Chapter Text
Bloody pawprints staggered down the sidewalk, each one deviating from the center of the sidewalk in increasing distances. He'd never been to this part of Zootopia, but knew of it. A ghetto, filled with a dozen various small time gangs and littered with discarded needles and trash. Large, undecorated- if you don't count the graffiti -projects rose into the sky and the sounds of arguments, loud music and the rare gunshot drifted through the thin walls.
He only had one thought, move. Move and don't stop, they'll find you and they'll kill you… just like everyone else.
Lifeless eyes didn't register he had stepped onto the crosswalk. Ringing ears that were covered in dried blood didn't hear the horn. Sore, aching flesh never felt the paw that dragged him back from catching the six fifteen to an afterlife. He didn't even realise he was on his back until she'd leaned over him. She was pretty, like most vixens, and had a shocked expression on her face as her mouth worked overtime.
If he was in the right frame of mind, he might've guessed she was scolding him for nearly becoming a stain on the bus.
Her unheard tirad stopped abruptly as she took him in. Well made clothes, plate carrier vest, blood soaked fur, a large shiner over one of his eyes, multiple bullet wounds, the handle of a butterfly knife sticking out of his shoulder, the scent of blood from several different species mixed with discharged gunpowder and pure fear, depression and anger.
He must've seen like a hero from a movie who actually survived an explosion, a shootout and a knife fight. Although his eyes… if he could've seen them, he would've asked who by the Lords and Ladies of all Beneath was that male with the dead eyes. The eyes are the windows of the soul and never lie, yet his were nailed shut with plywood and thick blackout curtains.
They were two voids, rimmed with red.
He wasn't afraid or angry anymore, the scent of those two emotions being particularly clingy. Depressed didn't fit either, that would imply he was feeling something. He was… muted.
She pulled him to his paws and picked up a few plastic bags of groceries. He would've helped, but with one arm stabbed to uselessness and the other wrapped around the smaller vulpine, there wasn't much he could do. She talked, but the words didn't even bother going in one ear and out the other, the words went around. Before he knew it, he was in an elevator, in front of an apartment’s door and, finally, bleeding on a cheap dining table as the vixen and her husband patched him up.
He looked at the doorway and saw the young kit again. His bright green eyes met his dull red occasionally as the kit watched wide-eyed at his parents patching up a total stranger. They gave him some aspirin, as much as he could take, but he never complained or made a noise of discomfort.
They pulled the knife out as well as a dozen bb’s from a close call with a twelve gauge and a few slugs from a forty-five. All in all, when he woke up the next morning and left a few bills on the stained table, he entertained the thought that he may have enough lead to make a fifty cal.
If he did, he knew exactly what name to write on it. The hollow feeling was gone, replaced with rage.