Disclaimer: Zootopia and all related characters are owned by Disney.
...
Anyone looking down on Zootopia would assume that the city was waking up to a normal morning. They would be wrong.
The sun was just starting to creep above the horizon as the weather control machinery in the Central district's walls geared up to deliver another perfect day. Commuters were moving throughout the city filling up the roadways while other mammals gathered on the metro platforms to begin their daily trips to work. A few of those mammals stood with newspapers in their paws, most were looking at their phones for the latest news or social media phenom. All of them ignored one small bunny in a ZPD uniform slowly making her way to the district one headquarters.
Judy Hopps was a perpetual bundle of energy, she tackled each day with an enthusiasm that amazed her coworkers at the ZPD. Judy Hopps, first bunny cop, was never down or defeated.
Until today.
Judy's eyes were bloodshot with faint bags underneath from a rough night's sleep, and her droopy ears lay flat against her back, further broadcasting the bunny's mood. She walked without her usual pep, and as the ZPD building came into sight, her eyes glistened as they threatened a new set of tears.
Normally, she would be meeting her partner Nick, at their regular Snarlbucks. They'd pick up two muffins, one blueberry, one carrot, and two coffees one black and the other half-caf. After a brief walk to the ZPD precinct one building, they would head up to their shared desk, finish their breakfast and then she would drag him by his tie to the bullpen for the morning brief.
Normally.
Instead, this morning she was a mess. After her talk with Nick, she'd spent the rest of the weekend in tears, watching Pawflix, and trying to ease her mood with carrot juice and ice cream. She knew she had done the right thing breaking it off with Nick. Her family would never accept him, and if she dared to date him, her family would be destroyed by prejudice and their farming business along with them.
Nick had trusted her. For so long, she had encouraged him and promised to stand by him and then, in a few minutes, she had destroyed everything they had built together. She had never seen Nick so hurt and upset. He had picked apart her arguments and tried his best to convince her to change her mind. After a while, he'd finally given up, and in a fit of frustration, lumped her in with all the other speciest mammals that couldn't get past the possibility that two mammals from different species could be friends or more.
She wiped away a tear forming in her eye with the back of her paw. Nick didn't understand how it was with her family. She had a choice, she could selfishly ruin almost 350 lives to indulge in a fantasy or she could destroy her own life with a decision that she knew she would never forgive herself for making.
Judy stepped through the main doors of the ZPD building and into the lobby, she dreaded what was about to happen. How was Nick going to treat her, would he even talk to her? She had already rehearsed in her head what she would tell Bogo if Nick didn't want to be her partner anymore. As the possibilities that ran through her head got darker and darker, Judy started to tense up. She wasn't a very patient mammal and worrying about what was going to happen was eating at her, best to confront it quickly and deal with the fallout before the stress made her puke.
She looked around the lobby for Nick but didn't see him. It was still a little early for him to be here especially since they didn't meet up for coffee. Judy saw Clawhauser munching on a doughnut and walked over to his desk.
She put on her best fake smile, the one she saved for her parents and greeted the plump cheetah stuffing doughnuts in his mouth. "Good morning, Ben."
"Hey, Judy, I was wondering when you were going to show up. It's so unusual to see Nick here before you." Wiping doughnut crumbs off his muzzle, Ben reached under his desk and grabbed a Snarlbucks cup and bag and handed them to Judy.
"Nick asked me to give these to you."
Judy looked confused, she had mentally prepared for all sorts of possible scenarios, but Nick treating her to breakfast wasn't one of them. "Thanks, Ben, where is Nick?"
"He's upstairs talking with Bogo. He said he needed to catch the Chief before the bullpen meeting."
Judy was about to ask why when Ben pointed at the lobby clock and said, "The morning meeting is about to start you better hustle if you don't want to be late."
Judy rushed over to the bullpen and made her way to the chair she shared with Nick at the front of the room. The chair was empty. She hopped up into the seat, being careful not to spill any of her coffee, and looked around for Nick. Not seeing him, she placed the cup on the desk and the bag on the seat next to her. That was when she noticed the note taped to the side of the cup. She pulled it off using a claw to tear it open since it was sealed.
'Sorry, I was an asshat – Nick'
She folded the note closed just as she heard the pounding of fists on desks and loud grunting. Bogo entered, his look shutting everyone down. The day looked to be a quiet one, so the assignments Bogo passed out were the same as last week except for when he came to Judy.
"Hopps, Wilde is on parking duty for the next two weeks, so you'll rotate partners starting with Officer Garrison when she gets in at ten."
"Why did you put Nick on parking duty? What did he do wrong?"
"Hopps, he didn't do anything wrong, he volunteered for the duty. He's doing your two weeks so you can go to some Bunnyburrow vegetable celebration that's happening in the next couple of months."
Someone from a few rows back laughed and yelled out, "What do you bunnies do, paint yourselves orange and dance naked around the great pumpkin?"
Bogo snorted and dismissed the room full of officers with a thump on the podium, turned and left.
Judy looked at the note crumpled in her paw and then at the empty podium. "What the heck, Nick?"
Judy stood in the building's large lobby looking for her carrot-picking partner. He was up to something and she was going to find out what. She hadn't ever broken up with anyone before, well truth be told she hadn't ever actually dated anyone before either, but setting that aside, this wasn't how it was supposed to work. Growing up with hundreds of siblings Judy had seen every permutation of a breakup and its effects. Usually, there was one or more of the following: anger, crying, video games, yelling, crying, listening to breakup songs, boy or girl bashing, ice cream, crying, binge eating berries, breakup movies, and a few M rated reactions that can't be thought about in mixed company. Point being, buying her breakfast and working her parking duty were not on the approved list of breakup responses.
Judy headed over to the reception desk. Clawhauser was alone moving his head to the beat of the latest Gazelle release. She threw away her trash from breakfast and then hopped up onto the desk startling the large cheetah into dropping the doughnut in his paw. "Judy, you surprised me, wait, five-second rule." Grabbing the doughnut and blowing off some lint, he started eating it again. "What's up?"
"Ben, have you seen Nick? He skipped the bullpen meeting this morning."
"Yup, I heard he's on parking duty for a while. He headed out to the garage a few minutes ago to sign out the parking cart."
Judy hurried to the garage and bounced through the large doors. Quickly looking around, she found Nick. He was easy to spot decked out in the required yellow and orange striped vest topped with the ever-fashionable bowler hat. She started to giggle at how ridiculous he looked in the outfit, but now was not the time, she took a breath, balled her fists, and pasted a serious expression on her face. It was a determined bunny that went to confront the unsuspecting fox.
"Nick, what are you doing?"
He replied with a smirk and gestured with his paw from head to foot "Right now I'm making this outfit look good."
"Yeah, no Nick, it makes you look like a dork, especially with that hat. I'm asking about the breakfast and you working my shifts." Judy's ears fell behind her back and her voice grew softer as she looked down. "You were pretty upset when you left my apartment and I was upset too, but I said what had to be said and I can't change my mind, I'm sorry, but that's how it has to be. So, what is this really all about?"
"Look Car… Hopps," Judy unconsciously cringed at his use of her last name. "I want to apologize for what I said. I thought about it a lot and you aren't anything like what I said. I know you think you're watching out for your family. I don't like it and I don't agree with it, but I don't have any family, so I have to accept it for now."
"Now I'm more confused, if you're okay with what I said, what's up with doing my parking duty?"
"Hopps, I didn't say I was okay with anything."
Judy stood in front of Nick, her right foot rapidly tapping the floor and ears upright trying to make sense of what he just said.
Before she could ask a question, he continued, "I asked for the parking duty because it will buy me the time I need to figure out what's going on. I barely know anything about your family or where you grew up and I can't solve a problem I don't understand."
"Nick, there is no understanding anything and there aren't any problems that can be solved, whatever you are thinking, you need to stop thinking it. As much as I want things to be different, the risk is too great. Us being together is just a pipe-dream, something that can never happen."
"Judy, we've been friends long enough for you to know that I don't give up on the things that are important to me. I never have and I never will." Nick looked into her eyes and with a softer voice said, "It wasn't too long ago I heard a very special mammal say in a speech that we all should try. That we should try to make the world a better place. So, if that's what I have to do for us, then that's exactly what I'm going to do."
Judy's foot had stopped thumping and she seemed frozen in place listening to his words. Nick turned slightly and with his head down looking like he was about to get punished, he quietly added, "Judy, you're my partner and the best friend I've ever had and I respect you more than you can imagine, but sometimes you leap without thinking about other possibilities. I'm going to prove to you that this is one of those times." He paused, pursed his lips and continued in a determined tone. "No matter what happens, it will all be on me. The worst that happens is I get fired." Looking her in the eye again, a smirk back on his face, he added, "But, don't worry, if that happens, I'll give you some snark-cards to use on Bogo in the morning bullpen meetings."
Nick slid into the parking cart's front seat while Judy just looked at him. Smiling now, he gave her a quick two-fingered salute and gunned the cart which sputtered and slowly made its way out of the garage.
Judy huffed as he left. With paws clenched at her sides, she wasn't sure if she should be angry because Nick hadn't accepted her decision without question, frustrated because she didn't have a partner for two weeks or pissed because she didn't know what he was up to. After a very calm, careful, well thought out evaluation of all the possibilities, she decided that, for now, she would go with a combination of frustrated, pissed, and a touch of curious. But, while glaring at the receding parking cart, she also decided that if necessary, she would hunt the fox down and pound him into the ground.