The Good Life

AN: This is the chapter where a lot of questions about Wolf's past get answered, and...it's not exactly pretty.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Bad Guys or Zootopia.

Chapter Fourteen:

Well, this was about the single worst thing that could've possibly happened. Since coming to Zootopia, Wolf had been nervous—afraid even—of running into familiar faces. Seeing Nick again had been bad enough. But while Wolf knew the possibility of running into a member of his family was a non-zero, he had not expected or known his cousin to be a police officer.

There he was, though, and Wolf was seriously wishing he was somewhere, anywhere else but here. Still, Wolf pushed the complicated mix of emotions to the deepest, darkest recesses of his mind and recomposed himself. "I'm still not talking before my lawyer gets here."

Alex glared at him for a moment before turning around to look at the glass leading into the observation room. With his right hand, he made a single cutting motion in front of his neck. Seconds later, Wolf noticed the red light on the camera go off, and Alex turned back around to face. "Yes, you are. Maybe not on the record, but you're going to talk, Mason."

Now that he'd recovered from the shock at seeing his cousin again, Wolf narrowed his eyes and corrected that mistake. "It's Moe. Moe Wolf. Don't—"

"Don't what!?" Alex interrupted with a growl. "Call you by your real name!? Because it sure as hell ain't Moe! That's the name of the son of a bitch that killed your parents, Mason!" Wolf was on his feet in an instant, fury in his eyes and a growl tearing out of his throat. The chair he'd been sitting on slid backwards on the tile floor with an ear-grating scrape before hitting the wall. Before he could even say anything, though, Alex was on his feet, too. "SIT YOUR ASS BACK DOWN!"

And that was the second time in the last few minutes where Wolf was too shocked to do or say anything. Slowly, he sat down, ears flat against his head from his cousin's furious and disappointed glare. Once his chair was back in its place, and his behind was firmly planted on it, Alex sat down, as well, though his glare never wavered.

"We're talking about this, whether you like it or not," Alex continued, his tone, though much quieter than before, still invited no argument. "I don't care about last night. Once your lawyer gets here, Chief Bogo or Nick or whoever else can deal with you then." He jabbed the table with a single finger a few times to emphasize his next statement. "This is about family right now. I want to know why my cousin suddenly decided to up and leave everyone that still cared about him. We were like brothers at one point, Mason. What happened?"

Wolf just glared at him out of the corner of his eye. As much as he didn't want to have this conversation—either now or ever—he didn't exactly have much of a choice. Alex clearly wasn't about to leave until he had answers, and he himself couldn't go anywhere. "You know what happened," he whispered, finding it was becoming increasingly difficult to meet his cousin's gaze.

"Yeah...I know what happened that night," he agreed. "Most of it, anyway. What I don't know is what happened three years later when you dropped off the grid. What causes a fifteen-year-old with all of the love and support he'd ever need to just abandon his family to become the very thing that destroyed his life?" He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. "That's where things get a bit fuzzy for me."

Wolf was quiet for a long time. Despite the silence, Alex didn't rush him, which he supposed he was grateful for. Ten or so minutes later, when he finally did speak, his voice was full of bitterness. "November 29, 2007."

Alex burrowed his brows in thought, trying to remember what about that date was so important. Eventually, he shook his head and just asked. "What happened on November 29?"

Wolf closed his eyes, remembering that day like it was yesterday. "It was a Saturday. Next week was semester finals. Your parents told me I'd be grounded for the entire break if I didn't get a least a 'B' on all of them, so I was upstairs in our room studying." That was the minimum grade he needed to get a 'C' in his classes since he'd been on the verge of failing all of them. After the incident that lost him his parents, he'd never been a particularly good student in school. The bullying played no small part in that.

"It was around 1:30 in the afternoon. I hadn't eaten lunch yet, so I decided to take a break and get some food. While I'm eating at the dining room table—no one was allowed to eat anywhere else—the mail carrier pulls up. I can see him through the window on the street below." His aunt and uncle lived in an apartment not far from his current one. His own family had lived in an actual house in the suburbs. "Uncle Jason was taking a nap on the sofa while some gameshow or other was playing quietly on the tv. Aunt Ellie was sweeping the kitchen, and when I tell her the mailman was here, she goes down to get the mail from our box in the lobby, but she was gone for a lot longer than needed to just get the mail."

Alex was listening closely, though he was also paying attention to see if anything Wolf said was a lie or half-truth. While also trying to remember this series of events for himself, most likely. "I'd just finished lunch about ten minutes later. It was a tuna sandwich with cheddar and sour cream chips on the side from what I remember. And a glass of water to drink."

"And you remember all these little details?" Alex sounded skeptical, like Wolf was making things up just to prove a point, but he just nodded.

"With crystal clarity." Alex nodded after a moment, and Wolf continued. "Right when I got through cleaning my dishes, the front door opens. Aunt Ellie and Mr. Brown comes in and both of them head right for me."

"Mr. Brown? The lawyer mom and dad hired to represent our family in the case against...him?" Wolf nodded, and understanding began to bloom within Alex's eyes. "That was the day we found out the bad news."

Wolf scoffed. "Bad news!?" he snapped. "Maybe don't understate the magnitude of it, Alex! That's the day I found out the bastard that caused my dad to murder my mom and then commit suicide while I watched from the closet would get away scot-free!" Wolf was snarling openly at this point, anger and grief overriding every other emotion right now. "You want to know why I left? Why I became a criminal? Because it was the only way for me to get revenge! The police didn't care enough to keep pressing the case! The incompetent lawyer didn't care enough! And your family didn't have the money to keep pursuing it! That meant it was up to me to do what needed to be done!"

"You know...I understand that," Alex began. His calm, genuinely sympathetic tone of voice took Wolf by surprise once again. "Hell...I'd even go as far as to say I respect that." That was one of those statements where Wolf fully expected a 'but'. He wasn't disappointed. "But I don't understand why you decided to turn into the thing you hated." Before Wolf could respond, Alex continued. And this time, he was a bit more animated. "You lost your parents, Mason, but did you ever stop to think that they were my aunt and uncle. I loved them just as much as you did. Remember all the weekends I spent over at your house? We played games both inside and outside on Saturdays, and then I'd spend the night and we'd do the same thing all day Sunday."

Alex's small smile grew wistful as he remembered the good times before things turned bad. Wolf looked down with a sigh. "It's hard to remember sometimes..." he admitted, both in reference to the good memories and the fact that Alex lost family, too.

"Yeah..." The other wolf trailed off for a moment before he sighed, too. "I mourned them, too. And I was just as angry as you were when the case fell apart. What happened to us is a big part of why I joined the force. And I wasn't satisfied with just being some beat cop, either. I worked my way up to detective, and now I do undercover work sometimes. And let me tell you...I've caught some bad mammals before they could hurt anyone. I'm making a difference, however small it is." He gestured at Wolf and asked, "What difference did you make becoming a criminal?"

Wolf hummed at that. "A difference that I made?" Alex nodded. Wolf remained quiet for a long time, debating whether or not to tell Alex the full truth. He'd left his family for the sole purpose of finding the wolf that ruined his life, but he'd stayed away because of what happened when he did. He glanced up at the camera, seeing that the red light was still off. Despite that, he wasn't sure if he should say anything. His cousin was a cop now, after all. Eventually, he whispered his answer. "I found him."

Alex sat up in his chair, studying him intently. "Found him? As in..."

"Yeah. Him." He paused for a moment and grit his teeth in anger at even thinking of his name. "Moe Lupin..." he spat.

"And...what did you do?" Alex seemed nervous, as if he knew what the answer probably was and was genuinely scared to hear it.

Wolf glared at him. This was it, the first time he'd ever tell anyone what happened. It was a secret he'd planned to take to his grave, but Alex was asking, and he deserved to know the truth. As he'd just been reminded, his cousin lost family that night, too. "I shot him." Alex sighed heavily and closed his eyes in resignation at hearing the expected answer. "In the leg first to stop him from running. And then after I introduced myself, and he knew what he did, I put a bullet between his eyes. That's the difference I made. I got revenge for our family. And I did it with the gun my father used that night." And it was the pistol he still kept with him to this day.

Alex sighed again and rubbed his eyes. "How many people have you told?" he asked quietly.

"Just the cop sitting in the front of me." He'd never told Snake or Diane or anyone else, and if he had any say in the matter, he never would have to. That was the darkest moment of his life. He'd been consumed by the need for revenge for years. Those hustles and robberies with Nick were all in the name of getting the money needed to track his target down. Favors in the criminal world didn't come cheap, after all.

After he killed Moe, the world seemed brighter. Everyone, in real life and in movies, always said revenge wouldn't bring happiness. For him, it most certainly did. Of course, murdering someone was cause enough to leave the city. And he'd just so happened to go to the other side of the country. Honestly, he was surprised no one had connected the dots, but it was certainly a cold case now. And very few people were going to be demanding the police to find an infamous conman's killer.

"And I assume that's when you started going by his name..." It was more of an observation than a question, and an accurate one, at that. Once he became a murderer, he dropped his old name and stole his. Then, he just shortened his last name from 'Wolford' to 'Wolf'. Alex sighed for a third time and dropped his hands to stare at his cousin. "The cop in me says I should charge you for murder here and now, now that I have your confession." A forth sigh, and then a frustrated growl. "But the Wolford in me is glad to know that bastard got what was coming to him." A pause and then Alex stood. "Be glad the camera wasn't recording, Mason. Because I'm not going to see you charged for doing the world a favor." Alex walked to the door, but before he opened it, he turned to regard Wolf again. "I know it's been a long time since it was said last, so in case you forgot, I still love you, Mason. Flaws aside, you're still my brother."

Wolf's expression softened, and he gave Alex a small but genuine smile. "Love you, too, shorty." Alex snorted at the old nickname before walking out of the door. It wasn't that Alex was short; he was actually about average height. Wolf was just tall for...well, a wolf.

And that confrontation could have gone a lot worse, certainly. Provided Alex kept his word, of course. Not that he didn't trust his own cousin, necessarily. He was just normally paranoid about this kind of stuff. Came with being a criminal, he supposed.

The anger at the beginning was justifiable. It had been a long time since he left, and he was sure it wasn't exactly easy on Alex to come face-to-face with his wayward cousin. Just as it wasn't easy on him to see his cousin as a police officer. But past grief and anger over shared trauma was something that tied the two of them together. Honestly, he sort of expected Alex to keep the confession a secret, too. Family became a lot more important to the two of them after the incident.

The door opened again, bringing him out of his musings, and the chief once again sat across from him. A soft bing alerted him to the camera coming back on, and sure enough, upon glancing that way, the red light was lit. "So...that conversation over, let's get back to business."

As Bogo opened the folder again, Wolf interrupted. "Actually, I have a quick question." The buffalo looked at him in mild surprise and suspicion, and with a single look made Wolf aware that that's not how this worked. "Did you know he was my cousin?"

"After he told me, yes," he nodded, going back to the folder.

"So why let him talk to me? Isn't that against regulations or something?" He wasn't entirely sure about that, but it seemed odd either way.

Bogo glared at him for a moment as if annoyed by the continual questions but answered, regardless. "Wolford's one of my best. And I know how important family is...and how frustrating they can sometimes be. Ever since you first came into the building, he's been asking to talk to you. I figured a quick conversation couldn't hurt, especially if it cleared his head enough to focus on his job, which it seemed to."

Wolf nodded. "Well, thanks, I guess."

Bogo snorted as he continued perusing the file. "So...Mr. Wolf...let's run through the basics again..."

Wolf sighed internally. If this was going to be his next few days, he might just go insane enough to start talking without Diane here for backup.

AN: Not much happens plot-wise, but I figured the conversation between Wolf and Alex was important enough to give it its own chapter. And Wolf's past isn't a happy one. I think I mentioned it once before, but it was heavily inspired by Sawyer from the tv series 'Lost'. I do so love that show...

Until Next Time

AdmiralCole22