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AUTHOR'S NOTE: as said in the summary, this is a companion piece / sequel to my previous fic the judges will decide, the likes of me abide. It goes in depth about Pawbert's mother and there are references to that here. However, if you would rather read just this, no worries! It will still make sense. Feel free to choose. That being said, I hope you'll enjoy!
When I was just a baby
My mama told me: Son,
Always be a good boy, don't ever play with guns
But I shot a man in Reno
Just to watch him die
When I hear that whistle blowing
I hang my head and cry
- Johnny Cash (Folsom Prison Blues)
They do not understand grief.
That was among the first thoughts that came to Pawbert’s mind when he woke up that day – sometime after his 172nd day in jail, he had stopped counting them by then – and the one thought that would echo in his mind until the moment sleep claimed him again.
And once it did, it would haunt him in his dreams.
Maybe that would be the one thought that he would not let go of for the rest of his sentence, if not for the rest of his life.
Much like a wild animal that could not be pulled back into its cage once it had finally tasted freedom.
Sand in an hourglass, mercilessly escaping the fingers of those who tried to contain it, no matter how desperately they attempted to hold onto nothing.
Pawbert stretched out his limbs and his joints ached from a sleepless night in a bed too small for his frame, but he did not focus on any of that.
It had not been a calculated thought by any means, really.
I hope it is not so warm today, he had muttered when he first scrubbed his eyes open in the morning.
A yawn.
I must get to the cafeteria before they finish the coffee this time.
Then, just a heartbeat later, man, they do not understand grief.
He blinked at it and looked around, as if wondering who had suddenly thrown that at him.
Could a thought itself have a mind of its own?
But the more he thought about it, the more he realized it made sense.
That thought would have come to him eventually. Today just happened to be the day it finally took its shape.
It was merely the natural conclusion of many observations he had gotten to make over his time incarcerated. It had happened effortlessly, a final piece of a puzzle smoothly sliding down into its spot among a bigger picture that finally came together and made itself clear.
Pawbert completely forgot the urge for coffee as he sat up on his bed; the guards yelling that breakfast time was almost over went ignored, almost unheard. His legs began swinging back and forth, and he pondered over the strange thoughts that formed themselves more clearly in his mind now, chasing away sleep.
Strange thoughts that finally had a name that he could recognize them by.
Grief.
Try as hard as he may, Pawbert could not remember the last time he thought of his mother before he went to jail.
Sure, he remembered her often.
Pawbert saw the pictures and paintings in the hallways of the Lynxley mansion every day, her forever-young face frozen in time while the rest of them aged and grew; a privilege that fate had cruelly denied her.
Her name was mentioned, usually in passing, in speeches of different galas, and mammals would occasionally (and briefly) lament her death if they had met or just heard of her before.
Oh, it has been so long. Poor Milton, widowed so young. Anyway.
Pawbert remembered her. But he did not think of her beyond a faded memory. Beyond a picture attached to a familiar name that he did not bother to say aloud.
Or maybe he did not want to, lest he broke down immediately.
Over the years, his mother had become a glimpse he caught out the corner of his eye, but never really got to look at it because it faded when he tried.
Until one day, he just stopped turning his head at all.
A glimpse that then became a ghost he tolerated as part of himself.
It was not until they were in jail, and they had been for almost a month, that thoughts about the Lynxley matriarch began shaping themselves in his mind again.
After years of lurking silently in the corner of his mind, perhaps just waiting for the right moment when they would not be drowned out by anything else around him. And those thoughts seemingly thrived spectacularly in the dark, lazy, empty days of prison.
He said that grief would get smaller.
That was the first memory of that day that came back to Pawbert’s mind. The one that opened the gate that once contained the flood but now had given in under the pressure that had built up behind it for years.
The day when Pawbert was seven, and his world turned upside down. When his young heart got ripped out of his chest on an otherwise lovely Sunday morning and he thought he might suffocate in the effort it took to keep breathing with the news that his mother was gone.
She wished him good night, as she did every night.
Next thing he knew, she was gone.
Nothing in between.
Death did not always come with the gift of a warning, with the privilege of a goodbye, with the fantasy that one could deal with it better if given enough time to prepare before they broke all the same because one would never be ready.
It came instead with a sudden, violent strike that took the air out of his lungs and left him choking as though his very bones were suffocating inside of him.
That was when Milton had told him about grief for the first time.
It is sad now, but it will be ok. The pain will get smaller. Now, stop crying.
Pawbert believed him then. Why would he not?
His father knew everything.
It would be ok.
Someday, the pain would go away completely.
Pawbert just had to survive it; the same way a ship survived a storm before it reached the peaceful beach. It survived wave after devastating wave after unforgiving wave.
And so, he did.
Day after day.
Until the thoughts of his mother did not visit him as often.
Until he realized he had not thought of her the day before.
Then, he did not think of her for a whole weekend, because he was busy with a gala that occupied his mind.
Or with an event. Or with Cattrick’s eighteenth birthday. Or with Kitty’s debutant ball. Or with Milton’s interview with another Zootopia magazine whose name sounded important, but Pawbert had never heard of before.
And then, one day, he realized the thought of his mother no longer made him cry.
Finally, pain had gotten smaller.
And grief had gone away.
Well, grief never went away, Pawbert thought to himself as he looked into the mirror of the humid bathroom he shared with his family in the suffocatingly small cell.
Milton was wrong, as he was about a lot of things – Pawbert realized it now.
Thinking back to it, Pawbert’s life had merely grown around his grief, just enough that he became able to ignore it. Just enough that grief had to fight for space in his heart and mind, alongside everything else that Pawbert lived through.
But it was still a part of him, it had always been. And he realized, it would always be. Just with different strengths in each part of his life.
And with the days blending in their similarity in that prison, one after another, in a nothing routine, there was nothing stopping it from consuming him again. Just like when he was seven and her death became his entire sense of self.
Pawbert’s mind had been stripped bare in the deafening silent walls of prison, and grief was once again free to reign.
Nothing to think of and nothing to worry about, no conspiracy to stop, no secret to keep, no gala to prepare, no document to fetch, no feisty police officers to murder.
Just him and his mind and thoughts he assumed were long gone finally clawing their way to the surface like a starving predator that smelled blood for the first time in months.
And it would have been easier to fend off a crazed predator than those thoughts.
Pawbert was not sure when the first of those thoughts popped up. He was not sure what had been the trigger that opened the gates of memory and flooded his brain enough to drown it.
But he realized he suddenly remembered it.
He suddenly thought of her again.
And instead of turning away to focus on something else, he let himself think of it. Because there was no other option. Not there.
He thought of her smell, and her smile.
And her laughter.
Trivial things he thought forgotten but that suddenly surfaced and forced him to realize that they had never really left.
And the pain that used to be a shelved memory from his seven-year-old self now made itself known again.
It wrapped itself around his heart and mind and tugged it down violently. Every heartbeat bleeding out when it realized it was living, continuing, while hers did not get to. As if the stitches that kept his heartbeat together by force alone were now coming undone, one by one.
So, while his family was probably fighting someone at the cafeteria for the last slice of something, Pawbert lost his balance and fell to the musty bathroom floor with a single tug.
And with no other option left, he cried.
Truth be told, the bathroom in jail was not as gross as Pawbert would have imagined from the movies he watched.
Sure, it was humid, dark, intimidating in its emptiness. Not a shred of familiarity to someone who used to live in a mansion. But clean enough. Spacious enough.
Pawbert could not remember where he had found the nail file, or even when or why he had picked it up.
But he was now holding it, and he twirled it around with his fingers before throwing it to his other paw and repeating the mechanical motion. Several times.
The tears washed away what little restraint he had had before, an open wound inside of him was now free to bleed as it had not done in years.
And it bled out the most whenever the memory flashes happened to be of one very specific night, when he was seven.
This house has a way of killing all that is kind, his mother had said to him as she ran her fingers through his fur, and he peacefully snugged into his bed.
Surrounded by his own innocence, unaware of what the morning would bring.
Unaware that it was the last time his heart would ever beat that lightly.
Now, he could even hear her voice, so vividly that he would not doubt he might be going mad.
Try to keep that kindness alive in you, Pawbert, she said at last.
Oh, ok, momma, he replied without thinking. Nighty night!
The scene in his mind was now so clear that it brought along more than memories – it came with full on sensations, her smell, how the room hummed quietly and the soft pillow he laid on as his mother’s paw caressed the tufts in his cheeks.
And etched tightly into that memory was the unmistakable gummy sensation of missing baby teeth. Pawbert smacked his lips as he recalled it, almost being able to feel it for a moment before his tongue touched his adult teeth and pulled him back into the present.
Pawbert remembered it very well now. Running his tongue over the empty spots as she spoke to him for the last time.
Two missing canines that had fallen just two days before that night.
Perhaps a grim irony of sorts. Those were the last remains of his childhood smile; an incidental representation of the innocence and kindness she had asked him – begged him – to carry throughout his adulthood.
A promise he only now realized he had broken when he tried to use those very same teeth to murder someone who only ever meant to do what was right.
Pawbert wondered if officer Nick Wilde had any scars on his body that his teeth were to blame for.
He fell to his knees a second time, the file falling beneath him without even making a sound.
Getting up from the floor a second time seemed to take him hours, as if every muscle in his body refused to cooperate with the action. His paw almost slipped from the sink, and it seemed close to giving way from his weight.
His eyes were red from tears. His fur was matted and dirty from laying on the floor. His mouth felt dry, his throat burned, and he was one wrong breath away from falling to the floor again – and he knew he would not be able get up anymore that day if that happened.
His left paw held onto the wobbly sink like it was his very own lifeline, as shitty as it was.
His right paw rested by his side, holding the old nail file between his fingers.
And he stared down at the sink as droplets fell from the faulty faucet, one drop by second, in sync with his heartbeat, water sounds loud against his ears.
Pawbert proceeded to look at the file in his paw.
And then, he looked into the mirror intensely for a moment, as though he expected his reflection to make that decision for him.
But it did not move until he did.
The file was heavy in his paw as he lifted it towards his open muzzle.
First, he pressed the file against his right canine and held it still. Barely touching, just a tease of what was to come should he decide to continue.
His breathing stopped when there was a second of hesitation.
And then it was gone.
The first scrape of file against bone was sharp and certain, but it came with little consequence. A shiver down his body, starting from down his neck to his feet, but his tooth remained barely affected. A weak, practically unnoticeable smell of enamel came as a hint of what he had just done.
His right paw gripped the file so hard, his knuckles turned white.
Pawbert ran his thumb on top of his canine.
It still felt just the same as before. There would be no consequences if he stopped.
“This is so stupid,” he laughed hollowly. Then, his eyes widened.
He sounded just like Milton.
What would his mother have said?
You don’t need to be a threat to be seen, she said when his teeth had fallen out and Cattrick teased him by saying he was a useless predator now.
Pawbert did not stop.
When he raised the file again, it somehow felt a lot lighter. As if no longer held down by the weight of doubt.
Patience against instinct, he continued sanding his tooth down. Each scrape was carefully placed as the sharpness of his tooth gave way to something different. The tip wore down increasingly more with every move; expertise crawling into his movement the more he did it.
There was pain, yes, but it felt distant. As though he was watching it happen to someone else, instead of looking at a mirror. But painful as it may be, it was still the only thing that slowed down the storm inside his head, even if just for a second.
Scrape after scrape, he sought that relief.
Pawbert could not tell how long he had been at it, only that he went on as though he tried to outrun the agony by sanding his tooth down – the agony of grief, of the file, of jail, of everything.
A painful gasp brought him down from his high, as he stepped back from the mirror for a moment.
Then, he bared his teeth and looked at his canine.
It was still there, obviously. There had been no blood, no cracks.
But now, it was closer to how it had been the last night he saw his mother alive.
The closest he would ever look to the boy he was the last time she saw him, when he was seven and had little gaps in his smile.
His tongue scraped away the powdery remains of his tooth, the weird sensation of it being smoothed down taking him by surprise for a second.
Then, he moved the file to his other canine.
“Pawbert- what the actual fuck are you doing?” Cattrick’s voice came from the doorway, more appalled than judgmental.
Pawbert was not startled at all, too focused on the task to bother.
“When she died, my canines were missing,” he said nonchalantly between scrapes, "Baby teeth."
At first, Cattrick’s eyes widened as if he had just seen Pawbert grow a second head.
But surprisingly, the sentence made itself make sense in his head after a moment of pondering.
There was only one mammal Pawbert could be talking about.
“She has been dead for years,” Cattrick pointed out carefully, without ever using her name, “Why does that matter now?”
Pawbert looked up in thought, as though he had not asked himself that question yet.
“That was how I looked the last time she saw me. The last time I saw her. My baby teeth had fallen out,” Pawbert continued. A small scrape escaped his grasp and the file rubbed against his gum for a second, a drop of red emerging from between his teeth.
The metallic taste of blood was all but grounding, but only for a moment.
“So… you are dulling yourself for the sake of, what?” Cattrick scoffed, “Misplaced nostalgia?”
Pawbert’s paw gripped the sink tighter as his other paw never stopped its mission.
“I’m trying to remember who I was back when she knew me,” Pawbert spoke, looking straight ahead at himself, “Because I think I might have forgotten.”
Cattrick took a step back.
“You were a dumb child, who turned into a stupid adult, who has now gone completely mad.”
“Maybe,” Pawbert nodded in agreement, “But at least she would have recognized that dumb child. The other options… not so much.”
Cattrick blinked.
“I think she wouldn’t recognize me now if she walked through the door,” Pawbert continued, tongue struggling to form words as the file occupied his mouth, “She would ask what I’m doing here. How could I possibly have ended up in jail? She would ask if it was a mistake. And then when I told her it was not…”
His heart tugged at the thought.
He could almost see her face.
Too young for the age she would actually be because he never got to see her age and could not imagine her looking any older than the pictures. But he pictured an unmistakable look of a broken heart in a desolated mother.
“I want to give her something to recognize in me,” He continued at last, tongue going over the canine he had already worked on, trying to figure out if it felt somewhat the same as the gap in his teeth did when he was seven.
Cattrick frowned.
“She’s dead, Pawbert.”
Another scrape against his canine.
“I know.”
Cattrick shivered when he heard the scraping sound.
“You don’t need to do this.”
Pawbert cleaned the dull file against the sleeve of his shirt and took it to his mouth again like it was second nature.
“I know.”
Cattrick turned away when the scraping sounds became more intense, stronger, more frequent, as though that was the thousandth time Pawbert had done that, and it now required zero effort on his end.
“I need to know if you seriously think she is going to walk through the door,” Cattrick shook his head, ignoring the taste of bile that came to his mouth, “Because if so, I’m asking to switch cells before you try to skin me alive in my sleep.”
Pawbert shrugged and almost laughed. Almost.
“Well,” he took a deep breath, “if our mother did walk in the door of this cell today, and looked at us again…”
Cattrick held his breath when Pawbert turned around to look at him in the eye for the first time since he had walked in, trying not to focus on the uneven teeth his younger brother now had.
“… do you think she would recognize you, Cattrick?”
For only a moment, Cattrick’s expression softened – as though he had been unarmed.
But then, Cattrick slammed the door shut.
Pawbert giggled briefly. Figures, he thought.
The file went up to his canine again without any hesitation.
Pawbert was not sure when he would consider he was done. He was not sure of what he was doing, to begin with.
But once both of his canines had been dulled to round tips, it seemed enough.
When he lost his baby teeth all those years before, he would run his tongue over their absence over and over again. It felt weird, something was missing, but something had changed.
And that feeling was forever attached to the memory of the last night he spent with his mother, as she asked him: try to stay kind, even if nothing in this house does.
He had broken the last promise he made to his mother.
He had forgotten what her last words to him had been.
Now, when he ran his tongue over the dulled canines, it felt weird, something was missing, but something had changed.
Let this serve as a reminder, he thought, if he ever forgot it again.