[Author's note: While still rated T, this chapter contains a brief non-graphic description of a potentially dubcon situation.]

No charges were filed against Nick for the deaths of the two mammals at the prison in Northlund. He's still working through some lingering guilt from that and the way he left things with his dad, but he's been seeing a counselor, and I think it's helping.

Speaking of which, he's agreed that we should start seeing a counselor together. In fact, it seems like he's being overly accommodating to everything these days, which feels… off. I know he's been having nightmares, and I can't help but feel something else is really bothering Nick. I'll just have to give him time.

The first thing Nick did when he finally got out of the hospital was say goodbye to his father.

Birds twittered in the nearby trees, and a soft spring breeze ruffled the grass as Nick and Judy quietly watched while a gopher lowered John's casket into the ground. Several more gophers solemnly stood several yards away, shovels in hand. After a few moments, Nick nodded to them, before he turned and knelt to place flowers on his mother's headstone. He gently rested his paw on the ground and spoke with a hushed voice.

"Well Ma, you paid for the adjoining plot, and it still has his name on it, so I'm gonna assume you're ok with Pa being here next to you." Judy moved to stand silently beside Nick. Several moments later, he stood up and brushed the dust off his pants. He looked at her and said, "You doin' ok?"

Judy gave him a wry grin. "I'm supposed to be the one asking you that." She sighed and added, "Today's not about me..."

Nick rubbed the back of his neck uncertainly with one paw, then glanced over at the waiting gophers. "You know what, let's go for a walk so these folks can do their job." Nick grabbed her paw, and they slowly made their way down a footpath towards the small pond that stood between the cemetery and a nearby park.

They were both silent, but a few times Judy caught him sneaking glances at her. He was waiting for her to speak, but she didn't say anything until they reached a bench on a small bluff overlooking the pond. They both sat and she said, "It's weird, I still don't feel any… closure, if that makes sense. It sounds dumb, because I know the loss of a few clumps of cells is nowhere near the same thing as the loss of your dad, but-"

Nick interrupted her. "I get it. And don't ignore your losses because of mine, Fluff." He pulled her close with one arm and stared out across the pond for a few minutes before Judy heard him inhale deeply. She looked up to see a smile teasing at the corner of his mouth. He gazed down at her and said, "Thank you for being here with me today, Judy."

Several officers had expressed interest in coming to the funeral, and a surprising number of my family did too, but Nick wanted to keep the service small. I thought back to the herd of mammals who came to his mother's funeral, and I can understand why he wanted something more low-key this time.

Nick still isn't sleeping well, and it's impacting his performance at work. Chief Bogo yelled at him for taking too long to finish his dad's missing mammal report, and we ended up getting stuck with desk duty. I was hoping to go on patrol and enjoy the spring day, especially now that I'm finally done working on my part of the Marmota case. I can't wait for the day we bring him in, because it's becoming increasingly clear he frequently uses blackmail during his "investigative reporting" to get what he wants.

I'm worried about Nick. He also got in trouble for wasting time on the clock looking for Karla Lisza. If Nick were a buck, I'd be jealous about how obsessively he's been trying to find her, especially with his other odd behavior. When he isn't distracted and withdrawn, he's almost... manic. We're moving in together at the end of the month, and half the time he disappears to his apartment for days to pack his things up, and the other half of the time he's overly affectionate. I can't even remember how many times he's bought me flowers since he got out of the hospital, or unexpectedly taken me to a fancy restaurant, only to disappear without a word back to his apartment for a day or more.

I've got to remember to go get his mom's hair comb at lunch today. I managed to find someone who could fix it, and I'm hoping it will cheer him up.

Clawhauser always wore his emotions on his sleeve, and Judy could tell something was wrong when she stepped through the front door of ZPD headquarters.

"Hey, Benji, what's up?"

The cheetah fretted nervously. "Hey, Judy." He motioned for her to come closer, and spoke with a conspiratorial tone. "I think Nick is in trouble again. The Chief called him into his office an hour ago, and after that Nick left for the rest of the day."

Judy had hoped she and Nick could finish up a few lingering reports from the previous week, but she could probably get the needed files from his computer. Nick didn't always save his documents on the ZPD fileshare, so instead of coming up with a way to remember to do that, he took the lazy way out and kept a copy of his workstation password in the locked file cabinet they shared. Judy pulled out a manilla folder from the very back of the drawer and rolled her eyes when she saw the crudely drawn rabbit head with crooked buck teeth on the label. She rolled her eyes again and chuckled when she saw LetMyBunBunIn scrawled in his barely legible handwriting on the inside of the otherwise empty folder.

When the computer screen unlocked, Judy found a paused video of a police interview. The interrogation room wasn't familiar, and she didn't know who the polar bear officer was, but she recognized the arctic fox being interviewed. It was Karla Lisza. The vixen's expression in the frozen frame was almost comical, her mouth open and her paw hovering over a bottle of water on the table.

She clicked on the video to move it out of the way, and it started to play automatically:

"Yeah, it was. I probably could have fended him off, if I'd wanted to. I mean-"

Judy hurriedly paused the video, and her throat went dry. Should she watch it? Probably not, since it most likely contained private information about Nick. Was it what Chief Bogo had met with him about earlier, and why he'd left for the day? Though if Nick was in trouble, maybe she should watch it. Judy wanted to help, but she didn't want to violate his privacy. She wasn't involved in any case related to the vixen so she couldn't justify that as a reason to watch it, either.

She was still debating if she should watch it or call Nick first when her phone rang. Judy was relieved when she saw that it was him.

"Nick? Where are you? Are you ok?"

"Hey, Carrots." There was a long pause. "Judy, I… we need to talk." She could hear the stress in his voice as he spoke. "This isn't a conversation we can have on the phone."

"I know. I logged into your computer and noticed the video, but I didn't watch it."

There was a long silence before he finally said, "Go ahead, you should. If you still want to talk to me afterward, I'm waiting at the train station on the north platform."

He hung up without saying goodbye, and Judy's heart went cold. The north platform was where trains came and went in and out of Zootopia, so she didn't have much time.

She really wanted to go straight to Nick, but she should probably see what she was dealing with first. The video was only a few minutes long anyway, so she got her headphones, plugged them in, and restarted the video.

"Can you tell me what happened after you fell off the truck?"

The vixen looked up at the camera nervously before she answered the officer. "While Nick and I were trying to escape, he was accidentally dosed with nightshade and became extremely aggressive. He attacked and killed two mammals who were trying to stop us." She shifted uncomfortably and was silent for a moment. "At first I was afraid he was going to attack me too, though I was also…" The vixen sighed. "I was also extremely…" She squirmed in her seat again. She flattened her ears against her head, and her voice grew quieter until it was barely a mumble. "He obviously could smell… I'm such an idiot…"

The officer cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, I don't understand. Can you speak up?"

Karla looked down at the table for several moments before she finally said, "Nick chased me and we… while under the influence of nightshade, he… we rutted."

"Was it consensual? Or-"

The vixen still didn't look up from the table. She took a long sip from the bottle of water in front of her and said, "Yeah, it was. I mean, I probably could have fended him off, if I'd wanted to. I can't help it that I find him attractive, right?" Her face turned sour, and she added, "But apparently he's only into rabbits, of all mammals-"

The interviewer cleared his throat. "Please continue, and try to stick to the relevant facts."

Karla nodded. "Nick was… aggressive towards me at first, after we escaped the prison. He cornered me and when he got a whiff of me, his aggression quickly became more… amorous. I wanted to think his feelings for me had changed, but it was obviously because of the drug."

The polar bear made an annoyed noise, and the vixen cringed. "Sorry. While we were being… intimate, he curled around me, and then he growled out something. A single word. 'Judy.'"

The vixen hung her head with an embarrassed look on her face and sighed. "And then he growled again. He bit down on my neck, and short circuited the shock collar I'd been forced to wear. It zapped both of us and he let go…"

The video went on, but it barely registered with Judy. She felt queasy, and her heart hammered in her chest. Judy paused the video and took off the headphones. She knew she had to push her feelings aside for now, there would be time to process this later.

She noticed the timestamp on the file was from a few hours ago, so Nick probably saw it for the first time today. He also most likely hadn't seen the entire thing, which made it seem even worse. Judy knew him well enough to know the guilt Nick was feeling right now must be crushing, and she could only imagine how badly he was tearing himself up at that very moment. She didn't know what she would say, but she had to go talk to him.

After she had convinced Francine to give her a ride and they were on their way to the train station, Judy pulled out her phone. This was one of those times where she was definitely going to need some backup.