Chapter Text
One week ago.
It was quiet now, but for the beep of the machines hooked into her arm, and the soft whir of the climate control.
Judy's ears rang anyway, with the volume and conviction she'd surprised herself with and with the heavy thump of the door in its frame as it closed behind her parents.
But before she could even contemplate the searing anger properly, it lost out to the desperate loneliness that came out of nowhere. That had been inevitable. Judy expected it from the start. But the entirety of it, the magnitude - it was impossible to prepare for. The tears rolled down her cheeks.
How could they do this to her? To Nick? They had no right to take that step. No right to lock him away, to strip him from her like this. They refused to see what he meant to her. Wouldn't even consider that she was telling the absolute total truth when she said she loved him, that he loved her back, just as much. She couldn't 'wait until she'd had a chance to rest' to think anything over, because that knife hadn't done any damage at all to her mind. She knew exactly what she wanted, she didn't need to think about any of it - and her parents had gone to court to keep him from her when she needed him most.
Worse, Judy had no way to address it properly, not from a hospital bed. It demanded confrontation. All she had to do to reverse the order was go into the courthouse herself, and prove to the judges there she was of sound mind, that she didn't need protection from her friend, her partner, her lover-
And here she was, unable to walk more than a few steps at a time.
Now her injury did flare in pain, so severe and unexpected she tried to curl around it. Her paws cramped into fists and she had to focus on breathing.
It faded, eventually, and in its wake it seemed to have muted the thoughts that had piled through her mind in the minute or so she'd been alone. It left room for a new one; the one that mattered.
Did Nick even know what her parents had done?
The pain in her stomach was nothing, compared to how she had sat in the bed and watched his world fall apart around him. It was his nightmare: to have to suppress the urge to protect her that drove so much of what he did for her, while the world looked on and judged them for the decisions they made. In their nights together, the ones that already seemed so rare and fleeting, he apologized for how that fear made him act. For how he tried to keep the world from hurting her, even when it was impossible to stop all of it.
And that was the worst of it. It was bad enough that Nick had had to walk out on her now, because of what her father had done. But it was never supposed to be so permanent. Even with everything they'd gone through, the botched cases and the social missteps that nearly sent their bond spiraling out of their own control, Judy had, with Nick's support and love, been able to salvage it. Repair it. Keep it safe and make it stronger.
Now there was something in their way neither of them could do anything about. Nick would blame himself.
That fear crippled her, for longer than she cared to know. It only broke when there was a quiet tap and the door cracked again, this time to admit maybe the one person close to her right now who really didn't deserve to be sucked up in this at all. Judy swiped at her eyes.
"Hopps." Fangmire looked around the room as if checking it for other occupants.
"Captain? What are you doing here?"
"Chief sent me to keep an eye on things while Wilde works the field angles," he said.
That was a strange and inefficient use of a police captain. He didn't need to be here, not when there were duty officers galore to choose from back at the precinct. The suspicion settled in Judy's stomach, and she looked away so the tiger wouldn't see the pain in her expression.
He might not know it, but this was a direct result of her parents' actions. Nick couldn't be here - wouldn't risk the legal fallout of breaking that order, no matter how much it hurt - so Fangmire was here in his stead.
"You all right?" he asked. "Your parents cleared out in a hurry."
He must have had his own thoughts, his own guesses. But he wouldn't say anything. He was always so careful about what he knew. And he knew a lot: From both the things she'd told him, and the things he'd witnessed in the moment. Judy felt obligated to spare him more of the same. She couldn't bear dragging him in any further, not when there was nothing he could really do to help.
She must have gotten that from Nick.
"I'm all right," she confirmed. "Sore and tired and frustrated because it's slow going, but I'm all right."
Fangmire looked sympathetic, and eyed the fluid drip in her arm. "Get some rest if you can, then. Are you all medicated for the night?"
"More than I'd like to be." Now that her heart rate was coming down a bit, Judy could indeed feel the drugs working on her. She didn't like them at all - they made her drowsy when she didn't want to be, which was most of the time - but she wasn't going to get much more done tonight. Not with the knowledge and fear chasing themselves around in her head.
"I have been stabbed and shot," Fangmire said. "Not both at once, mind. But believe me when I say the painkillers beat the alternative." He ducked his muzzle. "I'll be outside until 2300 if you need anything." He indicated her radio on the bedside table. "Channel six-two. Private nurse call button."
Judy felt the smile betraying her. "Thanks, Fang."
He slipped out and the door clicked and she was alone again. Alone with her thoughts and the noise of the machines, and she knew she would sleep whether she liked it or not. Would dream, whether she liked it or not.
Her last thoughts were of Nick, and the lonely hope that he would fare better tonight.
---
One night alone, and Judy knew she would rather work until she dropped from exhaustion than deal with it again. So she gave it her best shot.
The morning check with her doctor kept her occupied for the briefest of moments, but when the zebra had gone Judy had to fill the gap. She pushed down on the fear, on the anger that had refreshed itself overnight. She needed to focus. Any thought of her parents would just distract her now. Nick was out there, trying to crack this himself, and she could still help him do it. Had to. She fanned out the Garreline account statements on her lap again and fired up the computer.
Discharge duty. Then fix the family. Do what you have to to keep Nick safe. Wait.
It was hard. Harder than she'd expected, because she couldn't move around on her own yet. She was sore within a couple hours, even with the painkillers. Her neck and even her ears protested the strange angle she held them at to watch the screen and type. When she dropped papers she had to get the orderlies or even Fangmire to retrieve them.
The paperwork yielded slow patterns. Nick had talked about fertilizer. Ammonium nitrate. It was close to a controlled substance, because of its explosive potential if it got mixed with fuel sources. ZPD had lists of sellers and even big buyers in some cases, and chasing that angle seemed to have more potential than the closed system of Garreline's finances.
Still, gaps remained gaps. Judy's laptop couldn't grab a secure connection to ZPD's network through the hospital Wi-Fi, so she had to route even those basic requests through Fangmire. She sat and waited for him to return, while the physical therapist walked her through basic breathing and stretching exercises she was already way too restless to take seriously. Her lungs were fine. Her legs were fine. She wanted to stand and walk beyond simple bathroom breaks.
But they were adamant about it, and so she stayed in bed and worked until there was nothing left to work on, and then ate even more applesauce and created lists of things to get from headquarters to continue work the next day. That was how her parents found her, on day two.
She heard them coming. Her father's familiar deep voice bounced off the tile out there, and the adrenaline curled around in her stomach. She didn't want to do this now. She couldn't face them again so soon, couldn't move to lock the door or pretend to be elsewhere.
There was nothing for it. Judy killed her laptop display and lay back on her massed pillows, squeezing her eyes shut just as the doorknob turned.
"Oh!" came her mother's voice. "Oh, no. Stu, she's worked herself to sleep. Look, she even left her food."
"Well, how about that." Her father sounded relieved, almost. Judy fought to keep her ears still, laid out against the bed. "Maybe she really is starting to take it a bit easier."
"She must be hurting." Judy heard her mother take a few steps closer to the bed, and wondered if she would have to steel herself to not react to some maternal gesture. Between the stage plays and putting one over Bellwether all those months ago she was getting good at acting, but she was sore and sensitive and didn't trust herself right now.
"I'd guess it's all caught up with her." Her father took a deep breath. "Took more than I ever wanted, though."
"Stu, you can't blame yourself."
"To get between her and a fox..." Rough farm clothing shuffled. "What happened, Bonnie? What's happened to her?"
"She grew up," Bonnie said. "Farther and faster than any of the other kids. And she's still not done."
Judy lay there, like she was nine years old and hiding her late-night reading from older siblings all over again, and despaired. It all started to pour back in past the temporary barriers casework had given her: How alone she was. How angry and tired and impotent the whole situation made her.
But maybe they had just misunderstood. Maybe her father was having second thoughts about what they'd done in the interest of protecting her. If she opened her eyes now, Judy might have the chance to put it all right and bring Nick back-
But they were already leaving. Their quiet footpaws sounded at the door and with a soft click they were gone.
Now there was no small measure of guilt atop the simmering anger. She didn't like misleading anyone, much less her own parents, and especially not over something this important. It was too much of her now to give anything but her full attention. Nick deserved that.
That was the problem, though. Judy watched the ceiling tiles swim in her vision as she stopped bothering to keep from crying. She couldn't address it now, not while it could be such a fierce distraction for both of them. She had to trust that he would hold up without her, until they had finished what they started so long ago down in the ZPD precinct offices. That's what she'd told Nick, and as she hefted the weight of that decision onto her shoulders she had to tell herself again, too. It was more important than them, for better or for worse.
Get this done and do it right, she told herself again. And then you can both fix what's happened.
She'd never hated putting something before herself more in her life.
And she might have fallen asleep right there, throbbing injury and all, had the door not cracked again. Fangmire tapped on the frame.
"Hey, Hopps. Doing okay?"
Judy sniffed and wiped at her eyes, and the helplessness rose in her throat. Yes, everyone kept checking on her, because she really did need checking on. She wasn't her old self yet. "I'll live."
"That's the spirit." He eyeballed her IV lead and checked the clipboard at the end of her bed in one huge paw, in the automatic routine he'd simply assumed in his time here. Judy didn't mind, but sometimes she did wonder about his own hospital experiences.
"You missed your last dose," Fangmire said.
"What?"
"Your painkillers." Fang pointed a finger at the little plastic cup on her dinner tray, where Judy could see the three purple capsules. The guilt sharpened.
"They make me drowsy."
"Then they make you drowsy." Fangmire tilted his head at her. "Come on, Hopps. I can't make it an order, but I can stand here and be disapproving all night if I have to."
"I'm okay," Judy said. She didn't want to sleep. Not when she had so much still to do. She tapped at her laptop's keyboard to wake it up again. "My hydration's good. I'm not bleeding anymore. My recovery is ahead of schedule, even if the doctors don't think it's-"
"Judy."
Something in her cracked, after days of trying to hold it together. "What?"
The big tiger's ears flickered at her fire. "You need rest. You don't have to do everything yourself. And you shouldn't."
"But I do," she said. Her side twinged, and she felt everything threatening to spin out again. "Fang, do you know what my parents did?"
"No."
"They went to court. Against Nick. There's a restraining order on him now, under the old prey safety measures."
Fang had the decency to actually be shocked. He lowered the clipboard. "I didn't know those were still in force."
"For all of a few more months," Judy said. The courts were working on them as they spoke. Nobody was supposed to need the special protections anymore, not since the government had started its reforms to give predators the rights they never should have lost in the first place.
Fang was studying her. "I'm sorry, Hopps."
"It's not your fault." She sighed and picked up the pills. They rattled around. "But it's not fair, either. It's why I'd rather hurt than sleep."
That was a stretch. Sleep didn't offer relief anymore, not since Nick had gone. But some things she still wouldn't share with anyone else.
"You know what he'd think of that."
That hurt. Judy snapped up to glare at Fangmire, but he was looking right back, ears forward, muzzle down so his eyes were on her level. There was no malice in it. He was just right. Her captain knew about her and Nick, knew what he meant to Judy about as intimately as anyone else could, because she had told him herself.
But she couldn't let him know everything. She had to spin at least a half-lie to his face, and it felt awful. "I can't let him do this alone."
"You're not." Fang shook his head. "You have to trust him to do his part. And the best thing you can do for him right now - even if you can't see him - is rest."
And so he watched her, quiet and sympathetic, until she swallowed the pills and washed them down with half a liter of cool water from her bedside bottle.
Now she was committed. She felt drowsy already, even if it was probably placebo. She didn't want the loneliness that was coming, even if she needed the rest. Her pillows weren't much comfort as she settled down.
"I never wanted to drag you into this, Fang," she said. "I'm sorry."
"No worries, Hopps." She could see him moving for the door. He flipped the lights off. "It's that magnetic personality."
Judy fought it as long as she could. But eventually the exhaustion won out. She drifted into medicated, necessary slumber and didn't wake until morning.
Not even as the nightmares played again and again.