Taking a super quick break from my new multi-chapter fic "The Dead Waltz" (it's the sequel to "The Redemption of Gideon Grey," if you're into that sort of thing, lol) to write yet another one-shot that kinda fits chronologically with the other one-shots I've done for Zootopia! This one fits right after "We've Got Everything," which I uploaded about… 16 months ago or so?
(Speaking of, if you're looking for all of them in order, plz check out my page [YFWE] on ArchiveOfOurOwn. Luv that AO3.)
Hope ya dig!
If the Creek Don't Rise
YFWE
He could not find Judy.
And that was weird, even in a place like her childhood home. Though the burrow was full of rabbits, many of whom bore a striking resemblance to the bunny he knew best (Well, of course, Nick thought, they're siblings, cousins at least), she was usually just a step ahead, maybe a skip or a jump away. She was easy enough to track, anyway. One of his many skills.
But Nick Wilde had been stalking the halls of the Hopps homestead for about five minutes, and Judy Hopps was nowhere to be found.
Nope, not normal. When she awoke at home before he did, he usually heard her – or at least felt it, felt her head rising from the pillow of their shared bed, which in turn stirred him awake if he was not already. And even when he neither felt nor heard her, she saw to it that he woke up anyway, even on days when he did not have a shift at work.
Instead, the fox had awoken to an unfamiliar scene: the bedroom the two of them shared while in Bunnyburrow, replete with most of Judy's childhood possessions, trinkets and treasures – but without one important addition, the rabbit herself.
"Where'd ya see her last?" Amos Hopps, one of Judy's older siblings by about a decade, asked with a shrug as he poured a bushel of clothes out of one clothes hamper into another, seemingly on his way to the laundry chute. Nick had finally decided to stop roaming the house with an ambiguous purpose, opting to ask around directly if anyone had seen the bunny. Someone had to have, right?
"I dunno, last night?" answered Nick querulously.
"Last night? Odd. Didn't I pass y'all on the way to bed?"
Nick shook his head. "No, no, that's what I mean. Last night when we went to bed. As in, she was gone when I woke up."
"Aw. Well, why didn't ya say so?"
"I kinda di—oh, whatever. You haven't seen her, though?"
"Haven't. Sorry, Nick. Maybe try the kitchen? She's usually there first in the morning if the creek don't rise."
Nick proceeded to follow his nose to the kitchen, where he found but one solitary rabbit — and it was not Judy.
"Oh, good morning, Nick!" called Bonnie Hopps, who cradled a sack of potatoes between her paws, lugging them with a labored grunt toward a steaming pot full of water. "Sorry, breakfast's running a little late this morning."
"That's all right, Mrs. H., I didn't come down here to complain," the fox said, adding a toothy smile for good measure. "This is way earlier than we used to eat growing up, anyway."
Bonnie plopped a few potatoes into the pot and carefully placed the others on the floor behind the stove so as to not knock the whole sack over. "That's what happens when you've got a hundred-something mouths to feed, I guess, versus just a handful."
"I hear that. Would you like some help?"
"Oh! Well, if you don't mind…"
Nick did not; though the question of Judy's whereabouts still troubled him, his eagerness to endear himself to the rabbit's family was a stronger emotion entirely. Plus, how long could it take?
"There's a ladle over in the cupboard behind you," Bonnie said, jerking her head toward the row of cupboards behind Nick. "Middle one. Mind bringing it over?"
He was not sure which cupboard she was referring to, but Nick knew what a ladle was, at least, so he ventured into what he believed was the middle drawer and began sifting through its contents.
"Gotta admit," he spoke, a little louder so the rabbit would hear him over the sound of sizzling food, "thought I'd find Judy down here. Amos said she's usually down here in the morning."
"She does usually help out a little bit, but I try to shoo her away nowadays."
"Aw, she can't be that bad a cook…" Nick trailed off, thinking about their dinners together and the prevailing quality – which, he had decided, was quite good.
"Has nothing to do with her ability!" Bonnie exclaimed. "She just isn't home much these days, and I'd rather not have her spending time slaving away in our kitchen when she could be spending time with her family, know what I mean? I'm guessing she's with Stu this morning. Hoping, at least. He likes the company."
"I guess that makes sense. Here's your ladle, by the way."
"Oh! Yes. Thanks, Nicholas. There're some onions in the bottom drawer of the fridge – no, not that fridge, yeah, yes, that one. You know how to chop them, right?"
"Mrs. Hopps, are you trying to make me cry?" Nick asked, opening the correct fridge and bending low to the ground, eventually moving onto his knees so he could access the necessary drawer.
"Take one for the team," said Bonnie with a laugh. "I've already done enough of it with all my babies home this holiday season. Have a feeling the waterworks aren't over, either."
"Oh?" The fox pulled out three onions from the drawer and carried them to an island table on which a cutting board and a knife were already out and ready, plopping all three vegetables onto the board and beginning to slice.
Bonnie sighed, and Nick spied a smile on her face out of the corner of his eye in a brief moment in between dicing up the onions.
"I always cry on New Year's," she said. "If the creek don't rise, of course, and sometimes when it does."
Nick's ears pricked at a phrase foreign to him he was hearing for the second time that morning. He asked Bonnie what it meant, but his question coincided with the din of frying potatoes quite suddenly increasing to a point where it was impossible to hear either of their voices. Nick's onions, when added shortly thereafter to the pots, only exacerbated matters, and by the time normalcy had been reached, he had forgotten the question entirely.
By the time he had finally pulled himself away from the kitchen (and snagged his own breakfast before the morning rush), Nick, having checked his cellphone for the time, realized it was half past 9, and a worrywart of a voice began to creep into the back of his mind, questioning whether or not everything was OK. It just was not like her to up and disappear.
Luckily, Stu Hopps was far more helpful.
Not that it changed much.
"Did she say why she needed to head into town?" Nick asked, trying to mask his impatience.
Stu shrugged, taking a puff of a lit cigar that dangled from his mouth like a lithe trapeze artist while he sat alone in the front living room of the house, right off the dining room. "Sometimes ya just go into town around here, Nick. Break up the boring, so to speak."
"Literally never heard anyone use that phrase."
"That's 'cause I made it up," said Stu, suddenly puffing out his chest as though inventing a phrase with admittedly awkward diction was something to gloat about. "Means doing something other than the same old, same old. Shoot, I used to pick Bonnie up while we were dating on the way into town some days, when we were both living even farther out from downtown than we are now. Spent an hour or two on Main Street, got a soda or two, enjoyed not being on the farm for once." He breathed in deeply suddenly and then exhaled. "Good times. Miss 'em."
"Nah, I get it," Nick said with a nod, taking a seat on the couch next to the rabbit and resting his elbows upon his knee, chin resting on his forepaws. "We just went to the mall where I come from."
Stu fished out another cigar and offered it to the fox, who accepted it.
"No malls around here for a while," the rabbit said while passing along a lighter. "In fact, I don't know if Judy'd ever been to one until we went to a family reunion way past East Meadow when she was about 12 or so."
"Ah. Prime mall age." Nick lit his cigar.
"Y'know, now that I think about it, don't think we could pull her away from the place. Think she talked up one of the security guards too, since they looked kinda like police 'n' all."
"Judy Hopps? Never."
The rabbit chuckled softly, taking back the lighter and stowing it in an ornate wood side table next to his rocking chair that seemed to be a family heirloom, judging by its wear-and-tear. "Suppose it worked out. Even though a mall cop's a generally safer profession, I hear…"
"Clearly you've never shown up to one on a Black Friday," interjected Nick.
"...she's done a lot to make us proud these last few years, and I wouldn't trade that for nothing."
"I'd clink my glass against yours if we were drinking beers and not smoking something that's on fire."
They sat there for a few minutes – or maybe it was just a minute or so; Nick could never quite gauge time when silence was involved – with little more but the occasional passing bunny, young or old, and the dull static of the television that was flipped on in front of them but was barely audible, playing reruns of an old show, the name of which Nick had long forgotten.
He resolved to head back into the fray once he had smoked the whole cigar; even if Judy was in town rather than somewhere on the Hopps farmstead, something in him wanted to be there when she returned, longed to see those violet eyes step out of whichever truck she and her siblings had taken to and from Bunnyburrow, catch a glimpse of him, and maybe smile.
Goodness, he had become such a hopeless romantic. Stupid rabbits. Stupid farm.
As though he had sensed Nick's internal dialogue, Stu broke the silence: "If the creek don't rise, I'll bet she'll be back in a half hour or so, maybe 20 minutes."
"All right, I keep hearing that phrase. What's it mean?" Nick was glad to be in a position where his question would actually be heard this time.
"You mean you don't usually?"
"No. And this isn't one of your made-up things again, is it?"
Glancing thoughtfully at the ceiling, paw scratching at his chin, Stu shook his head. "Nah. Just a thing we say out here sometimes, I suppose. It's like… gods willing, if you believe in one, or maybe… if all goes well."
"Delightfully bucolic, Mr. H."
"Someone's gotta do it."
The end of his cigar approaching, Nick readied himself to leave, though not before landing one final question to the head of the Hopps household.
"Why the cigars, anyway? You told me the other night they were just for special occasions and Mrs. H.'d give you a kick if you started lighting up every day again."
"Oh…" the rabbit trailed off, his own cigar's formerly billowing puffs of smoke down to a small trickle. "Dunno. Just have a good feeling about today, I guess."
Nick wished he could feel the same way. Not that he was having a bad day in any sense of the former word – not by a long shot. He usually considered himself cool, calm, collected in the face of most things, unless they were trying to kill or harm him, and he and Judy's trip back to Bunnyburrow should not have damaged that psyche in any which way.
But as he descended the steps of the back door of the house, deciding he would sit for a spell outside to breathe in some fresh country air after doing a number on his lungs the previous 10 minutes or so, he realized an easygoing disposition was not coming as easily to him as it normally might, and he had an idea of why that was – it revolved around a very specific question he meant to ask Judy, and the time he had to do so was dwindling with each passing hour.
Before he could dwell upon the thought any further, he heard the sound of slamming car doors in the driveway that shook him from his reverie.
He barely realized he was moving by the time he was around the corner of the house, stuffing his paws into his pockets and prepping a congenial smile.
And yet, once again…
"She wasn't with us."
Nick knew Jill, one of Judy's siblings closer in age to the rabbit, had not said this in a pointed manner, but the fox could not help but take it as such, the aggravation boiling and teeming beneath his fur.
"Oh! Well, your dad said she was with you, that's all," the fox said, following a step or two behind Jill and a few of Judy's other siblings as they returned from downtown Bunnyburrow with nondescript boxes in their arms, some of which seemed far more heavy than others.
"Yeah, well, Dad sees a lot of things, and he's got a couple hundred of us to keep track of." Jill paused and put down a box, proceeding to massage her arm before bending over to pick it back up. Nick briefly got a look at what might have been inside, but all he could see was plenty of what looked like pie, maybe cake.
Nick frowned, frozen on the spot once he realized Jill was not joking, watching the handful of rabbits lug the boxes onto the front porch.
"Listen, she's 'round here somewhere; it's a big place," called Jill over her shoulder. "If the cr—"
"Creek don't rise, yeah, yep, got it."
And then it hit him.
It was cold farther out from the house, where the warm air from the kitchen or the fires burning to stave off the newly winter weather could not quite reach. Nick had little reason to even be out that far during their stay up to that point, generally hanging out in the main house or in a car or truck on the way to someone else's place. He was not shivering per se; it was still early in winter and somewhat mild as far as holiday seasons went. But he did figure a jacket would not have been a poor garment to have grabbed before he came outside.
As he walked, Nick scanned the even farmland that surrounded the homestead, flat as far as the eye could see even as the ground came into contact with other barns and homes. Every other time he had come to Bunnyburrow with Judy, it had been in the midst of some type of harvest season – and even though he knew the Hoppses still did some cultivating in the colder months, the barren, clumped-together dirt that stretched in the distance was a telltale sign that little was being done then and there.
The immediate grounds of the farmstead, however, were a sight to behold, with their frosty grass, proudly displayed lights in various shapes and sizes welcoming the holiday season, and festive wood-based décor such as wreathes, which dotted every flat side of a building in sight and even swayed from a few tree branches that could shoulder the weight. All it needed was a brightly lit shack or shed out of which some mammal was handing out cider or hot cocoa and it would be holiday postcard-worthy, Nick thought with a smile.
The creek out behind the Hopps homestead was little more than a tiny stream, but it was one through which water flowed all hours of the day, at least since Nick had been visiting the place. Stu had once told the fox as the patrolled the grounds one fall afternoon, taking in the smells and sights of a fruitful autumn, that it was that stream that helped fortify and enrich the farmland the family owned, even when rainfall was at a premium. Stu could not remember its current running dry for at least two decades; it came from a spring somewhere far away, he said, and eventually emptied into a bay that itself flowed into a river passing by Zootopia.
It was flowing then, too, despite the cold weather that might have eventually turned it into ice if the temperature dropped enough. A sweet sound emitted from it, an ambience not unlike those odd 10-track albums of nothing but babbling brooks and other assorted nature sounds Nick occasionally saw at greeting card stores. He was not sure who would buy one of those, though he had to admit the noise was relaxing enough.
As he neared the stream, it occurred to him that the nearby barn's front door was slightly ajar – a sight he figured was probably uncommon, given the weather. He had half a mind to close it, until he beheld the light coming from within the barn, an illumination that shone through even the dirty, dusty windows that flanked the door.
She was inside. He did not know how it had taken him so long to make it to the barn – that barn, this barn, of course. Had he thought through things with even the slightest comprehension that morning when he first awoke to find her missing, he would have tried there first.
"Took ya long enough," were her only words at first.
"Oh, you know you love me," was all he could sputter back.
Judy Hopps wore a blue sweater Nick had nearly forgotten she owned. He accrued it during one of their first visits together to Bunnyburrow, one long weekend when the pair had ventured to a local farmer's market. Together, they had bought so many blueberries and blueberry-related delicacies from one stand that that the spend-$30-and-get-a-something-or-other gift the owners were offering was theirs, in this case a sweater knitted by the farm's owner's mother-in-law.
He had rarely seen her wear it since – in fact, he was almost certain she had left it – accidentally or otherwise – in her old room their last trip home. But he understood its deeper significance anyway, remembered that night when they brought it home, along with their locally sourced goods, and –
"You remember this place, right?" she asked.
"How could I not?" he answered.
He still remembered it like it was yesterday.
"With a little more light this time," he admitted, walking around the perimeter of the barn's interior much like he was sure he was dancing around the inevitability of what was to come. "Where'd you get all the lights, Fluff? Steal 'em?"
Judy stood from the hay bale on which she had been seated, motioning toward a loft above her. "We keep all the lights for the holidays in here," she explained. "Dad didn't put them all out this year. Thought I'd give them their chance to shine."
"Well, it's appreciated after what happened the last time we were in here."
"Psh. Your knees healed."
"Yeah, but my pride –"
"Shh." She beckoned him toward her with a paw. "Come here."
Nick's mind raced over the memory anyway as he obliged – that night, when they watched the stars by the barn, talked about life, themselves, the other, both apart and as one. The night where the levy broke, where everything changed, when lips met for the first time under a dim hanging lamp, where an errant bucket caused a trip that sent them falling, laughing with glee, into each other's arms while they braced for impact.
They embraced again among the brilliant light of the barn's interior, the whites, reds, blues and greens warming Nick's fur alongside the coziness of Judy's body. He had to admit it; the sweater was not the comeliest thing, but it sure seemed comfy.
"This was all planned, wasn't it?" Nick asked with a wink when he caught Judy's eye again.
"Hm?"
"Oh, come on. Your folks, your siblings, the line about the creek…"
Judy beamed up at him, showing a little teeth – that silly, slightly buck-toothed grin she was self-conscious about, even though he adored it all the same.
"Had to have a backup plan if you didn't think to come out here. What's this about the creek, though?"
"Oh, I would've figured it out eventually. Just needed to stare outside for a second."
He paused, eyes studying the worn wood of the barn's walls behind the bales of hay while he stood lost in thought for a few moments.
"And I think the creek thing was their own choreographed way to point me out here," he added.
"Were they telling you to go hang out by the creek? That's dumb. It's so cold right now!"
"No, but I think I get it a little bit now. The line, I mean. 'If the creek don't rise.'"
"Oh!" Judy nodded, staring up at Nick with an amused expression. "My grandmother used to say it all the time. It's like –"
Nick held out a paw to shush the bunny. "Your dad already gave me the rundown," he said, grinning. "But it's funny, because I'm not sure if I quite agree with it."
"How so?" Judy cocked her head.
"Well, because even if the creek rises – or you know, something bad happens, whatever they're getting at here – and it directly affects us, you and I," he pointed a paw between them, "it wouldn't matter, because I'd want to fight for us. Come hell or high water."
"That's another Grandma phrase," added Judy.
"Oh, good. I'll have to talk to her about it when I finally meet her."
Judy shot him an impish, knowing smile. "Have a feeling you're going to very soon after you ask me what you're gonna ask me."
Nick barked a laugh and closed his eyes, reveling in the moment.
"Ask you what? I couldn't possibly know what you mean."
"Oh, don't play dumb, dumb fox."
"Excuse me, but you don't even know if I have anything."
"Uh, yeah, I do. I saw the box in your dresser."
"Why were you going through my dresser, dearest Carrots?"
"Because you forget to close the top drawer most of the time, dearest Nicholas."
"You make a valid point, ever-dearest Carrots."
Judy wrinkled her nose, stealing a glance out the nearby window toward the house. "But if this isn't the place or time… I get it."
"You kidding?" The ring was in his paw before the rabbit had even noticed Nick's sleight of paw, though he kept his paw enclosed around it; she had not yet laid eyes on it. "This is exactly where I wanted to do it."
"Oh! Great minds, then."
"Great minds indeed."
His left paw took her right, the other still grasping the ring.
"So what you're saying is…" he started, his paw gently massaging hers as he held it, "I should ask you to stick with me the rest of our waking lives, through thick and thin, no matter what creeks or rivers or whatever metaphorical or literal body of water stands in our way. That you want the entire ZPD to finally cash in their bets on how long it took for us to get hitched already –"
"How many of them are we going to invite?" she interjected.
"Probably every single one of them, because that is a party worth having. An expensive one, but a party nonetheless. Anyway…"
Nick blinked, pausing mid-thought.
"Funny," he remarked after a few skipped beats. "You won't believe me, but I actually had a whole rest of a speech planned." He glanced down at the bunny's expectant gaze. "But now, darnit, Fluff, all I can think about is how much I want to put this darn ring on your finger."
He swore he could hear her foot tapping against the floorboards.
"I take it you don't want me to wait any longer," he said.
Judy nodded slowly. "It's all I've wanted since we got home."
"Then Carro—I mean," he stopped himself and winked, a chuckle escaping his throat when he saw her smile fondly at the nickname, "Judith Laverne Hopps." He opened his right paw and fell to one knee, his gaze meeting hers before her own fell to the jewel in front of her. "Will you marry me?"
"Of course I will."
END