Prologue - Quenched Stars
A/N:
So this is it, the beginning of my various genres Zootopia fanfiction called A Second Chance, part one: Twilight. And no, it doesn't have anything with vampires. Thought I could state that since even my first association to that title reminds of famous book and movie series XD. It has two parts and possibly third (depending on the interest of readers, but that thing shall be discussed at its time), all posted as separate stories. At first, there was supposed to be just one part but I decided to split it in three for they are so different in genre. I'm going to state that now and every time: I would love to hear your opinion in comments, and for all concerns, confusions, misunderstandings, errors that can't be forgiven, feel free to PM me.
Warning: Major OC involvement.
Other notes: This is the second version of Prologue; the first one can be found on my Deviantart page (username Indigo 222). Let's say that the original contains a better explanation of the second part of this chapter, while the first part is nonexistent.
Disclaimer: I do not own Zootopia or any concepts related to it: old and new, everything presented here is for entertainment purpose only and I don't claim it as my own. What I do claim are word constructions down there and some of OCs who are yet to be introduced.
Alright, let's start.
"And then he said, 'if you can't lift the weasel, you better not...'"
The only thing Judy Hopps could do at that was smile.
Staring absently with her head turned to the right towards her partner, she was slowly giving up on all her efforts to focus on his story, happenings from the day before that she had missed, apparently. Her head was moving up and down, following vivid gesticulations of the all too familiar fox beside her, his paws in the air. He laughed and then continued to talk. But none of his words made it to her anymore.
Paws on the steering wheel of the (not so much) new ford she and her partner had earned throughout their years-long service at the ZPD, she was waiting before the crossroad for the green light, and for that time simply zoned out. She felt peaceful. And so beautiful. Starlight-less yet bright night due to city's wonderful illumination, fresh and cozy breeze coming from a half-opened window, no noise, no crowd, even mammals outside - the clock had been ticking small hours of the night after all. A regular night patrol, just the two of them.
And every once in a while, times like these served best Judy to pause the world around herself and simply admire. To lean back, draw a deep breath, smile and remind herself of how happy she was. Of things that made her happy, she didn't mean just police work. Sure, she loved her job, and still enjoyed it like when she first joined the force (though she didn't like this new tension in the city, something new, something she couldn't even put a finger at, let alone do something about it), but for now, she put that aside. She put it aside and focused instead on something else, something that, as she realized, made her a little bit more selfish than before.
Because for all her life, ever since she was just a child, she had only wanted to make the world a better place. She had done everything to accomplish that goal, it was that determination that led her to penetrate through life: to join the academy, train, to become first ever bunny police officer, and that fact spoke for itself. But now, she knew, there was something that expanded her view a bit. Something that made her try to do something to make her own little world a better place. Or was it someone?
"...Carrots, you listening?"
Because, falling in love and later marrying Nick was the best thing that happened in her life. That, and something else...
"Wha- Yes, of course!" It was the first thing that came to her mind and out her mouth once she snapped back to reality, but then her eyes met another pair of quite unamused greens under raised eyebrows and she understood Nick wasn't buying it even for a moment. She drew a deep breath.
"No, sorry, lost in thoughts."
"Oh, well, that's okay sweetheart," he replied in an exaggeratingly light and cheerful tone. "If I'm not worth your attention, I might just turn around and shut up." And he did exactly that: turned his body as much as he could away from her, arms crossed over his chest.
For a brief moment, Judy wished to slap her face in annoyance and shout back something like: "You're its center alone", but knowing how doubtful he would be of that - she would need to explain herself and even end up mocked for being so sentimental - she chose a different approach.
"Nick, you have my attention."
"Now obviously," his words followed by his head moving even further away from her.
Drama queen, she thought for herself as she fought the urge to roll her eyes up. But even though, she thought, he was only playing, he was playing to be hurt, and that emotion could have been half-true. Had she really neglected him these days, she wondered. Either way, she needed to do something.
So she leaned over to the passenger's seat and enveloped her arms over said passenger, as finely as the distance between seats and the seat-belt were allowing her to.
"Nick, sorry... You know I love you"
Looking up, she could basically see the moment her words were comprehended, as one of his ears twitched and, followed by the other, started to fall back as his head moved - clearest of signs saying things were getting a bit emotional. He put his paw on her back, that way accepting her awkward waist-hug.
"I love you too..."
Hearing that she smiled in his shirt and raised her eyes up to look at his face once again. Only to see him smiling down at her too. She pressed him tighter.
"Ouch, Carrots," he cried out, "I think we're blocking the traffic now."
She rather would not let go of him, not yet, but eventually, she pulled away and straightened in her seat. Even though she knew there was no traffic that could be blocked at 3 AM. For that witty remark of his, she only shot him a half-aggravated look before glancing back at the traffic light. It was red again. Wondering how many times it had changed since they stopped, she waited a few moments more for it to turn green, before stepping on the gas and pulling into the intersection.
For three, four minutes they continued to drive in silence. It must have been a green-wave, the patrol continued smoothly, without more stops. As if. It was one of the next intersections that changed it completely.
There, it all played out in the matter of fractions of a second. To do something she couldn't, even though her peripheral sight and good, rabbit-like reflexes were working fine as always, still, they weren't enough to react, only to help her catch sight. Catch sight of a headlight-less vehicle coming at great speed from their right. It was just a blur, during which she managed to let out a mere cry of warning to her partner who was first to face the irrefutable danger before a loud, clanging sound pierced her ears and from then on, everything was dark and muted.
When she opened her sore eyelids, she failed to recognize her surroundings. Fighting the sharp pain that welcomed her body and the buzzing in her head, she tried to make sense of what had happened. She saw a little in the darkness, but the acrid smell of kerosene reached her nose, and she remembered. In her mind, the memory emerged: the driving, the deadly fear she fell unconscious with, what stirred another fear that started to form in the pit of her gut, one that pained in a different way.
Nick!
She quickly turned to her right, only to see her fox lying seemingly unconscious. She unbuckled her seatbelt and hurried towards him. She thanked God, he was breathing.
"Nick, please look at me. If you're with me, do that for me," she said in a cracky voice, trying not to fall under the emotion of seeing him like that, bleeding, bruised, captivated by the crushed steel. She got no response.
Help!
Carried with that thought, she moved to the front of the vehicle for the radio speaker so suddenly she earned a sting of pain that ran through her torso. The radio was dead. Cellphones, couldn't reach for them. There must have been someone. Yet the car who initiated the accident was nowhere to be seen, as well as the people driving it, only the dent on the steel. Someone! Anyone...
"Help!" But the only response was silence and some lights in the distance down the road.
"Nick please," she went back to him, eventually, convincing herself someone must have noticed or heard anything. She unbuckled his seatbelt and, knowing how risky every move of his body would be, only lowered his seat to give him some space. "Please, do something, show me you're not..." her own voice betrayed her.
And there that was, a grunt. One and only grunt that came from his throat, and it was enough to give her all her lust for life back. She took his paw.
"Hold on, Nick, you need to... the help will be here soon, just stay with me, stay... please"
The paw she was holding, she felt a gentle squeeze on it. She looked at him and he was, his half-lidded eyes were looking down at her. But instead of joy, why did his gaze bring her such unfathomable sadness? The longer she looked, the more her eyes welled up.
He parted his muzzle and she could hear forming of words. But she did not want him to say anything, scared of what she might hear. She gently leaned her head to his shoulder and laid beside him. The shoulder always there for her to cry on. So warm.
"Judy..."
"No, don't speak," she said, but the next moments of silence were like breaking her, "We can't, not now, we can't leave. You know that!" sobbing "Not now, not when..."
"Live."
Another squeeze on her paw, one that made her words die out in her throat, before his paw relaxed and his head touched hers. At that moment, she knew that it was the last one. That it was over. Feeling as if something had ruptured in her heart, all that was left was deaf pain that dried tears from her eyes.
Slowly, she put her head back on his body, closed her eyes over the heart that wasn't beating anymore and enveloped his body with her arms, letting their blood mix once again. Over the pain that was taking her consciousness away, she seemed to hear voices.
"No good. We were early." the voice of a wild boar disturbed the night as one of his hoofs caressed the vehicle.
"No way. There is no way we could have known they'd stay at that crossroads for so damn long. I'd still call it a good job," rhino's reply came.
"Aww, look 't 'em. If they weren't fox and a bunny you could actually say they are cute together."
"Be serious. You think it's safe to call the ambulance now?"
"Probably. Wait. You think she can make it?"
The ambulance called in next minutes, through the empty streets at night needed around six minutes to show up on the place of the reported accident. When the paramedics arrived and uncovered the two mammals in the crushed vehicle, all they could do was share sad looks at the moving sight. They knew they would save no one that night.
-Check out the bottom for notes-
When I was a kid, I thought Zootopia was that perfect place,
A street in grey, nightfall,
Where everyone got along,
A mass of mammals,
And everyone could be anything
Zootopia's Downtown, 32 years later
His head boiled, and his lungs started aching. His steps slowed down unconsciously but the must of going faster remained, and his eyes were still fixed to a mammal in front of him. He watched but the petite figure would disappear behind a large number of animals bigger than it, putting more and more distance at the same time. Which was frustrating. Angering. Desperate.
"Stop in tracks!"
And the young mammal could be seen threading his way through the busy street, causing some outcries and getting quite a few dark looks from the mammals pushed aside. But the figure would not mind them. The figure with grey, wolflike face with fierce eyes, clearly one in distress continued going through the mass that seemed to separate for him, on the edge of running. He would put his paws in the pockets of his long coat that not differed much from his fur, like searching for something, and then take them out empty, as if changing his mind.
It was his mind that was giving him trouble at that moment, and all he was able to do about it was stay by the side and scream inside himself, or feel like screaming at last: "Not the time!" But as much as he suppressed it, tried to think about something else, to come up with a way to cut the way of his aim short or at least reduce the distance between them, they were still there.
The things he knew but didn't think of.
Things he didn't think of, but existed nonetheless.
A long time had passed without the former heroes of Zootopia, long time since the accident that took lives of both the fox and the bunny. Long time since their burial, for as everything they did during their lives while they had known each other, they were doing together. And they were buried along with all the honors worth citizens who not only served the city faithfully for years as police officers, but also with words of praise for that one time they helped mend the broken city. Many teary eyes, picked flowers, speeches, of which so many genuine.
Funny thing, as if the world they knew died with them.
The headlights of the light, humming cars blinded the young mammal on the tracks. Their horn's tooting filled the air. Yet he saw the only thing his eyes wanted to see: the shadow that was already on another side of the road. Stupid. He had been stupid enough to give himself away and now, he knew, he was suffering the consequences. If only he could end this fastly...
When they once had seen how easy it had been to turn animals against one another the way Bellwether did with predator and prey, some went her steps. And fear, fear always worked, so they created fear, insecurity, spread heat among mammals. Sometimes they attacked logic, sometimes hearts.
The stream of mammals moved on, he was the one to stop dead in tracks once he realized he did not see anyone in front of him no more. His mind racing, he had made attempts to recollect himself, before breaking into a run. Still nothing. Went back. Turned to the left, right. Somewhere at that time noticed the overpass he was on. With undying a sense of dread and panic, he rushed to lean over its banister and to take a look at the road down. His lungs let out air he was not aware he had been holding, from relief.
He climbed down to the road below using stairs less and gravity more...
"Is there a real reason for our fear of predators, could that be something even thousands of years couldn't mend?" asked ones
"What if it's in their nature to fear us. Is it really a good idea to live together, especially considering all these "new proves" in every headline?" asked the others. But those behind these questions, they were never contented. Not with just having "biological enemies" against one another: they went on and on so that, one day it had come to that an antelope and a zebra failed to see similarities between them.
He had lost him... Again.
But unlike before, in the city center, now he had been in a quieter, housing part of Downtown. As panic flooded through him once again, he clenched his fists in his pockets and tried to force himself to think. Although he would not admit that even to himself, his conversance with the target was very poor. All he could possibly think of was that the mammal seemed to be on the move all this time. And was trying to get rid of him. The last time rather successfully. If only he did not choose to go right when he was made believe he should go left, now he would not be standing here with faintest of smells that told him he was on a good way.
He looked at the houses in line by the road. An explanation for all those prolongations, all those twists and turns he had had to come through to arrive here. He was being led to somewhere important. Someplace that shouldn't have been discovered.
Home, he thought before raising his head in the air, searching for a smell that would help him choose the right doorway.
In the end, the mammal metropolis went on, the way it could. Mammals continued living together but instead of previously glorified harmony, they started to shrink from one another. All because once, 40 years ago, their lives were not impacted so deeply.
Not this time.
A/N (inserted later on)
If you have read the first part, I wouldn't be any surprised if you have some, say, unfriendly opinions about me. I know I would have if I was to read something like this some time ago (I know I cried while writing). So now I've come to apologize for any possible emotional disturbance I may have caused, because now I feel kinda bad about it.
And no, I'm not a monster, and yes, I even love Nick and Judy as much as you do. And I do have a good reason for what I did. And I hope that the rest of the story would be worth it :)