Chapter 14.
A/N: Hello any and all returning and new readers! I know it has been too long but come hell or high water this is getting finished. Trigger warning for addiction right from the outset. It's an integral part of the story moving forward so I'm sorry if that affects anyone's enjoyment moving forward and I'm sorry for any inaccuracies in this chapter and future ones regarding this very serious illness.
The doctors had given him morphine. That was bad. What was worse was that they refused to give him more. Nick had been a bad kit and that bad kit had become a bad mammal. A mammal with addictions and debts up to his eyes. He and Finnick had enabled each other because it was the only way to deal with their problems. Or at least it had seemed that way until Finnick had been caught with a gram of grass. It was the duo's only arrest in a long career but it might just have saved their lives.
Finnick underwent two months of rehab and through the power of example and plenty of threats convinced Nick to do the same. The therapy allowed them both to kick their habits and focus on more lucrative enterprises like popsicle scams. It had been ten years since Nick had felt the itch and nausea that opiate withdrawal brought with it. Now it was back with a vengeance.
Nick was curled in a ball, dripping with sweat and itching like crazy. The doctors and nurses had wrapped his paws in swathes of bandages to stop him from scratching himself bald and bloody. He had to get out of here. There hadn't been a visit in a couple of days. Not since that rabbit with the basket of blueberries had arrived claiming to be his girlfriend. Nick would have laughed if he hadn't felt so sick. She'd left the blueberries and he'd tried to eat them but he couldn't keep anything down. That was the cruellest irony yet.
He'd seen plenty of fuzz come by. It wasn't helping matters especially when he'd wake up screaming and there'd be a timber wolf or polar bear there with concern in their eyes. It was hard to see past the uniform no matter how kindly they looked at him. Nick hated cops, always had. Worse he felt like a prisoner. He definitely had to get out of here. If he could escape Mr Big and numerous other gangs he could sure as shit get out of this hospital.
But how? The knock on the door came then. It was four in the afternoon, visiting hours. It was that dumb bunny again wasn't it? He couldn't see anyone in the door's glass panel but he could see the tips of a pair of ears. She gave the impression of being determined if nothing else. Nick groaned and buried his head in his sweat soaked pillow. A second knock was followed by the door opening.
"Nick?" asked a gruff voice. "Nick get the fuck up!"
"Finnick?" Nick said shooting up, an act that sent his head spinning. Sure enough the diminutive Fennec fox was there but dressed in a business suit. How long had it been since the popsicle scam? The smaller fox looked the same otherwise except for the same redness around the nose and eyes that the rabbit – what was her name again? Julie? – had displayed.
"How you doing Nick?" asked Finnick.
"How do you think?" Nick replied, holding up his bandaged paws. "This place is a prison."
"It's a hospital Nick. You're here to be helped."
"Yeah and look how that's going. Finnick what the fuck is going on? No one's told me anything since I got here. Not the doctors, not the cops. How long has it been since the popsicle scam?"
"It's been… It's been a while Nick I won't lie," stated the other fox hesitantly.
"How long?" Nick growled.
"Nearly two years Nick."
That stopped Nick's rush of follow up questions. Two years? That'd make him nearly thirty-five. He'd lost two birthdays, two Christmases and a whole lot else besides. What had happened in all that time? Where did he go from here? Where could he go? Nick asked the only question that would trip out of his shocked mouth.
"What happened?"
And so Finnick explained. He told a crazy story about a sheep called Dawn Bellwether and how she nearly destroyed Zootopia. He told Nick about the unbelievable fact that he had partnered with a bunny that sounded like a nightmare to anyone. Apparently they had saved the day and the city. Soon after Nick had joined the ZPD and passed with flying colours. He became one of the legends of the force after being partnered with the rabbit he had helped. All of their exploits had led them to become detectives. Soon after their appointment Chief Martina Bogo had commanded their presence back in Zootopia to help take down one of the city's biggest and oldest terrorist groups. Nick could hardly believe a word.
"That water buffalo's name is Martina?" he asked sceptically.
"Yeah," responded Finnick. "Apparently it was a slip of the pen on his dad's part."
This Fennec fox looked like Finnick. It sounded like Finnick. It smelled like Finnick. It wasn't him though. The cops had paid this snitch to be the friend Nick remembered. If this was really his old friend he'd help him get out of here. Nick said as much and he got the response that he feared.
"No Nick," said Finnick solemnly. "I hated the fuzz as much as you do right now. Plenty of 'em are bad people but they're not the ones we dealt with. Judy loves you Nick. I do too. And so do all the people you work with."
"I don't know who you are," said Nick. "But you're wrong. I don't care what you say you're wrong."
"Alright Nick. If you don't believe me that's fine. But she loves you and neither of us can change that. Will you speak to her once more, for your old pal at least?"
His skin burned. His fur felt like it was about to leap off him. His brain felt like it was boiling inside his skull. But the memories persisted. The taste of her sweat and fur. The scent of her pressed close against him. The feel of him deep inside her. The sensation of her paw in his. Nick Wilde didn't know if it was instinct or a deep-seated conviction that made him say it but he said: "Yes."
Wolford had been pretty practical before he joined the force. He'd taken his lot in life and done his best with it. Never had much time for sentimentality. His commanders in the army had loved it. It'd made him perfect for the kind of clandestine, clinical operations he'd been sent on. He'd hated his nickname though. Lone Wolf. It was so uncreative it bordered on derogatory.
Only after all the missions and violence within his own country's borders had he let sentimentality come into his life. He'd done his job and he'd done it well but it had been time to move on. He'd spent months in therapy. Learned to heal, learned to love and he'd learned to cry for the first time since he was five. But a side effect of this new love was isolation. All the death during his military career had hardened him. Therapy had helped him soften up but he'd decided to try not to let death affect him ever again. So he'd isolated himself.
He kept to himself mostly. Rarely socialised in or out of work. The loneliness of the Highway Patrol suited him. Except for Grizzoli, Hopps and Wilde he had few friends. It suited him. Sentiment could hurt just as much as it healed. He knew that but he also knew why they were here.
"He used to live here," said Judy, indicating the underside of the bridge. "Before he was a cop. It was here that I convinced him to help me take down Bellwether. It was here that I realised I loved him."
Wolford edged closer to Judy partly to avoid the rain but more so to comfort his small, vulnerable friend. She'd asked him to take her for a drive when his shift was over. He'd driven – mostly in silence – until she got him to stop here. The muggy wetness of monsoon season was starting to get to him and everyone else. He missed the sun. The broad shouldered timber wolf hunkered down and put his arm around the rabbit who was half his size.
He couldn't remember what Judy looked like with her ears up. He'd tried to cheer her up. A carrot doughnut there, a Gazelle playlist here. All he got was a muted thanks or a half-hearted foot tap. Not even Clawhauser was getting through. Things were spiralling. He'd seen it before, he'd hoped not to see it again.
"He's not gone yet Hopps," said Wolford. "He's just… lost. He needs our help. Your help so that he can find his way back. But it has to be gentle. On both of you. The whole ZPD, shit, the whole city has your back Hopps. It's a cliché and a half-truth but I think time will literally heal these wounds."
She leaned closer into him and small paws gripped the fabric of his uniform like a vice. Wolford swallowed past the lump in his throat. It was then that Judy's phone lit up.
Nick lay there as the monsoon clouds darkened the sky outside to a deeper black than ever before. The season was about to break with the biggest rainstorm of the year. Nick made fists to deal with the shakes that wracked his body. His chest and shoulders were tight with repressed energy and all his muscles were locked rigid. He was nervous, extremely so, but the reason for it eluded him.
His stomach was empty and sore. His head felt like spikes had been driven into his eyes and ears. He felt apart from himself physically but mentally he was aware of every pain. More than that he was aware of that two year gap – "block" the doctors had called it – in his memory. He was drawn out of his misery by the ICU doors opening. He saw Wolford, one of his two apparent guardians, rush in with Judy. They slowed as they reached his room. Judy knocked lightly.
"Come in," he called, trying to keep the strength in his voice. The door opened and after a brief, whispered exchange with Wolford Judy stepped in. The wolf went to stand outside the ward. The rabbit's ears were not quite flat against her head and Nick detected a shake to them.
She stepped closer and Nick breathed in for the first time since she'd come in. And he caught her scent. Images flashed and popped like cameras in his mind. He saw her in a stupid little uniform in an embarrassingly small car. He saw the black water of the Tropical Zone's river and he heard himself call her name in desperation. He remembered the feel of his jaws around her thin neck. The thump of music and flashing light and the feel of her close against him. Last came her eyes: desperate and hurting and loving as his own vision went dark. He exhaled.
"You remember," she said. "Don't you?"
"No," he responded truthfully. "There are flashes but that's all I get. I don't know if it's a trick of my damaged head or whether I really did know you."
"You still do know me," she said. "I'm sure of it. I know the fox I met and loved is still in there."
"You say all that as if it really means something. As if it's more than an impossible dream."
"I could march in an entire precinct of mammals and a whole farm of bunnies to tell you it's true."
The iron in her voice surprised him but it made his hackles rise as well.
"I meant as if it means something to me," he snapped. "Whatever we had or whatever you're trying to convince me that we had obviously means the world to you but it means nothing to me. It's just added confusion. I woke up not knowing who I am and the third mammal I see after a cop wolf and a doctor that shoots me full of morphine is a sly bunny trying to convince me that we loved each other in every way. So you'll forgive me if I think this is all a little ridiculous!"
"I'd forgive you anything Nick," she said and all the iron in her voice was gone replaced by an aching sadness that failed to get past his seething anger.
"Then you'll forgive me if I ask you to leave and to not contact me again unless I ask you to?"
"OK Nick, sure, whatever you want."
Judy left the room without another word. By the ICU's doors he saw her bury her face in the wolf's abdomen. A strangely sickening mix of regret, jealousy and anger burned through Nick. He had to get out of this place.
A/N: Dark right? Well that's the kidnaps and the heartbreaks done with. Hopefully it's all healing from here on. Be sure to review, favourite and follow!