Everything was burning. Even the sheet Judy was lying under was on fire, little tongues of flame licking hungrily upwards, and she tossed it away. Her eyes widened in horror as she took in the inferno that had once been the parlor of Nick's house.

Judy was surrounded by flames and clouds of choking black smoke so thick that she couldn't see the walls of the room around her. The fire roared, consuming what little there was in Nick's parlor with a furious intensity. The armchair was a smoldering ruin, a blackened heap of burning fabric and stuffing that had exposed the wooden frame beneath. Judy stumbled to her feet, looking around desperately, trying futilely to orient herself. Her nose twitched as she felt waves of panic going up her body, but no matter how she turned in place, looking desperately, her eyes couldn't pierce the gloom of the smoke backlit by the ever-growing flames. The windows, the door, and the stairs to the second floor could have been anywhere, and no matter how she tried to search her memory she couldn't remember where they had been in relation to the sofa she had abandoned, which was already charring into a shapeless lump.

Before she could pick a direction, she heard a piercing scream of agony coming from the right, a noise that didn't seem to have any right to have come from the mouth of any mammal. Judy almost clapped her paws to her ears as she shouted back. "Nick!"

There was no response, the scream continuing unabated, and Judy ran towards it, plunging through a cloud of smoke. The fire had made the parlor seem impossibly large; Judy was completely blind as she forced herself forward long past the point where she should have hit the wall, shouting Nick's name all the while. There were no thoughts in her mind; she was consumed entirely by trying to get to Nick, running as fast as she could through the haze.

It felt as though it could have been hours, but it surely couldn't have been more than a few seconds before she reached the wall that the staircase was set into. The wallpaper with its watercolor tropical islands was peeling away from the walls, the islands burning and twisting as the fire consumed them. The stairs themselves were warping, splintering apart as gouts of fire burst between the gaps in the boards, the flames nearly reaching the ceiling. As Judy had approached the stairs, the screaming had only grown louder and Judy didn't even hesitate as she threw herself up the stairs. "Nick!" she shouted, "Nick, I'm coming! Nick!"

There was still no response, and Judy took the stairs two at a time, ignoring their groans of protest as the weakened boards took her weight. The stairs were as endless as the parlor had been, and there was still no respite from the flames. The instant that she reached the top of the staircase, the stairs collapsed behind her, but the noise of their fall was barely audible over Nick's continued screams, which only got louder and louder the closer she got to his bedroom.

The upstairs hall had been painted instead of wallpapered, but the walls burned all the same, blackening and falling apart. Judy raced down the hall as quickly as she could, ignoring the flames creeping up the walls. The door to Nick's room of records had been left open and she spared a glance on her way past, seeing that the shelves had all been consumed by the endless flames. The records had melted onto the floor into a boiling black puddle that burned on the surface, an oozing tendril stretching out of the room.

When at last Judy reached the door that led to Nick's bedroom she flung it open and a wave of fire and choking black smoke instantly billowed out. Nick's screams drowned out any other noise that Judy might have heard and she unthinkingly leaped through the fire. Once Judy was clear of the smoke, her frantic cries of Nick's name died in her throat as she stumbled to a stop less than a foot from the bed and what was in it. That can't be Nick, she thought, It can't be Nick.

The screams of agony were coming from the thing in the bed, which had only the barest possible resemblance to a fox. It was the same brilliant red-orange that Nick's fur was, but it didn't seem to have so much as a single hair on its body. The thing was burning, little wisps of fire glowing in a hideous mockery of fur over a horrible mass of blackened bones and lumpy seared flesh. Its arms, which were unnaturally long and thin and terminated in claws that took the place entirely of its fingers, were bound to the headboard of the bed with cuffs.

Judy stood, rooted in place, as the thing turned its head to her, and if its body had been bad its face was impossibly worse. There was no skin attached to the skull, which glowed at the center of a writhing mass of red-orange flame the same as the rest of its body. There were two spots atop the skull where the fire burned higher in crude imitation of ears, and the empty sockets of its eyes sparkled and danced with brilliantly green flames the size and shapes of coins above a yawning jaw full of yellowing fangs.

The thing stopped its horrible shrieks as it saw her, and its right arm reached forward, the chain of the cuff binding it to the bed glowing a dull orange as the links first stretched like taffy and then broke, sending splattering drabs of metal to the floor. The droplets hissed as they vanished into the flames filling the room, and the fires burned higher as the creature's arm kept moving inexorably forward until it could grasp Judy's forearm in its twisted claws. "Nick," Judy moaned in a bare squeak, all rational thought leaving her as she realized that the thing was Nick, reduced to little more than a skeleton by the fire.

Nick's voice was like a shovel being hit against a concrete floor, a harsh and metallic buzz devoid of any emotion. "This is your fault," he said, and his grip on her arm tightened as he pulled himself forward, the other cuff beginning to stretch and distort as he brought his other arm to bear.

"This is your fault," he repeated in the same empty tone, and then his other arm was gripping at her as he pulled himself off the bed until he was standing upright, looming impossibly tall over her as those horrible green flames in his empty eye sockets burned into her eyes.

"You did this!" he snarled, and at last there was emotion in his voice, terrible anger that seemed as though it couldn't be constrained by his body.

The little flesh left atop his chest sloughed away to the floor, the flames burning around his body sending his bare ribs into sharp relief as he looked downwards. "Nick, please," Judy begged as she finally found her voice, but he seemed to be beyond all reason.

Nick's grip grew tighter and tighter. "It's all your fault," he said, and his jaw stretched wide, the flames flickering around the fangs as he leaned in. His tongue was a curling horror of charred flesh that lashed out, incredibly long, nearly touching her face.

"Nick!" Judy cried as she struggled against the grip he had on her arm, but it was useless.

Her paw had gone completely numb in his inescapable grip and his jaw was nearly around her neck. "Nick!" she screamed.

"Carrots?" Nick asked.

Judy's eyes snapped open as her perspective entirely changed. She was still lying on the sofa and she threw the sheets aside as she flopped into a sitting position. Her head had been resting on her right paw, and the sudden painful tingle of pins and needles in it told her that it had gone to sleep beneath the weight. Nick was standing in front of her, his eyes glowing faintly in the dim pre-dawn light that filled the parlor—the parlor that didn't have any fire whatsoever in it, not even so much as a candle—from the streetlights and the moon. Judy thought that she could read concern in his eyes as he began to say something. "What's wrong? You were screa—"

Nick didn't get any further before Judy tightly hugged him, and suddenly there were tears flowing down her cheeks, her words coming out in ragged sobs. "I-I d-dreamed... I dreamed..."

Judy couldn't see Nick's expression with her face buried in his torso, but she didn't care. His body was wonderfully solid against hers, wonderfully real and warm, and he awkwardly patted her back. "It was the fire, wasn't it?" he asked, and his tone was gentle.

She nodded miserably, completely beyond the ability to find words as she sniffled, trying to bring her tears under control. Her heart was still racing and she could feel her limbs trembling as Nick gently disentangled himself and sat beside her on the sofa, one arm still wrapped around her. "I-I'm s-sorry," Judy said, "You m-must... You must t-think I-I'm a d-dumb little coward now."

She gave a weak chuckle that she didn't feel at all, but Nick just shook his head. "I think you're about the bravest mammal I've ever met," he said, and Judy looked up at him, tears still swimming in her eyes.

"R-really?" she asked.

"Really," he said, "The way you stood up to Lionheart? I've never even heard of anyone ever doing that to him before."

He was silent a moment as he pulled a plain white handkerchief from a pocket of his blue silk pajamas and gave it to Judy. "Of course, maybe that wasn't the smartest thing to do..."

He trailed off, a wry smile playing across his muzzle, and Judy laughed a little despite herself. "But you're a step ahead of any cop or prohi I've ever met before."

Judy wiped at her eyes, and she felt her breathing start to become regular again even as her heart continued to pound away in her chest. She sat there, feeling the companionable warmth and weight of Nick's arm around her shoulder, and she waited a long moment before she spoke. "Thank you," she said quietly, "But..."

He looked her in the eyes, apparently content to wait patiently as she pulled the words together. "Do they ever stop? The dreams, I mean."

Nick sighed, but he seemed to grasp her meaning perfectly. "I still dream about the warehouse, sometimes. Not often. But enough," he said.

Judy nodded slowly. She had expected about as much, but Nick continued. "You know, I probably would have screamed myself, the first few times I dreamed about that fire, if they hadn't kept me muzzled in the stockade."

His words had a lightness to them that she doubted he truly felt. Judy looked at Nick, wondering at what that must have been like. She imagined him, on a cot in a cell barely longer than he was tall, suddenly springing awake, his cries choked to muffled nothingness by a series of straps and twisted wires fixed around his muzzle. He must have seen her expression, and he gave her a lopsided smile that seemed to have a touch of humor to it. "Try to stay out of military prison, Carrots," he said, "That's my number one life tip right there."

"How did you handle it?" Judy asked.

"Alone," Nick replied, "As best I could. But you're not alone."

Judy was silent as she took in his response, but suddenly she didn't feel as though she deserved him. "In my dream you were..." she began, and then had to swallow a lump of shame in her throat before continuing, "In my dream you were burning. You said it was all my fault."

She seemed powerless to stop the words, but she felt as though she had to admit to the awful truth. It was her fault that he had nearly died when her apartment had burned down. Her own short-sightedness, her belief in herself that had tipped into arrogance and her thirst to prove herself were all to blame, and although he had waved off an apology before, she still didn't feel as though she deserved either his forgiveness or his support.

"That was your dream," Nick said, "Not reality. Not me. You're trying to be better. It..."

He paused, and looked down, scratching at his muzzle with his free paw in seeming embarrassment. "It makes me want to be better too."

Judy could feel warmth flushing her ears as she decided that she had been right. She didn't deserve him, but if he was going to follow the investigation through, she owed it to him to do no less. The resulting silence was awkward, and Judy found herself suddenly fully conscious of the weight of Nick's arm across her and the press of his body against her side. Nick broke the silence suddenly, apparently changing the topic. "I was the only kit my parents had, you know. Our apartment wasn't too large, but I had a bedroom to myself."

Judy looked at him, wondering where he was going with his train of thought. Although her parents' home in Bunnyburrows had individual rooms for all the kits, that had been out in the countryside, where more land than anyone could ever need for a family was freely available for the taking. In the city, it must have been different, because Nick had spoken of his bedroom as though it were an unimaginable luxury. "When I had a bad dream, and I woke up all alone in that bedroom, do you know what my mother would do?"

Judy shook her head even as she studied Nick's face. Even in the dim lighting, it seemed as though some of his natural cynicism had washed away as he called up what seemed to be a pleasant memory. "She'd brush my tail and sing to me until I could fall asleep again."

Nick shrugged. "But you don't have much of a tail and I don't have much of a singing voice," he said, turning to favor her with his typical smile under his half-lidded eyes.

"You could stroke my ears," Judy suddenly blurted, the words falling out of her mouth seemingly beyond her control, "And you could hum."

Judy immediately regretted the words as soon as she had said them, and she could feel her ears flushing again, this time with embarrassment. Touching a bunny's ears wasn't an overly intimate gesture, but it was a personal one, and surely a fox's tail was the same way. She expected him to say no, she expected him to tease her, but before she could say that she hadn't really meant it Nick spoke. "I could," he said thoughtfully, and his expression seemed as serious as he ever got, "If that's what you want."

"It is," Judy said, and her voice sounded much more natural than she felt.

She didn't expect Nick to follow through. She thought that he would draw away, the same way he had when he had noticed the scratches he had caused, or say that her joke had gone on long enough. But he reached out with his left paw, not moving his right one from where it was across her shoulder, and brought it to her ears with a surprising delicacy. She felt the fur of her ears stand on end, but she didn't flinch.

The touch of his claws against the sensitive skin of her ears was feather-light, less than even pinpricks. He stroked her left ear gently, and Judy could feel the roughness of the pads of his paws—so unlike the furry softness of a bunny's—as he worked his way from the base of her ear to its black tip. Judy didn't think that any touch she had ever felt had been nearly as good, not even when her own mother had stroked her ears when she was a kit, and she shivered. Nick paused, hesitating with his paw suspended in midair. "That's not too hard, is it?"

"It's perfect," Judy said, and without even thinking about it she lowered herself against him until her head was laying in his lap.

She heard Nick take in a sudden sharp breath, but he stroked her ear again, and started humming something. Before, she had heard him humming through the door of the bathroom as he showered, but it was completely different so close to him. It seemed to resonate in his chest, and Judy could feel it as much as she could hear it. Her breathing started to even out and she recognized that he was humming the same song that they had danced to, but as she started drifting off to sleep the name of the song danced just outside her ability to remember it.

As Nick continued stroking Judy's ears, his humming stopped as he started singing, so quietly that she could barely hear him.

"There's someone... I long to see..."

She thought he had been selling himself a little short; he'd never sell out a concert hall, but his voice, even at a whisper, was rich and sweet. "I'm hoping that she... Turns out to be..."

Judy could feel the pleasant beginning of sleep starting to claim her, her limbs growing heavy as her brain slowly gave up consciousness. Judy couldn't remember a time, not even on the rare occasions she had held the entirety of her parents' love alone, that she had ever felt so secure. Her last thought was to remember the name of the song, and the words seemed to linger in her head. She could feel a smile work its way across her face as she thought the words just as Nick came to them.

"Someone to watch over me."

Author's Notes:

The title of this chapter, "Song of the Flame," comes from the title song of a 1925 Gershwin stage musical. Considering that this chapter features (a dream) of fire and singing it seemed appropriate to me, although I had debated about whether I should name the first chapter something different so that I could use "Someone to Watch Over Me" as the title of this chapter.

Writing Judy's nightmare was an interesting challenge for me, because I tried to make it seem like an actual nightmare; hopefully it works. Granted, the only real frame of reference I have for dreams of any kind are my own, and the experience may not be exactly universal. One of the things that I was careful with is that, despite dreaming of being in a fire, at no point does Judy have any sensation of heat, which was a deliberate choice to make it more dreamlike, as well as the apparent distortion of the physical dimensions of the parlor and the impossibility of Nick's screaming, to say nothing of his appearance.

This chapter marks the third appearance of the song "Someone to Watch Over Me," and this is the chapter where my reason for choosing it should become apparent based on the lyrics. I will note that Nick didn't get the lyrics of the song exactly right, but there are a few reasons for that. The first, and most obvious one, is that the song was originally performed from the perspective of a woman about a man and Nick swapped the gender of the pronouns. This isn't too unusual; Frank Sinatra performed a pretty good cover of it that I recommend listening to. Second, Nick would have only heard the song for the first time when he and Judy danced to it—the song was first released in 1926 and he wouldn't have exactly had access to the latest hits in Podunk at the time—so it should be understandable if he didn't remember it perfectly. The third reason is a somewhat meta-reason; the song isn't in the public domain, so I couldn't simply reproduce the lyrics.

Judy heard Nick hum back in chapter 9, through the door of the bathroom while he showered as described, and the resonating quality that she notes in this chapter would seem to imply that he's more or less purring when he hums.

As a side note, Nick's voice actor, Jason Bateman, actually has a decent singing voice. He's not going to win a Grammy any time soon, but you can hear that he's surprisingly good singing "Eternal Flame" in the 2002 romantic comedy "The Sweetest Thing."

Due to how this chapter occurred without any change in setting or advancements in the case from the last chapter, I really don't have too much to add in terms of historical notes, except about the quality of mental health care in the early part of the 20th century. During WWI, shell shock was recognized as a symptom that some soldiers suffered from, but the medical science of the day couldn't make any determination as to the cause. What we now recognize as post-traumatic stress disorder was attributed to everything from natural cowardice to brain trauma caused by the shockwaves of exploding shells to carbon monoxide poisoning. Soldiers were occasionally, although rarely, executed for exhibiting shell shock under the guise of punishment for desertion.

Military commanders of the time tended to try to avoid medical recognition for shell shock due to the common view that it represented a lack of character on the afflicted soldiers' part. This view was not uncommon even into WWII, when the terminology of combat stress reaction began to see use; in 1943 General Patton infamously struck soldiers who had been hospitalized for combat stress reaction, telling them that they should go back to the front line. Patton later wrote in his diary his belief that such soldiers should be tried for shirking their duty and shot.

Considering this background, and the fact that Nick's discharge from the military was barely a step above a dishonorable discharge, it shouldn't be too surprising that he's had to deal with the psychological repercussions of his near-death experience alone. Granted, even if he had been offered help I'm not sure that it'd be in his character to accept it. Still, I think this chapter shows the evolving nature of his relationship with Judy, particularly in his willingness to be there for her as no one was for him.

As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought.