Author's Note: Hey guys! This is a relatively uneventful (cough) chapter, and might be a bit short, but I will make up for it with chapter 4, which will be our looongest chapter yet! Hope you're all still enjoying it, because I sure am. You can expect the next chapter to be out within the next 2-3 days.

Chapter 3

Regret.

It was raining hard when Judy drove back into Centre Zootopia. The wind screen wipers on the police vehicle squeaked cheerfully every few seconds, building ambient noise with the water droplets continuously crashing down on the roof. The bunny had tried turning on the radio, but had failed to perceive anything but noise in her state of confusion.

Judy had her eyes focused on the wet road ahead, but she was driving the car on auto pilot, perceiving the cars rushing past her and the lights ahead changing occasionally only as though it was all in the distance – blurred and vague.

When her car finally rolled into her parking spot at the ZPD, she didn't leave the vehicle for minutes. Her head sunk down onto the steering wheel and her ears drooped back as she tried to distract her mind from Nick Wilde and focused solely on the sound of the rain. It was a sheer impossible task, seeing that her heart was still racing, in fear or anticipation she did not know.

The tame collar had given off a cruel Zap sound, and Nick Wilde had flinched and cried out. She could still see him before her mental eye, hanging in his cuffs like a lifeless doll. For a few seconds, the chains had been the only things holding him in his seat. He was twitching, panting hard. Judy thought she had seen his eyes become glazed and watery, and drool settle in the fur around his snout. He looked so pained and, worse for her, startled at the punishment, that she had dropped the remote like a hot potato and jumped onto the table, murmuring his name "Nick!" over and over, with apologies, "Sorry, I – I shouldn't have – I didn't mean to-"interwoven in her sentences.

It had taken her all her will power to force herself back down into her own seat and fold her paws on the table to hide them trembling. She had felt guilty at once. And she had achieved nothing. Eventually Nick pulled himself back up into his seat and leant back, a weak, pathetic version of himself. His eyes looked tired, his ears had drooped back, and if she had perceived disinterest in his demeanour before, she now found uncharacteristic and unmistakeable hopelessness.

He had still been twitching, his clenched paws occasionally shaking suddenly and heavily. His expression was that of a beaten dog that had trusted, for a moment, wholeheartedly, and had been disappointed and betrayed. The way he looked at her had made Judy despise herself. But no more words crossed her lips. He refused to talk. Not a word. What had passed between them, she believed, had ruined any remainder of the strange, unfamiliar understanding they had perhaps once shared in a moment of playful hostility. Judy had stood, nothing proud about her stiff and tense body now, and had waved for the guards to take him away.

Nick had hung in their arms more than he had walked himself, and Judy thought, when he turned his head by the door, that he would surely declare his hatred. But all he had said, in a gentle, exhausted voice, was: "Come back when you're ready to listen, Hopps."

And with the ghost of a smile he had added: "I'll accept blueberries as an Apology."

Judy lifted her head and weakly bashed it against the stirring wheel, three, four, five times, murmuring "I am a dumb bunny…" to her defeated self. She could not hide away in the police car forever, and chief Bogo would want a report. A transcript maybe. She had work to do, important work, and as an upstanding Cop she could not let the citizens of Zootopia down!

Using an instilled sense of righteousness as fuel for energy, she pulled herself out of the car, slammed the door close, and marched into the ZPD.

She waited outside Chief Bogo's office whilst he took one call after the next. His voice sounded agitated, apologetic at times. When there was silence for more than a minute, finally, Judy knocked on the door and let herself in. Chief Bogo had his head in his hooves and was rubbing his temples, looking just about as tired as Nick had done when he had been dragged away. He looked up to register her. "Oh, Officer Hopps. Come in, won't you." His voice lacked the usual biting sarcasm. She closed the door behind her and pulled herself up onto a chair positioned in front of the chief's desk.

"Please tell me you have good news.", Bogo growled.

"Sir, I'm sorry Sir, but – but I think I am not the right person to deal with Nick Wilde. I was not able to extract any information from him. He insists… he insists, Sir, that he was never involved in a murder in the first place."

"One year and he is still on that act?", Bogo huffed. "Did he cause you any trouble?"

"No, Sir."

"So that was all for nothing. Well I hope you enjoyed your field trip, Hopps."

Judy hesitated, awkwardly shifting her position in the large seat. "He did say one thing, Sir, that perhaps we hadn't considered."

"Well spit it out."

"But it is rather ridiculous. He said the culprit could not have done this with a collar, so…either it is a collarless Predator or…Ridiculous, really. Or the culprit could be…Savage Prey."

Bogo stared at her silently, his hooves flat on the desk in front of him. Judy, nervous now, stammered quickly. "But that's silly, right? Prey couldn't go savage. And besides, Prey could never do something like this. We aren't that blood thirsty, right… Chief…?"

Chief Bogo heavily lifted himself out of his chair and stepped to the window, his giant frame blocking Judy's sight to the outside. He was a dark silhouette against a grey, pouring sky.

"Listen, Hopps. As a cop, you come across a lot of mammals in your life…many of them good, many of them dangerous. We have had our fair share of trouble with the Predators. But there is no denying that this city has forced them into a difficult situation."

"But it's necessary. They- they're dangerous."

"What I'm trying to say, Hopps, is that I'd be lying if I said I had only ever had trouble with predators. A mammal is dangerous not because of their species, but because of their will. There are murderers and thieves amongst Prey too, Hopps. The world isn't that black and white."

Judy stared down onto her paws, folded in her lap. Her vision blurred before her as her mind raced back over her conversation with Wilde, the strange delight in his eyes when he had seen her, the sincerity with which he had declared himself innocent. Could he have told the truth?

"Chief Bogo?"

The large mammal turned back to face her, his features made soft by exhaustion.

"What did Wilde say, a year ago?"

Bogo shrugged uncomfortably. "Honestly, Hopps…the case was rushed. The whole city was frightened. There was a protest at city hall when Bellwether explained what had happened. One wrong statement to the media, and the story was everywhere. They demanded he was put away at once. His interrogation fell short, and the evidence against him was crushing. I didn't get to speak to him, I'm not sure anyone did. He was behind bars before any of us could wrap our heads around it."

Judy remembered the media side of the story. No way in hell would anyone have believed the fox if he claimed his innocence. He was found in an illegal, shady, run down looking theme park, in a puddle of sheep blood. The disfigured corpse was right next to him. There was blood on his fangs, blood on his claws, and when he woke up, surrounded by police, he had been furious. Rumour had it that his collar didn't go off even once, but Judy was not too sure. She had been kept away from the crime scene with other tasks, and had only heard about it when Nick had been taken in and everything was over.

In her stomach she had the sickly, uncomfortable feeling that she may have made a mistake.

Perhaps she had asked the wrong questions. Perhaps she really had spoken to Nick expecting him to confirm what she thought: That predators were the culprit, that it was in their nature to kill so happily that there collars meant nothing. Perhaps she had sought for an excuse to have Predators even further removed. In the eyes of many citizens their communities were stains on the map of Zootopia. They were all so scared. They were all so hateful. And Judy, despite her act of righteousness, her firm believe in goodness, had given in to her fear as well.

"I'd like to try again.", Judy said slowly. She jumped up from her seat, clenched her little fists. "I'll speak to him again. I think – I think maybe I tried the wrong approach."

Bogo nodded lazily. "Fine, Hopps. I'll give Outback Island another call. You can go back over there first thing tomorrow morning. But this is the last time. If he isn't willing to cooperate, we can't waste police time on him."

Judy nodded eagerly. With new enthusiasm, hope rushed through her veins. She was off her seat and by the door within a second. "Thank you, Sir!"

She had almost closed the door behind her when she turned back and found Chief Bogo still facing her.

"Do you think he did it, Chief?"

The towering mammal shifted case files from the side of his desk to the centre, stared down at them long and hard.

"I think he needed to be sentenced. We would have had a riot on our hands otherwise. Mass panic. He had to be punished for the whole thing to blow over. Guilty or not…"

Bogo paused, sighed.

"Guilty or not, Nicholas Wilde was a scape goat."

Unpaid overtime should be forbidden, prison or not.

Nick Wilde folded a batch of grey jump suits and neatly stacked them onto a close by table. Every few seconds, his paw travelled up to his neck where he rubbed the sore skin. Each time he got close to where the collar had shocked him, he felt his mind return to the afternoon, and persistent disappointment and bitterness overcame him.

Nick could not quite explain it to himself, but somehow he had thought better of the bunny officer than he had of the rest of the police force. Their first encounter a year ago had gotten him an unjust traffic ticket, but that was no biggie. She could have gotten him into trouble for worse things had only she known. Back then he had mocked her, but beneath her proud talk of justice and making the world a better place he had perceived genuine good will and a sound, uncorrupted moral compass.

He had been too cynical back then to acknowledge it as a virtue, too caught up in his own hatred of those luckier than himself, but today his expectations of her had been rejected and destroyed, and he felt the loss of her righteous image bitterly.

When he had called out her bluff, she had proven him wrong. Never had he thought the meek, fluffy little bunny would exercise her unjust prey privilege over him like that and make use of a tool as cruel as his tame collar.

"trust no one, not even a dumb bunny…", he murmured to himself. "They're slyer than they look."

Nick was the only one left on laundry duty. He knew that Ryan was waiting by the open door tn the hall way, ready to step in if he got any bad ideas. The room smelt sourly of sweat and dirt on one side, and sweetly of soap on the other. The staff at the facility had promptly made him stay longer on duty than the others, since he had missed an hour of work thanks to his unscheduled appointment this afternoon.

Nick stared down at the clothes with terrible disdain. A blob of colour had invaded his world for a few minutes, and then thrust him back into the ocean of grey. Nick had not struggled to swim in it before, but now he was drowning. The stench, the tightness of the hallways, the terrible lack of anything at all, made him sick to the stomach. He almost welcomed the pain still occasionally buzzing through his neck, just to remind him that he was still alive.

The fox had started humming a song to liven up the monotone folding work when he thought he heard steps down the hallway. He looked up, his ears darting up, but couldn't hear anything else. It was quiet once again, and so Nick turned back to his work. It was less than a minute later that he heard steps behind him. There was a strange smell in the room, intermingling with the stench of unwashed clothes. Nick kept his eyes on his work, and smiled lazily.

"Ryan, buddy, if you're trying to sneak up on me, you're gonna have to try harder. But I'll hand it to you, big guy. You've been pretty damn qui-"

Before Nick was able to finish his sentence or turn around, a burning pain emitted from his side. The world blurred before his eyes. When he looked down to his waist he could only see a pool of red, swirling with the grey all around. The fox staggered, felt for his side, felt blood pouring. As quickly as the knife had entered his flesh, it had been pulled back out, leaving a gushing, gaping wound.

Nick was vaguely aware of steps distancing themselves in a hurry, but his mind had become a hot, burning mess intercepted with buzzes of pain. He collapsed onto the folding table, soaking the freshly folded clothes crimson. His claws tensed around freshly folded jumpsuits, and he dragged the pile down to the ground with him when he fell. With the cold hard floor against his head, his eyes threatened to close. A voice carried to his ears from far away.

"Wilde, get back to-" Good old Ryan was back. Relief tugged at Nick's frantically, irregularly beating heart. "Wilde? Wilde! Nick!"

Then the fox's world was devoured by black.