Chapter Sixteen

Richter Street

Richter Street was part of the old side of Zootopia. This place was different from Soho in some ways, the same in others. While it was far less sleazy, every third femammle you met wasn't a prostitute and every fifth building wasn't a casino, this had the knock-on effect that the people inhabiting this place lived in far more poverty. Without the same income that the sex and gambling industry brought to Soho, the residents of Richter Street were seen thus rarely — either working long hours for low pay or preserving their heat and energy at home — so the pavement of Richter Street — rather than packed like the streets of Soho — was devoid of all life, until a ZPD police car came driving down the road.

The car pulled to a stop by the edge of the cracked pavement on the tarmac road, which was in dire need of resurfacing. The car stopped on what was technically a no-parking zone... but the paint which designated it as such was so faded as to be illegible. The rabbit driving turned off the engine and got out briskly, letting the door slam behind her, shaking the car a little as she marched away. From inside the car — which had been silent since the rabbit's final outburst of emotion — the fox watched forlornly, as she continued her speeded walk towards number twenty-two which was an apartment block: tall, thin and wedged between two other likewise buildings, while knowing that she wouldn't wait for him as it was just too much to expect her to.

"Well, Nick," he muttered, as she moved further and further away, "that's the end of this relationship." However, after climbing the small flight of concrete steps to number twenty-two, Judy came to a stop by the blue door with frosted glass windows. She didn't turn away from the door — didn't look over to Nick still in the car — but she did wait for him... if anything, it made him feel worse as her words floated up through his mind.

'Nick, you are my partner. Everything we do, we do together Nick, the good and the bad. To be the best we can be, we need to take and give everything we have to each other. If that means being late for you? It doesn't matter in the least, so long as we do it together.'

'Sometimes, Carrots, I really love you.'

'Only sometimes?'

He had really believed in her as she had said that — but moreover, he believed in himself — that he was finally ready to share himself with another person after so many years shut off, locked away. It was not the first time Nick had sourly mislaid his trust in himself, so he should not have been surprised when he raised his emotional walls against Judy, shutting himself off from the rabbit who he loved dearly, and she quite possibly liked him in sort of that way in return. He looked over to Judy — quite a way off from him, stock still, staring at the blue door, waiting for him to join her.

He wanted to believe he was ready to love again — he wanted to let himself love Judy so badly — but, as he had just seen: he still needed only a slight push for raising his walls against Judy, cutting himself off from her in a dreadful lack of trust.

You only hurt the people you love... you should know that by now.

"Damn it," he muttered under his breath, "damn it all to hell."

...

Across the street, Judy had counted off nearly a whole three minutes in her head. That was two minutes longer than she had intended to allow him — and yet, when it came to he time she had told herself she would leave the stubborn fox to his own fate — she found she could not pull herself away from him just yet. She waited longer regardless.

But, at length, the truth came upon her. Nick was never coming. Judy, biting her bottom lip to hold a tear at bay, reached her paw out to the door handle, but as her soft paw touched the cold metal, her ears swiveled at a sound behind her. She turned with a start, something like relief filling her as Nick, at long last, emerged from the dark confines of the ZPD cruiser. As quickly as the joy at his coming came, however, it was again relapsed by the sense of betrayal that he had struck within her when he blanked her — completely blanked her — while she threw herself emotionally upon him, hoping to make him open up and face his demons. Emotion, which cascaded off him like water around a stone, leaving him no different than before, yet leaving Judy an emotional wreck.

The rabbit kept silent — staring at the blue door, motionless — as the fox moved to stand beside her. As much as she regretted the fact, she was already finding it hard to be mad at him. "We just gonna stand here all day," she said, venomously, "or were you planning on opening the door sometime."

The fox made no reply of the rabbit's remark, though a number of cutting retorts came to his mind. He kept them all down; she didn't deserve insults, not at all. Silently, Nick reached out and pushed the blue door open. Without a word, Judy stepped in and Nick closed the door as he followed. The inside was grey and dimly lit — yet clean — and not as run-down as some of the buildings on that street. The floor was imitation wood, scratched but well-polished. The wallpaper was old and peeling at the corners. Together, yet somehow, apart — they walked down the corridor and to a speaker in the wall where Judy found and pressed a buzzer.

The male voice which crackled over the speaker in reply asked for their names and room number, but Judy reported she was an officer investigating a murder, and was then let into the main complex, which was exactly what happened. There was a notable lack of banter between the two partners as they walked to room seven on the first floor — the rabbit ignoring the fox and the fox making no attempt to be noticed by the rabbit as he walked — a little further than usual — behind her.

Entering through the metal gate, sectioned off the porch of the block of flats, which was guarded tirelessly by the unblinking eye of a security camera. Wilde and Hopps walked down a long narrow corridor. The floor of this corridor was carpeted — a rough, old, industrial carpet, meant for durability and cost efficiency rather than comfort — blue in color, yet stained in many places and pulling up from the corners, with the carpet tacks bare to the room.

The walls were grey and lifeless, the ceiling was of cheap panel with a number of the mentioned panels missing, the lights — long beams which ran down the length of the corridor at intervals of around twenty feet — were too few and far between, and did not put up enough light to illuminate the corridor properly, so darkness hung in abundance, separated only by the dull yellow put off by the weak vision, along with the faded blue of the carpet, the dull grey of the walls and the creamy yellow of the thin plywood doors.

Judy paced on down the lengthy corridor — ignoring the fact her partner had fallen quite some way behind — and marched on towards a door, which was clearly marked '7' by a brass number screwed below the peep-hole. The number appeared to be in brass but, on closer inspection, was actually plastic — tarnished and brittle with age. Judy stopped just before the door and waited for the fox to catch up — again, not looking at him, but staring blankly at the door as he approached with words following, his voice soft with legs stopping to stand beside her.

"Hopps, look, I—" unbolting the lock with the key she had been given, Judy opened the barrier and stepped inside, letting it close on the fox as he spoke, cutting him off whatever apology he was about to try and make, to which his paw shot out to stop the door from closing and locking him out.

Nick sighed, pushed the door open again, and then followed silently, scanning the room he had entered into. It matched much of what they had seen of the building so far — mostly blue in color, percolated with dull yellow of off-white, dimly lit by an old ceiling beam, grimy, smelly, moldy, rotten. It was a square room — about four times the size of Judy's — and had two closed doors which led off to other rooms, as well as the third door they entered into. Apparently this room was the living room.

Against the far wall was a sofa, creamy blue, with old and torn upholstery which revealed the firm, uncomfortable padding of the cushions beneath, and with a number of burn marks — apparently cigarette burns — upon the arms of the chair. Against the corner of the wall was a small television with a smashed screen. Against another wall was a window which looked directly upon another brick house across the street. There was little else in the living room apartment but for a low cabinet of old junk and a few books, some miscellaneous litter scattered here and there, and a clothes-hook upon the door with a heavy black coat of fleece material — fennec-fox sized.

This coat was spotted by Nick as he closed the door and, on a spur of moment thought, he rooted through its pockets and found a small piece of metal in the inner breast pocket. He took it out and looked up at the rabbit who was taking a slow pace around the room, to which he proffered what he had found towards her.

"Hey, I've found a key." Judy glanced up at him — actually she looked at the key, avoiding direct eye contact with the fox — and then went back to her investigation. "What do you think this opens?" She didn't even glance up at him this time, walking to one of the two doors and opening it to reveal an airing cupboard containing a mop, bucket and a few cardboard boxes of junk. "See anything?" Nick asked as she passed him, crossing the room towards the other door which she opened without comment peeled at the fox. It revealed a kitchen which she stepped into, and closed the door behind her shortly after.

Nick stared up at the ceiling for a moment, then looked down at the small key he held — it wasn't a 'real' key, not any doorkey Nick had ever seen at any rate. It looked more like the key to a jewelry box, or a small safe, rather than anything truly important like a door. He slipped it into his pocket, walked across the room and entered into the kitchen. Judy had turned the light on in the eyes of the small, narrow kitchen. The kitchen consisted of little more than a fridge, a cooker and a line of drawers and cabinets which encompassed two-thirds of the room.

The chipped, tile floor was hard beneath Nick's feet...

"Look, Hopps, I'm sorry I ignored you. Can you forgive me?" It sounded as pathetic as Nick thought it would, and he wasn't surprised when Judy carried on as though nothing had been said, not even turning an ear towards him…

Almost as hard as Judy's shoulder, in fact.

"Carrots, please." He placed a paw on her back from behind her. She walked immediately away from him, knelt down, opened another cabinet and started searching through that. "Hopps, I know I was wrong to ignore you like that. I fully deserve this treatment from you, but—" Judy pushed Nick aside a little to access the drawer he was stood in front of... moving him as though he was just an object.

"Judy," Nick said from his place just beside her, "Judy. Judy!"

She stood, turning to him sharply. "Oh, talking to me now, are you?"

"Come on, Carrots, don't be like that."

Reaching out, Nick moved to touch her shoulder, but Judy slapped his paw harshly away before it even got half way between them. "Don't you dare tell me how not to behave; you're the one who's acting like a jerk!" Storming away from the drawer she was searching, Judy opened a cabinet across the other side of the kitchen and started looking there.

"I can't do this with you if you're going to keep switching off your emotions like that!" she shouted across her shoulder, shifting through the contents of the drawer. "If we're going to be lovers — which is something I want, badly — then you're gonna have to show me that you trust me enough to talk to me about these things!"

Nick crossed the room, standing just behind her with his paws on either side of her, while fully resting them against the cabinet's surface. "It's not a matter of trust— Judy— it's just, it's painful."

She turned and shoved into his chest, bracing herself against the cabinet and sending Nick stumbling back to the center of the room. "But we share that pain, that's what being a team means!"

"This is my burden to carry, not yours," he retorted, pacing back towards her. "I will not be the reason for—"

"What, making me cry?" she mocked, side-stepping his advance and moving back into the living room. "You think I can't handle a little heartache when it's for your benefit?"

"You were nearly in tears back at the factory just at the mention of my family's involvement with drugs!"

Judy walked over to the wall to glare out of the window with her back to the room, her voice just a touch softer, "I wasn't prepared for it then. But I am now, and we—"

"Hopps, just shut up and listen," he demanded, his voice almost a growl, as he approached her from behind— "now, I'm not gonna apologize for how I acted, but I will make ame—"

Persuaded still, Judy span on her heals, brought her arm around in a wide ark and smacked the fox heavily across the side of the face with the back of her paw.

...

Nick blinked at her. Slowly, not quite sure what had just happened, he raised a paw to soothe the hot pain in his cheek. Blinking again, squinting as his mind processed what had just happened, Nick's berating became heavy at the realization of what had just transpired, his dread kicked in the form of heavy lungs. Time — which had apparently slowed — returned to normal and Nick took a small clumsy step away from Judy, holding his cheek with his paw, his expressive eyes filled with the etch of hurt, as he gawked into Judy's eyes, which suddenly filled with the drownings of regret to Nick's withdrawal backwards.

... At his second step Judy's trembling became visible, and her paw, which had done the deed, shot to her gasping mouth, and she moved towards the fox, her other paw reaching out to touch him — make him see she hadn't meant it — with her voice high and trembling with worry, "Oh God, Nick, please! No, I— I didn't mean that! I'm sorry!" She rushed forwards to close the distance Nick had put between them, putting a paw out to touch his arm in what she hoped would be an affectionate gesture. It wasn't. Nick hurriedly pulled his arm away, gasping from the touch, stepping back again, a look of agony — emotional hurt — written across his face as he withdrew himself physically and mentally in a way he had hoped he would never have to do again.

"Nick, please," she begged, softer as he backed off to the door, "please, I didn't mean to do that, I—" Her ears pricked up with realization of what Nick was about to do when he opened the door to the apartment, and he — his eyes wide and his ears high with emotional pain — stepped out. "No. No!"

She leaped at him — actually throwing herself across the room at him — and flung her arms and legs around his neck and waist just as he was about to disappear. Her weight overbalanced him and Nick fell to the floor, instantly struggling to push the rabbit off himself, shoving her head and her body to rid himself of the arms and legs which were wrapped so tightly around him.

"Let me go!" He snapped at her after a moment of unsuccessful pushing.

"Let go of the best thing that ever came into my life?" she shouted. "Never!"

"Judy, let me go!"

"Nick, I'm sorry I slapped you. I—"

"Shut up, just, shut up!" Snarling, he continued to push at her, trying to untangle himself from Judy's small but strong frame. "The people you're close to always hurt you in the end. I should have known that by know."

"I would never harm—..." The statement, which Judy's mind had pushed forwards in the heat of the conversation, trailed off. How could she even think she would never harm him? She just did! She still couldn't believe she had actually struck Nick — sure, she had delivered many playful punches to the arm — but there was nothing playful about the slap she had delivered across the side of his face in an ire of worry, betrayal and concern.

Unable to complete her sentence, there was only one thing her mind thought fit to say... and she said it in a whimper into Nick's red ear, "Nick, I love you."

"No," he murmured. "Don't say that."

The color drained from Judy's face as an overwhelming feeling of sickness took her. "Why... why not? D-Don't you love me?"

"I can't let myself!" he shouted at her in a sudden burst of fury, his whole body trembling. With a sudden rush of terrifying dawning, Judy knew, knew that this was the result of a ghost of his past. The fear Nick was feeling — the hurt, the pain — went far, far deeper than just the slap she had put across the side of his face, though the slap doubtlessly was the inciting event for the resurfacing of this past pain. The rabbit was slightly relieved at this knowledge, yet at the same time started feeling even worse for having done it.

"Why not?" she asked, trying to discover what it was that was coming between herself, Nick and the love they should be allowing to pass freely between them.

"Judy, everyone I've ever cared about is dead." The words sent a shock through her small body, freezing it. Nick's body, on the other paw, started to convulse slightly, his eyes falling shut to stop the tears, his breath coming and going with uneven snorts between stifled sobs, and his voice weak and trembling from emotion. "Everyone: Mom, Dad, Scarlett; everyone, apart from you." Nick forced his eyes to open, though this allowed the tears to run down his cheeks and his voice to become yet weaker as he spoke. "A-and I can't let myself l-love you or... or something might happen and I'll l-lose you too."

"It... it's okay, Nick," Judy said, at a loss, doing all she could to offer her support. "I'm here for you. I'm here for you and—"

"I know you're here for me, no one else is. That's why I can't bare the thought of losing you."

"Nick," Judy said, lowering her head to rest on his chest, feeling the rapid beating of his heart, "we can make it through this, you and I, just so long as we can trust each other enough and to—"

"Judy," Nick said with a slow voice... "Will you please, let me up."

...

Silently, Judy took her paws away from around Nick and rested them against his shoulders. She uncoupled her hooked legs and withdrew them from around his back. She sat up, gazing down at the fox below her who lay on the floor, the fox who was gazing back up at her with eyes, which could have made statues weep from the sadness that drowned within them. Judy pressed her lips against his, her eyes falling closed. Nick didn't return the kiss, though it set his blood racing with a spike of pleasure — a pleasure which, for the brief second it lasted, banished all feelings of grief and torment from his body.

But when she stood, the misery flooded his mind like a broken dam.

Nick took the paw Judy offered towards him, standing silently and keeping his gaze and his expression vague, while his mind retained nothingness. Judy stood silently behind him. Stepping out into the corridor which was long and narrow, dimly lit and of a lifeless grey-blue color... Nick, slowly, started pacing his way down the corridor. Judy remained at the doorway, tears trickling down her face as her life walked away from her. When he reached the door at the end of the corridor — the door which would take him away forever — Judy called out.

"I love you."

... Her voice echoed dully down the corridor. Nick stopped and half-turned to her, his ears raising a notch before he forced them back down, turned his back to her, turned his back on the world, and then resumed on the path lain before him... the front door opened, then shut with a soft click behind him.

"I love you too, Judy," the red fox muttered to the lonely silence that now surrounded him, "and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I couldn't have been a better mammle for you."

…

Author's notes:

Hesitance jumps around your mind,

Grooms decision thus chosen blind.

Your thoughts most succulent of snack,

All delivered by luscious feedback.

So don't hide like a tiny shrew,

Thus share that belovable review!

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