Chapter Text
Everything becomes perfectly clear in an instant, but terror paralyzes Nick. He watches, time crawling in slow motion, as Bellwether fires and Judy screams, and he knows what’s coming next.
He stumbles backwards sluggishly, his mind and body vehemently out of sync, and tumbles over his own paws. The idea of devouring Judy decimates him. He braces for the misleadingly small impact of that blue pellet, feverishly tries to think of a way to prevent the inevitable, but it's too late, much too late.
It doesn't happen.
Nick cautiously peeks one eye open, then the other. Judy is lying in a heap at his feet.
“Judy, run!” Nick scrambles back in a flailing crabwalk.
Judy’s ears swivel frantically towards Nick and Bellwether. She pivots to look at Nick, her nose begins twitching furiously, and Nick finally realizes what had happened when he sees her fur splotched blue.
“Bunnies can't go savage,” he says. “Carrots, you sly old...Carrots?”
Judy’s eyes are blank as she flattens herself to the ground, ears slicked down against her back. Nick catches her dumb look of sheer fear before she races off into the greenery.
“Get him!” Bellwether bleats, and Nick begins sprinting around the enclosure as one of the flock loads a tranquilizer gun.
“Can't run forever,” Bellwether shouts.
“Don't need to!” Nick shouts back. He dives sideways and avoids a dart by a few hairs. Judy erupts from the fern he landed in and sprints wildly around the enclosure.
Nick manages to keep running and not trample Judy in the five minutes it takes the ZPD to show, and then he collapses in exhaustion while Chief Bogo recites the Purranda Rights to Bellwether and her sheeple.
“Hey, Judy,” Nick calls between pants. “You're safe.”
On the other side of the display, ensconced in a hastily made burrow, Judy quivers.
That should have been the end of it.
Of course, that was not the end of it.
Judy is among the first to receive a cure, and although she is undeniably still Lieutenant Judith Hopps, she’s different.
She has several new nervous habits. Nick catches her absentmindedly chomping her way through an entire cup of pencils; when driving, she shifts lanes every few seconds; she avoids eye contact with all of the other officers and has to visibly steel herself to greet Clawhauser every morning.
And then there's Nick.
He unthinkingly tackles her when he first sees her after the cure, and she screams in total terror while he plasters himself apologetically against the wall.
“She has memories of being savage,” the police therapist tells Nick.
It translates to this: Nick has to be in Judy’s line of vision whenever they are in the same room, he cannot move towards her with any amount of speed, he cannot look at her if she is not looking at him, he cannot sit beside her, he cannot be present while she’s eating, he cannot speak too loudly or without her awareness that he is about to speak…
“It's just with me,” Nick tells the therapist.
“It was just you with her in the pit,” the mongoose pointed out. “She is remarkably courageous, especially for a rabbit. Her greatest moment of fear was with you.”
“Of me,” Nick snorts. “How do we fix it?”
“We're not here to discuss Lieutenant Hopps,” the therapist says.
“That’s the only reason I'm here, Doc.” Nick pulls at his ears. His tail flits around the chair legs irritably. “What does she need?”
“Time.”
“Away from me?” Nick asks. He'll do it. If that's what it takes to see Carrots loosen up and come back to life, he'll do it.
“This is a discussion that the two of you should be party to.”
It isn't a yes, but it also isn't a no.
Nick knows well enough that if they have this conversation, it won't result in any solutions. His passing comments about Judy’s jumpiness and frazzled nerves have been met with apologies and denials of anything being wrong.
She saved him from the fate of turning momentarily into a monster, but in turn has an unshakable perspective of him as a monster. It beats the alternative--Nick still wakes in cold sweats considering how the night in the museum could have ended differently.
He edits some of his police academy paperwork in Chief Bogo’s office. The chief refrains from commenting as Nick blathers on with reasons he'd like to see outside of the city, and it's only as Nick is halfway through his new form that the cape buffalo tosses his head and says, “What do you want, a cookie and a gold star? I know.”
“Is it right?” Nick asks before he can think of whether he actually wants to ask.
“I'm a police officer and detective, not a career counselor,” Chief Bogo huffs. “To think, we used to be a weight class of four hundred or higher. The two of you combined barely make twelve pounds.” He shakes his head. “It would be good to have more diversity outside of the town. I should warn you that the opinions outside of the city tend to be a little more old-fashioned.”
“I'll find a way,” Nick says. “Always do.”
Nick tells Judy that he's headed to police academy. He doesn't tell her that he has requested a post-training district in faraway lands and undesirable climates.
Judy tells his feet good luck and safe travels.
Nick tells the top of her head goodbye.