I absolutely should not have kept you waiting so long for what is a pretty short ending. I sincerely apologize. The last important thing was in the previous chapter, I guess, and I kept thinking I should add more to this one so I didn't keep people waiting for nothing, but finally I decided to just post it, so, enjoy!

The reason I've been so busy, if anyone reads author's notes or cares, is that I've been at play practice for four or five hours every night for two weeks. Beauty and the Beast opens this weekend and I am Cogsworth! So excited! If it's not baroque, don't fix it! Ahahahaha. Wish me luck, and that I totally don't completely screw up.

"Well, I suppose if you have to know so badly, I'll tell you what I dreamed." Leela surrenders at last, ironically, to a silent cockpit.

"Hasn't been keeping me up at night," you announce flippantly.

Fry's mouth, on the other hand, almost drops off its hinges. Her sudden declaration is bizarre, considering he gave up nagging her about the dream days ago. It's been a forbidden subject, under-penalty-of-death-glare. Leela had made that clear within the half an hour of waking from her coma.

She laughed and joked along with the rest of you guys, who were practically melted into oozing puddles of relief. Fry held her much longer than what would have flown on any other occasion, but nothing seemed wrong until he handed Leela that ugly little Cyclops toy from the night stand, and she went suddenly silent. She shrank back into his jacket and noticed it draped around her for the first time, glancing from it to its ragged-looking owner and back again in disbelief.

"Oh, it was kind of cold in here," he explained.

She pulled his jacket off her shoulders and cried into it for twenty minutes.

"Please don't cry," Fry said, even though he hadn't quite stopped swabbing his own eyes yet. "You're alive, Leela. You could cry if you were dead."

"No one would hear you, though," you put in, helpfully.

Leela hiccupped and checked her sobs. At his insistence, she blew her nose on the jacket sleeve, which was already covered with tears and snot. Filthy human gunk. "Sorry… It's just… I dreamed…"

And for once in her life, she actually shut up about something. It must have been a hell of a dream, though, because she's obviously been reliving it nightly. She still comes to work with her eye swollen and bloodshot, and even though she was the one who spent two weeks in a coma, she gives Fry skittish looks. As if he was the ghost.

"Anyway, I don't want you to think I was being rude." Leela continues at present, eye fixed on the starry horizon. She seems eager to get it all out while her voice is steady. "I just wasn't ready to share yet-"

"Still not ready to hear," you comment.

"And I think that now it's been long enough-"

"Not even close."

"And I know you've been dying to-"

"Nope."

Fry punches you and then shakes the pain out of his fist. Then you're banished to the other side of the room as Leela tells her story. Her whole, long story.

"I would have explained sooner… I just didn't want anyone to read too much into it," she finishes with a painful attempt at nonchalance. "You know how people try to go all Freud with your fever dreams."

(Fry just sits there and tries not to read too much into the fact that once upon a time, Leela thought he was dead and didn't particularly want to live anymore.)

He clears his throat. "So did you hear anyone else… besides me, I mean? 'Cause Amy was in there, too, some nights, and when I had to get bandages changed and stuff."

"No, it was just your voice. That's all I remember, anyway."

The ship echoes with the quiet conversation that you definitely aren't eavesdropping on, or extending your eyes to see better. Standing at the window, he's taken her hand, and for once Leela hasn't pulled it away.

"Oh, well that's… I mean it's not… I was just always there… it probably doesn't..."

"It was special," Leela admits. She squeezes his hand, briefly but tightly. Then she looks away again, and her eye darkens. "You were the only thing I heard, besides my own deep inner guilt whispering to me that you died and... it was all my fault…"

"That's awful. That's really terrible, um, unless it helped you wake up, or whatever…" Fry trails off anxiously. Leela tries to regain her hand, but it's obvious she won't be getting it back without a fight.

You snicker malevolently, folding your legs as you lean back in your seat lazily. The nice thing about being evil is that no one ever catches you doing anything good. They will never suspect a thing, the morons.

"Well, we're about to land on Milan, planet of the supermodel freak, and I definitely don't want to be seen like this." Leela, who's still powder-pale from the weeks in a hospital bed, stands up from her captain's chair. She surprises Fry into releasing her hand with a quick peck on the cheek. "Bender, take the helm while I put on a little eyeshadow."

You and the meatbag both protest.

"But you don't need make-up," Fry says.

"What are you talking about? I can't steer the ship," you declare broadly, folding your arms across your chest cavity. "I don't know how."

"Fry, shut up. Bender, of course you can. Unless you want us to fly straight into that dwarf star over there." Her bulgy eye meets yours. You intently study one another, each waiting for the other's bluff to crumble.

"Our hospital bills. There was no ambulance fee. Unless the Professor paid it, which you know he didn't." She motions to the chair she has just vacated. "That and someone accidentally bent the steering wheel."

The handles are indeed warped inward. You drop into the chair she's vacated and extend your arms to take the wheel with a great grumbling fanfare.

"Thanks, Bender." She kisses the top of your head with a clunk. You grumble harder, refusing to look her way.

Way to look out for us puny, pathetic, fragile humans, you imagine she's saying instead. We hail your mighty heroism and tender compassion.

Yeah, why don't you shut the hell up? you respond. You aren't my problem, meatbags. Maybe I'll fly you into the sun, just for kicks. Fillet of human sounds good tonight.

(But that would burn them, so you don't.)

Thanks for reading and reviewing, as well as all the favorites and follows! You know who you are, and I'm sorry if I didn't respond to everybody personally. You guys are a lovely fandom and have been really welcoming, and if I literally ever have free time again I hope I'll be able to write here again. :) Auf wiedersehen!