Chapter Text
Judy Hopps padded slowly as she drifted away from the imposing spire of City Hall. To her sides, the plaza and mammals gathered there were little more than an uncharacteristic blur in her periphery.
Still in her uniform — she had practically lived in it for the last fortnight — Judy kept low, trying not to attract attention to herself. She put a paw to the place where her badge had been.
Just before, on her way out of the building, Judy had caught the eye of a brown rabbit, mid-thirties, smart-casual. Blue eyes.
“Officer, please?” the rabbit had asked, padding quickly after her.
“I’m… not an Officer. I can’t help you.” She had held her paws up. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”
There was a stinging at the corners of her eyes as she moved along. Just dust, Judy told herself, quickly wiping them with a sweep of her balled paw.
With delicacy, Judy picked her way through the crowd of larger mammals flocking around the subway entrance and touched-in at the barrier with her travel card. Shimmying through, she furtively kept up with the flow of mammals about her, before scuffing down the paw-polished steps to the platform below, towards the sound of squealing wheels, and quietly into the waiting carriage.
Upon returning to her apartment, Judy rested her shoulders back upon the door. A shrug, and it closed behind her. The throb of the city in her ears quietened as she relaxed back.
Her nose twitched. The scent of the subway still clung to her fur, electricity mingled with smoke and mammal, but it was the scent of the apartment that struck her now.
The tall, narrow room reeked of her, of her toil and her work and lack of self care. She’d been less inclined in these recent weeks, her work keeping her from her thoughts long enough for her to take little notice of her own steady attrition. It was unbearable now.
Judy hauled open the sash of the window and stepped back. She worked to slip out of her uniform, pausing to carefully fold it over the back of the chair beside her. Her ears hung down limply as she padded and stared at the gaps between the floorboards beneath her footpaws.
Despite the heaviness of her heart, she felt lighter now in her underclothes, the breeze moving her fur and cooling her skin. She looked up at the water-stained ceiling above her for a moment, mouth pinched tight, nostrils flaring as she breathed, steadily. She swayed slightly, balancing upon the balls of her footpaws, calves trembling.
The air cleared a little through the darkening apartment as she stopped to look at the space that had held the photograph of Judy and her father. She’d begun to take it work with her these last few days, as encouragement to start her patrols, to coax her smile a little when she ended them and returned forlorn to the Precinct.
Oh, peas. she thought. I left it there. She let out a little moan as her shoulders fell.
* * *
Judy sat in her underclothes upon the cool sheets of her bed, her phone cradled close in the crook of her neck.
“Hi, Bun-bun!” Her mother Bonnie sounded bright and cheery, as she always did.
“Hi, Mom.” Judy’s legs were crossed loosely as she sat up.
“We haven’t heard from you for a while. Everything okay?” Bonnie asked, fishing a little. Even on a voice call and from her daughter’s first two words, she could tell things might not be.
“Oh. I’ve just been busy, Mom.” Judy could hear some of her brothers and sisters in the background. There was a clatter, somewhere.
“I’ll bet — Amber, you put that down — we all saw you on ZNN. Our little bunny on television! Cotton was beside herself.”
“Oh. Yeah. Heh.” Judy laughed thinly, and didn’t linger. “Listen, Mom, I was thinking. Of… coming home.”
“Oh! Are you on leave? Do they let Officers have leave at times like this? I’d have thought you’d be rushed off your paws,” Bonnie said conversationally. Judy could hear the clinking of pots down the line. She drew a breath, holding it for a moment.
“Judy? Are you there?” Bonnie asked, sensing the quiet on Judy’s side of the call.
Judy’s paw went to her ankle as she drew her legs in. “It’s not leave.” She sucked her lip, working through the confession. “I’m… I’m not an Officer anymore.”
“What happened, Judy?”
Judy swapped her phone to her other paw.
“I quit, Mom.”
“But, Judy,” Bonnie sounded confused. “You said you’d had your big break,” Bonnie continued. “That case you were on, it was big news, honey. You sounded so happy.”
It was Bonnie’s turn to draw breath now.
“Was it that fox?” she asked.
“What — “ Judy started, about to scold her mother for making generalisations again before she caught onto what her mother was really asking.
“No, Mom.”
Judy sighed heavily. “Nick, he helped on the case, that’s all.” Judy had told her parents a little about Nick, briefly, on the night they’d returned to the Precinct, with the Missing Mammals case cracked. She hadn’t spoken of him again in any of her increasingly infrequent and short calls home.
“It was nothing like that,” she added, rubbing at an ear-tip with thumb and fore-claw. She could sense her mothers mind going at a mile a minute, even as she tried to set it at ease.
“Besides, I haven’t seen him since,” Judy said.
“I’m sorry, Judy. It’s just, well, you dreamed about being a police officer since you were, oh, knee-high to a hare. It was all you ever used to talk about. Something must have happened to make you want to leave?”
“I just realised,” Judy began. “That it wasn’t meant to be.”
Judy was usually so forthright and rarely shied away from a full account, but her mother knew better than to try and press for one.
“Judy,” Bonnie said. ”You can come home anytime. We’ll be here for you, whenever you’re ready.” Her mother's voice soothed Judy, close to her ear as she tipped her head and drew her shoulders up.
“Thanks, Mom. Say hi to Dad and the family for me. Tell them I’ll see them, real soon.”
“It’ll take me some time, but I’ll be sure to, Bun-bun.”
Judy smiled a little.
“You be well, okay,” Bonnie added. “Take care. Love you, hon.”
“Love you too, Mom.”
Judy ended the call and rested her head on her paw. She ran her claws through the tufts of her headfur before curling into the sheets.
* * *
Officer Hopps had been acclimatised to the early shift, so Judy was finding the nights to be thankfully short in her stead.
She was sleeping for long enough to get by, but it hadn’t been good sleep. Her dreams were filled with details; the conference, those things she’d seen on duty these past days and perhaps worst of all, the look on Nick’s face.
She turned and stretched, unwrapping from the nest of bedclothes about herself.
Judy washed quickly from the stained basin in her bathroom, scooping the shallow water up in her paws to apply a few cursory splashes where it mattered. As the breeze cooled her skin under dampened fur, Judy moved to close the window against the early morning noises of a waking Zootropolis, the glass panes shuddering a little. She could hear sirens, somewhere off in the distance.
Judy picked her crumpled lavender t-shirt up of the floor. Sniffing briefly at the musty cotton, scented slightly with a mix of laundry powder and rabbit fur, she pulled it over her ears and worked on stepping into her leggings. A footpaw caught in one leg, sending her off-balance. She skittered and made her frustration known.
It took her a moment to become calm and as she padded in lazy circles around the room, she resolved to set to work.
Judy thought about what to say to her landlady as she sifted through the tenancy papers. There were still months to go on the agreement, and Judy, in her enthusiasm, hadn’t negotiated a break clause. She could just about cover the next few months rent after her rail fare, but found it hard to consider anything beyond the next hour or so. She decided she’d just say she was going away. Twenty-eight days or longer, this was just statutory notice. She’d be taking some time.
Judy pulled her suitcase from beneath the microwave. She set to empty the laundry hamper, tumbling those few clothes within into rough bundles and stuffing them into the waiting case. She unplugged the microwave and rolled up the power cord, shifted the whole apparatus beneath the table with an easy push.
The welcome mat outside was pulled in and rolled up, propped behind the medium-scale stool that stood in as a table next to the apartment door. She cleared that, then moved onto her desk. The photographs of family and the keepsakes of home were packed carefully on top her clothes. She set to empty drawers of what little contents they had too, without stopping to close them again.
Judy crouched and pulled hard to open that last, stiff drawer beneath the bed —
Oh.
A lilac cylinder rolled out a slow curve in the emptiness, slowing with a rock-rock-rocking as the contents of it shifted and settled.
It was a tiny can of Fox-Away repellent, the keep-safe from her parents. She’d taken it just to reassure them, of course, never once thinking she’d need to draw it.
She picked it up and rolled it between her fingers. It was cold to the touch, the vessel taking away the warmth of her paw. She quickly dropped it, letting it roll back into the dark beneath the bed, all too aware now of how repellent she had been, all on her own.
* * *
Judy wiped a paw across her cheek, before she moved to slide the corner chair neatly back under the desk. Her uniform still hung across the back of it. She hadn’t laundered it, and it still carried the faint scent of the days gone by. Judy knew it belonged here.
One last look at the apartment, as spartan now as she’d found it, and she closed her eyes briefly. Her nose twitched as she caught those remnants of her scent on the bed, and on the walls, and that uniform, mingling with the mustiness of the rest of the old building. She was becoming almost imperceptible now.
Clutching her suitcase and umbrella in one paw, Judy took a step back. Quietly, she crossed the threshold and without lingering she pulled the door closed silently behind her.
Not even her arguing neighbours made a sound as the floorboards creaked softly beneath her footpaws. She made her way to the street and the subway beyond.
Moving through Savannah Central Station itself, there were far more ZTP Officers here than her home station. They stood strategically in their high-vis jackets, staring impassively across the crowds. They were all heavy-set species, but not a single predator was among them. As she bought her ticket, Judy saw a lithe cheetah being given a pat-down near the barriers. One of the attending Officers, a caribou, had a hoof resting upon their dart gun. Trigger-ready, Judy noticed.
The journey back to Bunnyburrow was short. Return journeys always were, but Judy had spent it burrowed deep into her seat. She’d been facing the direction of travel, and had only once turned to look back at Zootropolis, receding under a leaden sky. As she watched the Bunnyburrow station slow into view, that too seemed dark, the colours painted upon the shingled walls of the station-house drab.
Judy gently padded onto the platform, a few other mammals disembarking around her. She’d expected to see her whole family perhaps, crowded onto that small platform but as she cast her eyes to look for them she could only see her mother and father.
“Hi, Mom, Dad,” Judy said quietly, her eyes low. Her father, Stu looked at his daughter with her sallow fur and limp ears.
“Jude,” he began.
Judy dropped her suitcase and ran forward to bury her face in his shoulder. Bonnie closed the circle about them and Judy breathed deeply between sobs, taking in the scent of earth and fur, rabbits and family.
It was going to be difficult to move forward, Judy knew. She’d need encouragement now, and she tightened her hold because when it came to it she knew, in a single word or gesture, she could find it right here.