A Shift of Fates
Chapter Two
WHO? WHAT? WHERE? WHEN?
It was loud. Loud and smelled like a hospital. Was she in a hospital? What happened? Another accident? Oh god, please let everyone be okay.
These were Astrid's first thoughts on her arrival back into consciousness. The moment she opened her eyes to find a panda in a nurses outfit tending to the beeping machines next to her, she remembered everything.
Gunfire, explosions, fear, pain...and a bright blue light pulling her down...And then the fox, trying to help, carrying her away and...a rabbit driving a car? Everything after the blue light was hazy, true, but as Astrid looked at her very much real fuzzy white paws, she knew her memory of those events was, in fact, correct.
"Hun? You okay?" asked the panda-nurse gently. A large paw was resting on her arm in comfort and concern in her brown eyes made Astrid realise she was on the verge of hyperventilating from the sudden stream of traumatic memories that had slammed into her. Astrid didn't even remember sitting up, but when the tears started she didn't even try to stop them, letting her terror and pain out the only way she could.
She didn't notice the bunny in blue enter her room, carrying a cup of coffee and looking concerned as she hurried to Astrid's bedside. She did, however, hear the sound of the paper cup being placed on the small bedside table next to her. Turning Astrid found the rabbit she vaguely remembered from the police cruiser sitting on the seat next to her bed, amethyst eyes wide with worry.
"It's okay, I'll sit with her a while," the bunny smiled at the panda-nurse, who nodded and moved to go before turning back with a stern look.
"Keep the questions to a minimum, the doctor needs to have a look at her before you and your partner start on the poor thing. She's been through enough," despite the warning tone the bunny's smile didn't budge an inch.
"Don't worry, Nurse Bambashoo, Nick and I are perfectly capable of waiting for the all clear from Miss O'Field's doctor before questioning her," the bunny assured Nurse Bambashoo. With another nod the nurse was off, probably to finish her rounds. Though this exchange Astrid had slowly gotten a hold on herself, and while she was sore and tired and wanted desperately wanted to go back to sleep, something was bothering her.
"Miss O'Field?" the bunny called to her softly. That was it. The name. It wasn't hers. Looking at the bunny beside her Astrid wasn't sure what to do, clearly everyone thought she was someone else. Something she would have to rectify as soon as possible, how to break that bag of cats to these people, that was her first dilemma. Her second was finding out where she was, and how she got there. Astrid wasn't even going to try to figure out how she managed to grow fur after the blue light dragged her down. "Miss O'Field, I'm Officer Judy Hopps, ZPD, my partner Nick Wild, he was the one who found you in the warehouse," the bunny said slowly. Astrid frowned, but nodded slowly, uncertain how this was going to go now.
"I'm not," she stated clearly. Better to just get it over with after all.
Nick glowered at the coffee machine as it finally spurted what passed for coffee in this place into his small paper cup. Was it too much to ask to catch a break? He'd already had to head back to his apartment to shower and change out of his blood covered uniform. It had only been once he'd gotten home and caught sight of himself that he realised how much blood that poor bunny had lost as she'd sat curled up against him in the cruiser. He was just glad they'd made it to the hospital in time, that he'd found her before those wolves had. The fact that they hadn't howled was still niggling at his brain, and would be something he was going to have a closer look into once he had the chance. For now, his brain was busy. He dubiously eyed the coffee as he walked down the hospital hallway, the O'Field Case File tucked under his arm so they could review and update it as needed. He also needed something to do while they waited.
The doctors had told them that O'Field probably wouldn't be awake any time soon, but considering their suspicions that someone else was after the bunny the pair had decided to hunker down and stick close to their victim. Naturally they'd called in their status to Clawhauser at dispatch to let Dr. O'Field know they'd found his daughter as soon as they'd arrived at the hospital. The relieved father would be at the hospital any time now, and Nick figured he and Judy would give the guy some time with his daughter before they went over the timeline leading up to her disappearance as her he knew it. They wouldn't know anything else until the bunny woke up after all, might as well cover all their bases and tick all the boxes even after the fact that they'd found the missing bunny. Nick did wonder if it had been, perhaps, a little too easy. Missing Mammal cases were supposed to be hard to crack, after all.
Frowning to himself as he headed back to the bunny's room, Nick took an automatic sip of his hospital-coffee and almost choked as he forced himself to swallow down the swill they were passing for caffeine. Disgusting.
Grumbling to himself he tossed the remaining fraudulent coffee impersonator in the nearest trashcan and kept moving, it really was not his day. He was about to step into the small private room when his sharp hearing caught Carrots talking to someone inside;
"-was the one who found you in the warehouse," Judy was speaking slowly. Carefully. And though he was dubious, Nick curiously poked his head through the door in time to see the small, brown and white bunny frown minutely. He'd though she was an odd looking bunny when he'd seen her photo, in person, well, she made a little more sense. He had no idea how, of course, between the pink tuft of long fur she had messily cultivated on her head, pink ear-tips, and the three earrings in each her long ears, Astrid O'Field was-
"I'm not," and didn't those words bring his thought processes to a screeching halt. From the confused look on Carrots' face he wasn't the only one having trouble understanding that statement.
"You're not what?" Judy asked for clarification. Her ears had dropped down behind her as soon as the bunny they'd assumed was Astrid O'Field had spoken.
"O'Field, that's not my name," Not-O'Field ran her paws over her face as she spoke. She sounded uncomfortable, like she didn't want to make things complicated. She also looked like she wanted to pass back out again, the fact that she was awake at all should have been seen as a miracle.
"Wait, you aren't Astrid O'Field?" Nick understood Judy's disbelief. The bunny before them looked exactly like the photo of O'Field in their case file.
"Yes, I mean, no, I mean-" the bunny sighed and hung her head. "My name is Astrid, yes, but my family name is O'Neill, not O'Field," she explained awkwardly. She was fiddling with the sheet, not meeting Judy's eyes when Nick entered the room properly.
"Okay, so the fact that you look exactly like Astrid O'Field is just a coincidence?" he asked sceptically. Uncertain blue eyes met his again, somehow pinning him in place just as they had back in the alley behind the warehouse.
"Nick," Judy warned him sternly. The fox ignored her, instead opening the file and pulling out the photo of their missing bunny as he strode over to the pair.
"Because you do look exactly like her," he said pointedly as he handed over the photo. The confused bunny stared at the photo for a moment, little pink nose twitching ever-so-slightly as she studied the subject depicted. Admittedly, Nick wasn't sure what he was expecting, but the reaction he got, wasn't even on the list.
"What are you talking about? This doesn't look anything like me, I mean, I'm not a-" Astrid stopped midsentence and stared at her other paw not holding the photo. Her eyes flitted backward and forward between the photo and her paw rapidly as her breathing steadily increased. Nick watched curiously as the bunny closed her eyes and slowly calmed her breathing back down before she opened her eyes again, staring at the wall opposite her bed for a long moment with a small frown. It took Nick a minute to realise she was listening, her ears were up, twitching at every little sound. An odd thing to do right in the middle of such an important conversation.
"Look, obviously this is all just some kind of crazy misunderstanding I'm sure-" Judy began.
"Look, Astrid, I can call you Astrid, right?" Nick interrupted as he moved to sit on the seat beside her. Astrid turned her head slowly to look at him, her small frown back in place, she did however nod minutely so Nick continued before Judy could stop him. "Thing is, Dr. O'Field is going to be arriving here any moment, expecting to see his missing daughter. Apparently you aren't her, and that's just fine, but we've already called it in that Astrid O'Field has been found. Instead we found you, who looks exactly like our missing mammal and share very similar names. Now, either this is actually one big coincidence, and we'll all have a big laugh about it later, or, and this is the more likely scenario, someone doesn't want us to find the real Astrid O'Field and you're either in on it, or just another victim just like she is," Nick gave her a long look after his trademark fast-talking was over. Just waiting to see what she did.
Astrid stared at Nick for a long moment, and Nick could practically feel Judy's irritation with him for railroading her, but he had a feeling about this bunny. She was odd. Like Judy was odd. Blue eyes blinked at him, and then flitted about the room. She was thinking hard.
"Hold on, rewind," she said holding up a paw. Her eyes back on him. "You said Dr. O'Field?" Nick had to wonder why that had been the thing to pull her attention first.
"Dr. O'Field is the father of our missing bunny, Nick and I were assigned her case early this morning," Judy explained patiently.
"What kind of Doctor are we talking here?" Astrid asked curiously. She had the most peculiar look on her face, and Nick was getting worried, they were way off topic now and he'd lost control of the conversation. Odd bunnies. They were the bane of his existence.
"Oh, well, Dr. O'Field is one of Zootopia's leading As-"
"Astrophysicists," Astrid finished with a look of wonder. Judy looked at Nick in bewilderment as a small smile slowly made it's way across Astrid's face. "Her mother doesn't happen to be a travel writer, does she?" she asked after a moment. Nick frowned and opened his case file, glancing down the list of facts known about the victim. There is was, Mrs Chris O'Field, noted Travel Writer, currently abroad- location unknown. Suspicious.
Looking up at the waiting Astrid, he couldn't help but wonder if she'd been hired to impersonate O'Field and it had just gone horribly wrong, or more worryingly, it had gone horribly right. Wait. No. She had denied being O'Field. So what the hell was going on?
"How did you-?"
"Because, that's what my parents do," she told them with a bemused and slightly bewildered smile.
"Wait, what?" Judy cut in.
"Doesn't matter, you, Red, hand that over," she said quickly. She held her hand out for the case file, looking at him expectantly.
"Yeah, like I'm going to just hand over a classified police file because you asked," he told her with obvious sarcasm. He didn't like the way her smile got that sly tilt to it, it was the same one Judy got sometimes and it rarely meant good things were in his future.
"Oh, I see, well then I guess I'm just going to have to keep telling everyone that I'm not Astrid O'Field, and you saved the wrong bunny," she made an awkward face. "Or, I don't know, you could give me that file, and I can cover for you while you try to find the other 'me'," she used air quotes when she reached the word 'me' for effect. Nick wasn't sure what the world was coming to, when did bunnies suddenly get so good at verbally twisting his arm.
"Hold on, just one minute," Judy intervened to Nick's relief. She would sort this out, because he was way off his game. "Why do you want to see the file?" she asked suspiciously.
"Because I want to see if the similarities just end with our names and parents jobs, or if it goes further than that, and if it does well..." Astrid's grimace said it all. Apparently that was all it took for Judy to take the case file from Nick and pull out her note pad and recording carrot pen.
"Okay, but you write down all similarities and differences between the two of you, and give them to us, as well as covering for us," Judy bargained holding the items just out of reach of the bedridden bunny.
"Deal,"
AN: Have some more random from me.
Just before someone decides to mention it, the spelling mistakes in Nick and Judy's last names in Astrid's sections are on purpose.
Slightly longer chapter is slightly longer.
I do feel a little sorry for Nick, now he has two bunnies capable of verbally kicking his ass in his life, don't worry, he'll get his mojo back soon. Pretty sure he just needs a minute or five to catch his breath.
Till next time.
RLK
