Chapter Text
Judy hoped that Zootopia would never stop surprising her.
After just over a year she knew the city decently well, but whenever she walked its streets there was always something new or at least new to her. It didn't matter if it was something small like the cozy boba shop that replaced the claw salon a block away from her apartment or something big like a neighborhood she had never visited; she loved the city and didn't think her enthusiasm for it would ever dim.
It was still increasingly rare for something to stop her dead in her tracks, though, but that was exactly what happened when she walked into the Precinct One bullpen. She literally came to a stop, staring to make sure that her eyes weren't deceiving her as she saw something she had never even dreamed would be possible.
"You beat me to work?" Judy blurted, completely unable to keep the shock out of her voice; Nick was never late, but he was never, ever early, either.
"Didn't know we were racing," Nick said, giving her a lopsided grin before his eyes ran up and down her, "Although by the look of things, you swam here today." It was an exaggeration, but not by much; Judy was dripping on the floor.
"The subway flooded," she said, "I had to take the bus."
Thawing out the long-buried reptile district meant turning all of the ice into water, and that water had to go somewhere. The rain over the past four days had been torrential, and the city's infrastructure was starting to show the strain as nature and the efforts to rebalance Zootopia's climate controls battled for dominance. "Well there's your mistake right there," Nick said with mock severity, pointing at her with a pen, "When the weather's this lousy, you should take the skyway."
"You told me the skyway's always packed with tourists," Judy protested as she tried wringing the water out of her ears.
"It is, when they can actually see anything from it. A day like today, it's your best bet," he said, placing his hand over his heart, "Guaranteed."
"Is that how you managed to stay dry?" Judy asked with a frown, looking him up and down; his uniform wasn't even damp. Nick just chuckled, tipping her a wink.
"I can't give you all my secrets," he said, "But here, I had a feeling you were going to need this." He tossed her a towel embroidered with a monogram that most definitely wasn't his, but it was large and soft and Judy took it gratefully.
"Thanks!" she said, drying herself off as the other officers shuffled into the room for the morning meeting. She wasn't the only one who was wet; one of the Zebros almost looked gray his fur was so damp and Chevalier was stoically dripping. Even Bogo wasn't perfectly put together, his collar undone and a towel wrapped around his thick neck, but he was all business as he lumbered to the front of the room and put on his tiny glasses.
Judy folded the towel that Nick had given her, setting it aside on the table before lacing her fingers together and leaning forward as she waited for Bogo to start the meeting. "First of all," Bogo said without preamble, "I have a bit of good news straight from the horse's mouth. According to the mayor, tomorrow ought to be our last day of rain for some time." The reaction was enthusiastic, but Bogo's voice cut through the room as if no one had spoken when he continued. "But that means we have to get through today and tomorrow first," he said firmly.
With that, he moved rapidly through the day's assignments. The constant rain had opened a sinkhole near Little Rodentia, and Judy had been assigned with Nick and two other officers to assist with the response. It was important work, redirecting traffic and preventing miniature buildings from disappearing into the growing maw that had formed in the pavement, but it shouldn't have been particularly difficult.
Unfortunately, by the time they took a break for lunch Judy was already exhausted. Her feet felt as though they had been filled with lead and her heart was beating so hard that she could feel her ears throbbing. She was cold and wet and miserable, and while her sandwich was at least staying dry inside the police cruiser it was like ash in her mouth. She ate mechanically, forcing down each bite, and tried desperately to match Nick's enthusiasm as he chattered on cheerfully. He had, apparently, picked up a thing or two about rodent-scale construction in the glory days of his pawpsicle hustling, and for once she was grateful that they weren't alone. Having two other officers in the car gave her an excuse to not contribute much; simply keeping her eyes open was hard enough.
After they were done eating she grimly pushed on, refusing to do any less than the other officers. Judy thought that Nick might have noticed her fingers trembling as she moved a mouse-sized duplex to safety, but it was hard to tell; the pouring rain made the entire world seem small and close, as though nothing existed more than six feet away. The hours dragged miserably, and when her shift was finally over she was too tired to feel much more than a flicker of satisfaction at a job well done. Seeing the mounds of sandbags stacked higher than the tiny buildings they were protecting just made her back hurt, but for Nick's sake she gave him what she hoped was a convincingly high-wattage smile along with a fist bump.
When Judy finally got back to her apartment, she realized she had no memory of the trip back to the precinct building. Judy vaguely recalled telling Nick that she was going to give the skyway a shot for her commute home, but she honestly wasn't sure whether she had or not. Her weary mind simply didn't seem capable of forming memories at the moment; if it wasn't for the trail of wet footprints she had left in the hallway behind her it almost might have seemed possible for her to have simply teleported home. It was a weird thought and she set it aside as she fumbled with her keys.
Her fingers felt stiff and clumsy; it took several tries to get the right key in the lock. When she did Judy stumbled into her apartment, letting the door close behind her, and just fell face-first onto her bed. The cuffs of her pants were cold and wet but she couldn't muster up the energy to care about that. Just a minute, she thought to herself, Then I'll take a hot shower.
She woke up and felt as though her body still desperately needed more sleep, the warmth and softness of her mattress seeming to try pulling her in. Her eyelids had crusted together and she rubbed at them blearily as she reluctantly shifted to check her alarm clock to see how much longer she had before it started going off and she had to drag herself out of bed. It took a moment for her eyes to focus on the glowing green numbers, and when they did her heart froze in her chest.
11:54
It's almost noon? Judy thought, suddenly instantly awake, and she leapt out of bed, seizing her phone and bobbling it as panic crept into her heart. She must have turned off her alarm and gone back to sleep, but she had no memory of that. Bogo was going to be furious and Nick would never let her live it down, even if he was going out of his mind with worry. But when she finally managed to get a good grasp on her phone and focus on the screen, there weren't any new message notifications. The time stared back at her, and Judy groaned as she gratefully slumped back down onto her bed.
11:55 PM
Her heart was still pounding furiously, her vision throbbing at the edges, and she shook her head as her ears drooped. Judy didn't know how she could have possibly missed the obvious; her bed was right next to her window and it was pretty clearly not midday outside. It was still raining, the droplets on the glass smearing the lights of Zootopia at night into something beautifully abstract.
She flipped over, staring up at the ceiling of her apartment with her phone resting on her chest, and as her pulse slowed Judy had to admit an unpleasant truth to herself.
I haven't fully recovered yet.
If she had been her usual self, she never would have fallen asleep immediately after getting home; she was simply much too energetic for that. Or she had been, anyway, until she had been injected with a dose of venom strong enough to kill a much larger mammal. Her fingers unconsciously drifted to the spot on her neck; there were two hard lumps she could just barely feel under her fur, their tops scabbed over. The doctors at the hospital had promised that she'd make a full recovery, but they had never claimed that it'd be immediate.
Judy sighed, feeling the ache in all of her joints and one in her heart that seemed to be worse than the physical pain. She was alone in her tiny apartment, but she felt alone in a way that went beyond that. In her building there were dozens of people, and to go beyond that to her block brought it up to hundreds. Then the neighborhood made it thousands, and the city millions, and all world billions.
But out of all those countless people, there was only one she wanted to talk to.
Before she could think better of the idea, she pulled up Nick's contact on her phone and shot him a text.
Are you still up?
Nick's response was almost immediate, and when she saw it Judy rolled her eyes but smiled a little.
no
He followed up with a winking fox emoji, and then another quick text.
what's up? besides you
Maybe it had been a mistake to text Nick in the first place, but she had committed to it and she had to try. I've been exhausted for days and I'm afraid I'll always—no, that was too pathetic. We didn't get to talk much at work today and—he wasn't stupid; she never texted so late at night and he'd see right through her. Judy kept typing and deleting her words over and over, struggling to put her thoughts together, and then she saw the three little moving dots at the bottom of the screen that meant Nick was writing.
easier to call?
Judy's fingers paused over her phone, and she considered the offer for a moment before deleting her latest and still lackluster draft.
Yes
He called her so soon after she sent the message that it seemed instantaneous, her phone starting to vibrate. Nick's phone was old and his room was dimly lit, and between the bad camera and worse lighting Judy could barely make out his face when it appeared on the screen, his features fuzzy and a bit blocky. As terrible as the picture was, though, it was clearly him, and something untwisted a little in Judy's gut as she met her partner's gaze. "Little past your bedtime, isn't it Carrots?" he asked, and although the tinny connection robbed his voice of most of its nuance Judy thought she could hear concern under his casual tone.
"Can you turn a light on?" Judy asked, "I can barely see you."
He fumbled with something offscreen, and an instant later his fur was no longer a muddled gray but its usual vibrant red, practically glowing at the edges. The background also became visible, but Judy couldn't tell where he was in his apartment; the wall behind him was an almost institutionally bland and entirely featureless shade of bluish green. She wondered for a moment if he was still embarrassed about the mess or if he had cleaned up before setting the thought aside, recognizing that she was just looking for a distraction.
"That better?" he asked, and Judy nodded.
"So," he said, drawing the word out, "Why aren't you sleeping like a good little bunny?" He looked out at her, waiting patiently, and Judy swallowed.
Admitting how she felt to Nick shouldn't have been hard. She had just been thinking to herself that if there was anyone in all the world she could tell that she still hadn't fully recovered from being injected with venom, it was him. He'd tell her there was no shame in taking time off to recover, maybe make a joke about how she worked harder than anyone else even when she was sick, and she'd feel a bit better. Judy wanted that. She wanted it so bad, and yet...
She didn't want him to think she was weak.
He thought so highly of her that it made the anxious voice at the back of her head, the one that always told her she was failing, fill her mind with even crueler worries. What would happen if she disappointed him? How would he react if she was anything less than what he thought her to be? Judy knew that he was fully aware of her flaws; he certainly teased her often enough for her to know that he didn't think she was perfect.
It was stupid to let those thoughts gain any kind of traction, but the world was a very different place at midnight, alone in her apartment, with her partner reduced to a flat and pixelated image on her phone. "I had a bad dream," she said at last.
It was and wasn't the truth; her sleep had been complete nothingness, her exhaustion apparently too great for her mind to come up with anything. But that wasn't the case with the previous night, or many of the ones before, and it was a weakness that felt easier to admit. Nick's features softened, and Judy somehow felt that he knew what she was going to say next. "About the climate wall," she went on, "I... I didn't get to you in time."
The nightmare wasn't always the same, which somehow made it all the crueler, as though her mind was tormenting her with every possible 'what if.' Sometimes it was as though she was trying to run through molasses, unable to close the distance before Nick disappeared off the side of the wall. Sometimes the very last door that stood between them was jammed shut, and no matter how hard she threw herself at it, it refused to open. Sometimes she tripped at the very last possible moment or the stairs refused to end, stretching out into infinity no matter how many she climbed.
But what was the worst part was the impact. That was the one thing all the dreams had in common; no matter whether she was standing on the edge of the wall looking down or stuck in the stairwell racing toward it, she always knew the moment Nick hit the ground. The sound was one she had never heard in reality but it haunted her all the same, all his bones breaking in a single moment.
"You did, though," he said softly, "You saved me."
There was a depth and sincerity to the words that went beyond the simple truth of what had happened that day, and Judy wished that they were in the same space and breathing the same air. For a long moment, neither one of them said anything further, the connection completely silent as she looked at him and he looked back. Eventually he coughed, his ears tipping back slightly as he scratched at his cheek with the hand not holding the phone. "I've had the same dream," he said, "Well, not the same same, you know?" He chuckled uneasily, licking his lips before going on. "It's... different, each time. I miss throwing the pen, my fingers slip through yours, or you're not there, or..."
He sighed, falling silent again as he seemed to have to pluck up the courage to say whatever he was thinking about, his lips moving wordlessly as he hesitated. "The worst one, though, you did grab my hand. And I just pulled you down with me." Nick gave her a lopsided grin, but there wasn't any humor in his eyes. "How's that for a metaphor, huh?" he asked.
"It was just a dream," Judy said, "I'd never regret going back for you. Never."
Something about the vehemence in her own voice surprised her, and from how Nick's eyes widened a bit she thought she had caught him off-guard too. He meant more to her than anyone else, and the idea that she'd ever give up on him... Nick laughed again, and it sounded much more genuine. "I'm sorry," he said, seeing her puzzled face, "I was supposed to be making you feel better."
Judy's laugh was pretty weak, but it was genuine. "You did," she said, smiling at him, "Thank you."
He settled himself back against the wall behind him, his chin lifting superciliously as he placed one hand on his chest. "Anything for my—"
He was interrupted by a furious banging on Judy's wall that made her framed diploma rattle and shook everything on her shelves. "Hey rabbit!" a tired but still aggressive voice called out, "Some of us are trying to sleep!"
"Yeah!" a second voice called from the same side of the wall as the first, "Be insecure somewhere else!"
"Gotta go bye!" Judy blurted, waving at Nick as she fumbled to end the call. She had a final glimpse at his smirk, and she laid back down with a sigh. "Sorry!" she called back at her neighbors.
"Don't be sorry, be quiet!"
"You be quiet, I've got an early shift tomorrow."
"Like I don't?"
Judy pulled a pillow over her ears, squeezing down to muffle the sound of Bucky and Pronk having yet another argument. They were still yelling when she drifted back off to a dreamless sleep. She felt warm and loose, as if lit from within by something in her heart, and the feeling was still there the following morning when her alarm woke her up.