Chapter Text
“If there were words to describe this precise moment, I would say it would be ... fear. The image in front of me stirred all my deepest emotions. And yet, my body refused to move. The trance had taken over my movements. Not even words could come out of my mouth. And at that very moment, what I wanted to do was ... scream!
"Wilde? WILDE?" The deep, thick, serious voice awakened me from my condition. However, my gaze didn’t move for a second to face the mammal that was calling me. But that voice, I recognized well who it was. "You need medical help." He warned me, and I knew he was right. I was hurt and ... it was not little. "You cannot do anything in here. Now it's on the paws of the paramedics." He put his paw on my shoulder in comfort. Comfort that didn’t come for me.
"But ..." was the only thing I could say. My throat ached, and words stumbled.
"Wilde, she'll be fine. Now, please, you need medical care." He insisted, and he was right. But my body didn’t answer me.
My gaze met the violet eyes. Eyes that showed me she'd be fine. The same eyes that told me not to worry and to take care of me. A faint smile, outlined on her partner's angelic, bloody face. Then, I fell into reality. All this by a stupid insistence, a neglect of what was involved, and a discussion that should not have happened under any circumstances. At that moment, I knew that ... I could lose the female I loved the most.”
BIP…BIP…BIP…
The sound of the alarm clock echoed through the room. One paw, gently, was placed on the small button of the clock to silence it. Eyes opened slightly, trying to focus on the little light that entered through the curtains barely closed. There, two tears streamed down his cheeks. He had waked up in tears and that was already repeated for three consecutive nights. That dream tormented him, and he didn’t know why. There was no explanation for having such a dream since the cases he and his partner had, were simple and easy without any danger. Most of the time they kept the parking meters or simple routines to check the streets of Zootopia. Stunned by the dream, he wiped the tears with the back of his paw and pulled the sheets from the bed, sitting on it. Before getting up, Nick propped his elbows on his legs and rested his face on his paws. Was it some premunition? Not that he believed these things. But three days in a row with the same dream? It was weird. And the strangest thing was, he dreamed all the same details. None of the three dreams contained anything new. Everything was the same.
In a long sigh, Nick got up from the bed, picked up a towel on the back of the chair, and headed straight for the shower. Maybe the bath would calm his emotions.
Unlike Nick, Judy had had a quiet and serene night. Despite having had some disagreement with her neighbors to keep quiet so she could sleep, she managed to fall asleep and have her 'beauty sleep'. The alarm clock lifted her from her bed. The music chosen to wake her, until it was a nice melody, but in the ears of the bunny, it was time to change that annoying thing. A small finger pressed a button on the phone to silence it. A yawn, filled her little room. The sheets were pulled back and Judy sat on the edge of the bed. She put her paws in her eyes, rubbed them, and yawned again. Then she looked at her watch. It was five-thirty in the morning. She had to be in ZPD on seven o'clock and the meeting with Nick in the usual pastry shop was around six-fifteen. So, she had enough time to take a more peaceful shower. Something she no longer knew what it was for some time. She got up from the bed, went to her closet, where she removed a towel and a change of underwear, and left her room to the shared bathroom of the building.
The streets of Zootopia were already crowded even though it was still early enough for any activity. The sun was already a little high and, as it was summer, the esplanades of the pastries were almost full. Nick and Judy had met at their usual pastry shop for breakfast, and now they were sitting on the terrace eating. The landscape here was breathtaking, as the river flowed to its left, and the large central park on the other side of the river, balancing on the right side, which was for the city. Also, the sunrise seen through the trees, marveled Judy. Although she's been watching that scene for a year now. But far from that excitement, there was a fox lost in his thoughts.
"Nick?" Judy called him softly.
"Mmm ..." he replied. His head was resting on one of his paws and his other free paw, was stirred the coffee with the straw.
"You ... alright?" She was worried, and this was noticeable in her little voice.
"Yes," he replied dryly, without looking at her.
Judy frowned. She had already noticed that Nick, in these last three days, was not present. His usual jokes were no longer heard. His charming smile was limited to a mere closing of his lips. And the glow in those breathtaking green eyes had been lost for some reason. That was the reason she was dying to know. But when she questioned what was going on, the answer she got was 'nothing.' She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She had to find out what was going on. After all, a quiet Nick was not the partner she liked to have at her side. She wanted the talkative Nick, the dry jokes and ... the fox lived for whom she had fallen so deeply in love. She didn’t dwell on the matter again, in which they both finished their breakfast in silence and returned to the ZPD, each in their own thoughts.
At the reception, Clawhauser was as cheerful as ever. From elbows resting on the bench, on his paws, his mobile phone rested. From the small columns of the device, the new song was sweating. At such a melody, the cheetah's tail moved from side to side. Such concentration that he was, that he didn’t win the scare when Judy greeted him.
"Oh, gods. Sorry, but you know how it is ..." He shrugged. "Our diva's new song is BOMBASTIC!" The last word came out like a scream, making Nick divert from the reception toward the stair with a twisting nose. That reaction didn’t go unnoticed by the cheetah, who leaned over the table and whispered to the little bunny what was happening with the 'breaking hearts', in which, in response, Judy shrugged and sighed. Then she smiled at her friend and saying, she goes to the stairs too, beginning to climb up and go to the office.
Today there would be no meeting for both. The previous day they had been late from the patrol for problems related to the breakdown of a traffic sign and a road accident, where a discussion was unleashed, because nobody wanted to give as guilty and where Nick had to lose his temper to calm the mammals. As such, this situation robbed them of the hours of filling out the paperwork and of having to fill it in the next day. So, the two would be confined to the four walls all day, to the torment of the both. One for the dream to steal precious hours of sleep and not give rest to his brain. On the other, because the anxiety of knowing what was going on with her partner left her somehow deconcentrated to fill in the paperwork. It was going to be a long day, and Judy would have to handle how to extract information from Nick without making him furious.
To be continued…