Captain Glottus had wanted him to give this to his husband. This wasn't Fry's problem. It wasn't his decision. Carlos Glottus got to decide if they should use the data nugget against the DOOP or not.

But if Fry gave this to him, the truth about the brains would come out.

He snapped it shut again, and tried to think like Leela. What would she tell him to do?

Her voice was easy to summon in his head.

It's a tough call, she said. What if the Brainspawn try to kill Carlos? What if they take over his brain and make him do something awful? That's what they did to Captain Glottus, when he got in their way. If you give this to him, you're putting him in danger. Think about it, Fry. You need to be sure you're making the right decision.

But I'm not sure, Fry thought hopelessly. I'm not sure about anything. I wish you were here.

The Leela-voice in his head sighed, a hopeless sound.

I know, she said. I know . . .

Fry shut his eyes, and let his head fall back against the windscreen.

The memory was playing in his mind again. Captain Glottus, slumped against the wall. Dying. "This is my fight," he'd said, "and I'm not about to drag you all down with me."

But he'd been wrong. The Brainspawn were Fry's fight.

If Fry gave the data nugget to Captain Glottus's husband, then Carlos would use it to expose the DOOP. That's what I'd do, for Leela, he thought. There was no way Carlos wouldn't feel the same. Fry knew it, in the pit of his stomach. Carlos would use the data, or Captain Glottus died for nothing. But as soon as he did, the DOOP would turn on him, and maybe the brains would make him a target too, for exposing the truth about them . . .

And it would all be Fry's fault, for giving him that choice.

He opened his eyes again.

He pulled the chain on again, and tucked it back under the collar of his shirt. Then he slid off the hood of the car and rummaged in the glove box until he came up holding a pen. There wasn't any paper, but there were plenty of Fishy Joe's napkins left over, and they were hard enough to give you paper cuts most of the time, so Fry figured it was safe enough to write on them. Sure enough, the pen scratched easily against the surface.

Fry swallowed back the lump in his throat, and returned to the hood.

He'd always been crummy with words, but this was worse than anything he'd ever tried and failed to express before.

Maybe someone else would have done it better. Maybe there was a way to tell someone you'd watched the person they loved die – a good way. A way that made it easier for them to hear. Maybe there was a way to write out someone's last words and capture not just what they'd said, but the way they'd said it, and what they'd really meant. But if there was, Fry couldn't find it.

It took him an hour – and three discarded napkins - to complete the letter.

In the end, he just wrote the truth. Everything that happened, and everything Captain Glottus had said, as near as he could remember it. And then he added "he was the bravist man I ever knew", and folded the letter up into a square, so he could squeeze the address onto the blank space at the back.

He didn't include the data nugget.

He hadn't lied about it, exactly. But in the letter, he hadn't told Carlos Captain Glottus had given it to him. Reading that letter, he knew, Carlos would think the data had been lost with his husband. It made Fry feel slimy inside – knowing he was disrespecting the Captain's final wishes – but Captain Glottus had gone on the run to keep his family safe. He'd want them to be safe now, wouldn't he? More than anything?

It was all Fry had to cling to.

He leaned over at last and shook Bender by the shoulder.

"Bender. Hey. Bender. Wake up."

"Zero zero . . . one one . . . zero . . . cram it, weirdy . . ."

"Bender!"

Bender's visor snapped open and he jerked upwards, staring around him as if he had no idea where he was. At last his gaze settled on Fry, and Fry heard the whirring of optics as Bender focused on him.

"Meatbag?"

"Yeah," Fry said uneasily. "It's me. Are you okay? You were really out of it."

Bender pushed him away impatiently.

"I already told you, I'm fine. You were dumb to let me sleep this long." Fry would have been offended by this, but Bender had caught sight of his untouched portion of Fishy Joe's, and his face had lit up in delight. "Ooh, takeout."

The robot lifted one limp, long-cold fry to his mouth, and tossed it in. There was a whirring sound and then he belched, exhaling smoke.

"Nice."

He jerked his head at the letter in Fry's hand.

"What's that? Another sappy musical for One Eye?"

"It's a letter."

"For who?"

Fry stared at the letter for a long minute, then stowed it in his jacket pocket, next to the card Mort had put there before he left.

"I don't wanna talk about it."

Bender rolled his optics.

"Whatever, fleshwad. Your call. What do you wanna talk about?"

Fry frowned.

"What were you doing on Erosh?"

"Huh?"

"Erosh," Fry said patiently.

This seemed like an important train of thought to stick with. He hadn't wondered about it before – he'd been too convinced Bender was a figment of his imagination – but now that he thought about it, it seemed strange. Erosh was a long way from Earth. A really long way.

"What were you doing there?" he asked.

"Looking for you, obviously." Bender snorted. "You're lucky I found you when I did. You were this close to being steamed like a shrimp! You owe me the top layers of your skin. If it wasn't for me heroically jumping in to save you, you'd look like Zoidberg without a shell right now."

"Right," Fry said. "And I appreciate that. I do. But I don't understand how you found me. I was hiding. In a basement," he clarified. "And I wasn't even supposed to be on Erosh. How did you know I was there?"

Bender stared at him. For the first time he seemed discomfited.

"You weren't kidding about this new thinking bit, huh?"

Fry shrugged.

"You didn't answer," he pointed out.

Bender huffed.

"I got connections," he said. "Big connections."

"The Don Bot?" Fry groaned. "Bender, I told you before, you can't trust him. You've seen what he does to mob snitches – it's not pretty! He'll put your processor through a cheese grater, and then stomp on the pieces! And then he'll feed the pieces to that robot shark in the Jaws museum!"

"Not him!" Bender said impatiently. "I got better friends now. Friends in high places." He chuckled, though it came out with an edge to it, like one of his diabolical laughs. As if there was a joke Fry wasn't seeing. "The highest."

"Oh, no. Not the Robot Devil. Bender -"

Bender rolled his optics again.

"That would be friends in low places."

"Then -"

"Give it up, meatsack. It's not your problem." Bender grinned, and threw his voice in a rough approximation of Fry's. "I don't wanna talk about it. Take a hint already."

Fry gave up. If Bender really did have a powerful, dangerous new friend, he was sure to start bragging about it sooner or later. All Fry had to do was wait him out. And so far they'd survived, so . . . whoever Bender was making deals with, they couldn't be all that dangerous.

They sat in silence for a while, as Bender incinerated the remainder of his fries, and Fry stared out the window at nothing.

"Bender?" he said at last.

"Uh-huh."

"How's Leela?"

There was another beat of silence.

Bender let out another fiery belch, dragging it out as if buying himself time to think. When Fry simply kept staring at him, he shrugged.

"She's crazy," he said. "Same as always. What'd you expect?"

Fry shifted uncomfortably.

"Ben-der."

"What?" Bender lit up a cigar, as slowly as before. He took a deep, steady drag. "What do you want me to say? She's the same no-fun weirdo she always was. Same lectures. Same self-righteous pain in the ass. Same crazy temper. Only crazier, since you're not around to do whatever it is you do that makes her normal."

"She's not crazy," Fry said defensively.

"Yeah, right."

"She's not." Fry ran a hand through his hair, rumpling it in frustration. "She just . . . it's just this thing she does, to feel better. It's like she has to be in control of everything, or she flips out. I don't know."

He let his head fall back against the headrest.

"I think she's scared," he murmured. "I don't think she trusts anyone. Except maybe me. Sometimes. I guess. But I think that scares her too. And then she tries to feel in control again, and shuts me out."

Bender snorted in blatant disbelief.

Fry winced.

"I know, I know. It's Leela. She's not scared of anything. That's what I always thought too. But you didn't see her the day I left." He swallowed. His voice was getting hoarse. "I never saw her cry like that before."

Bender said nothing. He had gone suddenly still.

Lost in his own thoughts, Fry didn't notice.

"I started thinking about it," he went on. "When we were . . . you know -"

"Banging," Bender supplied.

Fry winced.

"Together," he corrected. "I don't know," he said. "For some reason I kept thinking about that time we went to the orphanarium with her." He frowned. "There were bars on the windows. Remember? And she laughed about it. Like it was normal."

"So?"

"So . . . there were bars on her windows, Bender. And she couldn't bend them, she was just a baby. I never thought about it before, but that's . . . it's like . . . it's like they put a baby in a prison. And they never let her have any fun, and no-one ever told her they loved her."

Bender nodded, sanguine.

"Humans need that."

"Right. Because otherwise it's like a supervillain origin story or something, I mean, that's how you turn out evil, or -"

"Or a sociopath."

"Yeah. But Leela didn't turn out like that. She turned out kind, and incredible, and I guess . . . I guess I thought that meant it didn't affect her at all."

"That was your first mistake," Bender informed him. "I told you – she's crazy."

Fry sighed. Bender kept using the wrong word, but he was starting to see what the robot meant. Crazy was Bender's word for any strong human emotion he didn't understand. And Leela had a lot of complicated human emotions.

"I used to get so mad sometimes," he admitted. "Because I was right in front of her, loving her, and it was like she couldn't ever see me, no matter how hard I tried. And then . . . and then I figured it out, at last." He smiled sadly. "I kept trying to find a way to show her how I felt, but she never knew what she was looking at. I should've just . . ." He made a gesture, grasping at the empty air with one hand. "Told her."

Bender choked on his cigar.

"What?!" he said, outraged. "Meatbag, you told her you loved her a thousand times! You never shut up about it!"

Fry coughed, eyes streaming in the fug of smoke.

"Yeah," he croaked. "But that was all I told her. Just 'I love you'. I didn't tell her what I meant. I didn't tell her she walks into a room sometimes and my heart does a double back-flip in my chest, because I'm so happy to see her. And not even for a reason. I just am sometimes. Just because she exists. I didn't tell her that. And I didn't tell her I think about her, all the time. That it's like she's always in the back of my head. And every time I have to make a decision I think about what she would do, and every time I see something beautiful I want to show her, and every time something bad happens, she's the one I want. It's like she's a part of me somehow, and if they dug up my bones in a thousand years and, DNA tested me or whatever . . . she'd be there. Inside my bones."

"Eww."

Bender looked appalled.

Fry groaned.

"I know, it's weird. But Leela wouldn't think it was weird. She'd know what I was trying to say, and then she'd tell me what I was trying to say. And it would make sense, the way she said it. And . . . I loved her for that too. I should've told her I loved her for that."

"You're right," Bender conceded. "Leela would explain this better." He tapped the ash off his cigar, thinking. "What about the nagging?" he said at last. "Hah! You didn't love that."

Fry shifted awkwardly in his seat.

"I did."

"What?!"

Fry sighed.

"I did. You don't get it."

He rubbed his shoulder, wondering how to explain something he'd only just come to understand about himself.

"See," he struggled, "when I was a kid, no-one put bars on my windows, but . . . it felt like my parents didn't care what I did. I mean, they told me I was a deadbeat and my ideas were crazy sometimes, but . . . mostly they just let me do what I wanted, and told me it was dumb later, when it all blew up in my face."

He paused.

"I had this dream," he admitted. "When you gave me the morphine. It was about Yancy." He frowned, grasping for the details of the already-fading dream. "I think . . . in the dream, I think maybe he was trying to tell me he cared. But he never told me that back when he was alive. It was like he couldn't find the words. Like he didn't know how to talk to me without being a jerk, so I never heard what he was trying to say. And maybe my parents were the same, because in the dream Yancy said I was their favorite, and that's just dumb, they thought I was a loser -"

"You're losing me, meatsack."

"Oh. Oh, right." Fry foundered, and tried to grope his way back to the point again. "What I mean is, they couldn't tell me either, so I thought . . . I thought that meant that they didn't care either. I didn't think anyone cared. And I didn't even know I wanted them to care about all the dumb stuff I did, until . . . until I came to the future and met Leela." He swallowed. "Leela cared, even when I was being a lousy friend and I didn't deserve it. She looked out for me anyway, because I was . . . I don't know. Hers. Even when I wasn't."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"It does to me. Leela always told me what I needed to hear, even when I didn't wanna hear it. She always tried to keep me safe, even though I never thanked her for it. Even when all I did was whine at her. I don't think she was always right anymore, but . . . she thought she was right. She thought she was doing what I needed, even when it was hard." He risked a glance at Bender. "That's love, isn't it?"

He half expected Bender to fire back with another off-the-cuff comment - "is it?" or "stop with the sap, sap head" - but to his surprise the robot held his gaze, and said nothing.

Fry had almost given up on him responding at all, when -

"You really think that?"

"I . . . yeah. I do."

"But . . ." Bender's voice had gone wobbly, the way it normally only ever did during a big emotional scene in All My Circuits. His words were slow, as if he was choosing each one carefully before he let it out. As if he wasn't saying what he really wanted to say, somehow. "She broke your heart," he said. "Stomped it into little pieces. I never saw you sadder about anything. You should hate her. I bet – I bet you'd hate me," he said wildly. "If I made you cry like that! I bet you'd never forgive me -"

"I would." Fry sighed. "I can't hate her. I couldn't hate you. No matter what you did. You can't hate someone you love, Bender. You can be mad at them, but you can't . . ." He shook his head. "It doesn't work like that. Mad goes away. But when you love someone, you love them forever. I mean . . . I do."

"Oh," Bender said quietly.

He coughed, as if the cigar was irritating his non-existent lungs. His thumb was chipping at the dashboard again.

Fry frowned.

"Are you okay?"

"Mmmnhmm."

Chip. Chip. Chip.

"Are you sure?"

"Uh-huh."

There was a long beat of silence as Bender continued to chip away at the dashboard, avoiding his eye. He looked far away and lost in thought.

"I -" I didn't explain that right, Fry started to say, you're confused, I should start over -

But Bender had straightened up suddenly, as if it didn't matter. As if he was done with the conversation.

"You should rest again," he declared. "Humans need rest when they're hurt."

Fry winced.

"I'm okay. I'll just sit here, and you can drive. I don't need to sleep again."

Now that he was awake again, Fry felt a pressing desire to stay awake. The hazy, unsettled world of his concussion wasn't one he wanted to return to. And the effects of the morphine had been even more disturbing. He decided he preferred to stay awake and in pain. It might be uncomfortable, but at least he could tell the difference between dreams and reality this way.

"And water," Bender continued, ignoring him. "You're supposed to be drinking water."

Fry sighed and held out a hand for the bottle.

"I can drink some water," he said. His mouth was still dry from the morphine, and it didn't seem like such a big ask to keep Bender happy.

He took a gulp from the bottle, then swung over to the shotgun side as Bender walked around the outside of the car. The robot slid into the driver's seat. Ancient FM crackled over the stereo again as he turned the key in the ignition.

"Alright." He flexed his fingers, cracking the lug nuts in his hands the way Leela sometimes cracked her knuckles. A grin spread over his mouthplate, a brief bright flash. "Let's burn rubber, baby!"