Heroes of Zootopia

Chapter 2 "Rain"

By DragonMan1997

Zootopia © Disney

Lily Wolff sighed as she walked up to her home with her suitcase. It had been a long trip full of surprises that she wanted to forget for a while and just enjoy the life she prefered. She was happy to be home, back in the Rainforest District. She never carried an umbrella here. The rain came as a comforting delight, even though it was artificially sprayed by the sky high sprinklers. Her only cover was the same tattered brown trench she wore ever since she found it at a thrift shop. It was identical to another one she had known long ago in a different place that she rarely talked about. It was another trip to forget what she saw but not what she learned.

Lily was not a mammal that could easily be figured out by records or documents alone. Her very name lied, now, right off the bat. Her married name could fool you on paper. A photograph could bring light to the fact that she was indeed not a wolf like her husband, Adam. She was a snow leopard. Odd, I know. But, so it was. Seeing her now, you could never have known that much of her early life was spent on crutches. A broken leg that didn't heal right stunted the growth of that leg. To prevent her spine from misaligning, she walked on her fully grown leg alone with the aid of crutches. Then she had the corrective surgery that made both legs the same length. That was ten years ago. And now you couldn't even tell there was a slight limp at all. Time allowed her leg to forget.

"Ah, nuts." Lily searched her pockets. "Where is it?" Her paws dug and dug but there was no trace of the key to her house. She could easily get in without it. "Adam!" She didn't even have to call her husband to let her in. But, she still didn't like this way. Looking around the whole neighborhood, she sighed when no one was in sight. "Fine." She moved closer to the lock to better hide her actions. She concentrated her thoughts. "Clé de tous." Her paw began to glow with a pink mist that swirled into the shape of a key. Grabbing a hold of the key, Lily pushed it into the lock and twisted it. She could hear as every pin aligned and the bolt unlocked. Lily let the thought go, and the pink mist evaporated.

She had magic, or some form of it. Maybe it wasn't magic at all. Her trip she had returned from was for the purpose of figuring that out. She told her husband it was a business trip. She had lied. Lily didn't want her husband to worry about her. They had both made a promise to leave their pasts behind them. But, problems began to arise. Lily was losing control. So, she followed myth and legend to the end of the world in the frozen tundras of the north where she found the Monastery. There she learned from others like her. They hid from the world, but she couldn't. Lily had her family. She would never abandon them.

The mammals at the Monastery taught her the ways. They taught her that the best method of control was practice. Bottling up power would only ever end in disaster. When Lily had asked what magic was, she was met by a curious answer. What isn't it? Lily learned it was always there. It was raw untapped energy that could be used by those who knew how to harness it. There's a science to it. Lily didn't like it, not one bit. She didn't even want it, but she upheld the responsibility. The only comfort she found in the idea of possessing magic was that she could protect her family with it if necessary. Thankfully, that day had not come yet.

Lily pushed open the door to her home. There was joy but also a reserved sadness that came with it. The house was not the same as it was a decade ago. It had been rebuilt after a fire destroyed it. Lily missed little things from the old house, old comforts. Those lost memories were more than compensated for with the addition of new memories for her, her husband, her son, and her daughter.

"Welcome home, Mistress." A bull dressed in slacks, a vest, white shirt and a tie rushed from up stairs. "Sorry for not being at the door to greet you." One of his horns bared a gold band. On his grey vest was a W calligraphed in gold thread.

Lily smiled at the bull who addressed her. "It's fine Grant."

Grant Cowden was a dear old friend of Lily's husband from the darker days of his youth. The bull had also worked with Adam in his crusade for justice all those years ago. Grant was a butler to the Wolfenstein family. Adam Wolff's family. And to this day, he continued his service with love and respect. "How was your trip? May I take your suitcase up for you?" Grant offered a white gloved hand.

"Thank you." Lily relinquished the suitcase to Grant as she unbuttoned her trench coat. "The trip was," she chose her words carefully, "eye opening. Where's Adam?"

Grant's face sunk a bit as he sighed. "The Master is in the basement, practicing."

Lily's face sunk as well. "Again?" She rubbed her eyes. "I'll go talk to him."

"Thank you." Grant bowed before starting away.

"For what?" Lily's query halted Grant.

The old bull turned slightly as a smile crept on his face. "He's like a son to me. Ever since his family perished in that dreaded gang war, I always looked after him as if he was my own. It's good to know someone else looks after him as well." With that he turned to the kitchen, most likely to ready lunch.

Lily smiled faintly as she inhaled deep breaths. The smile persisted through the tempest of thoughts and emotions storming away in Lily's mind. Practicing. The word was sour now. It brought worry and fear to Lily's mind every time she heard it. As she drew near to the basement door, she could hear it. The muffled sounds of the sound barrier being broken pulsated behind the door. Lily winced as she cracked the door open. The sounds were much louder now and more intense. A series of grunts, of fatigue and pain, echoed from the basement.

Adam Wolff closed his eyes as he swung the red paracord whip over his head and rolled it's long form in the direction of an empty soda can. The can was ripped in half by the whip as it's cracker reached maximum speed. The wolf clenched his eyes shut and loosened sore muscles as he dropped the paracord whip from his left paw. He took hard breaths as he resisted the pain fluctuating from his left shoulder. Eyeing the bandages, he muttered something that was even incoherent to himself. The white bandages were painfully obvious against his fur. His gaze finally shifted as he heard footsteps coming down the stairs. A smile came to him at last when he saw his wife. "Hey, honey."

"Adam. Your shoulder!" Lily rushed over to him and grabbed his arm.

"Wait!" Adam groaned as pain shot through him.

Lily let go. "I'm sorry. What happened?"

Adam bit his lip as he worked out another lie, regrettably. "There was an accident. A damaged fan we were working on accidentally got switched back on. Shrapnel went everywhere. I got nailed in the shoulder. No one else got hurt, thankfully."

Lily sighed as she brushed the back of her husband's neck. "I'm just glad you're okay."

Adam felt his heart ache at those words. He wasn't really okay. And deep down, he knew that Lily knew he wasn't either. She had to know, just like he knew something was wrong with her. They both knew something. That they were sure of.

"Adam." Lily grabbed his paw. "Do you remember when we promised each other that there would be no more secrets between us?"

Adam had thought the same thing. "Of course." Of course he did. The memory stung every time he lied about where he was and what he was doing.

"Would you ever lie to me, and why?" Lily was hoping for feedback for her own situation. Her alleged business trip was for a good reason. To gain control of her powers so they never hurt her family.

Adam almost thought Lily was onto him, but the sincere look in her eyes told him otherwise. Those eyes he had come to love so much, they were off. He reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a pair of cat eye glasses. "Drop the magic."

Lily sighed as she blinked away the magic she used to correct her eyesight when ever she didn't wear her glasses. Her vision was blurry until Adam slid the glasses onto her face.

Adam smiled as if to say, there's the mammal I fell in love with all those years ago. "You know the only reason I've ever lied."

Lily nodded as she understood. She had heard it before. "To protect the ones you love."

Adam took both of Lily's paws as he kissed her forehead. "That's right." This pained Adam as much as it freed him. His urgent work calls to seemingly nowhere were for a good reason. To maintain peace in the world so none could ever hurt his family.

Lily felt younger again, like she was still in that vine tangled alleyway standing in puddles of rainwater. She could see him again, Adam, unmasked for the first time. When he had asked her where home was, she told him , "Wherever you are." Had it really been a decade? Lily didn't know, nor did she care. Maybe it was because she'd imagined there to be flying cars by now, and there weren't any. No, she understood the timeless bliss of marriage. In no way was it ever easy. The fighting began not even a month into their marriage. But instead of letting it divide them, they worked out the situation. After doing this time and time again, communication had been streamlined. The arguments became less intense.

Adam traced over Lily's ring with the heart shaped ruby. "Is there anything you want to say? Anything at all?"

Lily first thought about how much she had really come to love her husband. "Is it alright if I practice magic." Adam didn't seem phased by the question at all. He merely listened to what she had to say. "Not around the kids. But, I've figured out in a way that not using it at all is worse than using it every now and then to-."

"Like letting off pressure?" Adam interrupted.

Lily nodded. "Yeah."

"That's perfectly fine." Adam wrapped his arms around Lily. "I love you."

Lily got that feeling. It had once been so long since she had that feeling. But at the Monastery, and now, it returned. "What's wrong?"

Adam grabbed at one of his ear stubs. "Work, and Nick."

"Officer Wilde?" Lily smiled. "He and Judy still doing good?"

Adam shook his head. She jumped to them over work. That was good. He didn't want to make up lies about work anymore. "Not exactly. Apparently they're friends again, partners again even, but Nick's not… I don't know. He wants to be with her, but not at the cost of their friendship." Adam knelt over and wrapped up the paracord whip. "I know you want to know because of that promise you told me about." He locked the whip up in the steamer trunk next to the tool bench.

Lily remembered the promise she had made in that other place where the other Nick asked her to kick some sense into him in her world. It seemed like Nick had the sense or at least he had come to the conclusion that he felt for Judy. "I hope it all works out."

"You and me both." Adam picked up his phone from the tool bench. "He's called me on several occasions to pick him up from the bar."

It all irritated Lily. Her trip to the Monastery and now this thing with Nick plagued her mind. Why had she and Adam come together so much more easily than Nick and Judy? She couldn't think much more on it as Adam wrapped an arm around her as he lead her upstairs for lunch. "I think I'll pick the kids up today. I feel like I haven't seen them in ages." The thought brought a smile back to Lily's face as she thought about seeing her children. The fact that they were adopted never crossed her mind in all the years that she raised them with Adam. For all intensive purposes, they were their children.