Chapter 12 Summary
Judy celebrates her 18th birthday at Cliffside. Being sent someplace against her will, she panics and is drugged to unconsciousness. Waking up in Bunny Burrow, she has to figure out if this is real or just a hallucination.
Trigger Warnings!
This chapter includes topics like: dealing with depression, exceedingly foul language, forced intoxication, and manic episodes. If you are triggered by these subjects, please read this chapter with caution.
Author's note, from a comment I made on AO3:
Love and Fluff is coming, I promise. Just two more chapters of heavy emotional stuff, and then the tone will get lighter. New friends will be made, old friendships renewed, jokes will be laughed at, food and drink will be shared, and new wardrobes will be purchased. All things to make a lost bunny feel safe, wanted, and loved. I promise all the Judy fans that she will find her center and recover. She has to. Too much depends on her for her to fail.
10 Years Earlier At Cliffside psych ward: Judy's big day!
Judy awoke to the sound of rabid howling. Beaver howling to be precise. God, he was like a fucking clock! The stupid doctors could have cured his wolf delusion by now, but no, they had to torture the rest of her floor with a stupid beaver who thought he was a wolf. She pulled her pillow up over her head and pulled it down, grinding her teeth in frustration.
There was a clatter at her door, and she peered from under the pillow at it. It was just her breakfast – some wilted greens that looked like three day old grass clippings, dark green and soggy, on a cheap paper plate. The kitchen service really declined in the past year, not that it was ever stellar by asylum standards, ever since Horizons got into financial troubles defending their stupid contracts with the city.
There was a distant muted thunk, and the howling stopped. Oh fucking grand, the orderlies had managed to gag Millpond. Again. You would have thought it would occur to the administration to snip his goddamn vocal cords instead of just using the cheap disposable plastic gags that Swinton managed to find on special at some cheap-ass dollar store somewhere. He'd chew through that in a few hours, she knew, but that meant at least she'll have some peace and quiet to choke her breakfast down in.
Actually, she couldn't blame Swinton anymore for how things were run around here, the damn bitch. The stupid pig had managed to find herself a golden parachute and jumped over to the Zootopia Super-Max to take the Warden job. Now they had this stupid sheep ewe who was running things, some piece of work appointee from the city council, which just ignited the rumor mill at Cliffside, of course.
The most common rumor floating among the other patients that the ewe was here to shut things down permanently, transferring most of the patients to other facilities, and the hard core patients that were left over would get sent to prison. Other, more outrageous rumors, said that she was setting up a special chemical testing lab in the basement where she was going to test shampoos and perfumes on the rodents and rabbits still left at the facility. Certain asshole patients like to use that one to harass Judy. Most of the time she just ignored it, but if the orderlies weren't watching, she'd kick her tormentors in the groin, and spit on their writhing bodies.
Actually, Cliffside had been shipping patients out of here for the past six months. At first, most of the transfers had gone out in bunches, but now they've slowed down to just one to two a day. Not that Judy was ever gonna transfer out. Not with her luck, and certainly not today. No, today was her 18th birthday, and it promised to be an absolute shit-storm, just like the rest of her birthdays were, full of horrible singing by the staff and pharmaceutical cupcakes for all patients, except without the cake.
She got up and made her bed, not that they punished patients for failing to do that any more. It was just habit for her, one of the sole controls she had over her life. No, discipline at Cliffside had really slipped in the past 6 months, mostly because the new administrator who, feeling that she was an enlightened soul, had fired off most of the previous orderlies and replaced them with mall-cop level security types. They were fucking worthless pieces of shit, but they carried tasers, so she tried not to piss them off. She didn't mind the pain of being tased; it was the pissing her pants part that really annoyed her. It just wasn't worth the smell to sit in soiled pants for the rest of the day, tied up in a straitjacket.
She walked over to the door and pick up her food, and took it back to the steel table bolted to the wall. Plunking it down, she stared at the moldy mass in front of her. God, it wasn't worth the puking she would do later just to eat this crap now. She pushed it back up against the wall, and just sat at the table, waited for group to start.
Remedial Art is what she like to call it. Scribbling on construction paper with crayons, while the stupid intern tells them to draw what ever makes them happy. She'd pick it up, say it was beautiful, and go hang it on the wall with all the other shit that her fellow morons had turned out. At least Dr Weidii would actually critique the work, and make suggestions on how to make it better. Those sessions had been the happiest times she's ever had in this miserable place. But then all of a sudden he's gone and no body ever told her why.
Well, except for Swinton, who told her that he had been shipped back to his home country. Not that she believed anything that lying sack of chicharrones told her. No, she figured he had graduated from his post-doc, what ever the hell that was, with flying honors and had left Cliffside behind to do what all doctors do best, which was get really rich, leaving her behind to rot in a concrete cell. The fucker. She'd like to kick him in the groin.
Manchas had tried to run the class for a while, but he just didn't understand what art had meant to Judy. Not that it mattered anyway, cause Swinton canned him six months later for talking to some ZPD investigator. After that, the instruction quality slipped and slipped in art group until it was just like any other Cliffside group session when she first got here, before that damn cat had come along and fooled her into thinking he cared.
There was another muted clunk at her door, and an orange package slid through the grate. The watch-hole snapped open, and a voice snarled, "The patient will put the jumpsuit on now. You have five minutes to complete this task before we come in the door." Goddamn wolves. Always barking orders. Bark, bark, bark. Go howl at your own moon!
Did she want singed fur on her birthday, or would she comply? Oh, maybe they were doing grounds cleaning duty today? She perked up. The new administration had cut so far back on staff that they had taken to using patients to clean up the grounds around the Cliffside entrance. That would be worth it on her birthday, to experience fresh air and sunshine, and maybe she could even find a dandelion or two to munch on while she worked. Filled with an excitement, she jumped down from her chair, and hurried over to pick up the orange coveralls. She pulled the coveralls up over her Cliffside uniform and zipped up the front. That way she wouldn't chafe in the wrong places, and wouldn't get the uniform on the inside all muddy. There, all done.
She marched to the center of her room and announced that she was ready. The door opened and beyond it she saw two wolves, paws on their tasers. She smiled, impressed that they would consider little ol' her to be dangerous enough to rate two wolves with tasers. They marched her down the hall, past the stairs leading to the group rooms, and over to the elevators. Judy experienced a momentary twinge of panic; maybe there was some truth to the rumors of mammal testing going on in the basements. But no, the lead wolf just pressed the button for the lobby. No perfume testing for her today. She was going out into the sunshine!
Once they got to the ground floor, she was lead over to stand with a group of patients while the leader went over to another wolf in a suit sitting at a desk. Judy strained her ear to listen in. "Judy Hopps, as ordered, sir." He announced to the suit, who opened up a file. Judy couldn't see what was in the file, but the two wolves could. Midway down her patient file was a post-it-note with the words Expedite written on it along with a signature: Dr D. Pahin, ZMHW.
"Does this mean she gets a hearing?" the standing wolf asked. "No. No, just send her out with the others." the seated wolf responded. The standing wolf just nodded. He marched over to join the other wolf guard, who gave him some small leg shackles. He took them back to Judy and ordered her to stand still. He snapped the shackles around her ankles, and he moved back to the front of the group, leading them to the door.
Yup, grounds duty. They only put on the leg shackles to keep the patients from trying to run away. They left the hands free to do the lawn and garden work that grounds duty required. She hadn't been this excited in a long time, and that feeling lasted right up until they actually went outside.
It was raining; pouring, in point of fact. Goddammit! And on my birthday too. Yup, it's gonna be a shit storm of a day, she thought.
She stood just apart from the other prisoners, who huddled together for warmth. Judy sneered at them. Wimps, she thought. She'd show them how to tough it out today. God Damn, at least she was outside.
She saw two headlights appear in the gloom across a bridge; it looked like the guards were bringing a Cliffside bus across to ferry the work gang out. That made sense to her. They would keep the rain ponchos on the bus along with the gardening tools. They just had to stand here until the little bus got here.
Except that as it pulled up, she saw that it wasn't the stupid little white Cliffside bus with balloons painted on the side. No, shit, NO! It was a goddamn gray prisoner transport bus! They were sending her to PRISON! NO, nonononon o! She was due a hearing before they sent her away! She turned to sprint away, any direction looking better than that bus, but in her panic she completely forgot that she was wearing shackles. She took a leap, caught her foot in the chains, and crashed back down into a rain puddle on the pavement.
She struggle to right herself, and it was at that moment that she discovered a painful and unfortunate truth. She found that tasers work just fine through two layers of clothing and fur, especially if the cloth is wet. As she lay there twitching in the puddle, she looked up at the muzzle of the wolf who had been leading them out.
"Sorry, sweetheart, there's no escape for you that way. You are getting on that bus, and that's all there is to it." The security guard had read this one's file. She was an escape artist extraordinaire, and if he gave her half a chance she would be gone. He couldn't take that chance, not if he wanted to keep his job. He looked around, but didn't see any senior officers watching him. He leaned back to Judy as he pulled a long cylindrical object from his pocket.
Judy struggled to escape from him, but he wasn't taking any chances with her. He knelt over her leg, pinning her to the ground. He grabbed her flailing arm, and with his free paw, he rammed the object into her other thigh. She heard a small pop, a loud hiss, and suddenly cold fire flooded through her veins. As she struggled against the encroaching dark filling her vision, he leaned in and whispered, "Night, Night, little bunny."
Darkness took her, and all she could think of as her vision faded was that she wasn't going to get to have that dandelion after all today.
Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!
Judy twitched as she listened to the damn cricket chirping away. Somehow it had managed to sneak inside Cliffside, probably inside some damn guard's lunch. And now she had to listen to damn thing, until one of the insectivore patients chased it down. And another thing, the lights were on too damn early. One of the rent-a-guards must have hit the cell lights with his elbow. She reached for her pillow, but it wasn't at her head. Did it fall on the floor? She rolled over, and opened her eyes to look at the floor. Nope it's not on the tiled floor with the leaves. It must be on the other side. She rolled back up, dragging her arm across her eyes to block out the sun. Damn, this bed is getting lumpy, she thought.
Leaves.
Sun.
She whipped her arm down, and stared straight up. Instead of a ceiling of painted concrete with a single bare florescent bulb hanging from it, she was staring up at white painted wooden slats. And holding those slats up, standing next her, was this large carrot pillar, loudly painted in green and orange. She looked down at her bed, which wasn't a bed at all but a blue park bench. She sat up in a lurch and stared out across the far concrete platform, bathed in the golden light of dawn.
Sweet Cheese and Crackers!
This is the Bunny Burrow Train Station! Her mind screamed at her.
How the hell did I get here?
It had to be a drug reaction; it just had to be. That was it, she was reacting to what ever that damn wolf had injected her with, she thought to herself. She's experienced drug induced hallucinations before, but never this vividly. This one is chock full of sights, and sounds, and smells! Oh God, the smells! Fresh plowed dirt in the fields! Wild roses growing on the fences. The smell of fresh morning porridge drifting down the farmhouse lanes.
She walked down a street, kicking at the dandelion puffs with her feet. That's how she knew this had to be a hallucination, since that was her last conscious thought right before she conked out on the Cliffside courtyard. She had been thinking about dandelions.
She was also dry in this dream. She should be soaking wet, since she went down in a rain puddle after being tased. Nope, not here. Here, everything was sun bright and cloud free. It was wonderful. Too wonderful. She was waiting for the other spat to drop. Normally, at this point in her hallucinations she should be having invasions of pink death metal elephants giving a free concert in her skull or visits by professionally dressed cockroach doctors arguing about the ethics of lobotomies. Nope. Just sunshine, flowers, and farm fields as far as the eyes could see.
She wandered about for what seemed like hours, lost in this vision of normalcy, her only companion was the occasional rabbit farmer on a tractor, or a passing pickup. Ah, here comes the other spat, she thought. A middle sized delivery van, painted pink and yellow, was pulling up the road in front of her, driven by a middle aged looking fox. A fox, diving a delivery van in Bunny Burrow. Who would have thunk it!
The fox, who looked like a male, parked the van in front of her and got out the door. Coming around the door, she saw that he was a bit of a portly fellow, dressed in a plain plaid shirt and wearing a pink apron with a baked pie on the front. He walked up to her, staring at her like he just seen a ghost. "Juuu… Judy?" he stammered.
OH! It's Gideon! He looks just like her drawings that she used to do of him, she excitedly thought. She waved at him, "Hi, Gideon! Yup, It's me! I see you are a baker of pies! A pastry Chef, right?" Just like he was in her picture!
Taken back, he turned back to look at his truck, "Um, yeah? I make all kinds of pies."
"That's great! I never knew hallucinations could be so detailed!" She exclaimed.
"Hallucinations?" Gideon's weirdo-meter was going ding-ding-ding! She said she was Judy Hopps. Wasn't she in a mental institution?
"Oh, yes, but usually they aren't this organized. It must be a result of what ever the wolf injected me with. Any minute now, they're gonna inject me with the counter-agent, and I'm gonna wake up in the hospital ER foaming at the mouth! It's gonna be GREAT!" Judy was feeling a little manic right now, maybe from the over stimulation she was experiencing, maybe from the drugs she was injected with.
"Foaming at the mouth? Judy, are you rabid?" Gideon was a bit worried. He didn't think she was rabid, since she was talking, but he wasn't a doctor.
Judy pointed at her mouth, as she pulled her lips back and showed him her teeth. He pulled back from the display.
"Look Gideon, no foam! I'm not rabid, I'm drugged! There's a difference. A hallucination should know that, since I know that! Oh, look at all the pies." Judy climbed into his van.
Gideon didn't know what to do. He could call the Bunny Burrow sheriff, but he was worried they might just laugh at him cause he felt weirded out by an excited bunny who liked his pies. Those deputy bucks could be jerks at time, but he was a jerk once too, until Stu and Bonnie helped him out, so he could relate.
Stu and Bonnie! Maybe they just hadn't told him Judy had come home yet. He pulled out his phone, and dialed Stu.
"Hello, Gideon, how's baking?" Stu asked him.
"Um, baking's okay. Um, listen Stu, I think I've got your daughter here in my van. She's admiring all my pies!" In hindsight, Gideon thought that was probably the weirdest thing he could ever tell Stu. Maybe it would be better if he called the Sheriff's department. It would be less embarrassing. Caught up in that train of thought, he missed most of what Stu said next.
"Cotton? My niece? Is she playing hooky from school again? I swear, higher education is wasted on the rascal! What's she doing, again?" Stu asked him.
"She's admiring my pies." Gideon moved around to the rear of his van, and opened the twin doors. Judy sat on the floor, counting all the pies.
"Oooo! This is making me sooooo hungry! I haven't had anything to eat all day, since I didn't want to eat the moldy left-over lawn clippings this morning. Can I have some, please Gideon?" Judy rolled over in the aisle, and stretched her arms out to Gideon.
"What do you mean, admiring your pies? What, is she on drugs, Gideon?" Stu sternly demanded to know.
"Yeah, I think so. She said she's having a hallucination, and that she's gonna be foaming at the mouth soon. She also said she didn't know what the wolf injected her with. So yeah, I think she's on drugs." Gideon batted Judy's greedy paws away from his fresh pies. Wait, there, that one. His sampler pie pan, with half a raspberry pie in it. He could give her that one, maybe she'll leave his other pies alone. He needed those for his deliveries. She dug in with gusto, ignoring the fork he held out for her, using her bare paws instead.
"Well, you keep her in one place. Bonnie and I will be right over to sort this out. Where are you at again?" Stu directed him.
"Over in front of the Thumper's farm house, pulled off off the main road. Ya can't miss me; I'm the only pink van fer miles."
"We are on our way! See you soon, Gideon!" Stu hung up.
Oh, Blue Berries and Burned Biscuits, thought Gideon, this is turning out to be a really strange day!
"I'm on hold with the school, they're said they'll get right back to me." Bonnie told Stu as they bounced down the road in his truck.
"This drug problem is getting out of hand! Now it's in middle schools? I didn't think this was gonna be a discussion that we were going to have with her for a least a couple more years. We need to do something!" Stu fumed.
"She's our granddaughter, not our daughter. It's our eldest's job to raise her, not yours." Bonnie pointed out to her husband.
"Well, when we get home, I am going to find that buck and give him a piece of my mind, just you wait and see!" Stu barked back.
"Yes, dear." Bonnie said soothingly. "Oh, look, there's Gideon's van." She pointed down the road.
Stu pulled his truck up nose to nose to Gideon's van, who popped his head around the back doors before ambling over to their truck. "Hello, stranger." Stu said by way of greeting as he got out of the truck, "How is she?"
"Fine, except that she's hungry as all get out. I know that some drugs give ya the munchies, but I didn't think it was this bad. She's eating all of my raspberry tarts. I didn't think a little bunny could eat that much." Gideon complained to them as they walked together back to rear of the van.
Stu patted him on the arm, "It's okay, Gid, we'll make it up to you." Bonnie nodded in agreement. Stu raised his voice, "Alright, young doe! What's your excuse this time?" as he walked around the doors.
They came around the end of the van to a most peculiar sight. Judy was digging out the last crumbs of the raspberry tart she was working on with her paws. Her arms were stained bright red from paw tips to the sleeves of her Cliffside tunic, as if she were some kind of trauma surgeon doing emergency surgery in the field. And her muzzle… It was a horror show, Bunnicula come to life in the back of Gideon's van. Crimson stained her face, and cascaded down her throat and chest to pool in her lap. She looked up at the three of them standing there, and enthusiastically waved, splattering them all with droplets of ruby ichor.
"Hi Mom, Hi Dad! Want some pie?!" Judy offered them.
Gideon could swear he heard Stu's jaw hit the cement with an audible thunk. Bonnie neatly upstaged her husband by fainting dead away.
Judy let out a belch and answered her own question, "I guess not!" She picked up the tart pan to lick it clean.
"Judy, dear, you're not making any sense." Back at the Hopps family home, Bonnie test the water running into the bathroom tub, making sure that it was hot enough to soak the berry juice out her very colorful daughter's fur, but not enough injure her. "What do you mean Cliffside was closing down?" She turned around to help Judy take off her stained uniform.
"They had been shipping patients out for months, whittling away at the easy cases, and shipping the hard cases like me off to prison. Anyway, after giving us orange jumpers, they marched us all down to the courtyard to wait for the bus. Except that we didn't know it was the bus. I thought we gonna go do yard work, but it was too rainy for that." Judy prattled on, not even noticing her mother's confused expression, as she slipped into the hot water. "Aaaaaaahhhh. I missed baths."
Bonnie was concerned. Judy seemed rather manic, on top of all the sugar she had consumed in Gideon's van, and she still didn't have a decent explanation for how she got here, other than to offer the theory that it was all one big long running hallucination on her part. Frustrated, Bonnie tried to crumple up Judy's outfit so she could throw it away in the trash can when she felt paper crinkling in a pocket. Curious, she turned the outfit over until she found the pants pocket, and extracted a letter envelope. Stained in one corner with berry juice, Bonnie shook out the envelope out and opened it. A small plastic bag with what looked like white powder slipped out along with a letter. Bonnie opened the letter up and started to read.
Attention: Judy Laverne Hopps
It is the finding of the Cliffside Transition Committee that on this date, having reached your majority and successfully completed all relevant therapies, you are now deemed cured of your delusions and psychotic episodes. It is there for the conclusion of this committee that your are to be discharged immediately and returned to your original jurisdiction of record.
This finding will be recorded at the Cliffside archives on this date, and will be available for further review if requested.
If you require additional information, please contact your designated Cliffside case officer.
Thank you.
What a bunch of weaselly worded bunny pellets, Bonnie thought, Short, to the point, and total useless. Other than the part about discharged immediately. That was totally relevant to the situation at hand.
Judy was back to babbling her story again, "The wolf jumped on me and tased me in the back, and I dropped like a puddle of goo. Did you know you can be tased through two layers of clothing? I didn't. Of course it helps if you're wet…."
Bonnie leaned in closer to look at Judy's back. There, below her shoulder blades, were two little burn marks. Bonnie reached out and felt them with her fingers.
"OWWWW!" Judy yelled. "What did you do that for? That hurt!"
"Judy, there are two burn marks on your back." Bonnie pointed out to her.
"Of course there are! That's where the wolf got me. But I didn't think they'd hurt like that still..." Judy's face started to fall as the implications sunk in.
"Judy, they're real. And so is this." Bonnie held the letter up for Judy to read.
Judy leaned over the tub side, the lips on her muzzle moving in time with the sweep of her eyes as she read the letter that her mother held up. When she finished, she slowly turned her shocked face up to look at her mother's eyes.
"Yes, it's real. You are really here. This isn't a hallucination." Bonnie paused, tears leaking out of her eyes, and she finally got to speak the words she had waited nine years to say.
"Judy, you're home."