A/N: Yep. I've joined another fandom. Zootopia. Oh man. I saw the movie on Saturday, and I loved it so much I simply HAD to write a one shot in tribute to Judy and Nick's friendship. With, of course, some good ol' hurt/comfort thrown in.
I must be getting close.
Judy's whiskers twitched, and she twisted her paws together, sniffing at the air. The soggy air did indeed hold traces of fox. C'mon Judy, you can do this.
Almost forty-eight hours ago her friend, her best friend, Nick, had been declared missing.
He had disappeared, leaving barely a trace behind. Barely.
The rabbit crouched low to branch she was perched on, uneasy pricklings going up and down her neck. A chill floated through her body, and Judy shivered, rubbing her paws up and down her arms. Mist hovered quietly above the ground, weaving in and out of bushes, around the trunks of trees. The wind gave a soft rustle as it passed between the leaves. It felt like she was being watched. Some sense, some instinct buried deep within her whispered warnings into her long grey ears.
She had taken up the case immediately, spent almost every bit of energy she had picking up leads, scraping together clues. As she had worked on the case, the rabbit cop had begun to realized just how much she depended on Nick in cases like these. Not many of the secrets of Zootopia were hidden from him.
But it was more than that. It had only been two days, but she already missed the fox's snarky comments, his sharp whit, his jokes. The way his tail fluffed out when he was startled. The way his eyes lit up when he discovered a new clue.
Eventually, the trail had led her here, a remote forest on the edge of Zootopia. A place where scarcely any animals dared reside. There were rumors that circulated around this place, whisperings of dark and secret things.
Rumors, Judy reminded herself. Not facts.
Judy bent down to get a closer look at the branch, and inhaled sharply. The bark had been slashed with claw marks. They were different than the ones she and Nick had found in Mr. Big's car all those months ago. Those had been completely random, scattered across the seats and walls. This time, there was simply two sets of four deep claw scrapings, both leading downward. It looked at if someone had been dragged off the branch.
Judy peered down off the branch, her ears tilted forward to pick up any stray sounds. He back legs tensed, ready to jump, then grimaced and straightened back up. With the mist obscuring nearly everything in this forest, there was no telling how far away the ground was.
Suddenly, she stiffened her ears pricking forward and her eyes opening wide. There was the sensation again, that whispering of run, run. Telling herself not to be silly, the rabbit shook her head and scampered back across to branch to the place she had first jumped on. Once she could see the ground, Judy wrapped her paws around the branch and swung down, hanging off the branch like monkeys once did. After a second, she let go, landing straight into a puddle of muck. The cold, dirty water gave a mighty splash, speckling her neat uniform with mud.
Wonderful, Judy thought, gritting her teeth, her ears pinning back slightly. Spirits slightly damped, Judy hurried on.
She needed to find Nick. She need to find him fast. What if those claw marks were from him? What if he'd been attacked, what if he was-
Judy ran faster, her muscles bunching and flexing as she sprang across the damp forest floor, slick with wet leaves. One or twice her feet nearly shot out from under her, but she dared not slow down. She was so close to finding him, she couldn't slow down now.
The rabbit was running so quickly she forgot to look where she was going, and suddenly her back paws tripped over something warm and furry.
For a second Judy was flying through the air, the next she was facedown in the muck. Spitting out a mouthful of mud, Judy raised her head and turned around to see what she had tripped over.
It was Nick. Judy gasped, immediately forgetting her own discomforts, and streaked over to the fox. He was lying on his stomach, his breathing strained, and his teeth clenched slightly. His brilliant red coat was coated with muck and deep scratches ran down the length of his side, including a long cut down his leg.
"C'mon, Nick, wake up," she murmured, turning him over and gently slapping the sides of his face. "C'mon."
The fox groaned and curled up in his uninjured side wrapping his long red tail around himself. "Whaddya want?" he moaned, and cracked an eye open, his voice slurring.
"Nick..." was all Judy could get out, before her voice splintered. Her shoulders slumped and she sat down hard on the soggy forest floor.
"Heh... you bunnies... are so emotion-" Nick suddenly sucked in his breath wrapping his arms tighter around himself.
Judy rubbed her paw up down his arm, shushing him. With her other paw she reached for her radio. "This is Agent Hopps. I've found Nick. We're in Forest Area 36. Over."
Static was the only reply.
Judy let out a slight growl of frustration and tried again. "This is Agent Hopps, come in please!"
Silence.
"Hello? Anyone!?"
No one answered.
Judy drew back her paw and was about to throw the radio into the forest when she throught better of it and hastily returned it to it's pouch.
"You're... you're kind of cute when you're mad, Carrots," Nick murmured, a lopsided grin smeared across his face.
"I'll have you know I take offensive to that, Mr. Wilde," Judy retorted, hastily wrapping a makeshift bandage around the fox's injured leg, and giving him a clean cloth to press against his side. "Come on, let's get you out of here."
She offered him her paw to help, and after a second hesitation he took it, which only resulted in pulling the small rabbit down on top of him.
Blushing furiously, Judy scrambled off his stomach. "I guess you're heavier than you look," she huffed.
"Guess I should lay off the doughnuts, heh," Nick joked, giving one of his signature smirks, but it turned into a wince as he pushed across the ground to try and heave himself up.
"Nick," Judy's voice suddenly grew hard. "What happened to you?"
The fox leaned against a tree and rubbed his forehead. "Well, I-Judy, look out!"
Judy jumped out of the way, landing on all fours in a pile of leaves. A large bull's hooves slammed where she had been seconds before.
"The rabbit and the fox," he growled. "At last."
No time to ask questions. Judy grabbed Nick's paw and pulled them under a fallen branch. With a roar the bull collided with with the branch, causing the whole thing to tremble.
She tucked and rolled down a small bank and pressed up under the outcropping of dirt. Nick followed, slower, clumsier.
"He's the one that kidnapped me. Knocked me out and brought me here. I... m... managed to escape, but... he's been after me for two days, I... don't know why." His voice came out as a strained whisper. Judy glanced over and gasped in horror, placing a hand over her mouth. Her ears flopped back, and her eyes opened wide.
Streaks of scarlet were dripping down and over Nick's paw as he pressed it against his side. The cloth she had given him was already completely red. All the movement must have reopened the wounds.
"You can't run with that," Judy breathed. Nick leaned towards her and opened his mouth to speak, but Judy cut him off. "And I'm not leaving you."
Nick slumped against the dirt, his face drawn, sucking short breaths. The sound was like a knife twisted in her gut. "Shhh, it's going be okay, we're going to be okay," she murmured, grabbing his free paw with her own and squeezing it lightly. "Trust me."
Her face was calm, her voice light, betraying none of the tension that flooded through her body.
"You can't hide from me," the bull called out in a sing-song voice. "I know you're here somewhere. I know what you did to my little sheep. It wasn't very nice. It wasn't very nice at all."
He must be referring to Bellwether, Judy thought, nibbling on her paw. Three months ago Nick and Judy had uncovered a savage plot laid by Zootopia's assistant mayor, a ewe called Bellwether. This bull must have have been tied up with her somehow, and now it seemed he was looking for revenge.
"I'll tear you apart for what you did to her." The bull's voice grew deeper, then light again. "Come out little bunny."
Judy shrank back, digging her heels into the dirt in an effort to press herself as flat as she could against the dirt wall. Think, Judy think! The small rabbit yelled in her mind. What to do, what to do, what to do?!
She cast her eyes wildly around, looking for something, anything. Then she saw it. She knew where they were. She knew what to do.
"Nick," she whispered, looking straight into the fox's bright green eyes. "Do you trust me?"
No hesitation. "Yes."
"When I give the signal, we're going to take off as fast as we can. Don't stop running, no matter what."
The fox nodded, one paw still wrapped tightly around his side. Judy gently took the other in her hand.
"I know you're here somewhere..." the bull's voice grew louder, then softer.
"Now."
Judy shot out from under the bank, pulling Nick with her. Sweat poured down the fox's face and high pitched whines of agony escaped his lips, as his leg nearly gave out on him.
"Keep going, Nick! You can do this," Judy yelled, her heart squeezing at the sound of her friend's pain.
Behind them the bull roared, like the sound of the loudest tractor. It rattled through Judy's sensitive ears, shaking her to the core, but she didn't dare stop running.
Then the ground beneath her disappeared. She let herself fall, still holding on tightly to Nick's paw, her heart ready to leap out of her chest.
Before she could scream, they hit the water. This time she had been too disoriented to do a proper dive, and smacked into the surface of the water. The impact nearly drove the breath from her lungs. She came up gasping, calling out for Nick.
A glimpse of red entered her vision, and Judy desperately swam towards it, her whole body shaking from fear and cold. Within seconds she caught hold of the unconscious fox, and slowly began dragging him along, grateful to whoever had decided that things in water would be much lighter than they were on land.
It was only when the police force had been notified, and Nick had been hastily patched up, did Judy all allow herself to break down and cry, holding Nick close to her, holding him as if she would never let go.
A/N: Don't forget to leave a review on the way out. I always love reading them! :)
