Oh boo…

This took a while and I don't have an excuse. Well, I mean, I kinda have an excuse (I got surgery recently, won't get into the gritty details) but if anything, that should've given me more time to write. Now it's been, what, two weeks? Whoopsie daisy.

Well shit, I'm sorry about that. I hope the next chapter will take a week at most…

By the way thanks for 9k views ;)

My collar had been green for the past 3 days.

I stuck to the same routine as before. Honey went off to work and I wallowed in self-pity in Honey's apartment. It was nice to see nothing had changed.

My throat was excruciatingly sore, but for some reason I didn't care. It felt like I let something small and shit-ridden crawl inside of my windpipe and die, but nothing smelled off. I stubbed my toe but didn't wince. My eyes were bloodshot but they didn't sting. There was nothing to be felt.

I didn't even know if I could attribute this to what had happened either. I hadn't thought of my mom since I learned of her...passing, but I wasn't actively ignoring it either. I had come to terms with the fact that I'd let her down. There wasn't anything I could do now.

But I wasn't moving on either.

I was stuck in limbo. I knew that she was gone, she was gone from my life and my mind, but I couldn't move on. Something was holding me back. Something felt useless, pointless. Something inside of me. I was the problem in an unfixable situation. Getting this fucking collar all for nothing wasn't doing much to solve anything.

Before becoming a full time doctor at the hospital, Honey spent her hours as a care worker for my mom. She went in three times a day to feed, clothe, wash, and accompany the dying vixen. Honey was moved to my ward before my mother passed away, so she was never made aware of our relation.

Honey carefully explained to me how my mother went out. Learning this didn't make me feel any better to say the least. She'd developed a serious heart disease, most likely brought on by stress, and had lived the last few years of her life bedridden and under extreme fatigue. She couldn't stand up without assistance and was lucky to leave her home more than once a week. She died before she was even 70 years old.

Honey tried to make it as clear to me as possible that my mom had been a fighter. No matter how anxious she was, no matter how bad of a shape she was in, her collar never so much as flickeredyellow. The badger still doesn't know how to explain it. In the few months she spent caring for my mother, it never went off. She approached every day optimistically, with a beaming smile on her face.

My mom talked about me every chance she could get. She never mentioned my name, but she always talked about how much she wanted to see me again. How much she wanted to hold me, talk to me.

But she never got to do any of that.

She never said anything negative. Honey said my mom always talked about how sweet and kindhearted her son was, neither mentioning my shady profession nor my sudden abandonment of her.

She also never ran out stories to tell about me. Honey recounted some of the many she had been told over the few months she looked after the vixen, several of which even I had forgotten about. There was a particularly funny one when I was a little kit playing outside and decided to climb into the hole of a large tree. When I came back inside my mother found me matted and sticky, covered head to toe in sap. It took nearly four hours to get me completely cleaned up, and the sweet smell was strong enough to make a fox faint, but not once did she yell. Not once did she complain. Not once did she scold. All she did was love.

She talked about the son she would never see again every day, but never brought up a single fault. My mother may have never got to hold me again, but that didn't stop her from reminiscing upon everything that made her love me in the first place.

The one decent thing I'd found in this whole scenario was how she finally slipped away. She died peacefully in her sleep and was found by the replacement caretaker the next morning. She suffered no pain.

It'd happened not too long after Honey was moved back to the hospital, and for some reason, Honey was never notified of my mom's passing. She was reticent to take me to see her because she knew how bad her condition was, but was never made aware that she had actually died. Honey apologized profusely for making such a mistake but I refused to even acknowledge it. It wasn't her fault anyways.

It was mine.

Nobody was to blame blame but me. I could've helped her, I could've made her feel loved. Even if I couldn't solve her health problems, I could've at least been there when she need me the most.

But I wasn't. I ditched her, twice, and then got shot in the fucking head. She died before I could tell her I loved her…

No.

My paws gripped my skull to the point where I received a headache. I let my chest heave down in a sigh and sat up on the couch of the main floor in Honey's apartment. With my arms wrapped around my legs I buried my muzzle into my knees.

This won't get me anywhere. I left her. I know that. That's a given. But those bastards attacked me out the blue and prevented me from seeing her one last time. Maybe if I wasn't in a coma I could've seen her…

I raised a paw to my face and felt the small indentation in my skull left from the bullet that penetrated it years ago. The fur covered all discoloration and any abnormalities couldn't be seen, but I could always feel the little ridge on my head that reminded me of the mammals that took away the last chance I'd ever have to see my mother again.

And now I have a collar...for nothing…I-...fuck!

I can pin this on myself all I want, but those sorry pieces of shit will continue to fuck over mammals like me until there are no predators left to ruin. I need to do something. I owe it to myself. I owe it to her…

I didn't know what to do though. The only sliver of hope that shined through was Daniel's pred resistance, but by the looks of it, they were getting nowhere. Still, they might have been onto something.

Removing Judy from the picture could definitely leave an impact. Seeing the way every prey in the city looks up to her, admires her for what she does, it might take a toll on their prejudice if she stepped down from the face of their kind. All of her propaganda had managed to ease nearly all of Zootopia into this hateful mindset. Taking said propaganda away could help ease a newer generation out of it…

How do I even manage to reach her though? I sure as hell don't wanna get assaulted in the streets again just trying to speak with her. There's gotta be some other way.

The jingling of keys and clicking of a lock broke me out of my stupor. In walked Honey, her arms wrapped around two brown paper bags most likely full of groceries. She kicked her foot and closed the door without setting anything down. The large bags rose up next to her head, making it appear as if her face was the inside of a sandwich. She noticed me sitting on the couch and hurried over to the kitchen to put everything away.

I put my muzzle back into my knees.

The sinking of the cushions spread out more evenly along the seat, and I flicked my eyes up to see the badger sitting right in front of me.

Her sympathetic amber irises met my apathetic green ones.

"How's it been going?" she asked softly.

Honey lifted a leg up on the couch with her, draping an elbow across her knee to make herself more comfortable.

"...it's been going…"

I was looking right at her but my mind was too far away to process sight effectively. All I had was sound.

"Is that really all you're gonna say to me, Nick?"

Words bounced around in my brain, but weren't successful enough to elicit a response.

The badger licked her lips and cracked her knuckles before heaving herself back up to her feet with a grunt. She clasped her paws behind her back as she walked around the room.

"I'm worried about you, Nick," she muttered as she paced. "You've barely said anything for three days and...and I don't know what to do with you."

I remained transfixed, staring at whatever my head was pointed towards. I was numb, unaware of what my eyes were seeing.

"Look, I'm sorry about your mom, Nick, but what you need to do right now is talk to me."

"..."

"You can't expect me to let you mope around my house the entire day for the rest of your life. That's just not how things work. I want to help you, I really do, but we have to be reasonable here."

"..."

"If I had known about what happened before I brought you to visit her, trust me, I would've done everything in my power to make this at least a little more comfortable; but we can't live in the past. I feel terrible. I know that you feel terrible. You have to let me in."

"..."

I heard the patter of footsteps die down until it was at a complete halt. I was left with a mild ringing in my ears from the stillness of the air. The noises picked up again, growing closer to me until they were right next to the couch.

Something brushed against my cheek, and again I felt the couch shift. My head was pulled into an embrace, my lifeless arms falling limply from their grip on my legs as my body came to rest against something soft and warm. I again felt something on my cheek, this time the other one.

I sniffed up any fluids threatening to drip from my nose as I let the badger bathe me in her tranquility, ignoring the dropping of my tears.

I refused to let my collar turn yellow.

"I just don't see what you're proposing we do."

I took a long sip of water, allowing the freezing liquid soothe the stinging of my collar-induced burns. I let out a satisfied 'ahhh' as I let the cup drop back down onto the kitchen table Honey and I currently sat at.

"Asshole the Otter said it himself. We gotta take Judy outta the spotlight. What else?"

The badger furrowed her eyebrows. "Yeah, I mean but...how?"

"We're gonna have to figure that out. Invite him over."

"But I didn't call a meeting."

"Call one then. We're having one tonight. I'm gonna get something done if it's the last thing I do."

Honey sat a moment to give herself time to consider.

"If you think we can actually get something done….sure, why the hell not?"

I brought the water back to my lips as Honey roamed the room dialing the number.

"Daniel? Hey, it's Honey. Get me Huskins and Houndinski, we're gonna have a meeting... What do you think? Yes, now."

Daniel took his designated "seat" by standing atop of the fold-up table in Honey's panic room. The two wolves sat - arms crossed - on either side of him.

"So what exactly has changed since the last time I visited?" the otter asked accusingly, a scowl visible on his face.

"Not really anything. I guess Nick had a hunch or something." Honey replied.

I nodded from my place on the bean bag chair, facing away from the rest of the group.

Daniel decided he'd rather just cut to the chase. "What is it, Wilde?"

I cleared my throat and shifted in my seat, resting one leg over the other.

"Hopps still cares about me. I can tell. Behind that whole innocent little game she's playing, I can tell she feels bad." I turned to look at the rest of the mammals in the room. "I just need to wiggle it out of her."

"That's it?" the otter burst out, throwing his arms out to the side. "Your master plan is to talk to the bunny?" He snapped his fingers at his two assistants. "Get yourselves ready to leave, gentlemen, I think we're just gonna have to settle for a hitmammal afterall."

"Won't work," I stated bluntly.

Daniel crossed his arms and started to tap his foot in irritation. "And why the hell not? All the prey in this city adores her, butthe bitch has it coming. Seems like a win-win to me."

"Well, I can't argue with the latter, but if you kill her, they'll just have her replaced. The only way we can do this is to get her to clean the system from the inside out. Either slowly drop the whole 'preds are bad' charade, or get her to soften the propaganda techniques. Trust me, Dan, I've hustled her before, I can hustle her again."

The badger lifted a finger to protest but I was too quick and interjected.

"And considering how big of a threat 'The Purifiers' appear to be, we would need to fix things from the inside out either way. There's no way the city hall and the media aren't working together to cover this up. They blatantly ignored facts in their news reports to keep prey in the dark, then they post a pretty picture of Hopps on the screen and suddenly everyone feels at ease again. I'm not saying we need to side with her - in fact I'm quite against that - but we surely need some sort of wrench to fix this leaky pipe."

"Did you really just compare this to a leaky pi-?"

"Not now, Honey."

"Okay, fine, let's say you manage to convince the bunny to help us," Daniel interjected. "How in the everliving fuck do you expect to be able to talk to her?"

"That's where you come into play, my angry little friend. I don't need to make the plans, I just run my mouth. I bet you can think of something useful."

The otter squinted at me, attempting to have some sort of tension-building staring contest, before he dropped his gaze and motioned to his friends.

"I'll try and figure something out in the next few days," he muttered as he hopped off the table. "Can't believe I wasted a whole fucking trip here for something that could've been said over the phone." The otter made his way up the ladder with the wolves closely stalking behind.

I adjusted my tie. "See Honey? Now we're getting somewhere."

She pursed her lips. "I'm not so sure about this... I still think she may be the one tricking you."

"I've been doing this since I was born, Honey. Nobody hustles me."

"There's no way she would just act nice to you. No cops would ever help out a pred getting beaten on the street."

I chuckled. "Yeah, well Judy would; and I plan to use something like that to my glorious advantage, Ms. Badger."

Honey moved her chair closer to where I was seated and plopped herself down. "Ya know, he's right. That was literally like a one minute conversation. You could've just told him over the phone."

I let a smirk take over me. "Oh, trust me, I know. I just wanted that asshole to get pissed off."

Honey let out a snort. "Wow. Okay. If anything, you're the asshole here, Wilde."

"You just keep on saying that, Badger, because you know you love this asshole."

"Pfft. Yeah right."

We sat there a few seconds until our smiles faded away.

I looked down at my paws and started to twiddle my thumbs. "With all the stuff that happened recently, I kinda forgot… any word on what's going on with Clyde ... Parker? The mink kid at the hospital?"

"Holy shit...with everything that's gone down I forgot about it too."

"So...did you check up on him? Like you said you would?"

"Huh? Yeah, of course I did. I just completely forgot to mention him. You barely even replied when I asked if you wanted to eat food."

"He's okay, right? Is his mom alright?"

Honey blinked a few times and paused to scratch the back of her neck. "She's uh...s-she's probably not gonna make it. She was dangerously close to the source of the blast. Lots of internal damage…"

I looked down.

"Oh…"

I rubbed my nose.

"Um...i-is he still at the hospital? Is he alright?"

"We're keeping him there for now. His injuries aren't serious; minor flesh wound on his face, but at his age we can't let him go back to his house alone. We'll have him staying with us until further notice."

"It's just that…" I scratched the other side of my paw and shifted uncomfortably in my seat. "-What happens if... if his mom dies?"

Honey looked up at me for a moment, taken aback by the question.

"I-, I really don't know…"

I nodded my head, sad to have to accept that the worst could be inevitable. Losing my mother and then finding out that some kid was so close to the same experience filled me with a tide of unrelenting sympathy.

I need to talk to him.

"Is he there right now?" I pried.
"At the hospital? Yeah."

"I wanna talk to him."

The temperature had dropped to something only slightly bearable in the three days I'd spent moping around. The sun had set just a few hours prior, so Honey and I had to rely on our night vision due to the lack of street lamps. She stuck close to my side, since her sight in complete darkness wasn't as good as mine.

In a matter of minutes we were inside the hospital, the much cooler air stark and relieving juxtaposition to the heat we'd endured. Honey led me towards an intensive care ward, having me wait outside of the room while she went to go fetch Clyde.

I leaned back against the wall by the door and glanced around. The place looked like a quarantine zone. The walls were pure white, everything looked clean, and almost nobody was to be seen.

My ears twitched as I made out muffled speaking. I decided to ignore any words that made it through the walls to avoid picking up anything private and focused purely on my surroundings.

How does anyone work here? It's straight out of a fucking horror story…

I shot up in attention when the door opened and glanced down to see the scraped up mink looking up at me with tired eyes while Honey stayed in the room with his mother.

"Hey, buddy," I greeted in a soothing voice. "How's it going?"

"It's been going," he replied shakily, immediately lowering his eyes down to his feet.

I felt a small grin tug at my lips, amused by how this mirrored my answer to Honey's concerns earlier.

"You need someone to talk to right now?"

The boy remained silent.

I let out a sigh and got down on one knee to look at him on his level.

"Look, I know you're going through a tough time. Things are going to be okay, I promise."

Clyde's glossy eyes met mine, streams of tears spewing from them leaving the fur below damp.

"Sh-sh-she's g-gonna die though…" His stare went back down.

I shut my eyes a brief moment at the bluntness of his comment. I brought a paw onto his shoulder and gripped it comfortingly.

"Clyde? I-"

"Why are you here?"

It took a minute for the words to sink in, the sudden harshness of his voice unnerving me.

"What do you mean? I wanted to check up on you."

He brushed my paw off of his shoulder with his own, wiping away any remaining tears with the other.

"I barely even know you." While his voice was still trembling with hurt, the sadness that was once clear in it could be made out as confusion and anger.

"Why are you here?" he repeated.

I opened and closed my mouth a few times before I could figure out something to say.

"I just...I thought maybe you'd need someone to talk to."

The mink stared up at me in bewilderment, clearly not satisfied with my answer.

"I...um," I continued, "It's important that you're here for your mom when she needs you the most. Don't forget that."

Clyde was immediately defensive. "I haven't left her side since I got here. I have been here for her. I know that she needs me."

He gave one more quick rub of his eyes and said, "I think I should go. I don't know how much longer she's gonna be around…"

He wrapped his fingers around the knob, but before he could push the door open, I grabbed his arm, probably with more force than I should have used.

"Wait, Clyde, I-...I really do care. I know we just met and all and it seems weird but…"

I started to massage my temples, struggling to even make sense of myself.

"I wasn't there for my mom when she needed me most, and...a-and I guess I just needed to see that you weren't making the same mistakes I made."

His eyebrows furrowed and he stared at me, trying to make sense of what I'd said.

Finally, he wordlessly turned the doorknob and stepped inside. Honey came out to take his place shortly afterward. Thankfully, she sensed that things hadn't gone well. We didn't talk the whole way back.

It was only as I began to fall asleep that night that I realized what I'd attempted.

I tried to gain closure from a kid's dying mom.

Gee whizz this took so much effort to write for absolutely no reason. Here's a tip for dealing with sleep apnea: Don't fucking get it in the first place.

Also, remember when I said I'd try to make every chapter longer than 5k? Whoops. Either way, I guess it's not a good idea to judge the quality of my content based on the length. If I think a chapter should end, I'm not gonna try and force more words into it anymore.

Also, thanks so much to WhatABummer and Astorathgrim for helping me edit this chapter! Here's to a whole marathon of shit to correct!

With that out of the way, hopefully I'll see you guys sooner rather than later.