Futurama

A Second Chance, part 1
By Enhas

Author's Note: I don't own Futurama or anything to do with it, and this is strictly a non-profit only thing.

Originally known as Love into Death, this has been combined along with Know the Answer into one story. The first part is from Leela's point of view.. these two stories arose from a morbid idea I had after watching Time Keeps on Slipping yet again. I choose to go down paths that the show didn't and never would, and if you don't like that.. leave now.

Despite how angst-ridden most of my stories are, I love Futurama and think it is one of the best television shows ever made. There is a little Fry, Leela and Bender in all of us.

I suppose all of this started when the Professor died. Nobody expected it to happen so soon, even though he was a very old man.. at least he died peacefully, in his sleep. After his funeral service, there was a will reading in which Cubert inherited most of Planet Express and the Professor's possessions. Fry also received a good chunk of Planet Express.. apparently, the Professor had taken a liking to him after all despite his idiocy.

Fry is my world.. seriously. Despite the many times I have rejected him in the past, he always came back stronger and more willing than ever. It wasn't until the Leela: Orphan of the Stars opera that I realized once and for all that he really did love me, and how much of a fool I was for ignoring him for years. We have been married for three years and have the sweetest little girl together, and I love them both more than anything else in the world.

Everything was fine.. but what happened next was just horrible. Now, remember what I just told you about Fry and my family.. none of what I am about to tell you can change any of that. But, after hearing the truth.. a part of me died that day that is never going to come back. I still feel to this day that it was all my fault, no matter what anybody tries to convince me otherwise.

The Professor had also left behind a holo-recording with the request that it be viewed at Planet Express by only myself and Fry. An odd request to be sure, but we followed through with it. Fry joked how it might be some secret space treasure map, and getting all excited and rubbing his hands together. Oh, how I wish it was something that simple!

The first thing that the two of us saw on the viewscreen when the recording started was the Professor and Bender standing side by side. Both looked very distraught, and Bender seemed to have been crying recently.

"First of all, I don't remember doing any of this. I'm gonna have the Professor blank my memories out later. It's better if I don't remember any of it." Bender said.

"Ah, yes.. I'll do that later. Anyway, I plan to outlive you all so if you are watching this.. then I have met with an untimely demise far too soon in my prime!" the Professor said, and we laughed. We wouldn't be laughing for long.

He continued. "Depending on my dementia, I may have well forgotten it all anyway in the future.. but I have a terrible and dark secret to tell you two. It would be best if you never told anybody else what we are about to tell you."

Bender spoke up. "It's a few days after the time skips and Globetrotters. I was out for one of my usual nights on the town.. you know, drinking and more drinking until I ran out of money or stole some more. I came home and went into me and Fry's apartment to offer him something to drink.. he was still pretty depressed over the divorce with Leela. There was no answer when I yelled for him, so I went into his room to see him.. and he was dead!"

I remember gasping in shock. Fry said that Bender had to be wrong, because he wasn't dead and didn't remember being dead.. that was kind of funny now that I think about it.

"He was just lying on his bed, and he actually looked happy! I don't know nothing about human medicine, but for some reason I grabbed him and ran to Planet Express and took him to the Professor."

"He was too late.. Fry had been dead for hours and there was nothing I could do.." The Professor said. "Philip J. Fry died this very night, in the year of 3002. Now, I'll pause for a bit so you can discuss and so I can use the bathroom!"

We did. Fry didn't seem to know what to think. Hell, I didn't know what to think myself.. only that I knew that there was something very wrong. Bender was oddly silent on the video and lowered his head, mourning for Fry.. I guess. When the Professor came back, we stopped talking and continued to watch the rest of the confusing video.

"Now.. I bet you're all thinking that I'm absolutely insane, and I may well be.. but Fry is dead, but also alive. I don't know how to tell you this, Fry.. but you're a clone! The original version of yourself committed suicide!"

I wanted to smash the recording right then and there. This had to be a joke.. Fry would never do something like that to himself! Meanwhile, Fry seemed to be staring at the screen in utter disbelief.

"I downloaded the entire contents of his brain.. which wasn't much, I tell you! I'm going to show you some images from the last day of his life.. and then you'll believe me!" the Professor said, and activated something off-screen. The viewscreen changed to a first-person view of someone walking into an alley towards a rather shady person.

"Do you have anything.. that can ease pain?" a voice asked. Fry. It was Fry!

"I have just the thing, kid.." the other man said, and reached into his coat. He pulled out a jar of something that I've never forgotten about and will never forget.. space-bee honey. "Just remember.. three spoons and you'll be sleepin' like you've never slept before! Six feet under! And no money-back guarantee! Get my drift?"

"Yeah, I suppose I do." Fry said, handing the man some money. The screen then switched to the inside of Robot Arms, where Fry used to live with Bender a few years back. It was still that creepy first-person view, and Fry was holding a spoon filled with the honey close to his mouth.

"Already took two.. one more and that's it. No going back. I've got nothing here anyway, Leela doesn't love me and she never will!" he said to himself, and plunged the last spoon deep into his mouth. He then went to lie down on his bed, and before long his vision started to fade to black. The last word to come from his lips was my own name.. Leela, before he fell asleep, never to wake up again.

"As you can see, Fry did a very stupid thing. But then, I went and worked the hardest I ever have in my entire damn life and cloned him a new body in the span of a few hours! I put all of his memories there except for the space-bee honey and suicide ones, obviously.. and I'm going to be sure to pump him full of anti-depressants for a while so he doesn't do something like this again, because I'm not going through something like this ever again! Bender, take the camera and follow me.."

He did as he was told with no complaint, and followed the Professor to the lounge. On the couch was Fry, snoring away in front of an Elzar rerun with some drool running down the side of his mouth. Elzar could be heard in the background saying something about a Grilled Martian Kangaroo.

"There should be no difference.. he is a perfect copy of Fry in every single way! I wanted to make him smarter but Bender here wanted him to be the same dim goofball that he's always been.. and thus, now you know my terrible secret. Fry, you might be a clone but don't waste your life because I'm not giving you another one!"

"Yeah, you don't know what it was like for me, either.. finding your best friend dead and nothing I could do about it!" Bender said, and stepped in front of the camera. "Listen, meatbag.. Fry. Don't waste your second chance! Whether you're with Leela or not, there's no reason to just go and kill yourself! Now, I need to.."

The recording ended there, because the clone-Fry was starting to wake up on the couch and they didn't want him to know what they were doing. I didn't know what to think, and I burst out crying.

"I'm a copy.. I'm not even the real thing!" Fry cried, and I went over and hugged him. I could see the tears running down his face as well.

"Yes, you are! You're still the man I love, clone or not!" I said. "I fell in love with you, and nothing is going to change that! What the other you did was very stupid and was the coward's way out.. but I can't blame you for that!"

"You heard what he said! If he hadn't drugged me up for a while, I might have went and killed myself again!"

"He did that because he cared about you! Did you see how horrible and tired he looked after what he did.. bringing you back to life!"

We stopped arguing for a while, and Fry wiped my tears away gently with his fingers. "I don't know what to say.. I'm a clone, but I'm still me and I love you. Leela, I never told you this.. but the biggest reason I was depressed wasn't because of the divorce."

This was something new. Fry had told me many things about his life, but was always oddly silent about the whole time skips period. He continued on. "Leela.. I made a message in the stars for you, and that is why you married me the first time. But you never got to see it at all before it was blown up.. and it must have drove the other me to kill myself.. uh, himself, I mean."

For the rest of the day, we spent our time alone just talking about the recording and everything else we could think of. Clone or not, he is the man I fell in love with.. my husband, and the father of my child. I kept reminding him that everything after the time skips was his own life, and for him to stop thinking of himself as a second-rate copy. I had always admired Fry from the moment I met him.. but it wasn't really until I was stung by the space-bee that I realized that I had true, romantic feelings for him. Before that, I only saw him as a friend and nothing more.

I feel guilty, like I should have done more to save him. I should have at least tried to speak to Fry more after the time skips, because I could tell that there was something very wrong with him. He would spend so much time alone and not talk to anyone..

We both agreed to never tell anyone about the contents of the recording, and I destroyed it.

Then, one day.. Fry remembered something quite eerie. When I asked him about it, he didn't answer me and wanted me to follow him. So I did, going through the tubes with him until we stopped at the last place I wanted to be.. a graveyard. Yes, I have a weird fear of graveyards.. but it's not exactly the worst fear someone can have.

Fry was still quiet until he stopped at a small headstone and kneeled down. I kneeled too so I could get a closer look, and nearly fainted once I had made sure that I had just read what I thought I did:

PHILIP J. FRY

1974 - 3002

"I remember me and Bender went through here one night. He showed this to me and laughed, that someone else had the exact same name and birthday as me. Oh man, this is creepy.. this is my own grave! Nobody looks for their own grave, so they must have figured I'd never find it."

"No, it's not your grave.. you still have a long time to live yet if I have anything to say about it!" I said. "Fry.. he is not you! He made a horrible, terrible decision that was mostly my fault! I feel guilty every single day! Not only because he's dead, but because if he didn't die nothing might even be the same now! I might not have you, and our daughter! I feel like I killed a man just so I could have another.. even if it's the same one!"

"Leela, don't blame yourself!" Fry said. "If he wasn't already dead, I'd kill him for what he's doing to you! The Professor is right.. I've been given a second chance and I'm not gonna waste it, Leela! I love you and our daughter and nothing is gonna change it! I won't ever leave you the way he did.. you can count on that!"

He comforted me with a kiss, and we returned home. To this day, nobody knows the true story.. but now you do. I have one final secret, that not even Fry knows.. every single day, I stop in that same graveyard and leave a single white flower on his grave. I always wonder how things would have turned out if everything had went differently.. if I had seen that message in the stars and married him, or even if he hadn't died.

I'll never know. All I can do is remember the troubled young man who tried his hardest to win me over, but failed.. and loved me into death.

The next chapter presents Fry's point of view, and how it affected him. I think being a clone would take quite a bit of getting used to, and weird..