Chapter Text
Mr. Renard had come into a new role.
Normally he'd been the villain in Judy's little stories growing up, chasing the rabbits and spoiling their picnics and scaring them with his teeth.
Now his job was more solemn than Judy would have liked: a sad, worn stand-in for one Nicholas Wilde. The sticker helped the likeness a little bit.
But it wasn't quite the same, now that Judy had rescued it from its crumpled ball on the floor of the headquarters lobby and carefully smoothed it out. One of the corners had lost its stick entirely, and little cracks chased through the shiny gold foil.
It had endured so much. Wind and rain and even a dive in the reservoir, and it held on through all of it, until intentional claws had pulled it off and discarded it. There was something symbolic about that.
And it was her fault.
Judy hugged the little stuffed fox to her chest and curled up on her bed, wishing for the umpteenth time in these few short days that she could take back what had happened. Since Nick had left she'd just been going through the motions, filing reports and walking beat and checking the occasional meter. Then she would come home and eat because she had to and then she would sit here, turning Mr. Renard around and around in her paws, as if he might provide answers.
How had she gone so wrong?
It wasn't even enough to stew in the pity, because she knew she had no ground to stand on. She couldn't lament how he'd balanced her naivete, or how he'd given her more help than she deserved. It wasn't about her.
She'd done real damage to Nick, and to look that fact straight-on was her penance.
She didn't have friends in the city, just colleagues. It was too early for lasting relationships, or had been until these last days. Nick had taught her things, in his own way, once they'd started to open up. On fairness and commitment and how and when to challenge authority. Yes, he was a fox. But in the last whirlwind 48 hours, he'd proved to her that there was more to him than what he had presented to the world.
Judy had been lucky to witness that. She'd found someone improbable, someone interesting and witty and much more than she expected or deserved under all that armor. Someone who might turn into something more than a witness, more than an acquaintance, just for her.
And she'd crushed him. In one thoughtless moment she'd ignored everything their cooperation had taught her.
But it was worse, Mr. Renard's sewn-on eyes seemed to say. Until she'd opened her mouth on that podium Nick had looked so happy and hopeful, and Judy had dared to think maybe just some small part of that was because she was the one giving him that application.
She wanted Nick to look at her like that.
The thought - so forward, so unprecedented, so wrong - was enough to stop her breath.
But she couldn't deny it. This was about accepting what she'd done. What she'd thought.
Judy Hopps, rabbit, go-getter and all of one week a career police officer, wanted her only friend back, for reasons she was scared were more than friendship. She wanted to be close beside a fox again.
Those were the parts she remembered the most: leaning on the DMV counter, sandwiched between polar bear enforcers, trapped in a tangle of vines in Rainforest district, climbing through the sewers together underneath an abandoned hospital. There was some primal thrill to picking that up. It had changed, even in this short time, too: from the careful knowledge that he was playing with her reactions and enjoying the ride, to the sensation of his strong heartbeat pressed to hers there in the rain, to the conspiratorial closeness of facing the unknown and realizing there was someone there supporting her now because he wanted to.
There was a word for this. But Judy couldn't think it now, not when it was such a betrayal. She'd had that chance, even if she hadn't recognized it for what it was. Now it was gone.
The sticker crinkled under her fingers. Its gold flashed reflected streetlights, misty now thanks to her blurred vision.
She would never get the chance to tell Nick what he had come to mean to her. She would never get the chance to apologize.
All she had was Mr. Renard, Junior Detective. She pulled him as close as she could, and wondered if it would ever be enough to fill the hole in her heart.