Yes, I know, this took me way too long! XD
But, you see, this chapter went through multiple reiterations. I had so many visions, so many directions to take, that it was rather difficult to settle on something.
But I am glad I finally settled on this. I'm quite proud of what this chapter turned out to be. And it certainly wouldn't be as clean as it is now if it wasn't for my editor, Jknight97. He even helped to write a small portion of this chapter (I'll say what portion after the end). I'm very grateful for his help.
You know, I've been looking back at my previous chapters. I'm actually quite surprised by how far I've come since then. My writing has certainly improved.
But still, please feel free to post any criticisms you may have. Your reviews really do help me out. I want to make this story as good as possible for you, and that requires some help.
Well, that's all I have to say. I hope you'll enjoy this chapter!
Note: I noticed there was a slight issue with uploading this chapter. So I have fixed it and updated it.
...
Caroline.
He was hers, and she was his. A simple concept, a simple statement, but oh, it meant so much to him. With it brought unbounded euphoria, limitless joy, and splendid addiction. Just being in her presence gave him a high that no other drug could match; one that upped his spirits and calmed his soul while healing the scars of the deep cuts life so generously bestowed upon him. Being with her was like a morning sunrise that, ever so carefully, beamed pure happiness directly into your being, softly nudging you awake. Or a night sky filled with twinkling dreams smiling down upon you as you lie down on a bed of grass, gazing towards them with bright, hopeful eyes. Or maybe the blissful sensation of a calm breeze as it tickles your fur during a golden sunset with deep crimsons and blazing oranges brushing everything in sight into a subdued glow.
He knew it was love. Maybe not love at first sight, but a love just as special and genuine. Their love.
They met at high school. The lunch line, specifically, and not at all in a romantic fashion. Rather, he simply noticed something strange about her, and it startled him, and not in the way members of her species usually did.
No, this girl was different. From his spot, a few prey students behind her, he could see her fur subtly shake, in a timid sort of way, as she whispered her order to the goat behind the counter. She ended up having to repeat her order a few times due to her quietness, all the while avoiding looking at the other mostly-prey mammal population. Instead, she focused on various other inanimate points of interest that would not judge her for what she was: Predator.
It was like she was ashamed of something.
This was odd. From what he assumed - and he would later realize that stereotypes like this were never true - her species were usually quite determined and fierce. He always thought they sized up everyone else and puffed out their chests in a manner that screamed dominance and danger. It was quite common, he incorrectly believed, to have one of them look at you directly in the middle of one of your shivering eyes, asking you to start something just so they can prove they are better.
"All predators do is fight," he said weeks prior to this during a discussion with a friend. "It's all they do. Any of them can explode in a rage at any moment. Look at what happened to me," William said pointing to his black eye. "I thought I was going to die." This was after he got into a heated argument with one of them. He would later admit that it was because he had uttered a speciesist remark, had refused to acknowledge the slight, and that he deserved the punch he received. He had started the argument. He refused to admit his fault. In his opinion, it was the predator's fault. He made himself believe that the pelt had started it. For William, they were hardwired to be troublemakers. And most prey agreed with his view of that class of mammals, anyway. Lying like this allowed him to get away with it. It's not like anyone would even believe the word of a predator.
He didn't see her again until a couple days later in the same lunch line. Except this time, he was directly behind her.
His sensitive ears caught her nervous breathing, as she stood stiffer than a wooden board. For some reason, this intrigued him. Normally, he hated being around any kind of predator, yet that was exactly what she was. The fangs, the claws, the trained eyes…they were all there, except something was different. Not once did he catch sight of any one of her claws, and the few times he caught a glance at her teeth, he noticed they were oddly dull, as if she had intentionally ground them down into something much less deadly.
And when he looked into those eyes…for once in his life, the hare saw shame and timorousness in a predator.
William Keegan did not know what to think.
It startled him for more than a moment. This was unheard of. This was uncharacteristic of predators. This was strange in every manner of the word. It freaked him out and bewildered him.
And then she was gone. She once again disappeared into the thick crowd of hungry mammals and slipped into a hiding place.
Little did he know he would see her again in much wilder circumstances.
...
What to do?
He had dismissed his guards and Judy was being taken to Precinct One. A disaster. He never wanted this to happen. Not to her, to them. He just wanted his family to stay safe.
Was he aware of how far that disgusting mammal would take this? No, no he was not. Keegan went along with her plans, desperately hoping for her to slip up, to be caught. All he wanted to do was see his family again, alive and healthy, not brutally killed.
At first, the Mayor was not even sure if she would actually take things that far. After the first week of following her orders, he had actually tried to tell the ZPD.
But right before he contacted them, Keegan received a phone call from his adopted daughter, except he didn't hear her voice. Instead, he heard her cries of agony as her kidnapper, his boss, cackled with glee as she slowly broke his daughter's arm.
The sound, the crack… it ripped his heart into several pieces whilst teaching him to never cross his boss ever again if he wanted his family to stay alive. They were, in no way, empty threats. She would actually murder them, and she would do it as slowly as possible.
After that, Keegan followed her every order without hesitation. He just couldn't lose his family.
The hare still hoped, though. He still believed that her plans would eventually fail. But, before he even realized it, hundreds, if not thousands, of predators were murdered in mere hours.
It was so sudden.
His boss, he now knew, was terrifyingly clever and intelligent. She told him her plans and orders in such a way that they felt absolutely absurd and poorly thought out. At first, every time a new set of orders appeared on his desk, he felt like banging his head against a wall in response to the sheer stupidity of her plans. It felt like a twelve year old wrote them. Nothing those papers ever said seemed properly thought out. Back then, he expected her plans to backfire. He thought she'd be ruined and he'd be reunited with his family soon enough. Surely, Keegan told himself, her plans would not work. They just couldn't.
But the first set of orders he carried out did, indeed, work. They had her desired effect. Then the next also succeeded. And then the next plans after that. They always succeeded, and he had obeyed her every command. The hare was reduced to a pawn in a rigged game of chess. A willing pawn with no regard for anything else besides the safety of his family.
Before he realized it, they had gotten so far in her plans that there was nothing he could do. Keegan had practically given her a stranglehold on Zootopia. She now had access to too many connections, to too many contacts, and there was nothing he could do. Even if he finally decided to tell Zootopia the truth - which would ultimately get his family killed - she would still be able to continue her plans. She had more than a foothold.
This happened around the time Algarotti was planted inside of the ZPD. By that time, his boss was too powerful for him to stop her.
And now, he was forced to watch the city tear itself apart.
Death reports pinged on his phone every hour. Names were listed in little files, each one belonging to a dead predator. Alongside them, there was a story detailing exactly how their death had happened, right down to how much blood the body lost. No detail was hidden from his eyes, and it sickened him.
He stopped reading them after the first one. Didn't stop them from coming, though. Each little ping was like a slap to his face, a slap of disgust and a reminder that, long ago, he would've almost welcomed the loss of so many predator lives.
What to do?
...
William couldn't help thinking about how he had gotten so lucky. It was like he was in a perfectly crafted dream, forever slumbering on a cloud made of pure delight.
It shouldn't have worked. They were different in more ways than he wanted to admit. Society had taught them they were simply not compatible, and not just physically. To put it bluntly: Most mammals refused to believe a predator could actually be a caring individual.
At one point, William would've loved to see a completely segregated society. In his eyes, and many others, preds and prey were not meant to interact as much as they did.
Yet, one day, he found his way to her favourite spot, completely by accident.
That day, he wasn't hungry. He wasn't happy, either. Instead, he was a hollow husk of his former self. Grief sunk deep past his fur and into his skin, flooding his veins with the sorrow one gets from losing a loved one.
His cousin.
Something pushed him to go to school; a quiet whisper, a feeling, told him everything would be okay. Perhaps it would get his mind off of things.
William believed it.
Instead of relief, he found a magnified pain so unbearable that he wanted to break down and crawl into a hole.
That's how he found himself on the rooftop of the school. The view was magnificent.
It was a nice spot, really. You could see a particularly beautiful stretch of the intricately constructed skyscrapers that were one of Zootopia's most loved aspects. Behind them, the sky was usually a baby blue with tufts of clouds floating above. And if you looked closely enough, you could see the giant walls that separated and created the different climates the city was renowned for.
It was a great place to think, and William had the time. It was lunch, and he had snuck out of the cafeteria quickly enough. And now, he was finally alone, leaning with his arms against the railing that lined the edges of the roof and kept him from falling off and onto the grass below.
...
The carrot pen finally made its way to his paw several minutes ago. He had been listening to it, replaying it over and over again.
Each time, he felt himself fall deeper in a hole.
When had life become so complicated? What was the tipping point?
It was a gradual thing, he noticed. His body wasn't immediately crippled by the weight of a thousand boulders one day. No, it began with a stone here, a rock there. They stacked upon each other to the point where he couldn't struggle enough to get them to shake off.
Taking a look at the carrot pen, he noticed it had several scratches and was chipped in a couple places. Near the tip, there was a small engraving of "Judy" carved on it. "+ Nick" was beside it, and that portion of the carving looked cleaner.
He clicked the pen and tried to write with it, but the ink came out sporadically. Unevenly.
Empty.
...
The clouds seemed to be completely immobile; just hanging against a backdrop of blue without a care in the world.
The hare envied them. A simple life felt… nice. Nice was a good way to put it. No drama, no worries, no heartbreak. Just you.
Would it be lonely?
Positively. Most certainly. But he never knew loneliness to ever bring him pain, at least no where near the pain he felt when death took away someone he loved. For the most part, solitude, and consequent loneliness, brought comfort.
As a mammal, death is something you will never get around. It's always there. Your best friend may not be here the next day. Maybe your brother might leave this world soon. Or even you.
Keegan never feared death. Long ago, he accepted it would one day take him away. What would happen afterwards was anyone's guess, but that was a bridge to cross when it finally happened.
What he truly feared… was loss.
William was a very social hare. A very affectionate and caring one. His friends were family and his family was everything to him. Losing one was like losing a piece of himself.
He was already missing the joy he felt on his last bowling game with him.
But at least the hare had silence. A deafening silence. A calming silence. A needed silence. A silence that begged his eyes to close.
The quietness urged the tiniest of tears to trail down his cheek and to splatter on the pebbles below him, marking a mere drop of his sadness.
Finally, giving in to the emotions, the hare's eyes closed; more tears followed after the first one, all taking a risk with their own lives and free-falling off his fur and onto the rooftop far below. What was once a small drop was subsequently pooling into a puddle of William's misery. It began to snake into tiny rivers, weaving through the pebbles and finding its way into the cracks of the grouting. He collapsed into a heap onto the railing as it dangerously creaked with his full weight on it. He began sobbing uncontrollably, the grief finally overtaking his resolve not to appear weak. He subconsciously took note of the ominous warning from the frail metal that separated him from joining his departed cousin and at this nadir in his life, he chose to ignore it, almost welcoming the possibility.
Then… there was a weight on his shoulder. A light, soft weight.
It gently squeezed and pulled him away from the edge. Then, he felt himself being pressed into an unknown body that felt nothing like anything he'd ever experienced before.
He loved it.
William felt long arms envelop his body and further squeeze more tears out of him.
There, the two of them stood in the wind with the only sound coming from the hare's sobbing and their barely-audible breaths… and they hugged.
Keegan had yet to open his eyes.
...
The number of confirmed deaths rose by another fifty in the past thirty minutes.
During that time, a stack of twenty papers were brought to his desk.
Orders.
Within the first two pages, Keegan learned that he had another press conference within the next four hours, and before then, he was to finally call the ZPD and tell them to resume their patrols. They've been sitting around doing nothing at their respective precincts, letting prey murder as many predators as possible.
Keegan stoked the fire and let it run until it burned a predator-sized portion of Zootopia to the ground. Now, he was putting it out.
The Mayor didn't know so many prey would embrace the chance and become killers. They were the real predators here.
No, he shook his head, predators were not killers. The prey were becoming savages. Murderers. Not preds.
And so was he. The Mayor was a murderer. A savage. He allowed this.
...
Calming. The gentle breaths coming out from the unknown mammal, the one who had him wrapped up so tightly in their arms, was… calming.
They were sitting now. William's back was pressed against an unknown chest while a soft paw laid over his, gently caressing with their thumb. Slowly, that action stifled his sobbing. He felt happier, somehow. Also slightly amused; the stranger had their head lightly atop his, sort of like a hat.
He smiled at that
The hare sighed contentedly and breathed in a distinctly female scent, but one that was much warmer than what he normally smells day to day at high school. It was almost foreign, and it told his body to run, but he didn't. William was far too comfortable and he had finally lost the miserable thoughts that were harassing him ever since he woke up.
With another sigh, he decided he should open his eyes before it got awkward and thank the stranger for calming him down. And hey, he thought, maybe he could make a new friend here... or something more.
Finally, after a little hesitation, he opened his eyes and immediately saw blood covering the stranger's paw.
...
The boulders of Keegan's turmoil came crashing down.
The orders he had received were soaked in his tears and Judy's carrot pen in his paw creaked from the pressure of his hold.
It was because of this one stray thought; a dangerous, life threatening thought.
"Maybe you can still do something," the voice whispered. It was the pebble that broke the hare's back.
It floated around in his mind, tugging at him to finally do something. "Surely," the voice continued, "there is something you can do."
He tried to ignore the inner voice by drowning it with the thoughts of his family's possible demise. That didn't work.
"If you sit here, more predators will die, and they will die because of your lack of action."
His body shuddered.
"You've protected me long enough," it said, still floating around in his mind and poking at his most cherished memories of a certain coyote. "I'd rather die than have more predators lose their lives." The voice was becoming more and more familiar. "I know you do not want to lose us, but those mammals have families too. They are hurting just as much as you, maybe more."
"Can't you understand that I don't want to lose you?!" Keegan shrieked, yelling to no one besides the irritating voice that wouldn't shut up. "You're the reason I'm even alive!"
"I am also the reason why so many predators have died," the voice whispered. "I can't take this any longer."
"You can't take this any longer?! Look at me! Look at what I've done for YOU!"
The door slammed open. "Boss?!" The sheep took a guarded step into the room; his pistol raised and pointed at every hiding spot he knew was there. "What's going on?"
William clutched the carrot pen and ran out of the room, out of the building, and started heading towards TundraTown.
"Fine! He yelled after he crossed the street. "I'm doing this for you!" Several prey shot their heads in the direction of the crazed hare. "Just…just don't die on me…" he sobbed.
…
Night Wolf here!
Jknight edited the entire chapter and also added in his own additions to what was a hallway scene. He actually turned it into the rooftop scene in the final product and even added a heavier weight to William's pain. This guy really is a skilled writer. If you haven't already, check out his Zootopia stories. They are original and very well-written.
And please, tell me what you think in the reviews! The help is tremendous and inspiring. :)