Epilogue:

Amy, Bender, and Leela eventually managed to coax Fry from his apartment and out to Amy's Beta Romeo. Numbly, he'd allowed himself to be guided into the back seat and had just stared blankly at the back of the chair in front of him until the car took off and flew away into the crystal clear morning. Later, Leela would have to explain to him how Zoidberg had been released and his double from the beta timeline captured to take his place. The reason for bothering with taking a Zoidberg home with them at all was simple. No one thought it fair that any reality should have to be stuck with two of them. Fry hadn't even noticed the Decapodian being tossed into the trunk.

Leela had tried to find something comforting to say to kill the silence that filled the Beta Romeo while Amy took it out to a safe distance from Earth. Nothing she tried made any impact on Fry, who just continued to look off into space. Eventually she gave up and activated the Professor's last briefcase device. There was a surge of all-encompassing blue light.

Pop.

They got back to Planet Express, and after a bit of an impromptu celebration to mark Fry's homecoming, everyone went their separate ways. Some of the life had started to seep back into the delivery boy. He and Leela were the last to leave. He waited for her to lock up the building and set the alarm, and the two of them set off southward along the street that paralleled the Hudson River.

As the two of them passed the vacant lot across from Planet Express they saw the rusty green hulk of the abandoned spaceship, which lay there rotting away much as it had done for the last several years. Fry stopped to stare at it, forcing Leela to backtrack a few steps.

"It's not blown up." The delivery boy shook his head. "I can't believe I'm really back."

Leela didn't answer. What was there to say? Instead, she waited silently for him to turn and start walking again. She kept pace with him.

"Do you think I'll ever see her again?" He asked at length. It was clear who he meant.

"I don't think so." She replied. "I'm sorry." It sounded a bit harsh when she said it, but she didn't want to lie to him. The Professor had run out of the briefcase devices and hadn't said anything about making more. We've mucked around in their timeline enough as it is. We don't have any business going back there again.

Fry nodded. He'd already known the answer. "Do you think they'll be okay? What if something happens to Zoidberg?"

That was a definite cause for concern. The Zoidberg that they'd left behind would probably think he'd died and gone to heaven with all of the care and attention he'd receive. Nobody in the other timeline would want to run the risk of him somehow getting killed and taking the whole of reality with him. Eventually the Farnsworth from the beta timeline would figure out a way to stabilize things so that everyone's survival didn't rely on the Decapodian's continued existence- a decidedly loathsome situation, really- and Zoidberg would cease to be important.

"I think they'll be okay." Leela assured the delivery boy. "The Professor from the other timeline will fix things." A moment later she added, "what about you? Are you going to be okay?"

Fry thought about that for a moment. "Yeah, I think so." He said as the two of them waited for a light to change so they could cross the street. "Tura was right."

"About what?"

The delivery boy looked at her in surprise, not having realized that he'd said the statement aloud. "What?" He turned away, trying to hide the color that had rushed to his face. "Nothing. It's nothing."

When the delivery boy said nothing further, Leela reached out and took hold of the hem of his jacket. He turned back to her, startled. "Look, Fry." Leela said gently. "Part of the reason things between you, me, Phil, and Tura got so screwed up is that we were all trying to hide things from each other. Phil got to pay for that with his life." She let go of him and crossed her arms. The light turned green, and the two of them made their way across the small intersection. "I'm not going to make you tell me what it was that she said, but don't hide it from me to spare my feelings."

Fry regarded her for a moment, thinking. Finally he looked down at the pavement, muttered something barely audible- something about it not being her feelings he was worried about- and then sighed in defeat. "Remember what Tura said about her not being my Leela?" His eyes were glued straight ahead.

"Yes." Leela had wondered what that was about, but things had been going unexpectedly her way at the time and she hadn't wanted to screw that up by opening her mouth to ask about it.

"Well, she wasn't." When Leela looked at him in surprise, the delivery boy added hastily: "I mean, I really cared about her. She was you, and you know how I feel about you."

Leela nodded, acutely aware that all her talk of openness had just backfired on her by opening a particularly smelly can of Venutian brain worms. Well, I guess I asked for it. She thought.

When Leela didn't change the subject as Fry had been expecting, the delivery boy decided to risk continuing. "Somehow though, even though she was you, she wasn't you at the same time. You know?"

"Not really." Actually, she did. It was the same reason that she'd never gotten close to Phil. She suspected it was also the same reason that Tura had let Fry go in the end. Pity Phil had to get himself killed in order for her to see that. As soon as she had the thought she knew it wasn't fair.

Tura had had the same feelings all along that Leela had had for Fry. No one that had been onboard the Planet Express Ship when Phil had gone missing could have failed to see that. Leela's double had been on the verge of hysteria once it had started to become clear what Phil was up to. Leela had tried the best she could to get to the delivery boy before he could go through with it, but she'd been too slow. Tura had been screaming at her to speed up, but she hadn't dared. With his suit transponder disabled, Leela only knew that he was near the Nimbus's bridge. Without knowing his exact location, she would have ended up sailing right by him before anyone saw him, or, worse, crashing right into him.

When the bridge of the Nimbus had exploded, they were still a couple of kilometers off. When the Nimbus's gun had found Phil a few seconds later, they were close enough to helplessly watch the result. I think Tura and I both snapped when we saw that. Leela remembered. If Tura hadn't fired off that torpedo and blown that bastard that killed Phil into a cloud of atoms, I think I'd have done it myself. She knew she would have it had been Fry instead of Phil. And I wouldn't have stopped with one measly torpedo. Her lip curled as she imagined it.

Standing there on the bridge of the Planet Express Ship with Phil's lifeless body floating by the viewport, Leela had wanted revenge. She'd been able to control herself, but it had been a close thing. She could only imagine what it had been like for Tura. She spent all of those years brushing him off and stomping on every one of his little advances. Just like me. Oh, there had been the excuses. At first she'd convinced herself that he wasn't really serious. Then when that wore thin she'd convinced herself that she didn't have any feelings for him, but that delusion couldn't survive forever either. Instead, there'd been the logic that now was a bad time. There was always later. Slowly, that had morphed into a realization that dating a crewmember might somehow put others at risk. Funny how that last bit of logic seemed now like nothing more than the same denial that she'd been hiding behind since the very beginning. With a jolt, Leela realized that, at some point, it had stopped being Tura that she was thinking about.

When Tura had left Fry's apartment earlier, she'd whispered something that was too low to hear. Normally lip-reading wasn't one of Leela's fortes, but it was somehow easier when the person you were reading was yourself. Tura's last words before she'd fled the room had been "I love you Philip Fry. Both of you."

Leela snuck a glance at Fry out of the corner of her eye. He was staring down at his shoes, walking on autopilot. And what about me? The PE captain asked herself. Am I going to wait for something awful to happen to Fry before I say anything?

Fry came to a stop again, and Leela realized that they'd come to the spot where they would have to part company. Fry's apartment lay down the street to the left; hers was directly ahead. Leela experienced a profound sense of déjà vu as she remembered the time, weeks earlier, that the two of them had been in this exact spot in the alternate timeline.

The same awkwardness that had gripped both of them the last time they had parted company in this manner settled in again. This time neither of them had any illusions as to its nature. Both of us have things that we want to say, and neither of us is brave enough to open our mouths. Leela thought. Of course, her earlier words about openness popped into her mind at that moment to chastise her.

"So, umm, I guess I'll see you tomorrow?" Fry said to fill the void.

Leela started to nod. "Wait!" She said, unreasonably glad to have found something to extend their time together. "No one remembered to tell you. There's no delivery tomorrow. Amy's parents invited us to go watch them demolish Mars Vegas."

That caught Fry's attention. Anything that promised to involve large explosions was liable to do that. "Cool!"

"Yeah..." The silence was back. Still neither of them made any attempt to turn and go. you're being stupid. Leela admonished herself. Didn't you learn anything at all from all of this? What are you afraid of, anyway?

"Anyway, I guess I'd better-"

"Didn't Bender say a long time ago that you got me a present?" Leela hadn't meant to cut Fry off, but she knew that she would despise herself for weeks if she didn't say something right then and there to stop him from walking away from her.

"-start heading- huh?" The little stripped gears in Fry's head worked away. "Oh hey, yeah! I guess I completely forgot about it. It's probably still buried under my bed somewhere, unless the owls ate it."

Having witnessed firsthand the ferocity of the rabid owls that called Fry's apartment home, Leela was unsure whether the delivery boy was referring to them eating the present... or the bed. "Oh, ok." There was a beat, then: "Why don't we go open it?"

"What? Now?"

Leela smiled at Fry's look of utter bewilderment. "What, do you have anything better to do?" She teased him.

"Huh?" His face went slack. Patiently, Leela waited for the delivery boy's neurons to fire. Well, smolder, at any rate. A sudden grin lit up the delivery boy's face as the statement finally sank in. "No! I mean sure!" The awkwardness that had been between them moments earlier was completely forgotten as Fry grasped Leela by the wrist. Before she knew it, the delivery boy was leading her at a half-trot down the sidewalk in the direction of Robot Arms Apartments.

Bender will be there. Leela realized. He'll see us together. The robot would never let her hear the end of it. Ah, to hell with it. Somehow she just couldn't bring herself to care.

Fry slowed, his enthusiasm curbed by his body's inability to breathe. "Hey, umm, Leela." Leela knew instantly what he was going to say next. "After we open your present, do you, I dunno- do you maybe want to go get some dinner somewhere?"

"I'd like that very much," she said.