Summary:

Judy and Hugo sit in ritual, and this moves Judy to bare her soul to him. Nick and Fennick have a short chat as Wolfard drives his partner to the Tundra Town Central Hospital. Fennick then visits with Cheryl in her office, and they are visited by two nurses seeking wisdom. At the end, Hugo provides Judy with some much needed support, and she rewards his efforts with a bombshell.

Hugo's House in the Snowy Hills

Hugo's ears twitched, as if he heard his name being spoken in the distance by some mammal he couldn't see. But before he could turn his head to look, Judy spoke up. "I've made some spectacularly bad decisions in my life." She freely admitted.

"Oh? Why do you say that?" Hugo asked across from her, turning back to face her.

"Isn't that what I'm supposed to do here, sitting in this circle? Seek wisdom and understanding?" She looked around at the candles, their wicks slowly burning in the stillness of the room. "Be at peace, and all that?"

Hugo pursed his lips but had to agree, "Yes. But usually a mammal sitting here would be seeking understanding about why some other mammal has died, not necessarily to point out all their bad decisions. We all make really bad decisions in the course of our lives."

"Yeah, Doc… But my bad decisions somehow end up leading to some other poor mammal's death. Careless blood on my paws, so to speak." She shrugged as she gazed across the circle at him sadly.

Hugo felt the distinct impression that she was being literal in that description of her guilt. Yet in all of his searching for her across the years, he had never encountered a warrant for her arrest, and if she had been running around killing mammals indiscriminately, she would have left evidence of such malice somewhere. Evidence that would have led to requests for information, information on her background, motives and methods. And those requests would have eventually made their way back to him, one way or another.

But he had heard nothing but the echos of silence. A black hole of information, as if Judith Lavern Hopps had ceased to exist. He supposed that if she had done heinous murder under some other nom de pleur, that it might remain hidden for a time. But not long, for as much as he deplored the casual corruption of those who held the badge, he could find no fault in the efficiency of their investigations. The police departments on the Northern continent were superb in their diligence and thoroughness, and criminals did not escape justice for long.

"Carl, you mean?" He asked her, curious as to what her answer might be.

"Carl? Yeah… He was the first… My first bad decision, so to speak." She nodded glumly.

"Judy, you were nine; just a kit. You plainly saw him as a threat to your family, and you acted in defense of your family." Hugo pointed out to her.

"What? Where did you get that? I never explained why I killed him! Not once! Not in group or one-on-one sessions! Not even to you!" She looked up at him in shock.

"No, not to a counselor. But to another, higher, Power." He offered her.

"Oh…?" She sat up straight, and looked at him sharply. "My prayers?"

He nodded, "Yes. I occasionally would catch you praying before you went to bed, while at Cliffside. It intrigued me that you still felt a religious conviction, being a teenage sentenced to an indeterminate sentence in a maximum security asylum. You didn't surrender to despair."

"Conviction? Huh… Not quite the word I would use, or expect you to use. I figured somebody might try to pin what I did on some religious delusion or something. Give them a convenient label to slap on my case."

"There wasn't one."

"One what?" Judy was confused.

"A label on your case file." Hugo explained, "The diagnosis field was empty. As if no one could ever figure it out."

"Yeah, well, I never helped define that, I suppose. There wasn't anything I could say that wouldn't lead some head shrink to determine that I was really crazy, and since I was already in an asylum, I didn't figure that there was any point to adding fuel to the fire, so to speak."

"No, you were always very rational in your actions and behaviors. I never believed you were crazy. You had to have some reason to have done what you did."

"Reason? Yeah… Yeah, I had a reason." She nodded.

"Which was?" He prodded her.

She sat there, considering her response. "Doc… Doc, do you believe in reincarnation?" She looked at him in askance.

Momentarily taken aback, Hugo thought she was trying to stall. But the look on her face, and the stance of her body, was earnest. The question was real, and what's more, important to her.

"Well, there are diverging opinions on that, with..."

She interrupted him, "I'm not asking what other experts think. I'm asking you what you believe." She sat there looking at him hopefully.

He hesitated before answering honestly, "I don't know. I know my Abuela would have lots to say on the question, but as a doctor who specializes in the workings of the mind and brain, I've never really seen evidence of that. Not that it couldn't exist, just that I haven't seen it."

"Huh..." She looked down at her toes in contemplation.

Wrong answer, Cat. He mused. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You were being honest." She assured him.

"And you were as well." He steered her away from the uneasy question of Carl, which seemed to lead into questions of metaphysics. "You speak of blood upon your paws, but in all of my experience I only know of the one that got you sent to Cliffside." He pointed this out without mentioning Carl Latrans. "Were there others, others that you feel I should know about?"

She shrugged, "Well, there was Lance."

"Who?" Hugo had never hear of this mammal.

Filled with melancholy, she smiled bleakly, "He was my boyfriend, back when I was doing porn. He was really good to me."

Hugo was struck by the memory of the picture from earlier, "The Rhino? Randy McHorny?"

She nodded, "Yeah, that was him. Randy McHorny was his porn name. His real name was Lance, Lance Ujasiri. He was a former MMA and wrestler who had to retire after too many concussions. He had this gym where he worked as a coach, in addition to his porn shoots."

Judy sighed, as the tears started to fall. "We were mismatched in size, stamina, and age, but we were matched in love. I loved him with all my heart, and then in the end when he needed me most, I killed him."

The ZPD Garage

Nick slid into his normal seat next to Wolfard, who already had the cruiser running, and buckled his seat belt. As his partner pullout of the parking lot, Nick pulled out his phone and rang up a certain little sand fox.

"Yo." Fennick greeted him.

"You needed to talk?" Nick asked him.

"Yeah… So something weird happened yesterday, and I was wondering if..." Fennick searched for the right words.

Nick was suddenly on guard, "What do you mean about yesterday?"

"Ah it's kinda bout the goat thing, with Clawhauser, at the hospital." The little fox began.

Nick demanded, "Who told you about that?"

"The Cat, who else?" Fennick said off-paw.

"What?! Why?" Nick's jaw dropped open.

"He had me babysitting one of his patients. Anyway, it got me thinking, thinking hard, ya know?"

"Yeah…?" Nick was dreading where this was going.

"I'm sick and tired of pussy-footing around him every time a certain subject comes up. When are you gonna come clean with him? Cause I'm not sure I can keep it a secret for much longer. I really can't." Fennick admitted.

Nick sighed, and sat back in his seat. His wolf partner looked over at him in concern, but Nick just shook his head. "Don't worry about."

"Don't worry?"

"Yeah. Bogo's ordered me to brief him tomorrow, in full, as part of the change up in Task Force leadership. I gotta do it. I just don't know how." Nick said with resignation.

"What? Really?" Fennick was amazed that Nick would unbend so far, and since he did so, Fennick was willing to extend him an olive branch, "Do you need help?"

Nick stared out the window, "Honestly, I might."

Fennick offered, "Okay, if ya need me, I'll be available any time after five. Just give me a call."

Nick raked his claws through his head fur, "I will. Listen, I gotta go."

"Kay. Later, Dawg." Fennick hung up.

Wolfard looked over at his frowning partner and offered his opinion, "Ya see? This is why we don't discuss police business with our closest friends. Makes for really awkward conversations."

Nick just snorted in agreement as he leaned over on the arm rest and stared out the wind shield.

"So, you finally have to tell Hugo, eh?" Wolfard said sympathetically.

Nick was quiet for a minute before he turned back to the wolf, "Yeah. That was what Bogo wanted to talk about. Seems the damn rabbit ordered it, and since he's in charge, it falls on my ass to do the dirty deed."

"How ya going to do it?" Wolfard asked.

"I have no fucking clue, dude." Nick just shook his head.

"Well, let me know when you plan to do it."

"Why?" Nick asked mildly.

"So I can be close by with a SWAT team to take him down, ya know, for assaulting an officer and attempted murder?"

"What? Oh, the big bad wolf can't handle a little itty bitty forest cat?" Nick laughed.

"Oh, Gawd no! I ain't stupid. The cat's crazy strong! I was there when he went savage, and I couldn't contain him! He torn my body armor to shreds. Took six weeks for my pelt to grow back from where he ripped up my fur with those claws of his. They are really sharp, I will tell you." Wolfard pointed out to him. "Really sharp." Wolfard shuddered.

"What? And it's okay that I get to be stuck in a small room with him while I tell him really bad news?" Nick leaned forward as he stared at his partner in disbelief.

"Better you than me, partner." Wolfard added, shaking a finger at Nick.

Nick sighed and shook his head slowly in response to the show of support from his partner.

Judy's ears dropped down her head as tears continued to flow down her cheeks.

Hugo was taken aback, "Killed him? How?"

She wiped at her check with a sweater sleeve, "He was having these really bad migraines one day, but we couldn't find his meds, so I ended up getting him something pretty strong from somebody I thought I trusted, and he O. on it." She finished simply.

Hugo sat back and asked, "What? What did you get him?"

Judy slowly breathed out, fighting to control her tears, before responding, "Something called Etorphine. It was just supposed to make him sleepy, but the guy I got it from warned me that it was pretty lethal in the wrong dosage. And it killed Lance." She shrugged as the tears began anew.

Hugo knew that drug, knew it's effects and it's dangers, and he knew how it was commonly applied, "Was it in an injector? Under a foot long?" He held up his paws to demonstrate.

She looked up at him blearily, "Uhhh, yeah?" she affirmed, as she wiped her eyes and nose with her sleeve.

He quickly got to his feet in one fluid motion, pointing to where she sat and said, "Wait there a second. I need to grab a couple of things and I'll be right back." He turned and ran out of the room and down the hall.

Judy perked up her ears in confusion. She could hear the scrap of his claws on the stairway banister, but his quiet footfalls on the plush carpeted steps were almost a whisper, fading in the distance. She looked about the now empty room, empty of his physical presence, but she strangely enough didn't feel alone or abandoned. His scent lingered, intermingled with the scent of the beeswax candles, whose flickering lights gave the large space a feeling of warmth and comfort.

She looked down at the circle again, and realized that Hugo hadn't put any candles on the three large symbols that were outside the circle. She wondered what they meant, since Hugo hadn't mentioned them in the beginning of the ritual.

Hugo strode back into the room, carrying several items in his paws; his phone, a laptop, and the plate of veggie slices she had been snacking on upstairs. He set the plate next to her feet, and sat down cross-legged on his mat. Pulling his laptop into his lap, he lifted the lid and logged in. He pointed to the plate as he waited for the device to finish coming up, "I brought you your breakfast. It was just sitting on the counter, and I figured you would want it."

"Oh, thank you!" She smiled as she slipped a paw down to sample a carrot. She crunched on it for moment, before noticing that he was looking at her expectantly.

He patted the laptop keyboard with a broad paw, "I think can I settle some of your concerns, Judy."

At Cheryl Silverheels' ZU Professor's Office

Fennick closed the call, and looked across the office desk at the cool coyote on the other side. He shrugged. "Does that work?"

Cheryl Silverheeels laughed as she shook her tawny head. She had heard both sides of the conversation, since Fennick had it on speaker. "I guess," she replied, "although I think it's cheating or something. You really didn't tell him anything."

"Not the place or time. Plus, Hugo would be pissed if I told Nick about her without asking him first, probably pull my asshole out of my mouth. Kill me dead."

Cheryl looked down at him, her brow furrowed, "What is it with you two? You keep acting like he's going to murder you. He's not that violent."

Fennick sat up, "What? Shit, he's a barrio cat! Used to run with the HSG back in the day, right? His grandma made him a Priest of Death, right? He's a dangerous Cat!"

"Oh, of all the ignorant..." Cheryl grabbed her aching brow with her paws. Fennick just grinned. He didn't fear the Cat at all, but sometimes he acted like he did, just to see what other mammals would do.

KNOCK… KNOCK...

Hugo explained to Judy, "One of the advantages of being a wandering neurologist is that it takes me to all sorts of interesting places, and that in turn gets me access to all kinds of interesting information. I did some work out west in Mission Bay with their medical forensics team a couple of years ago, and they gave me access to the Golden State's Medical Examiner's database of death certificates for my research work. I still have that access."

He pulled up the Golden State Medical Examiner's database and logged in. "Well, let's take a look. What was his given name again?" he asked her. She repeated Lance's full name, "Lance Ujasiri."

"Uh huh." Hugo entered the name into the database search engine. "What about his date of birth?" She told him. "And he died on…, Okay here it is. Hum..."

"What is it?" Judy leaned forward.

Hugo read off the screen, "Cause of death: Frontal Lobe Dissecting Aneurysm. Yeah, that makes sense... Toxicology screen: naproxen and sumatriptan, concentration… Other trace amounts of... This all looks very normal." Hugo was relieved to see that.

"What? Explain! In English please!" Judy demanded of him.

"That means that he died of a type of blood vessel aneurysm usually caused by repeated brain trauma. One of the blood vessels in the front of his brain had split open just a bit on the inner layer, causing the outside of the blood vessel to bulge out as it swelled with blood. That bulge was what was causing of his headaches. It was squeezing the nerves in the frontal cortex. The initial inner rip was probably caused by his brain sloshing around every time he was knocked unconscious in the MMA or wrestling ring. Eventually that bulge became weak and split open completely, flooding the front of his brain with blood. In essence, his brain drowned in it's own blood supply. That's what killed him."

"What about the other drugs?" She anxiously demanded to know.

"Naproxen and sumatriptan? That's just migraine medication. Perfectly normal, and certainly wouldn't have caused that specific type of aneurysm. There wasn't anything weird in his blood or in his GI that shouldn't have been there, as far as the toxin screen was concerned. If he had the Etorphine you had gotten him, he certainly hadn't taken it at the time of his death."

"What? Then what happened to the injector?" She sat back, and started to chew on her claws in worry as she worked through Hugo's information. If the injector didn't kill him, why were the cops looking for it? Why were they looking for me?

"There's no mention of it in the report. Since the cause of death is considered natural causes, taking into account his known medical history, I doubt there was any sort of criminal investigation into his death." He tried to assure her.

"What if there was? Could you find out?" She looked up hopefully at him.

"Me? Not really. I don't have that kind of access here. Even if I did, I'd probably trigger an investigation just by asking. I don't want to use my local ZPD contacts here because they would want to know why I was asking." he sucked on his lower lip as he thought.

Judy just pulled her ears in front of her head and started tugging on them.

"But I do know someone can ask these kind of questions safely without us or them getting into trouble."

She cocked her head as she waited for him to explain.

He smiled ironically back at her, "We need to talk to my lawyer."

There was another knock at Cheryl's office door. He turned to look as she got up with a sigh. She walked over and opened it, "Miki? What's up?"

Miki Wilde gestured into the office, "Can we come in? Or is this a bad time?"

Cheryl smiled a little ironic smile, "No worse than any other time, I suppose." She swept her arm to the side, inviting the two female mammals who were standing in the hallway to come into her university office.

Miki looked around, "Oh, are you seeing students right now?"

Cheryl just shook her head as she walked back to her desk, "No, just Fennick, here to give me my daily ration of bullshit." She gestured at the little fox.

Miki turned to the other mammal, an older tall white hare dressed in maternity scrubs, and asked her, "Do mind if Fennick stays here? He's a counselor too. He can be discrete if you want."

The hare looked down at the little fox before she held out her paw to him, "I guess? Aren't you Nick's friend?" She asked him.

"I'm everybody's friend." He looked up at her, racking his brain for a name. Ah, yes… "Meredith, right? I think I met you at Nick and Miki's wedding, years ago? You had come with Hugo, right? Aren't you his neighbor or something?"

The doe smiled down at him, "Yes, dear. You had given a very memorable speech during the reception, as I recall."

Fennick grinned up at her, "Yeah, well, his dad's dead, so it fell to me to embarrass the tod. What can I say?"

Meredith's smile deepened until dimples formed in her cheeks, "There is that, I suppose. I also saw you talking with Hugo at the reception. You are friends, yes?" she asked him.

"Colleagues," Fennick corrected her, "and friends, going on thirteen years now. Hugo helped me set up my street youth outreach program, and he still works with me on the program. So yeah, we're friends."

Meredith considered this for a moment, before she took the remaining seat across from Cheryl, between Miki and Fennick, and addressed the coyote. "Well, it's kind of about Hugo that I wanted to talk to you. About Hugo, and one of his former patients, and a very strange interaction between the two of them that I witnessed on Tuesday morning when I went with them to a clinic."

Cheryl and Fennick traded a quick look. Fennick turned back to the larger doe and asked, "I'm taking a wild ass guess here, but this former patient wouldn't happen to be a rabbit, would she?"

Meredith looked at him sharply, and Fennick held up his paws, "Like I said, we've been colleagues for thirteen years. I've met most of his former patients, and he's met most of mine. So I think I know who you're talking about."

Meredith still looked unsure, so Cheryl asked her, "Do you feel that you witnessed something inappropriate between the two of them?"

Meredith sat back, and shook her head, "Oh, no. Not inappropriate, not really. More that… Well… It's really hard to explain..." Miki reached across and grasped Meredith's paw to reassure her.

Cheryl encouraged her gently, "Why don't you start at the beginning?"

Meredith nodded, "Well, if we are going to start at the beginning, we need to go all the way back to Monday night..."

Fennick sat back, a small satisfied smile on his muzzle as he drunk it all in. He had heard parts of it before, but to have it from another mammal would give him all the juicy parts that Hugo had edited out.

"Your lawyer? Why?"

"It has been pointed out to me by several mammals that our mutual relationship isn't strictly professional. As such, I can hardly call myself your doctor."

"If that, Doc. You were my art teacher, not my shrink." She shook her head.

"It was art therapy, Judy. Very cutting edge at the time."

She snorted, "To-may-to, To-mah-to, I still call it art instruction."

He nodded and shrugged, "Just so. But because of that, you and I aren't protected by physician–patient privilege. I don't want to be put in a position where I might betray your confidence."

"I trust you."

He nodded, "And I thank you for that trust. But our problem still holds, especially for me. While I can refuse to cooperate with a police investigation, I can't refuse to answer a grand jury in a capital murder case. If I do that, I could possibly loose my malpractice insurance, especially if the insurer feels I am being deceitful and hiding information from the jury. They would deem me to be a liability. And if that happens, it's conceivable for the medical board to reject my license, since they can't trust my judgment any more. I won't loose my immigration status, since I am a naturalized Zootopia citizen, but I could loose my lively hood."

"Oh"

"I'd rather not do that, in all honesty." He grimaced. "And I certainly don't want to loose you, either." She sat up straight at that, and smiled at him as he continued, "I've spent the better part of a decade looking for you, and now that I have found you, I don't want to you to go." He sighed.

She nodded, "I want to stay, too."

Hugo looked off to the side, "And now that I said that, he was right, it does sound kind of obsessive and creepy."

She giggled in agreement, "Who was right?"

Hugo shrugged, "Who else? Fennick."

"Oh!" Judy exclaimed, "Speaking of Fennick, why did you dump me on him all day? I thought you were just gonna be a few hours."

He shrunk down in embarrassment, "I am sorry. It was only suppose to be a quick consultation on a patient, and then it kind of got out of paw."

She cocked her head, "And I suppose you can't tell me any details, right? The whole physician-patient deal, right? All I know was it was a goat that attacked Benjamin, and the ZPD got called in."

"Did Fennick tell you?"

"Um, He read the whole thing to me. Well, he paraphrased, actually." Hugo chuffed a short laugh as Judy continued, "I think he was kinda annoyed with you at that point." Judy pulled an ear down, not to tug on it in anxiety, but to groom the matting out of the fur.

Hugo sighed, "Damn that fox." He laughed, "Yeah, I can't tell you the particulars about the case, since they are confidential. And ordinarily I wouldn't even be able to tell you his name either, except that we don't know that. No body does." He looked at her a moment, "Do you know many of the Zootopia street mammals?"

She stopped grooming for a moment to look at him with one eye, "We don't have a social club, if that's what you're asking. But yeah, I know a bunch. Why?"

"I was wondering if you might have ever encountered our patient while you were on the streets." Hugo considered, "He's a male Hircus Goat, about 40 years old. Off white color, terribly thin. He had come in with severe head trauma."

Judy shrugged, "Well, he is a ram."

Hugo agreed, "Yes, I can see that. He had been ramming cars in a parking garage with his head when he knocked himself out hitting a support column. Oh, and he was also stark naked."

"Thin, naked, and nuts? That doesn't narrow it down, Doc. Lots of street mammals match that description. Got anything else you can tell me?"

"Well, as chance would have it, I treated him at the free clinic on Tuesday."

Judy let go of her ear in surprise, and it shot up straight out of her paw, "The giggler?"

Hugo nodded.

Judy gestured with her right paw up near her head, "Did he have a broken tip on his right horn?"

Hugo nodded again, "Yes. Do you know him?"

"Do I know him?" Judy sat back, "Hell, Doc! You know him! You remember Ed, Edd, and Eddy?"

Hugo sat up as well, "Oh! Yes..."

She pointed her finger at his chest, "The goat you're describing is Edd."

"But, but..." Hugo sputtered, "He was a Cliffside patient for years! His iris scans should have been attached to his medical files. But when we did a search, we came up with nothing! Even the ZPD doesn't know who he is!" Hugo smacked his forehead with his paw in frustration, "What was his name?!"

Judy did know what his name was, though. She sighed and closed her eyes. So it comes to this, at long last… Trust, or flee?… She opened her eyes and looked at the frustrated cat sitting across from her. I told him I would stay… So… Trust it is.

Trust.

"William Bruse. Mammals that knew him called him Billy. Me, I called him Edd."

Hugo looked back at her, "On account of your time at Cliffside, yes. Did he break his horn there?"

She shook her head. "No, he broke it off during one of the riots, about four years ago."

During the Species Riots? "Oh, did he tell you about this?" Hugo was still trying to figure out what Edd might have been doing there when Judy dropped the other spat.

"No, I was there when it happened." He looked up at her in shock. She shrugged, "I told you, Doc. I've made some really bad decisions in my life. Some I didn't have a choice in. Some I regret. Some I don't."

He stared at her. "Judy..." She nodded. "No. NO! It is not possible. You took vixen for a lover, by Diosa!" He waved his arms back and forth, "You were cuddling with ME this morning, of all things! I cannot believe.. I cannot..." He ran out of things to say.

Judy reached across the gap between them, and rested her paw on his knee. "I'm sorry."

He looked up at her, confusion and hurt swirling in his eyes. In a small voice, he asked, "Prey First?"

She sat back and folded her paws into her lap. She took a deep breath and nodded.

He met her eyes, hers calm and steady, his wet with the beginning of tears. "And Dawn?"

"You remember when I told you about that really bad girlfriend, standing in the hall outside of Finnick's office yesterday?" He nodded, "She was it."

Denial and rage warred within Hugo's mind, as he fought against the implications. Except… There was just one little detail, tickling against the back of his head. "She was the last one to call you Judy, wasn't she?"

Judy nodded, resigned now to her fate, what ever it might be. Her eyes met his, steady and calm. Without fear or anger. "Yes."

Like a cascade of crystal shards, thoughts poured through Hugo's mind as his brain went into overdrive. He asked her one last question, "And just what were you to her?"

Judy took a small breath and answered in a steady voice.

"She called me her Favorite."

Notes: Sorry, but this one took a while to plot out and write - Thank Dakzoo for poking me.