Traffic was thin at seven in the morning on a Sunday, and Nick breezed through intersection after intersection, with only the lights to hold him back. Nick was perpetually methodical about following traffic laws, and even if he saw a yellow light he could catch, he never chased it. Foxes weren't held in high regard by the city's police force, and despite his clean appearance and the plethora of proof regarding his motives in his laptop bag, he never ran the risk. Gambling was a habit a long time gone, and he reasoned that it was best to not gamble with one's own pelt. The empty streets appeared almost deceptive to him as he swerved into the office parking lot. The entire paved rectangle, intersected and divided with carefully-laid white lines, had been covered in shade. The building in which he worked was new, as was the entire district; ongoing efforts at commercial and residential expansion undertaken by the Zootopia City Council created patches of modernity in a city consumed by age and tradition. This gave it a mixed appearance from the windows of the apartment. At one end, the low brick houses of the old district stood in stark juxtaposition to the curving, tapering spires of high business, where power and money meant everything. Behind those panes, always glowing in the morning light, as the sun rose from behind North Burrow, lay a world wholly foreign to him, a grounded fox with no ambitions towards amassing (in his opinion) obscene amounts of wealth.
Modesty was key, and Nick never fully comprehended the need to arm oneself defensively towards life with troves of luxurious furniture, expansive top-floor offices, and fine suits. It felt like a wall to him; wealth was a last ditch effort to sever oneself from the hardships of life. He imagined the lives of those he occasionally caught in passing on the street, those exuberantly wealthy captains of industry, equipped prominently with gold lapel pins and designer watches, to be fully bereft of any momentous emotional passing. There was nothing money couldn't buy, be it emotional safety, or recluse from the pressures of rationing one's own hours away behind the frail walls of an office cubicle. But now, he sat in his cheap car, with his cheap shirt, and cheap laptop bag, housing an equally frugal device, and observed the path to his destiny, not as eternal as he would've wanted it to be. A lowly intern at Zootopia Daily Times, pressed into editing columns with vivacious, eye-grabbing titles and playfully destitute language. Entrance the masses. He understood it, of course. Plain to him were the tricks of the trade used to distract and divert from pressing issues, and having grown up where he did, in a family living from one welfare check to the other, to discard the follies of high rule and wealth was simple. And now he had awoken to find himself serving the machine. An almost poetic thought, if not fully drowned out by the creeping frost across the shaded ground. The shadow cast by the building had barely moved since sunrise, and as a result, the gentle, warming rays of the Sun were unable to reach the ground. He shook beneath his starched collar as he walked to the front door. Nick was ready to earn another day's living, nine to five, chugging his coffee and observing the unchanging, stone-faced yellow of his pencils. Sometimes he would rearrange them to stave off the boredom. It was an unstimulating world. From petty water-cooler discussions to off-paw greetings as they began another day, it seemed shallow to him, lacking real purpose. Nothing to change and affect.
There was a moment in his youth when Nick wanted to become a politician. He would spend hours before the mirror, wearing a ridiculously loud clip-on tie he found amongst his father's old clothes, and sometimes he would proudly observe the slickness of his tongue and speech. Alas, it was not to be. Instead his charisma came into its own when it was time to "hustle", to cheat and gamble his way through each day's living. Now he avoided politics, partly out of annoyance at everyone's opinions and their inherent loudness, and in part due to the creeping cold he always felt at the base of his back; the persistent question of whether or not he could've or should've been more. Until Judy had come into his life, he was a lowly fox, but she was the first one to see him as more than just a red pelt with defiant green eyes and a peevish grin. Repress the thought, he repeated to himself, not unlike a mantra, as he pushed the flat glass doors of the building open with his shoulder. The receptionist was a chipper antelope named Hornetta. Her name was the source of some amusement in the building, but he refrained from joining in the friendly jest, as its participants had defended it.
Nick knew what it was to be different over things you could not affect. There was a component of mean spirit in it, certainly. At the heart of it all, Hornetta was an outlier, and not even the wide and joyous grin she gave him and everyone else every morning as they passed her desk could've deflected from that fact. On top of it all, she also struggled with social interaction. Sometimes she would mill her words too long, or linger on certain phrases for an extended amount of time; at one point, weeks went by where she always affirmed everything with a chipper "oki-dokey", and while Nick found it endearing, he seemed to be alone in his opinion. But he waved back at her happily each time, and she waved back. Sometimes he would talk to her. As he passed the reception this moring, he decided to invite her to dinner one night, just so she could meet Judy. He imagined that they'd have a lot in common; the upbeat nature was there, the relentless fixation on a single object in hopes of better understanding it, and the many nervous habits neither could rid themselves of. A perfect match.
The lobby of the office looked similar to its outside; cold and impersonal. A pair of elevators, a set of chairs, large and small, to house those in waiting for meetings or other important business, but rarely used on the whole, and some potted plants scattered through corners and edges of the space for good measure. Nothing flashy. The Zootopia Daily Times headquarters occupied only three floors of it, and the rest was taken up by software firms, a banking conglomerate, and a pulp-and-paper enterprise that displayed its stock exchange ticker proudly beneath its logo. He tilted his head at it as he waited for the elevator, index finger impatiently depressing the button over and over, as if that would make it come faster. The logo of the pulp-and-paper company was a sideways "E", and beneath it sat its ticker, "ENE", and their motto: Be different. While Nick never paid any attention to matters of economic importance, he did overhear someone in the office mention a possible sting operation related to a mass embellishment and ponzi scheme scandal inside the aforementioned company. Apparently their stock was sinking too. The irony of their motto made him smile to himself as he boarded the elevator, laden with early-risers, overnight workers, cleaning staff, and an impatient and important-looking bull clad in a suit; all of them different based on the brief glimpses of their eyes that he caught, but fundamentally the same. Earn a living, nine to five, fuck your dreams. Be different. With a ding, he arrived at his floor, and saw pandemonium unfolding before his eyes. Panic-stricken workers ran from one end of the room, carrying armfuls of files, from tiny gerbils holding as much mail as they could to a slow-moving elephant carrying a stack of folders in half-open boxes.
"Coming through!" One of the gerbils exclaimed as he darted between Nick's legs and left a paper trail of spilled index cards behind. Nick followed him for a moment as he made his way to his desk. Calls echoed across the room, over the cubicle dividers, and an army of telephones rang incessantly, sometimes being answered in twos by hapless writers hungry for new information and facts. He found his workstation quickly enough. Situated between two adjacent desks, it was pastel grey in colour, bearing a small entrance adapted to his size, and flanked by two identical-looking squares. He pulled his chair away from under his desk, hung his laptop across one of the two hooks in the minute space, and waited. Nick closed his eyes. Any moment now.
"Howdy, neighbour!" A thick frontier accent roused him and he counted to five in his mind before turning around; Lewis. His colleague. A fellow intern, hopelessly friendly and naive, and utterly unbearable. He turned to him. The otter wore a wide and almost menacing grin, and beneath either of his round, brown eyes, his nose twitched away, "How are ya doing this fine morning?"
"Well, I was doing great..." Nick looked away as he began sorting through his papers, listing his day's assignments, which included copying down an entire spreadsheet by hand because someone in the accounting department had lost their hard drive, somehow. He raised his eyes at the otter and gave an utterly innocent but devastatingly cynical smile, "Until you appeared."
"Ah, Nicky, always the joker!" He despised that nickname, and the friendly jab he received on the shoulder prompted his brow to knit itself into an expression of utter frustration, "I'm doing great myself!"
"Ain't that a...thing." The fox couldn't even think of a witty quip on the spot, and he cursed himself for it under his breath, despite the fact that the otter would either take it as a sarcastic joke or not comprehend it at all, "If you don't mind, I'm gonna skip off to the break room and get some coffee." He got up and walked towards the glass square at the end of the passageway, housing fridges, microwaves, and an assortment of other, similar devices when he stopped and turned to Lewis; don't do it, don't you dare let those words pass your fucking lips, "Want anything?" Idiot. He bit his lower lip; why did you ask him such an obviously pointless thing?
"I'd like some...crackers." The otter raised one of his paws and began listing away on his fingertips, and Nick rolled his eyes. This was going to take a while, "Oh! And some coffee. Maybe...some gummy fish as well?" Nick checked his watch less-than-subtly, "Yeah, coffee, crackers, and gummy fish." Nick nodded slowly and turned, "And don't get lost in the jungle, Nicky!" Oh great, he sighed, muttering, now he thinks you're his friend.
The shuffle of his slowly-dragging feet sank into the chaos around him. Initially, he stood tall, moving in a prompt and businesslike manner, but the closer he got to the break room, through rows of desks where his co-workers spilled over into the passageway, swapping swift sentences, uttered commands, and clipped papers, his feet began to drag, and his paws found his pockets. Fuck this, he thought to himself. A small paper airplane passed over his head just as a wide-bodied elephant, perhaps the one he had seen earlier, almost fell forward directly before the door to the break room. He watched as she picked herself up and collected the papers she held, and at once, the beat and shuffle of her step resumed, to power onwards, to her goal. Temporary setbacks. It was chaos, and all he could do was stand in the middle of it all, and survey. Fluttering paws running frantically along the folded edges of paper reports, eyes and faces darting to and fro, and above it all, he stood there, with his paws in his pockets; Nick did not belong. This was not his world. It was a controlled demolition of the self for the sake of some goal no-one in the room could put their finger on, and despite the fact that he hadn't asked, the blank stares that persisted in their eyes as they struggled against the tides of havoc told him all he needed to know.
The fox crept forward slowly and tried his best to dodge any incoming projectiles, but none had passed even close to him; someone had tossed a balled-up printout of what he imagined to be a cancelled article across the room, and the fox watched with glee as it struck the floor supervisor in the eye. The entire room seemed to fall silent in an instant, and all turned to the injured, suit-wearing snow leopard. Garret Edwards was an imposing man, and the shivers of fury which ran up his contorted neck as he stood only made him appear more built and pressed for battle. He raised an index finger and moved it across the room. Surely no-one would be mad enough to stand up.
"Whoever threw that..." Edwards did not speak so much as he spat, and his voice shook, "In my office, immediately!" Once again, no-one stirred. Nick sat frozen in half-step, eyes locked on the snow leopard as he tried his hardest to not breathe loudly or make a sound beyond that of a breeze passing through the bristles of his fur. Invisible, he thought to himself, not a fox, not here. Not a fox, not present. At last, a camel in the far row of the room stood up, rising in an ungainly manner on his long, spindly legs, and he raised a finger meekly to complain, but was at once confronted with Edwards' threatening digit as he pointed to a small, black, rectangular door to his immediate left. The camel scurried quickly and in an obedient manner, and he seemed to bend under the supervisor's stern gaze. The door closed with a thud, and the havoc resumed, as if someone had pressed play on a VHS remote. More papers took flight, sometimes flanked by pencils, phone calls were answered in a hurry and closed in an even greater rush, and all Nick could hear as he walked to the break room was the rapid beating of his own heart. Being the usual suspect took the energy out of him like nothing else.
The soft thud of the door as he closed it with his back and slipped down it slightly elicited a sigh from him, and he promptly straightened himself, dusted his shirt off, and made for the vending machine. Coffee, crackers, gummy fish, and another coffee for him, as tall as he could make it. And black. Blacker than the blackest night. Blacker than the blackest black that had ever blacked. A laugh passed over his lips while he entertained himself by watching the tar-like substance pool in his paper cup. He was already on the task of fetching everything he could from the vending machine by standing in the middle of the two devices, and operating one with his left, and one with his right paw. It was a simple matter of inserting a coin, dialling in two consecutive codes. He sorted the snacks and coffees on the kitchenette counter-top and thought for a second. Snacks in either pocket of his trousers, and double-fisting the beverages. Before long, he was on the move again, pushing the door with his knee as he stepped into the office. This time, he chose to ignore his surroundings, and he hurriedly made for the cubicle. Lewis was waiting, still rolled out into the passageway by means of his chair, and Nick passed the drink to him wordlessly before setting his own down, and picking both requested snacks from his pockets.
"Thank y'all very much." Lewis responded, and reached up to give a tip of his imaginary hat; utterly insufferable. You can take the boy out of the province, but you can't take the province out of the boy, "So, how have you been?" The otter spoke with a mouthful of crackers which spilled liberally across the front of his shirt.
"Fine." Nick shot back tiredly; absolutely not the time for small talk.
"Did ya see the game last night?" His co-worker pressed and seemed to ignore the gentle shake of Nick's head, "Oh it was fuckin' amazing! Holy shit, I've never seen the Zootopia Unions fight like that." At that point, Nick was unaware whether the game in question was hockey, football, soccer, or skee-ball, but the otter didn't care in the slightest, "Really gave the Cedar Nuts a run for their money."
"Lewis, the Cedar Nuts are an all-squirrel team from a province so far divorced from reality that it would've been incredible if the Unions hadn't pounded them into the ground." That much he knew for sure, but only because he had once caught the title of an article in passing while skimming his Furbook; something relating to domestic violence charges and one of their...quarterbacks? He wasn't even sure. But what he did know was that it prominently featured the photo of an unsettlingly well-built squirrel in a helmet and shirt. "Quarterback" sounded professional enough, but he resisted the urge to try and smooth-talk his way through such a dull conversation. On top of that, Cedar Grove was an inland town, and an utter shit-hole. He spent one summer there at camp, and as he listened to Lewis defend himself from such a heinous attack on his own love of sports, all Nick could think of were the wasp stings he received when he accidentally mistook a wasp hive for an archery target. Well, not accidentally. Truth be told, he was showing off, but the memory of it elicited a soft, restrained smile from him; and he did end up getting some from that fox girl in shack 4C. They most certainly weren't up all night "patching wounds", he mused. Happier times.
Eventually, Lewis' energy tapered out, and he opted to munch on his crackers quietly before giving Nick an insufferably upbeat wave of the paw and turned to his own work. This was Nick's cue to take a look at his desk for the first time that day. Squarely in the centre of it sat a stack of papers riddled with post-it notes, underlined and crossed-out passages, and photographs to be scanned, attached to the article, and put up onto the page. That last part wasn't in his job description, but he imagined that with the pressure the IT department was put under today, it would wind up in it before sundown. He sighed and placed his forehead into the arch of his paw. Closing his eyes, he tried to feel something beyond resentment for everyone and everything around him. Nick reached into his pocket, and fetched his earbuds, along with his phone. Lazily he scrolled through his assortment of albums and playlists until he found something that suited his mood; "Fuck work". Folk rock to get him as far away from his present surroundings as possible. He was rather creative with naming his playlists. "Fuck my life" shone beneath that title, followed by, "Fucking: Prelude" (designed to get a certain rabbit in the mood by means of soft piano track and gentle-sounding crooners, bellowed from his phone dock), "Fucking: The Act" (He played that one only once, when Judy had agreed to it, and while he thought it was the best sex of his life, she appeared annoyed, so he didn't ask again), and finally, "Fucking: The Aftermath", divided into volume one and volume two. Volume one was for cuddling purposes, and volume two was for fast clean-ups before any major social events. For some reason, stage fright and pressure always seemed to get his wife in the mood, and he wasn't one to say no. So they would have a session of messy lovemaking on the living room sofa, or the coffee table, or, and this was only once, on the kitchen floor. After that, it was down to the hardcore electro beats to help them clean the stains and discarded clothes, and get ready as quickly as they could. He locked his phone with a click and went about his business of sorting papers.
Article, article, glamour article, political article, crossword, article, spreadsheet...it went on forever. At last, he reached the bottom of the stack, only to find a set of forms looking back at him. Clean and without marks, he looked it over. A single post-it note. He read it slowly. "You left this in the printer. Also, congratulations! - S." S? Who in fuck's name was that? And how did he or she know it was his? The handwriting was alien to him. But at least they were kind enough to deliver it to him. It was an electronic form he had filled out with all the relevant details save for the signatures; atop it shone a seal. Zootopia Child Care Services – Adoption Centre. A mouthful, but ever since that department came into his life, he had nothing but profound respect for it. It outlined a number of details. Parent jobs, a form certifying that their residence had been visited and inspected by a social worker, signed and stamped and appropriately dated, but only a photocopy, biometrics of either parent, psychiatric certification, and at the core of it all, the matching form; he and Judy were looking for either a fox or a bunny separated from their biological parents for any reason, between two months and five years of age, and all the other details were irrelevant to them, save for a note at the bottom that read "longest on the waiting list".
He closed his eyes. Life was on-track. It was set in motion a long time ago. A couple on the living room sofa, newly-engaged to be married, and discussing the possibility of kids. The whole topic began as a joke, a quip between the two of them spurred by an off-the-cuff comment he had given early in their relationship; "You'd be a great mom." All of it became serious very quickly, and rather than submit to the tyranny of incompatible biology or attempt expensive gene splicing procedures, they'd take the plunge on adoption. For weeks after they had reached a mutual agreement on the matter, Judy glowed. He was no different. Father to be. To hear those words one day: dad. It was all that mattered. Always look out for number one. Judy, the nameless tyke on the way, and a great beyond with new challenges, but greater rewards to be reaped. Everything felt right. There was, of course, a persistent fear he had held for a long time now. One of growing "old and boring". But as he challenged the blank line at the base of the form with his gaze, he looked up, at the photo of Judy he kept on his desk. If to grow old and boring was the end result here, there was no-one he'd rather do it with, and he knew she felt the same way. And no matter what, the energy within him would not wither. His paws would not slow and his tongue would not dull. At the end of the day, family life did not mean giving up oneself to the altar of old age. It merely changed its form, as it always did. To die a child, he mused, and nodded; he would.
A long time ago, Nick spent an afternoon in an art museum. This was before Judy; before the world made sense. A break in his daily "hustle" left him without an objective, and he snuck into the museum. Tricking the machines at the entrance was trivial. He wasn't there to steal, but merely to pass the time. Long, low orange lights crept across the polished museum floor. Marble, clean cut, and radiant too, surrounding the artworks around him in an almost heavenly glow. At the end of a long passageway, flanked on either side by twisting abstracts and complex masterpieces, lay an almost forgotten-looking statue. Bronze, and tall, jet black, it told of old age and relegated oblivion, but also a sense of providence. A simple, silhouetted figure. Two bodies joined at the side, with one leg belonging to each, and one shared leg in the middle of it all. Two heads, but one purpose. One step to take together. It became the most stunning work he had ever seen, and he found himself in its clutches even today, the fur on his upper back rising with reverence and respect. Providence. And now it was all coming true. To raise a new life as one.
The fox always put a bit of elbow grease into his signature, but this time, he opted for a more ceremonial approach. Simple, and to the point. After all, his signature was the first, shaky step into an uncertain future. And despite everything that had consumed his being since this morning, he would secure it. His paws would not slip this time. Prophecy mingled with manifest destiny. If the world was formless, God was dead, and we were all but tailors of our own purpose in this world, his paws would not slip. There lay no top-floor offices or expensive suits, fast cars and a life lived in oblivion before him. Purpose had come to him now: Judy.
In that moment, the signature was not a trail of ink on paper; it was the very first nail he had struck into the foundations of a definite home.
"You may now kiss the bride." Judy had rewound this moment perhaps over twenty times that day. Turn to the camera, smile for a moment (hers affectionate and glowing, his challenging but proud), and then Nick pulled her in, bowed her back into a tango dip and stole a kiss more passionate and loving than any other which came after it. She lay on the sofa in her blankets, curled into herself, and kept spinning back the DVD as far as it would go. Fifty minutes of footage, from the papers being presented at the rector's office, to the ceremonial reading of it, to the signature, and finally, a part of the walk down the office steps, smiling kisses on the cheek, teary-eyed relatives, Nick's mother standing beside Judy's parents, and the radiance of it all faded into a blank screen, marred by a square in the top left corner. Replay? Judy looked at the blank screen. There wasn't a moment of this disk she did not know by heart. Once Nick had left for work, she found a creeping cold within herself, and it grasped at her heart. This wasn't the first time she had felt it, of course. Into each life some rain must fall, she recalled and hummed along to the tune rather slowly. But whenever it did, this was her escape. She kept the disc inside a box beneath their bed, with all of her other memories, and beside Nick's identical case. It was an ossuary of moments she would never get back. Of uncertainty, of self-doubt, but always of a greater outcome. The last part was lost on her today. The bunny sank deeper into the small fort of pillows she had made for herself. On her bare chest she wore one of Nick's favourite shirts.
It was a simple Hawaiian, but for some reason that was utterly beyond her, he always wore it. But it smelled of him strongly. And that's why she opted to wear it or hug it whenever she missed him. Today that feeling was stronger than ever. Now she could smell each little recess of his arms, his form, his fur, each tiny aperture she had become so familiar with in the grand edifice of his being. It was a thought that hadn't ocurred to her frequently: knowing one's own body. She knew hers to a tee. The pains, the aches, the fleeting pins and needles in her feet from sitting for too long in one position, to the way it responded to emotion. Raised bristles of fur whenever something grasped her attention, scared her, or drew awe out of her, warmth in her cheeks and neck when pleasant feelings came in force, moisture between her thighs, in that narrow, pink gash hidden expertly beneath a trimmed tuft of fur whenever he kissed her with pressure, passion, and direction, and the weight of concrete in her lungs and a dull ache in her gut when everything appeared to sit at the verge of collapse. Teetering along a fine knife-point edge. Threatening to spill and shatter.
But she knew Nick's body just as well. This was something she became aware of just now. Whenever he experienced a pain, he would voice it, point it out, and map it, but never at once. It was a mosaic to be assembled from memory and experience. At times she would test it. Romance and sexuality provoked the expected response from his nethers. Firmness, and wetness as his slick, canine shaft rose out of its musky sleeve. But there was more beyond that, until it almost became secondary. His cheeks would grow almost rosy as he watched her from above and below, eyes fixed on her as she bounced and shifted beneath him and atop him, writhed under his touch just as he did under hers, and each press and push elicited another moan or growl, rising from the depths of his throat. The mesh of muscles in his chest, arms, and back that contorted as she hugged him. The drop or flatness in his ears depending on how he felt, sometimes standing eagerly to attention, and at others falling with disappointment, anger or sadness. She had seen it that morning. Mosaic. Pieces of a puzzle strewn amongst a thousand other ones, but his edges she could always find and define with remarkable clarity.
Wry smiles, coy grins, classic Nicholas. And there wasn't a single piece of him she didn't love. The bad ones were there, too. His short temper, quick to flare under pressure, lack of concentration when discussing matters he considered tedious, his wandering, provocative gaze, sometimes skirting the edges of her form as he sought to divert her attention from matters of immediate importance. Jokes, one-liners, long-form stories he would weave and spin, some of which she knew had never happened but were amusing regardless. To Nick, life was a long stage show, and she felt impossibly pleased to be one of the sole audience members to remain perpetually gripped by it. But now it seemed to unravel before her. All of it. Floor lifted, machines exposed. Churning gears to tell the tales of their highs and lows. The deeper she sank into the soft-edged images of him at his best and warmest, the closer the freezing fingers crept. They had been close behind the whole day, but now, she could resist them no longer.
Red fox. Two words. Noted down strictly and responsibly, at the base of the analytics page. In Nick's absence she had been convincing herself to glance over that file; it was her responsibilty. Judy had never missed her preliminary findings report. Not once. Every case had a clear-cut set of clues hidden in the forensics and analysis of it, and she would always have a stack of papers ready for Bogo and his desk jockeys the day after. Her insight wasn't considered particularly valuable by her co-workers, but she blanked that fact in favour of feeling grand about herself. ZPD's first bunny officer. There was no room for fuck-ups, especially when dealing with a case as serious as this one. No telling how long they would spend pouring over every detail. And now she had her haunches pressed into herself, arms around her knees, staring at a blank screen on the television. Weak. Nick had said otherwise. Weak, weak, weak. Internal state of the agent defines everything. And she had not told him exactly what had plagued her. Of course, he had seen the photographs. There was enough room to assume from there, but beyond that, a hollow, empty ring in a sound-proof room. How would she tell him? I'm afraid. That's what she would say, and she already did. But there was so much more contained in that one word. Afraid of what? Loss, pain, death. To lose him. To lose the sense of direction she had in life and which he held within himself. Nick did not define Judy. That name. Judy. Juds, as he called her. All she was, condensed into a call-out. But he did not define her.
Beyond the filled-in boundaries of her life extended patches of colour where he would never tread, and those would remain complete and untouched even if he...she did not want to even consider the word. But without him, she would be palpably less. That much was apparent to her, and now became a weight deep inside of her. The swaying pendulum of impending defeat. A race against time itself, lost before it even began. Blood, bullet to the lungs. Alive at one moment, gone forever at another, sand between her fingers to catch onto the delicate strands of fur between them as he sank away, piece by piece. There was an irrational split-second in which she considered calling him just to hear his voice. But it vanished as soon as it appeared; after all, the only thing she needed to bring him back to her, even for a second, was a breath of that shirt.
Judy stood to her feet and paced, back and forth, as the DVD player entertained itself by buzzing and flickering. Apparently the HDMI cable needed replacing, but she hadn't found the time to buy a new one. Nick was terribly bad with technology outside of his phone. One evening, while they were halfway through a semi-decent horror film, the picture vanished but the sound remained, and her husband appeared utterly perplexed by this fact. All he did was sigh in frustration, roll his eyes, and declare his intention to buy a new player. So she crawled behind the TV and after less than two minutes, she held in her paw the faulty cable. He had not understood what she was insinuating. Of course, being as stubborn as he is, he remained adamant in his pursuit to buy a new DVD, which he did. A budget one, worse than their old one, and without its own cable.
So now she had two DVD players, a broken cable, and a stubborn fox with his mind made up about buying a new TV instead. But this entertained her. There were no hard feelings on her part. They could spare the money, and always sell the spare or use it if the original broke down, and after all, it was an impossibly Nick thing to do. She surveyed the television from the kitchen as she poured herself more tea. A heat had crept along her back and neck and Judy almost felt as if she had a fever. She knew she didn't, but the light-headedness only made it worse. On top if it all, the file still glared at her from the table. Tomorrow, she promised herself. Not an excuse, she reminded herself as she walked a rather slim but palpable loop around the offending folder. This was proper cause for her to rest. Gather her strengths and rally, return the next day when she was stronger, more able to fight it all off.
Hours passed in a silent stupor. She switched from channel to channel, having found nothing of interest. There wasn't anything that grasped her attention. Not even the promise of video games on her laptop appealed to her. A lot of it was violent, and some of her favourite games entailed shooting "bad guys". Judy hovered the cursor over the icon but did not click it. Instead, she went to Furbook, to an assortment of sites she used to pass the time. And she avoided news sites like the plague. There wasn't a shadow of a doubt in her mind that the case had already been plastered everywhere. Nick was probably already working away at the stories, sorting, editing, changing out paragraphs. Sometimes she would read articles on the Zootopia Daily Times page and wonder whether or not he had something to do with it, and if he did, to what extent.
Time slipped away from her. Scrolling up and down Furbook and playing various brick-laying and coin-clicking games was one hell of a time-waster. The bunny sank into a stupor of sorts. Click here, click there, plant a row of these, a row of those, and pass twenty minutes doing something else. Eventually she had exhausted every resource she had and went back to talking with a few animals from her home town; her mother kept sending her messages featuring songs she found on YouTube and various pieces of outdated internet humour and Judy would respond with pretend-laughter. She could only imagine how much her parents missed her. At times she would think back to her life at the farm, but she felt homesick only infrequently. After all, home had become somewhere else. Just as she prepared herself to rise from the sofa again and make for the bathroom, her phone rang. Judy lifted it and took a glance at the screen; Nick.
"Hello?" Her voice bore the weight of exhaustion; sitting idle on the sofa all day made her yawn, and she briefly considered taking a nap, but decided against it. No time to risk another nightmare. Judy dreaded sleep.
"Hi, whiskers." Noise seeped through the mellow tones of his voice, and it seemed that he was in a crowd of sorts, "I'm leaving the office just now and I've got a surprise for you." Judy smiled to herself. Of course. She moved forward on the sofa and lay on her stomach as she talked to him, muzzle propped up on the armrest and eyes gazing aimlessly at the base of the landline; they had one, but she could not for the life of herself recall why. It was by Nick's insistence. For someone who was as up-to-date with matters of culture, he was ridiculously old-fashioned in other terms.
"What's the surprise, then?" He had been silent for a few moment, and all she could hear were hurried good-byes and his panting breaths as he stepped outside. Wind beat against his phone and it crackled into her ear, but all she did was roll onto her back and gaze at the ceiling; cracks. They really ought to fill them in soon.
"You'll see. I'll be home in..." Another pause; he was checking his watch, obviously, "Ten or so minutes. Get ready. And before you make me idle in front of the house for twenty minutes, no need to dress in anything fancy. Just the usual fare, cottontail." This elicited a soft chuckle and a nod from her.
"Well, you've got my curiosity at any rate." Judy steaded the phone between her shoulder and her ear as she got up to look through their closet, "See you soon. I love you!"
"Love you too." Nick always put a bit of a sing-song twist on those three words, sometimes four, and it always made her smile. But now she bit her lower lip as she rifled through her clothes. Not wearing anything other than Nick's Hawaiian meant that she had no free pockets. The phone would be fine on the floor, she reasoned. Dresses hung beside pressed shirts and formal clothes of various shapes and sizes, and the bunny tilted her head in thought. Eventually she opted for a pair of simple jeans and a pink button-up shirt. Standing before the long mirror, attached to one of the closet doors, she looked over herself, smoothing out the hem of the pink garment with her paws. Pleasantly friendly, but somehow too provincial. Judy shook her head. Silly thought; how does one go about looking "cosmopolitan"? She waved the matter off and set out to collect her purse and belongings before Nick got there.
The car ride they shared was mostly a silent one, save for small talk about his day and a brief rant by Nick on the topic of corporate ladders and promotions. As she got in the car, she spotted a stack of papers in the back. In the back of her mind, the idea that she had forgotten about something rang out faintly, but she pushed it back.
"So, what's the surprise?" Judy chimed in as Nick leaned forward and observed the changing colours above them. The differences in vehicle height in Zootopia meant that some stop-lights were too high for the smaller cars. This caused a lot of leaning, and a plethora of angry letters to the Mayor's office. It was such a widespread problem that a great part of Lionheart's re-election platform was "stop-lights for everyone". Both denizens of the car considered the entire spectacle to be utterly inconsequential, but Lionheart seemed to be garnering only more votes with such inane promises.
"Remember that quaint little coastal restaurant where we went on our second date?" He asked as he wound a corner and twisted the steering wheel in his paws, and Judy instantly went wide-eyed at the suggestion.
"Ralphio's?" All her husband did was give a gentle nod of affirmation, "You didn't! They're booked solid on every day save for Christmas."
"Oh I did." He blew along his claws nonchalantly and chuckled before turning to her and pecking her cheek, "Figured it'd cheer you up."
"Oh my God, I can't believe you, Wilde!" The bunny on the passenger seat couldn't stop smiling; their broccoli lasagne was the best she ever tasted, and the last time she did was during that second date of theirs. Given the traffic the restaurant got, she never thought she'd eat it again. A gentle paw nudged his shoulder excitedly and all he did was keep grinning to himself. He had fully anticipated such a reaction, and getting it was all that mattered. Nothing made him happier than seeing her like this. The first parking garage they tried was chock-full, but the second one promised at least twenty vacant places. She seemed to vibrate with excitement as she walked beside him, and he took her paw. They strolled down the boulevard leading towards the North Burrows Park. The establishment in question was fairly close to their house, but the long, winding downhill route was too arduous to walk back up late at night, and as Judy was convinced, too dangerous; statistics don't lie, she'd repeat, and all he did was nod obediently, despite promising to stay out of her way if they were attacked. After all, she was the reigning academy champion of paw-to-paw combat. Getting involved in such a scuffle would probably throw her off her balance and cause them both to get stabbed for their jackets.
The entire boulevard glowed with electric lights, bistros and bars speckled along either side of it, with signs flashing in the windows. Some advertised the possibility of watching live sports games, while others promoted "happy hour" and bore a list of prices; flashy cocktails for the price of a simple whiskey straight, three hours, every Saturday night. Music boomed from some, while others played host to friendly and down-to-earth conversations regarding anything and everything, usually led on the pavement in front of their doors, over cigarettes and beers. Judy would occasionally follow one of the patrons with her eyes if they grasped her interest, but beyond that, she merely gazed out before herself and kept pace with Nick. He seemed utterly disinterested in his surroundings. Paws in his pockets, gaze fixed forward, and dodging incoming pedestrians, some of whom seemed to be in a staggering hurry given the hour and day. The couple walked past a series of shops, and found a pair of antelopes arguing animatedly before a Saharan mini-market. Nick's ears perked for a moment but they walked past the clamour and crossed the street at the edge of Zootopia's Central Park. It was a massive complex of trees and biomes, from desert landscapes maintained by means of tall heat lamps, to spots and patches of frozen ice where the Tundra residents of the Central District came to relax and wind down after a long day; however, the vast majority of it was temperate in climate and well-suited to Summer walks.
But now, as the Sun had begun to set, it was to be avoided, lest one wanders into an unfolding crime scene with no backup to speak of. At the four far corners of it lay small consignment areas, which included amongst their repertoire a news-stand. Judy walked past it slowly. Every headline presented prominently behind the shuttered glass front of it mentioned the massacre. It was everywhere. Some of the more sensational papers, such as Zootopia Wild!, a notorious tabloid, ran a headline along the lines of "WINTER HORROR-LAND" or "BLOOD-BATH BEYOND THE ICE WALLS". The bunny hung her head low. Not now. Why would they put these on open display like this? One particularly tasteless publication even ran gruesome photographs, pixelated only in the very slightest. Of course, it was all clear-cut and obvious. Narrow your eyes and the image emerged from beyond the mist. Her features contorted into a grimace. It was a pleasant, calm evening, and not even the distant howl of sirens and running cars could distract her from the warm feeling of Nick on her arm and the chance to take a break from it all.
But now, expectation had set down on her shoulders again: fix the world. It is your job to protect and serve, she recalled, the very first speech given to all recruits at the academy. A summary of purpose despite them all having come there for that distinct reason. Protection had failed. Service remained as her sole escape, and hers lay bundled up on the kitchen island. To be avoided. Judy wished she could drive a wooden stake into the space between herself and her work. To shut out all emotion and for once, fight for what was utterly pressing without having to perpetually look inwards. But the eyes followed her. Each pedestrian they passed after meeting the kiosk seemed to look into her. Their eyes seemed to focus on the bunny and narrow in disgust. How could she? Failure. Failure to divide, to repress, to fight on. Weak. And so came dinner. Nick ordered slowly, and he raised the menu up to the cheetah that had come to take their orders, as if he was insinuating that her eyesight was failing. In public, he had very little concept of manners. But to Judy, it appeared deliberate. Gauge the reactions of those around him, including shock and bewilderment. But her thoughts were elsewhere. Even the taste of that divine lasagne did not cheer her up, and Nick noticed. His ears appeared cast downwards as he listened to her scrape the plate with her fork. From one extreme to the other in a matter of moments.
"Do you want to talk about it?" He asked, and Judy shook her head. Nick sighed. Before it had even fully passed his lips, she looked up at him, "What?"
"Don't be like that." Don't take it out on him, he didn't do anything; but the reminders seemed to do very little. Even if Judy had passed her entire day lounging about on the sofa, she felt stressed. It wasn't from too much work, but from a distinct lack of it.
"Like what?" He dropped his fork and crossed his arms. His gaze stiffened and turned challenging.
"Look, we're here to have a nice dinner." For a brief moment, their glances met across the table, but she deflected and looked down at her half-eaten meal, "And, no. I don't want to talk about it."
"When will you?" This was just cause for her to glare at him angrily, "All I want is to help you."
"You can't. Because you don't understand."
"Then help me understand!" This time, his voice had raised itself slightly, and he pleaded with her, but her response was to close her eyes and take a deep breath, "Let me in. I can't help you if you don't let me in."
"I need..." Her paw balled itself up beneath the table cloth, and she could feel her teeth gritting against one another; why was he pushing this? What was there for him to know? To bring him into this was only to liken him to those she never had the power to save. If only she were quicker, faster. If only that fucking red light hadn't held their car up at a critical moment, "I need to be alone."
"And what am I supposed to do in the meantime, huh?" He just wouldn't quit it, "Watch my wife fall deeper into herself while leaving me with nothing but the ability to sit and watch? I thought you'd at least tell me someth-" A soft bang cut him short, and the rattle of cutlery pierced the silence; she had banged her fist against the table.
"Nick, enough." Judy had lost all of her appetite in a single moment, "I said I don't want to talk about this." She stood; it was a declaratory motion, chair scraping back against the carpeted floor, and fork dropped unceremoniously onto the plate, "I'm going out."
The bunny snaked her way through incoming patrons and burdened waiters and made for the door. The air stung at her. It wasn't even that cold, but she pressed her paws under her shoulders and shivered a bit. Beside the door stood a lion clad in a waiter's outfit, smoking a cigarette. Judy had composed herself enough to ask him for one, but as soon as he had lit it for her, and looked away, she could feel a warm wetness forming in the corners of her eyes. She had yelled at him. In public, too. What the fuck is wrong with you? A drag dotted with shivers followed by an equally uneasy exhale. You fucking idiot. You've hurt him. Pull yourself together. Get your shit together. Judy paced up and down the pavement.
"I didn't know you smoked." Her head shot up and she froze; of course he had followed her, "Never thought I'd see the day where you'd leave half of a Ralphio's broccoli lasagne." He moved into her field of view and stood beside her with his paws limp at his sides, "I'm sorry." One of them swiftly found its way to her cheek and took to caressing it, and she shut her eyes, looking away; the depth of the chasm within her appeared incalculable. Judy resisted the urge to demand that he not look at her. Not like this.
"Nick..." The bunny took a step forward and looked up at him; the full moon sat directly behind his head, giving him an appearance verging on saintly. Saint Nicholas, "I'm the one who should be apologizing."
"Not at all." His arms wrapped themselves around her waist but kept her at a distance so he could look into her eyes while they spoke, "I'm the one at fault here. I pushed buttons which are best left alone."
"You're in the right." The gentle shake of her head betrayed everything Nick wanted to know; the pain, which appeared gone for a brief, radiant moment, had returned in force. "During all this, not once did I think to...to ask how you are?" Soft purple eyes locked onto him and blinked slowly.
"I didn't think it mattered." He reasoned, and this time she nodded the thought away furiously.
"Nick, it will always matter how you feel." Her paw rubbed up and down his shoulder. A gentle caress of all the things she could not put into words, "We're two people, but..." And she mustered a smile out of herself, "...there's a core idea of oneness to this. We give, and we take." Another pause drifted between them, during which they merely observed one another amorously, "So...how do you feel?"
"Helpless." It all vanished in a second and his ears sank low, folding downwards, "It comes from...you know." She did know; suicide. Neither was going to say it out loud, "Everything is too hard, too fast, and too quiet." His free paw, the one he hadn't held on her lower back arose between them, and he rounded an invisible object with his fingers, almost as if he were trying to feel out the edges of his feelings, "I feel as if I'm being hit by a perfectly silent cargo train of problems. And your silence doesn't help."
"I'm sorry, I should've..."
"No, you shouldn't have." He interjected before she had the chance to finish, "And you never will. Time is needed. Time in ample supply, and distraction." She nodded; you don't understand, she recalled, her own words now bitter on her tongue.
"Thank you." That was all she could muster before she lay his forehead against his chest and he embraced her in a more complete way, "I love you, Nick." Two soft bunny lips collided with his chin and he closed his eyes, smiling. In due time was the intended meaning. Unspoken matters never impeded their conversations. All they did was strengthen them. After all, Judy knew a hundred different ways to tell him something as simple as that.
"I love you too."
Beyond their embrace, the city murmured itself to sleep.
