#warwolf47

Bogo looms in the reinforced glass of the ER observation window. “I am looking, Hopps. I see a fox who killed three armed sheep with his own teeth and claws, and I’m not letting you in there.”

“He’s alone,” I say.

“That’s for the best right now.”

“You weren’t there.” I turn on him. Somewhere in the last week he’s stopped intimidating me at all, and it looks like he’s starting to get it. “He saved my life.”

“You’re alive because you had a hiding spot he couldn’t reach.” Bogo shakes his head. “You think he really would have know the difference between them and you while he was under?”

“Yes,” I lie. “He did this for me.”

“Hopps-” Bogo drags his hoof over his face. “I know you’re still coming down from this, but you have to understand. This is not the tram stop in rainforest. That fox is not your friend right now.”

“His name is Nick, and yes, he is.” He’s the only friend I’ve got, actually, and I’m not about to leave him alone. Not after this. I turn to go.

“Hopps, the board will make me pull your commission.”

Three days ago, that probably would have been enough to stop me in my tracks. Now, I’ve decided some things are worth more than even my brief, eventful career.

And Bogo doesn’t sound all that convinced of his own threat. He’s learned the hard way that I’m less than controllable. I know I still shouldn’t push it, but I also know Nick would push it if he were in my pawprints right now.

“Do what you have to.”

—

Nick is lashed to the bed.

It hits me harder than I think the doctor is expecting. There’s a blood line stuck to a shaved patch on his arm, and a long canine cannula in his nose. A loose band around his snout keeps his teeth closed.

The surgeons say there’s a good chance he might not wake up at all. He shouldn’t have to be tied down, even if it is for his own safety. There’s something wrong about that.

“How long?”

The armadillo doctor is still looking at me like I’m dangerous, too, but at least I’ve cowed him into being cooperative. “He’s off almost everything but the pain medication now, not that we know if any of it was having an effect to begin with.”

I stare at him. Ice curls in my gut. “He was awake during surgery?”

“Not awake, no. But he was more active than most patients. We’re still not sure what most of the Midnicampum varietals do to different nervous systems. It was hard to gauge what sedative dosages were necessary.”

“I understand.” My ears catch the slow heart rate telltale on the EKG. “Thank you.”

I get the sense the doctor isn’t used to being dictated to in his own hospital, but he’ll get over it. The door clicks shut behind him and we’re alone again. I find the single chair by the wall - too large for me, technically - and jump into it to wait, for however long it takes.

The post-action reports are done. I’ve read the relevant case law and statutes. Nick had killed three prey mammals with his own paws, his own teeth. That they’d been lethally armed and shooting at him and a ZPD officer helped his case somewhat, as did the fact that he had been under psychotropic duress the entire time. But a triple death was an anomaly. Enough to get the advisory board’s attention, and the media’s, and everyone else’s. Zootopia hadn’t dealt with anything like this for decades.

The one saving grace - the one real lifeline - is that the sole surviving witness to the attacks swears, on record and under her oath as a peace officer, that someone else shot Nicholas Wilde with a Nighthowler dart.

I’m lying for him.

Just like he lied for me.

He had me fooled, right up until he turned to go that one last time. He wasn’t supposed to be so noble. Wasn’t supposed to do something I hadn’t been prepared to do myself for him, had our positions been reversed. It was reckless and stupid and I owe him my life for it.

And his last big con might still kill him. I watch the steady cadence of his breathing. The perjury, and the risk of what happens to me now, doesn’t seem as important in the face of that. I have to make sure he’s okay.

He’d find it funny. A lifetime of moral adherence to code and rigor and structure of law, flipped on its head for one dumb fox.

We’re even now, and I hope it never happens again.

—

It takes two more days, with Bogo checking in personally the whole time to make sure I’m still alive. My duty status switched over to ‘paid leave’ somewhere in there. It seems I’m safe, for the moment. But Nick’s condition is a slow crawl back toward stable. He’s not bleeding anymore, but he’s no closer to awake, either.

I spend the time reading. I don’t understand near as much of the science behind the organics research as some of my agricultural siblings would, but I can read abstracts well enough to get the general idea.

Night Howlers and their cousins amp up the sensory intake of whoever gets them in their bloodstream. Subjects perceive sight and sound and smell and everything else as more intense than usual. It can be pleasant, in some cases, or at least harmless enough to others.

But certain varietals boost reflex and instinct along with the senses, trigger fight responses in predators and even some prey. Those are the dangerous ones, like the one Nick shot himself with.

There isn’t any literature on recovery, or withdrawal or permanent effects. The doctors have no way to tell what might happen when Nick wakes up until he wakes up.

And when he does wake up, the chiming alarms wake me up.

Nick’s breathing and heart rate spike. He shudders on the bed, despite his bonds. When his arms and legs don’t move, he raises his head, until cannula and muzzle bring it up short there, too. He’s starting to panic.

“Nick!” There’s nothing at the bedside to get me to his level. I have to scramble right up onto the mattress beside his head.

He rasps a growl. Something in his eyes flickers back and forth, between recognition and dawning fear and something ice-cold and totally feral. It’s almost enough to make me back off.

But his head lashes back and forth and he whines past the obstructions on his snout and I have to do something. The muzzle is velcro. I tear it away.

“Judy-”

“I’m here.”

Until I’m not, until someone hauls me bodily off the bed. The nurses have arrived.

“Are you crazy?” The moose grunts. “You don’t touch critical patients. Stay the hell out of the way, cop.”

His ocelot partner is talking to Nick, trying to get him to calm down and answer questions. They check his pupils and hover over him and I’m stuck in the corner, watching the muscles in Nick’s wrists bunch and strain under the straps holding him down.

But he’s alive.

He’s alive, and he recognized me, and that’s enough to make me weak with relief.

A whole procession of medical staff tends to him for hours. The questions and tests sail over my head; the dire warnings not to interfere bounce off every time the nurses repeat them. I tune out everything else and sit on that overlarge chair, knees hugged to my chest, and hold Nick’s gaze.

And as soon as they leave him alone again, I return to his bedside.

He’s still tense. The last of whatever the serum did to him is still working its way out of his system. But his eyes are clear again, and he’s even breathing without the aid of the cannula. They’ve given him his arms back. Good thing, too, because if he’d still been tied down I was ready to untie him.

“It hurts,” he says.

Something twists in me. He’s still loopy from painkillers. I never thought I’d miss his effortless sarcasm.

My paw is careful on his neck. “You got shot three times.”

“That’s it?”

There we go. “Nick.” Two of them are superficial. One of them skimmed the edge of his shoulder and another took a notch out of his ear. But one bullet drilled into his thigh, close to the bone. He’ll be a long, long time healing.

“I don’t remember, Carrots,” he says. “I made you hide, and then-” his brow furrows.

I’m not about to fill in the gaps for him, not this soon. I’m scared enough at what will happen the next time I fall asleep properly, at what I’ll dream about.

“It was fast,” I say instead, and brush the fur of his cheek. He seems to like it. His eyes close and his ears relax.

“So soft,” he says. “Better than the bright lights or the loud heart thing.”

“EKG. Electrocardiogram.”

“Whatever. It’s loud.”

“I’ll get them to turn it down,” I say, even though I’m pretty sure it’s already on its lowest setting. His hearing must still be overkeyed.

His nostrils flare and he leans back against his pillow. I take his paw.

“Blood,” he says, identifying the scent. “Is that my blood?”

I eye the IV bag on the other side of the bed. “It is now.”

“Oh.” Nick swallows. “And antiseptic. And saline and-” he breathes again. “Cedar.”

“Cedar?”

“yeah, it’s like-” he brings my paw to his muzzle and stops. His breath is strong and hot on my fingers. “Oh.”

Awareness prickles.

I hadn’t considered this. Not seriously, anyway. We’d been so busy, running for our lives and ducking explosions and dodging gunfire. There was no time to think about anything else.

And even now doesn’t seem like the right time to think about it too hard, not when he’s pushing my paw against his nose like this. I stay still, to keep from startling him and because there’s the knowledge creeping up on me that I don’t want him to stop, either.

It’s calming him. The muscles in his neck relax and he settles deeper against his cushions, and risks a smile as I stroke his muzzle.

“It’s you.”

“It’s probably horrible,” I mutter. “I’ve spent two days in a chair.”

“No, no, it’s good.” He shifts and holds my paws closer. “It means you’re still here.”

“Not going anywhere,” I say. Of course there’s a lump in my throat. “Not until you’re okay.”

“I remember,” he says, and pushes his nose at my paws with an anxious little fox noise that has no business tugging at my heart. “I told you not to let me lose you.”

Nick’s eyes are clear. Dim from pain and overloaded senses, yes, but he means every word, even in this state.

“Nick.”

“Don’t let me.”

I can’t. Not anymore. In three days’ time, he’s uprooted his entire life for me. Gained a friend and someone to trust, maybe for the first time ever. And he got shot doing it, in a crazy, desperate bid to to preserve something so new and important to him.

He’s going to need someone to hold him up when it all comes back, to remind him why he did it and what it meant. More than that, though - I can’t imagine going on without him alongside, either. It’s about time I made some stupid decisions, too.

So I climb right onto the bed proper, right next to him, close enough to push my muzzle over his, all the way up to his forehead so his nose slides against my neck, so he knows I’m right here. His shiver triggers one of my own.