Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Five years ago in the same year as Bellwether’s savage conspiracy attempting to overthrow former Mayor Lionheart, a then-ten-year-old female desert rabbit named Zara Shagatuff suddenly went missing from Klawbull Road, Sahara Square; for all those long years, evidence eventually built up enough for the ZPD to track her lead towards an understandably unknown island only known for its violent and crime-infested slums and nothing else among the metropolis’ mainland. 

Only the island’s residents know of and experienced the “nothing else”, and the ZPD’s first fox officer, Nick Wilde, has been assigned for an undercover mission to finally gather more information and intelligence regarding the island not only to find the now-teenage Zara Shagatuff, but to also assist Zootopia’s official government more potential ways to increase relations and coexistence with the island leading to the locals’ higher quality of life and peace. 

Out of the ZPD’s first rabbit or fox officer, Judy Hopps was chosen to be her long-time partner’s communication and assistance over the radio due to her expertise in supportive situations, especially emotionally, and interpretating intelligence plus evidence others have gathered and translating it understandably clear and straight-forward like sunlight through clear glass; Nick on the other side was chosen for his role for his expertise in espionage and experience plus knowledge of criminal backgrounds and environments when he was growing-up, from the clearest fresh air to the obscurest toxic fog. 

It was the first mission the iconic rabbit-fox police duo had to separate and support each other through non-physical means, so it took them a while to finally understand and accept the orders; adapting and executing them would be the real challenge. They even wrapped each other in a tight hug with the fewest tears possible dripping from both their eyes to in an exchange of good luck and physical farewell, with them gazing at one another as they shrunk in the distance between the motored inflatable boat and the coast. 

“Okay, Nick,” the boat’s driver assured himself to focus back to his designated role of the mission, the island expanding the closer he approached; his mind pondered at the possibilities of where his rescue-target may be and why. 

Once the sailor tod reached close enough, his eyes awed at the diversely festive lights glowing life into the otherwise deathly dull infrastructure: sheets of metal and rust supposedly concealing the rough patches of the bricks and wood, chipping away with the rusting of the metal. 

“First impressions can be deceiving,” the visitor in disguise commented curiously before his snarky smile stretched across his muzzle, “just like Judy when we first met.” A little laugh escaped his mouth before neutralising his expression as he approached the wood-chipped docks; aquatic vegetation and invertebrates wrapped thick and tightly around the poles protruding from the bottom of the coastal waters to beneath the walk-boards. 

Two figures appeared out from the boggy fog staring directly at their new visitor from the deck, second-hand assault rifles laying across their holders' grips; one AR-15-based with the other one being AK. 

‘They sure as hell seen better days,’ Nick thought to himself as the firearms’ conditions became more apparent behind the fading mist as the distance between him and them gradually shortened. Once the distance enclosed more, the red-furred mammal in disguise noticed both of the figures wore what seemed to be discount border patrol uniforms with them wearing navy-blue cargo bottoms, graphite-grey jackets and midnight-black denim caps. 

“Hello lads,” Nick greeted harmlessly casual trying to get on the good side of the guards, “how’s your patrolling duties going?” 

“Depends on why you came to this island,” the one with the AR-15 answered seriously with caution, obviously trying to appear tough and professional in order to not get played with, “and what exactly you bought with you.” 

“We need to check you,” the one with the AK began to explain, “to make sure you’re not any  kind of threat or disturbance to this place; it’s just standard procedure we do to everyone who comes here, and you are no exception.” 

“I’m just coming here to meet someone,” the undercover fox tried to cover up, “but they never revealed their name.” He purposely left his rescue priority’s name out of the picture to avoid any suspicion or contradiction to his cover-up story. 

“A meeting for what?” 

“A drug-trade; trading for nightsmokers specifically since it would be an enhancement to my combat abilities and awareness. I am a mixed-martial artist after all even though you likely can’t tell underneath my modestly long trench coat.” Nick’s charcoal-black coat extended down to his knees as a way to conceal all of his equipment from the island’s local public for his mission. 

“We’ll believe you when we see evidence of what you say, sly boy,” the AR guard commented under sharp suspicion, his gaze cutting just as sharp and deep into Nick’s emerald eyes. “I know what your kind are capable of.” 

“That’s enough of that , Carlin,” the other guard scolded her duty-partner, her tone frozen-hard like an ice-stone “we’re supposed to treat and search every visitor the same regardless of what they look like!” 

“So you’re saying you don’t remember the last time that whore-of-a-vixen came here just so she can sleep with nearly half of our guards and enforcement and go back to the city with a fortune on her hands, Ruby!?” Carlin argued with angry agony, his tone and expression hot-tempered with a sharp, teethy grit. “She could’ve at least helped our shitty island out with god-knows how much she earned!” 

“Calm down, you short-tempered, big cry-baby,” Ruby calmly tried to defuse her pissy partner whilst also using her scolding, no-shits-given attitude, “there’s no need to throw a tantrum over it now, is there?” 

“OR the time when that sick fuck murdered a big portion of our prostitutes?! Don’t forget that line of work alongside drugs is basically our economy’s life-support!” 

“And remember that we finally punished the mass-murderer in the most appropriately severe way to end his killing spree!? For god’s sake, man, you’re really scraping the deepest bottom of the barrel to come up with the most extremely delusional excuses just to confirm your biases attempting to deny this visitor any entry.” 

“Hey, I’m at least trying to do my job cautiously correct here, lady.” 

“Like the time you managed to find yourself sleeping with some near-barely teenage girl just a few years back which ended up with her pregnant!?” 

“Hey, it’s not my fault that I needed the money and female company that badly,” the creepy buck tried to desperately defend his horribly heinous, infuriating felony with an uncomfortably guilty shame spread all over his fearful face. “I mean,” a short silence filled his mouth as he dug for more justifications tainted with greasy gold, “with you not being able to help me out of my poor situation on the brink of becoming broke, who else am I supposed to burst my lonely boy-toy into some chick’s hope-hole hoping it will shit-out just enough value for me to stay out of living on the streets myself?” 

Nick felt himself cracking from the creasing cringe not only for the fact that he hadn’t heard a possible, potential predator admit his disgusting deviancy out loud with a stranger right in front of him, but also the way he described his evil excuse to his female coworker. ‘Christ!’ the red tod retorted with rage inside his head, ‘Not to be as simple-minded as this guy, but that place might just be as, if not, worse than the eye can see, after all.” 

“You're such a measly, monstrous molester with no respect for us; the most you can even be able to give is only for our bodies,” Ruby retaliated out of revolted retribution; the only reason she was even working with this objectifying pervert was so she can keep watch over him in case he tries to slack off resulting in his sacking and potentially as possible sharing beds with even more underage night-springers, as well as the fact her officer-in-command ordered her and Carlin to get along better ultimately unaware of the beastly buck’s brutal backstory. 

“So are you two gonna continue arguing or doing your damn jobs here!?” the third, lone listener finally interrupted, his tone irritably impatient with a pissed-off, protective instinct to rush his mission in order to save and rescue the viciously vulnerable victim from any further, horribly horrifying harm than she already must have severely suffered from. “‘Cause for just a couple of border patrollers, you sure as hell love to complicate your already supposedly simple duties.” 

Chapter Text

Rushing through the deeply desolate darkness was a deep-as-the-dark figure dressed all-black from head to paws, with only their tall, long ears exposed flagging from the speeding air and the slums’ streetlights lighting-up the coal-shaded clothing in a diverse variety of colours like moons, planets and stars shining and reflecting through the empty, outer space then onto the clear coal clothes. 

The natural waters showered and splashed all around and against the unknown-as-they-were-unidentifiable rusher, who was running away from multiple calls and cries screaming towards them swearing to stop and catch their escaper; the runner, still ignoring their hunters’ orders of swears and threats, continued running onwards sprinting swiftly in all and any directions necessary to navigate through the confusingly complex structure of the streets while also dodging the messy, scattered garbage, vehicles and other urban obstacles. 

“Shit!” the all-black escaper then muttered in frustration as they managed to find themselves a tall and tricky obstacle right in front of them at the end of a roofless drainage half-pipe: a wall extending too high and smoothly to even be able to climb over. The only possible exit was the circular metal gate at the bottom leading into the deep, dark, disturbing sewers that may possibly be a maze. 

‘The best place to lose my chasers’, the trapped prey thought with hope as they tried their best to be brave, ‘if the gate wasn’t locked up tightly with a chain wrapping all around it!’ “Goddamn!” The lock and chain miraculously broke then fell apart as a deafening boom echoed through the tunnel, triggering the startled survivor to rip off the remains before then pulling open the gate door and slamming it swiftly shut, causing a metallic echo to scream through the pipe towards the chasers that grew larger as the distance between them and the gate shortened as they sprinted. 

The one on the other side rapidly reacted by whipping the chain between the door and the frame before finally hooking the now-separated bolt of the lock over the now-wrapped chains and dashed backwards then turned towards forwards down the dark tunnel to the sewers. The daring dasher heard their pursuers’ loud and intimidating shouts and screams along with their booming bangs of the gate fade further down the underground pipe as the survivor flicks out-and-on their flashlight. 

Once they couldn’t hear the sounds anymore, they paused to catch a breath and figure out how they could be able to now navigate the just as messy maze of a sewer, the strong stinking scent of chlorinated waste filling up their nostrils. ‘Fucking hell!’ the sniffer cursed in their own head as they lifted their empty hand up to mask their already masked face to further drown out the wet odour. 

‘Thank you, Allah, for deciding I should be born as anything but a canine; this would be a not-so-holy hell of stinking shit and putrid piss otherwise.’ the thinker giggled ever-so-slightly to relievedly relax themselves from their own joke using their god’s name and faith, praying for guidance and hope to lead them out of their devil’s deviation of a levelling labyrinth. ‘Time to get to work,’ they refocused back to the divided tunnels sensing a holy, paradisical presence by their side hoping it will help them decide the right tunnels to escape their devil’s complex chamber. 

They first started by bringing their light closer to each one carefully by scanning across them all, then choosing the tunnel with the most promising features that possibly signified it will lead to the lights above ground; the middle-left especially showed a wide passageway sloping slightly upwards suggesting its potential of being the exit out of the dark, dull and slimy sewers. 

Certain of their decision, the underground maze-runner took their traditionally leaning unorthodox path to escapism whilst keeping a slow-pulsed pace throughout the tunnel, looking back behind their vulnerable backside for any terrifying threats that may be coming their way, or worse: tracking them down. It wasn’t until the trembling tunneller’s enormous ears viciously vibrated from the sensitive sound of a sharp sheet of moulding metal scraping from behind them: 

Scrrrrrrrrccccccck...  

The irritably insidious and scary sound raised all of the listener’s furs triggering their flight response to briefly spin their back around behind before instinctively spinning back forwards and fleeing down further into the tunnel with such superior speed that only sound could outrun them. The runner eventually only could hear their feet splashing across the wet, watery waste and soon slowed their pace down to pause peacefully at the wide-open waterworks and falls feeling achieving accomplishment of their grim, grisly goal and relaxing relief flowing through their veins. 

Despite their relieving relaxation and accomplishing achievement, they immediately got to work balancing over the pipe bridge and treading cautiously with care, their nerves nauseously shaking under the pushing pressure to fuel their focus up the top of their capability. 

Tip, tap... tap, tap, tip... tap...tip...  

AAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEH!  

Understandably unaware of the incoming threat falling furiously above and towards them, the balancer’s head flung upwards and jumped off the pipe bridge with a striking slash seriously slitting through the mask into two halves and scraping the tip of the face’s flesh as they free fell downwards through the musky air and eventually into the moisty, muddy water below. 

The flying, fleeing flashlight lit up the sewer’s pool of wet, watered waste to reveal a real, rose-red underwater, furious fog with chunks and fractures of squishy, squeezy matter and solid-hard calcium, that out of fuelling fear and revolting disgust caused the deep diver to dash through the suspicious water to grab hold of the torch and swiftly shine it towards the just-as-suspicious silhouette swimming closer shortening the distance between them and their victim. 

The vicious victim violently swam backwards as speedy as they can before directing upwards to the surface of the pool, where they then continued until finally reaching the solid, brick edge to climb themselves out of the water. Now soaked and soggy with rosy water that smelled like their potential, upcoming fatal fate, they immediately sprinted towards the closest ledge to latch onto and climb upwards before repeating the action in all different directions before reaching the level of the bridge pipe. 

Now at their only chance of escaping in one piece, the athletic acrobat jogged like a well-balanced jelly hoping and praying one last time for their passing of the bridge to succeed in their survival out of the sewage system once and for all. 

Chapter Text

In a peaceful pub in an alone alleyway ostracised somewhere far away from the island’s main town centre worked a bartender calmly and casually doing his duty wiping and cleaning the empty glasses that lied tainted with alcohol on the bar table. It wasn’t a particularly busy night as the entire dining area was barely half-covered, with only the occasional one or two players at a single time practicing their skills either alone or against each other at the only dart-board or pool-table. 

Which is why it is considered the peaceful, perfect place as a heavenly haven away from the disturbing dangers that live and lurk in and around the sick, slimy streets. Just as the busy bartender was focusing on finishing the final empty cup, his view shifted towards the sight of a deeply dark dressed doe approaching his direction with a side-angled slash slit and bleeding across her youthfully looking face from above her light-lavender right-eye and brow then over the nose and ending above her lip. 

“Oh my lord!” the tender retaliated with remorse against the witness of the saddening sight, “What the hell has he destined to happen to you, little lady?” his sympathy softened with slight sadness. 

“Sorry for you to see me like this, Devin,” the lady apologised apathetically, her face still as strong stone, “but I need first aid to get my wound treated right away.” 

“There’s no need to apologise for anything, dear darling,” Devin the fox tearfully turned down her apology, his tone soft as silk sheets, “and I would help you if either I or the limited staff here tonight actually knew how to use those things.” 

“What?!” the raging rabbit, suddenly surprised, furiously fired with piercing panic, her bloody face exotically expressing a maddening mix of cautious colours, “But can’t you see any rust trapped in it?” 

The curious canine pinched his eyelids closer together to focus more into the crimson cut, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t detect any dust, “I’m sorry, sugar, but no matter how hard I focus, I can never be able to tell apart the red rust from the similar-coloured blood.” 

The doe panicked from the unfortunate response, her heart beating rapidly and pumping pressured blood around her whole body. “You’ve got to be shitting me! But we still have to try, don’t we, or should I leave it to become infected and die from it!?” 

“You don’t have to do either with me here, now,” a clever, confident voice invited itself into the conversation, the fox and the rabbit turning their heads towards their uninvited guest who appeared to be a red fox like Devin, except older and with emerald eyes compared to the younger tod’s bronze-brown ones. “And I also have enough knowledge and experience of first aid to tell apart the rust from the blood.” 

“Oh, then thank Allah, you’re here,” the young female rabbit used her god’s name to give her thanks to the older red fox dressed in a long, deep-dark trench coat with the collar of his grass-green, patched and plaided buttoned shirts exposed like a patchy, grassland field and countryside was living underneath. 

“Well, aren’t you a lifesaver,” the younger male fox curiously complimented with gorgeous glee, “for coming into the rescue when no one else here can?” 

“We still need to test his skills first,” the still suspicious doe suggested cautiously, “to see if he really is as he describes himself.” 

“But first,” the more experienced and knowledgeable tod interjected, “we need the kit to be able to save your life.” 

“Ah,” the lesser one realised, “right, of course; let me take a moment to get it from the backrooms.” He then leaped to leave and rush towards the med kit in a room behind the bar, leaving the fox stranger alone with his rabbit friend. 

As the stranger looked at the fellow fox’s friend more, he felt a surged sense of deja-vu from her, like he was supposed to know who the mysterious young woman was. “Where and how did you get that slash across your face?” the suspicioned spectator questioned hoping his feeling would get answered without being too intrusive or intimating. 

“From some creepy bugger lurking in the sewers,” the questioned suspect replied rather bitterly, clearly bothered by the slasher who ruined their victim’s face, “fucker jumped me when I was crossing over a pipe to another side of a pool.” 

“And then what happened next?” 

“I landed in the water below and then rushed out of the sewers; it’s how I got here.” 

“So, why were you down there at that time of night, anyway?” the questioning canine asked in caring curiosity, confused as to why the rushing rabbit would even go to somewhere so dark and cave-like after the sun went deep down below the horizon. “Because places like that are really dangerous for these specific hours.” 

The rabbit lowered her look away from her questioner’s glaring gaze as she tried to think of an acceptable answer, but even after a few, short seconds of silence she can only reply with “it’s a long and complicated story”; clearly a way to dodge the questioning, big bullet. 

“Medical supplies here, now,” Devin returned with a healthy teeth-white plastic box and then heightening it and lowering again on-towards the bar table, its iconic insignia of a colourful plus pulsing and visible against the pure, plain background. “Now that you have the tools to fix her up, I suggest doing it in a room where the public can’t see you.” 

“I don’t mind buying a bedroom,” Nick answered, trying to appear that his only focus was to patch the girl up and nothing else, “I also need a place to spend the night until first sunlight.” 

“Well, lucky you that there’s only one room left unoccupied,” Devin started off with a compliment before his tone then shifted to. “But you’re also unlucky that there’s only one double-bed.” 

“What!?” the young doe boomed in disbelief of what she just heard, the thought of sleeping next to a man who seemed at least twice her age shook and shivered down to the bottom tipped tail of her spine. “Is there really nowhere else for me to sleep?” 

“I’m afraid not, darl,” the bar tender apologised with awe, “so sorry. And you’re not allowed to sleep on one of the sofas even as an urgent alternative as that breaks this place’s rule of ‘not taking up one of the guests’ public spaces for too long’.” 

“Don’t worry, please,” the older red fox insisted calmly, his open paws’ palms high up in the air to signify his harmlessness more obviously. “You also look like you can kick my ass out anyway in case shit does go south,” he smiled with a sly smug to suggest his comedic compliment, which ended up forcing a little laugh out of the rabbit. 

“Okay, okay,” she commented in playful defeat, her tone teasy and relaxed from the previous tension, “you win; I think I can trust you, but I’ll still be on my guard even if you are trying to heal me.” 

“Thank you, miss...?” Nick thanked as he questioned his patient’s name. 

“You can just call me ‘Eliza’,” she answered finally revealing her name, “or simply ‘Z’ for short.” 

“Then my name’s ‘Nicholas’ but you can call me ‘Nick’,” the older red fox traded his name. 

“And I’m ‘Devin Redwood’,” the younger red fox and bar tender shared gracefully and gladly, “though ‘Dev’ is simply enough.” 

Chapter Text

“No! No, please, stop! Get off me! No! Aaaaaugh! Fuck! Don’t touch me!”  

“No! No, guys, what are you doing to me!? What did I do wrong?! Why!?”  

Nick’s eyes swung themselves open to the sadly scary sounds that haunted and triggered his childhood past enough for him to wake up and snap out of his retraumatising nightmare; he then discovered the source to be Eliza moaning and groaning around in her own nightmare eerily similar to the one she was sharing the double-bed with, both members still fully-clothed and separated far away to each edge.  

“Z?” the older sharer first called out quietly, eager to prevent jump-scaring the younger one out of her nightmare and then into a heart-attack, but the listener didn’t respond, instead continuing begging and crying for mercy from her-god-knows-triggering, traumatic nightmare.  

“Eliza!?” Nick called again, his voice louder with concern.  

“Who is that!?” Eliza questioned, her voice vicious with crying confusion, “Who’s there!?”  

“It’s me, Nicholas!” he placed his paw onto Z’s smaller shoulder, his fingers dangling as they rested along and down it. “Don’t worry; you’re safe now. You just got to wake up.”  

“Nicholas who?”  

“Nick, for short,” he smirked, tone teasy trying his best to bring his companion back to reality, “you remember back at the bar with Devin?”  

The nightmare-experiencer cried for a little bit before suddenly stopping with a gasp of remembering realisation, “Yes, I do!”  

The attempted awakener’s smirk then turned to a smile as he sensed a surge of success flowing through all his veins of his body, “And also me patching-up your face-wound after we went upstairs?”  

The delicate doe’s last croaking and creaking cries fade to finalise in peace before eventually ending completely, her desperate breaths sucking in and blowing out the calm, cooling air until she fully awakened and recognised her real surroundings of her own consciousness.  

The reassuring red fox lifted his helping hand away from his poor patient’s shoulder to free her some space to breathe in more of one of the inn’s bedroom’s relaxing atmosphere that they were in; the golden glow of the early morning sunlight rays brightening the warmly wooden walls and floor and glittering the pale particles of delicate dust that blowed and flowed from and with the rabbit’s blissful breaths.  

“Are you okay now, Liz?” Nick asked smooth and silently like a concerned carer checking up on their cared-for child; it was only after listening to her wailing wines as well as her unhooded head and full-lit face that the carer was able to confirm that “Liz” looked, sounded, behaved and acted more like a mid-adolescent girl suffering as she’s struggling halfway through her piercing, puncturing puberty rather than a young woman already experiencing the earliest life-lessons that come and go throughout adulthood.  

“Didn’t I already tell you not to call me any other than ‘Eliza’ or ‘Z’?” the angsty adolescent slightly spat back with little yet vicious venom, her brows burrowed into her forehead as her pale-purple frown pierced into the concerned yet also confused, fully grown man’s grass-green gaze.  

“Oh, shit,” the misnaming male fox cursed carelessly at his minor yet miserable mistake, nonetheless, before finally apologising with awe, “I’m so sorry, Eliza; I definitely should’ve known better, shouldn’t I?” he released a long, relieving breath to prepare sharing one of his deeply personal experiences and memories; the ones that even his closest partner of a similar species to his secrecy-receiver have only ever known.  

“Especially since I’ve been, pretty much, misnamed myself from many others, including friends and family, intentional or not,” the soon-to-be crying canine paused for a short period to catch a sob and spill out a tear to two, the terrific trauma that terrorised his child-and-teenagerhood returning to haunt his mind and life, but no matter what he swore himself deep down with stabbing sorrow that he will, at the very least, finish his sentence before breaking down.  

“-it didn’t matter, damn shit, for the fact that it went on right until I finally became an adult.” Nick then in-and-exhaled all the air around him as much as he needed to stay sane enough to not put his mission in jeopardy; any mental breakdowns could also place his professionalism at serious risk, costing his cover and, potentially afterwards if he even makes it out alive, his own, well-earned career that his best partner helped him lead towards the first few moments of meeting each other.  

The listening leporine shared her sorrow as her once beaming stare then saddened into a melted glaze, her paw then resting onto the secrecy-speaker soon after like he did to her as she was having her nasty nightmare; perhaps it was also for a return-of-favour. Even though they have only known each other just last night, the deeds of Nick attending her wounds whilst they nearly both got lost in their conversation consisting of topics such as Devin Redwood, him and the other two’s love-lives and the mystery of the mysterious murderer that attacked to attempt to take the life of Eliza back in the sewer system.  

“It’s okay,” Z assured as she patted and rubbed her smaller paw around Nick’s shoulder and towards his back, shushing smoothly with silence as she motioned her arm in circles, “and I’m sorry, too, for reacting the way I did, which in turn, caused you to reveal a traumatic part of your personal life.”  

“Thank you, lass,” the calming, crimson-amber canine graced underneath his gleeful gulps of his last sobs, “you also didn’t have to apologise for me revealing my experiences with misnaming.”  

“You also don’t have to say any more if you don’t want to,” the soothing, smaller rabbit innocently insisted, her paw finally deciding to have enough of its duty comforting the blissful, bigger red fox. “It’s completely your choice.”  

“No, no,” Nick refused the request, opposingly accepting his own offer to explain more about his painful past that tried to pierce his pumping heart, but with company he can trust with all its pumps of blood that flowed throughout his veins and body, his trauma was unable to tear him down, “I would be more-than-happy to share more about it to you.” He then paused as he thought whether or not it would be a good idea to suggest Z to also share her similar experiences, until...  

“You know,” Eliza began to speak up for Nick’s deeply divisive decision, “the reason I don’t like being called anything other than ‘Eliza’ or ‘Z’ is because I feel they’re not a part that fits who I am inside of me.”  

“What do you mean?” the curious canine questioned carefully as to not seem too nosey.  

“Let’s just say, for now at least, that I had a different name before I came to this island of ‘Baroara’,” the self-restricting responder stopped speaking to decide on what to say next; “and the only reason I changed my name was for the sake of safety through anonymity.”  

“That’s pretty much the opposite of why I changed mine,” Nick piped up, pleased and free from any pushing pressure that dared to suppress his emotive expressions, “as I did it for the sake of fitting who I truly was inside, expressing more of it as I also grew more confidence with age, to the point that no one was able to compare nor connect barely-to-any similarities of me before and after my transition and reassignment stages and procedures which, thank fuck, finally gave me full peace and comfort of my own body.”  

“Damn,” Eliza cursed comfortably underneath her quiet breath, now noticing the realisation of others having to change their name under more lifelong circumstances and conditions in order to save their lives from potentially deathly dysphoria-and-morphia. “I guess my name-change, compared to yours, is like child’s play,” she tried to lighten the mood with a little laugh.  

“As much as your trying to brighten the sunlight here in this room,” the unignited yet fire-furred fox mystically yet playfully started to comment, “we still shouldn’t be comparing our traumas,” he ended more stern, strict and seriously.  

“Yeah, right,” Z awkwardly agreed, regretting her attempt to cheer each other up before apologising as awkwardly with a soft “sorry”. “Anyway, now that it’s sunrise, should we get going?”  

“Yeah,” Nick agreed, “just after I had my breakfast downstairs.”  

“Or we could eat somewhere else after we exit out this bedroom’s window then across the rooftops?” the adventurous spirit of a rabbit suggested with a wide, slight-sly smile, her expression eager to go rogue and reckless.  

Chapter Text

As the undercover Wilde fox jogged casually yet unsuspiciously to blend into the vulnerable, vigilant environment of the slummed streets leading to the island town’s centre to catch up with the waiting Z-rabbit, he took a moment to inspect the streets’ colourful flags and cloths hanging peacefully against the slow-blowing wind whispering across the clear, empty air;  

He compared it to the just-as vibrantly alive atmosphere of the great, diverse metropolis back home, especially in the sixth month where he can also feel loved, welcomed and understood against the opposing as they were suppressive society, laws and government. 

However, he always knew that there was always a community as well as loved ones and allies to support, warm and brighten him up during dark days. Perhaps the colours of the island of Baroara were its inhabitants’ way of expressing their pride in their culture and lifestyle not only just in June. 

‘Guess this place really is more than what I assumed on the outside,’ Nick praised in his head, his heart feeling scrunched-up with remorse for his potentially demeaning assumption, his legs picking up speed in their cycling motion to burn away and move on from his minor mistake yet thought that could bear consequences in the future. His eyes finally caught glimpse of the young, teenage doe waiting behind the concealing crowd walking in all sorts of directions. 

As the exposing, fire-furred fox burning brightly against the darkening blackness of his long coat entered his path through the just as standing-out people, he yet again lost his mind into the varying species and styles; some he did not recognise anywhere else. Their native exclusivity to this island, perhaps? 

“Lost in the crowd, are you?” Eliza snapped Nick out of his gaze that distracted him away from her, Z’s tone and expression curious with a sly smile. 

“Oh, sorry, Eliza,” Nick apologised, his focus now back on his main subject, “I was just busy admiring these beautiful people,” he then teased playfully. 

Z then laughed lightly before responding rather roughly, “Well, from my experience, and possibly yours so far, not everyone here is as ‘beautiful’ as they are on the inside.” 

“Like you?” the fox fired back with a sly smirk spreading across his muzzle and his emerald eyes shutting slightly into thin, green grass-snake slits. “And that also is one way to downplay my ‘admiring’ compliment.” 

“Oh, shut up, you,” the lightly argumentative prey tried to silence her playful predator with a slight smile, “why don’t we continue searching for a dealer, eh?” She then proceeded to turn around down through a darkened alleyway, with only the sunlight above beaming over the tunnel; her canine companion then soon followed suite after. 

Various voices could be heard echoing against the stone and brick walls of the suburban labyrinth, varying from loud laughs to shouting screams, the strong, smelly scents of weed, tobacco and night-howlers fuming furiously across the hollow air inside the alley; it caused both Z’s and Nick’s senses to tensely tire with aromatic alert and awareness. 

The strength of the noises and aroma increased further down the tunnel until they finally found one of the sources: a minor audience cheering and shouting at the brutal brawl between two furious fighters; they restrained no resistance clawing and biting into each other with smart, slicing strategy. 

“Well, that sure is a savage play-fight going on there,” the fox spectator cleverly commented, his eyes squinting and teeth gritting at the savage scene. 

“And that is the result of smoking night deep down your lungs and sniffing coke high up each nostril,” the rabbit one explained slightly sarcastically, letting out a little laugh whilst her eyes focused intensely upon the sight of rosy fluid and marks dripping and slicing from every strike that hit each fighter’s brawling bodies. 

“Salom, Eliza,” a silent yet sunny voice, also deep and growly, graciously greeted the doe guest. 

“To you, too, Salah,” she greeted back as graciously to the larger, middle-aged male wolf, his fur as sandy, rocky and rough.  

“And who is this uninvited guest you brought with you?” The desert wolf curiously questioned, his brown-amber eyes burning brightly. 

“I am the one who she invites to this place,” the red tod answered playfully with formality, his palm placed on his heart as he leans lightly forward to bow, “pleased to meet you in peace.” 

“As-Salam-u-Alaikum to you, too, my brother of Nar,” the brotherly canine replied heartedly with heat warming his tone and expression; it couldn’t help but remind the smaller, slimmer fox of his now fennec fiancé, whom he gladly shared his story with Eliza. Like Nick, the even smaller yet bulkier vulpine retired from his criminal life shortly after his future husband did, choosing the lawful career path of a clothes designer using his then-home-now-workspace van ideally inspired from one of his favourite cons where they would intentionally go to larger mammal-sized shops and stores to convert the fabrics and wear into multiple miniature versions of their former selves. 

“His name’s ‘Nick’, by the way,” Z added on, “and what he just called you, my brother, it translates to ‘fire’.” 

“Oh, why thank you, then, Salah,” Nick complimented his commenter. 

The commenter shined his teeth with grace before responding, “You know, when little sister next to you first met me on this island, she wanted her new name to be ‘Atish’.” 

Eliza felt her blood boil warm with blush all across her skin underneath her desert fur, “Hey, I couldn’t help wanting to be called after the lead character's alias of my favourite story.” 

“Aaaaaaaaaw,” Nicholas couldn’t resist awing adorably at his companion’s scrapped nickname, “now isn’t that cute for such a little lady.” 

“STOP,” the girl warned wildly, feeling the insides of her body about to overheat and implode, “now.” 

“AAAAAAAWH!” a loud, violently vibrating scream launched the three out of their conversation; they all witnessed one of the fighters brutally fall to the ground as her attacker launched her down to the hard, concrete ground. “You sneaky son of a bitch!” 

The ‘son of a bitch’ laughed manically at his opponent crying in pain and agony, his smile sharp with vicious, violent victory, “Ha, hey! You were asking for that to happen to you the way you were just wildly prancing and dancing around like you were on ‘Zootopia’s Got Talent’.” 

“You both don’t need to worry as much as we now have a medic with us,” Eliza reminded with rough retort, a gravelly giggle escaping her mouth. 

“Oh, well, praise Allah!” Salah praised preciously with please. “Otherwise, I would have thought of taking them two to the nearest hospital here.” 

“I can help,” the Wilde aider insisted, “but I just need to take a brief but important call beforehand.” 

“Oh, well isn’t that fucking great!” the more severely injured fighter coldly commented as she rolled all around and over on the floor.” 

“Just take some of my equipment,” the fire-furred fox explained as he opened his coat to aid Salah his meds, “to aid her as I take my quick call, alright.” 

“You got it, brother,” the wary wolf confirmed as he retrieved the equipment from his canine brother’s hands. 

“See you soon,” the undercover tod then walked deeper into the alley and turned an empty corner to safely contact ZPD HQ. “Hey, Carrots,” he quietly greeted his long-time partner over the radio in his grip, “long time, no hear of my beautiful voice?” 

“You bet so, Slick,” Judy responded sarcastically, “so, what’s the latest news?” 

“I’m in an alleyway in the town centre right now about to make my deal with one of the locals.” 

“Did you manage to find Zara yet?” she questioned curiously. 

“Not yet, however I did manage to find a companion to help me in the process named ‘Eliza’.” 

“Who’s she?” 

“Just some teenage doe who only seems to be scraping by on this island; light lavender eyes, sandy fur, and an attitude of fire in hell,” his tone grew teasey as he mentioned the last descriptor. “Sound familiar?” 

“Hmm,” Hopps curiously commented before a brief silence filled the line. 

Nick’s sharp suspicion raised roughly at the response he received, “What is it, Judes?” 

Even more silence shortly continued, time feeling slower and slower each passing second, “I guess so. All I can say is she sounds like a really important ally to our mission. Just keep on a good eye over her so you don’t lose sight, okay?” 

Nick’s grin grew wider before he cleverly concluded with “Like you did towards me when we both just started getting to know each other?” 

“Over and out.” 

Beep.  

Chapter Text

As Nick and Eliza were walking their way out of the island’s town centre and towards the shore to leave the island with Z still unaware of her adventuring associate’s real plan behind his cover, they couldn’t help but stop by The Aurora Inn to have an early lunch with Devin and chat about the horrifying yet interestingly intense brawl between two night-high, fire-furious fighters, and how the undercover fox saved them from their near-fatal injuries. 

If only the bartending fox could see the look on his own fragile face from his remorseful reaction. 

“Heh heh heh,” Eliza laughed lightly at the subject with Nick, “well, he isn’t really known to hold back how he feels about anything, especially as serious as that.” 

“Reminds me of my closest friend: Judy,” Wilde sympathetically shared, “especially when she came to apologise for when she worried that I would become a threat to her during the predator-savagery five years ago.” 

“Jeez, it felt like forever since that shit happened,” Z admitted anxiously, her tone and face gloomy with fear, “I just can’t believe ZPD Officer Hopps could even think of something like that in the fucking first place,” her tone heightened with fury, fiery with disappointment. 

Nick felt his heart sink itself deeply into his heart, obviously offended with how heatedly harsh that jab at his closest partner and friend in metaphorical blood was, even if she was unintentionally unaware. The mildly furious fox of fire was responsible and understanding to not say anything, fearing the exposure of his cover. 

“Hell, I even was kidnapped to this island not long after she managed to solve the case with the ZPD’s supposedly first fox officer afterwards, but we never could get to see what he looked like.” 

“Wait a minute,” the suspecting vulpine silenced his travelling leporid partner, “you mentioned you were kidnapped just after the savage conspiracy was exposed?” 

“Yeah, from Klawbull Road; I was walking home from school that day,” Eliza revealed her secret story, “They were short walks, but I still noticed myself being stalked from a distance, but I thought no one would believe me without evidence, until it was too late.” She then turned silent, sadness soaking her face with misery, like she partly blamed herself for being taken away; If only she had gathered evidence sooner... 

“Don’t blame yourself, okay?” the adult of the conversation empathised, his heart heating up, “you were only like ten when you were taken, so it's not like you knew any better than your taker.” 

“I was exactly ten,” the younger of the serious yet sympathetic subject of the chat exclaimed with accurate precision of her age, “and I can’t believe I’m fifteen now,” her eyes watered with wet tears, shining like pale purpurites. “I just wish I could have left this Allah-damned island anytime earlier.” 

“Well, no need to worry about it, now,” Nick assured anti-apathetically, his tone grown-up and gentle, “ ’Cause now we’re about to reach the shore to leave here and bring you back home.” 

“The guards have an inconsistent policy with people leaving, but I hope if we do manage to encounter one, we’d still be able to talk our way past them.” 

And that’s when they noticed one as they approached the sulky, sandy shore, but they were definitely familiar once they stopped mere metres in front of him. 

“Carlin, right?” Nick asked the big buck’s name, his smile slight yet suspiciously sly. 

“That’s correct, Nick, yes,” he answered, his eyes more focused on younger doe than the older tod, “I actually remember both of you.” 

“Huh?” Nick questioned, confused as to what he was implying. 

“Well, I certainly don’t to you,” Eliza defensively denied, her pale, purple eyes piercing into the blue-eyed buck’s gaze. 

“Want me to say your name?” 

BAAAAAAAAAANG!  

A loud shot from the older rabbit’s rifle ringed around through the gravely grey atmosphere as the younger one dashed and dodged towards her shooter, succeeding to tackle him down hard to the greyish and gravelly ground; she may be slimmer and shorter but she was still built bulkily enough to hold her opponent down; her grip strangling the bigger buck’s wrist with her other hand grasping a slender-styled wonder-nine sidearm that she got from Salah back in the town centre’s alleyway pressuring powerfully against the side of Carlin’s head. 

“Now you listen to me, you fucking molester!” she ordered loud and clear, her vocal cords shaking strongly against her own sound, “If you dare even say a syllable of my name you remember me by, a bullet from my handgun is going straight through your bastardly brain!” 

Nick, whilst understanding of the scene, still felt like his companion pushed it too far, even if Carl may have deserved it for his terribly terrifying and traumatic actions caused upon his unfortunate victims, “Eliza, no!” he warned carefully, “He’s just trying to provoke you; there’s no need for this.” 

“Shut the FUCK up, Nicholas!” she retaliated remorselessly, clearly too focused on talking down her “other” opponent with flaming force. “You don’t know fuck-all about what Carlin has done to me or other women and girls my age nor how many!” 

“You should listen to what your client is saying, little lady,” the creepy Carlin calmly suggested, sneaking, slithering and snaking his words far into her head, “your hand is shaking quite a lot with your toy in it; don’t want an accident now, do we?” 

“I’m warning you,” Z tried to suppress her shaking symptoms as she dug the barrel deeper into her captive’s skull, “you dare touch me or another one of us again, you can kiss your worthless, dangerous life goodbye right to my barrel!” 

Carl couldn’t help himself to laugh manically, whether as a coping mechanism of being threatened to death or he really didn’t take his captor seriously enough, “And if you do that, what’s going to happen next?” 

“I’m not afraid, you know; I bloody well mean it!” 

A short silence filled the air as Nick stared at the intimidatingly intense and deadly drama, worrying as he rushed his mind to find an appropriate answer to deescalate the situation, until... 

BOOOOOOOM!!!  

A vicious and violently volumizing shot shook the air all around and straight into Nick’s eardrums, jumping high towards the sky in reactive retaliation; his mind questioned itself constantly of what hell he just witnessed come out from underneath the earth. 

The trigger-puller stood straight-up swiftly as she in-and-exhaled the dull, dark atmosphere deeply with deathly breaths, suppressing herself even more from the life she just ended in a fatal flash; her victim’s rose-red blood spilled and leaked forming a bloody puddle pouring out from the now deceased buck’s still so slightly split-open skull. 

“Z!” the spine-shocked spectator called out in deathly despair and disappointment. 

“What!” the killer-doe exclaimed erratically as she turned to pierce her prism-purple gaze through her worried watcher’s grassy-green ones, her voice also echoing all around and over them. 

“You’re bleeding heavily from your shoulder!” 

Chapter Text

As Devin Redwood was polishing The Aurora Inn’s bar, his own boredom encouraged him to look up at the closest TV hanging above in a corner of the dining area; Baroara’s only available broadcast bringing in the latest local news to show and tell: “We air here live today to inform you all of two potential suspects on the run after a fatal shooting involving the death of an armed border-guard only known as ‘Carlin’.”  

The camera zooms in on the lying deceased body at an angle where the bloody wound on the skull was nowhere to be seen, ‘So much for respecting the dead,’ the fox viewer commented carelessly in his own head, completely unaware about the horrors the victim had plagued onto others; not even Eliza thought it was necessary to tell him about how dark her fellow male species and abuser’s true nature really was.  

“Although the suspects are still yet to be identified, several witnesses described a black-hooded rabbit-like figure running away inwards of this island with their companion closely following beside them who is described to be an adult male red fox with his head and face exposed whilst wearing a long, charcoal-grey trench coat.”  

“No!” he exclaimed under his breath, thinking it to be most likely the same fox and rabbit duo that just had their lunch earlier today, “It can’t be; why on this bloody earth would they do this!?”  

“As a result of the possible murderers still being yet to be found and identified, this island’s borders were placed under lockdown with the rest being under strict surveillance until the ones responsible for this felony are finally brought to justice.”  

BANG!  

The bartending tod shook his attention towards the source of the gunshot-like noise, which just only happened to be the barging of the inn’s front-door slamming swiftly open caused by the rushing, dashing forces of the familiar prey-predator duo aiming towards the bar. “What the hell happened back there!?” he questioned with a complex mix of shock, sympathy and fury, “Please, for love of fucking god: explain yourselves now!”  

“Carlin shot first!” the injured leporid burst out in paining panic, her paw preventing anymore redness pouring out of her wounded shoulder, “So I ran up to disarm him before he kicked me off of himself!”  

Nick stayed silent in order to come up with an appropriate response to the lie, but since he thought it would only cause more trouble than there already is combined with Eliza’s tempered actions and speech not being completely out of bad faith, his decided his silence should further prevail and prolong.  

“Well, I guess I can believe you,” Devin admitted half-heartedly, “but that still doesn’t excuse the fact of scaring the entire island from the manhunt as well as its lockdown!”  

“Just hear me out, please, Dev,” Nick finally spoke-up to his fellow male fox species, “we can worry all about that later since right now Eliza is losing loads of blood from her own shoulder!”  

The furious fox behind the bar table shifted focus to the bleeding doe’s paw pressurising her puddled mark, redness spreading and dripping down her arm. “Goodness me!” he commented in cold shock, his face expressing more like he saw a parasite digging itself out of Eliza’s would wild and wet with blossoming blood, “Then let’s rush her as fast as we can up to your room!”  

“No!” Nick warned, his voice booming with sharp, sincere seriousness, “Rushing would only let us drain our energy necessary to focus on the operation, plus if she falls over it’s only going to buy us more time! Just grab wherever the med kit is and we’ll eventually patch her up in our room!”  

“Right, roger!” Dev listened to the older one of his own species’ orders and, therefore, rushed with rough rigorousness to retrieve the med kit from the backrooms behind the bar and jogged back towards the aider and patient.   

First before heading upstairs, they wrapped Z’s wound up tightly with a clean, disinfected rag to suppress the bleeding back into her stream, then lifting one of her arms over the back of his neck and shoulders with Nick carrying the other one to support her up the stairs and towards the bed of the room.  

They then lifted her arms off themselves to lay and rest them down before lifting their patient on the double-bed where she and aider Wilde had shared before, then they unwrapped the now rose-inked rag before rolling it up into a ball and chucked it towards a corner of the room.  

“Now we can begin this operation,” the older red tod assured to motivate his more amateur younger partner, signalling the med kit in the process. He then laid down the box onto the bedside table before opening it like a book; its medical contents revealing itself for the operators to see and use.  

“First: we need to find the bullet,” Doctor Wilde ordered as he tipped the clean chlorinated water onto the plain and clean rag whilst wearing the bright blue, latex-free gloves before soaking it like a soggy sponge and pressing it onto the bare, exposed wound, the battled-blood washing away as it soaked onto the now wet, red rag. Once the massive mark from the piercing projectile was clean enough, the operators scanned through the hole to locate the round, slightly widening the wet wound to assist in finding it.  

“Well,” Devin commented as he failed to find the projectile, “what are we now gonna do as we can’t find the damn bullet!?”  

“It must have shot straight through,” Nick theorised as he widened the wound more to confirm his suspicion, Eliza gravelly groaning as the paining pressure of her mark stretched slowly, “and the wound is too big to sew properly.”  

“So?” the younger operator questioned curiously yet sarcastically, “What are we going to do then, Doctor Fox?”  

“See if you can find a metallic rod, stainless steel preferably, and clean it thoroughly with washing-up liquid before finally drying it, then bring it back up to me.”  

“But why?”  

“All I can say it can help seal the wound better once we heat it up hot enough to be able to sew it properly.”  

The less experienced and knowledgeable, fire-furred fox’s mind finally clicked into the burningly brutal outcome of the somewhat unorthodox medical method, shocking still into place for a minor moment before snapping back into action and rushing out of the bedroom and down the stairs.  

The paining patient breathed deathly as much as she was desperate for fresh air to numb her agony, both mentally and physically; her older canine operator pushing down gently with pillowing pressure onto the soon to be burning-like-hell wound, calming both the bleeding and his leporid patient soft and soothingly, his hushing whispering across the air between his extremely extended, long-lengthened muzzle to his patient’s as similar-sized ears.  

As Nick focused with fire upon pressurising the blood back inside Eliza’s shoulder-bared and buff body, his mind pondered about the last-night memory of patching her then slit-open face from about her eyebrow down diagonally to the top of her upper lip; a precious, precise procedure operated just mere minutes after meeting his as precious patient.  

It was, however, near to nothing compared to this red-running, manically massive mess of one, therefore being dead desperate to the deadly death to succeed and keep his patient alive.  

“Will this do?” Dev asked as he showed the rust-free rod in just behind the other fox’s ear for him to just look over his own shoulder to inspect the medical alternative of an instrument.  

“Yes it will,” the operating vulpine confirmed as he received the rod from his junior’s hand, resting it in his own gripping grasp as he reached under his coat for his lighter, an ancient yet well preserved and refillable one its user used to smoke with it among other utilities, with the second reason of use being the primary one nowadays.  

His thumb then flicked the tip of the lighter to ignite a well lengthened and brightly burning flame, transferring its amber-ruby fire towards the tip of the other way longer piece of metal furiously flaming it to a hot and heating hive hue as the minutes passed patiently.  

“I’m not gonna lie, Z,” Nick started to warn cautiously and carefully before boldly and bluntly stating sharply of the piercing pain she may have to face fearlessly as painfully possible, the rod inching closer towards the now fresh and cleaned wound, “ but this is going to seriously hurt as much as fucking hell itself.”  

Chapter Text

“Stop! That fucking burns! No! NO! Allah , help me! Please, let it STOP!  

No! NOOOO! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH ...!”  

“What the fuck?!” Eliza swore severe and strong as her consciousness raised high and wide awake from her nauseating nightmare that burned with hot-heating horror. Her surroundings sharply shifted towards seeming like a familiar and warm bedroom, with a familiar fire-furred fox sitting right beside her on the double-bed they both shared the night before. 

“You were just having a nightmare,” Nick confirmed carefully, his voice soft and sombre, “so its okay, now.” 

“Oh.” Z began to lift her back up from the bed to feel a slight sting in her shoulder, clicking and cracking the more she moved it, but it she still couldn’t get it to move as much as she wanted without any agonising, piercing pain. She also noticed it was now bandaged up soft and tightly, cosy and comfortably in its place. 

“Let me help you locate it back in place,” the companion fox offered delicately, his paws comfortably grasping two ends of his patient's shoulder before finally applying pressure gradually to numb the pain as much as possible to then swiftly snapping the bone and joint back into its proper place, a clapping ‘crack!’ booming in through the indoor air. 

“Ah!” the delicate doe flinched furiously as she felt a cracking clap inside her shoulder as the joints reorganised, “Now, that’s better.” She relaxed with a rather rough relief as she rested her back onto the pillows. “So, now that we have the time and safety: do you have anything on your mind you want to get off your chest?” 

“Just why on earth you decided to shoot Carlin without thinking much of the consequences,” the questioning canine answered trying his best not to sound too interrogative by shifting the blame onto his leporid questioner; “the island is even on close surveillance and complete lockdown because of it.” 

“Shit,” Z cursed clear and carelessly under her brutal breath remembering with rigorous realisation of her agonising action of vicious vengeance, her terrifying trauma tickling tremendously back in her much-mortifying mind. “Of course you’d bring that up, wouldn’t you?” 

“Then why don’t we start off with your nightmare you were having to help you, Eliza ?” Nick softly assured under his own bare breath. 

“I don’t know how to describe it, Nicholas ,” she answered anxiously, “and you also don’t have to call me ‘Eliza’ anymore.” 

“ Zara, then?” he guessed based on the information he managed to gather already. 

“Yes,” she confirmed without hesitation, her heart sparking with warm-blooded comfort, “please.” Nick then pulled out his phone and directed the screen for Z to see clearly, causing confusion and curiosity as she viewed it with sharp suspicion. “Why the hell do you have my school photo from the beginning of my final year I attended it?” 

“I am ZPD Officer Nicholas Wilde,” he explained carefully, his tone as delicate as cracked glass, “and I’m on an undercover mission to bring you back home safe and sound to the mainland, though not-so-thanks to what happened back at the shore, we probably would be there, right now.” 

Zara remained silent as she gave herself enough time to respond, frowning with frustrated guilt and rebellious remorse, “So, what now? You’re gonna interrogate me now?” 

“More like explain to me in secret,” Nick offered professionally politely, “though what you say can help me and my team give you the support needed; our words will only be between us two and to no one else on this island, okay?” 

Z breathed deep yet briefly to build up enough calm courage, her frown disappearing in the peaceful process, “Okay, so you heard our argument me and Carlin had back at the shore, right?” 

Yes, so go on, please?” 

“When I was first trafficked to Baroara, he was one of my many abusers who ended up with me pregnant a few years back.” Traumatic tears began to fill her eyes as she silently spoke, her tone tearing apart in the petrifying process, “With no safe or accessible way to abort my then-forming children, I had no choice but to give birth in the end.” 

Her soft subtle stutters then spilled into sobs, her breaths beating for air and courage, “Out of my four children, only one survived: ‘Bakhturwa’ I named him, because he was the only one who made it out alive.” Silence then filled all around the room, leaving an empty atmosphere that drizzled with glaring gloom. 

“Care to tell me more about him?” Nick questioned curiously with soft yet sad sympathy to fit appropriately to the new state of the air. 

“I swore to him and myself, as a single mother to an only child, that no matter what happened, nothing will ever break us apart... until...” 

“Yeah?” 

“I lost him.” Another silence followed, lasting longer than the last before an eventual cry showering down a wet-weathered well, the overwhelming trauma, guilt and raining remorse breaking her down completely. 

In response, the way older fox placed his paw gently on the younger rabbit’s seeping shoulder, to which she responded by burrowing herself deep into her canine companion’s chest, his arms wrapping around the sorrowed, sobbing leporid; her tears may be soaking his shirt, but he was too focused on calming down the tremendously tearful, troubled, traumatised young teenage doe. The memory of his own rabbit partner doing the same under that bridge all those years ago that helped save the city from savage chaos and fear flooded his mind, erupting him to join the crying session. 

“It’s ok now, Z,” Nick assured his patient, his tone tearful with whatever hollow yet happy hope is left to the poor little doe robbed of her now chill-cold childhood. “Even though your lucky little boy may seem gone, he still lives on inside your heart and mind.” 

Chapter Text

Beep...  

“Hi, Carrots,” Nick greeted his closest friend and partner-against-crime through the radio line, his voice serious yet also playful, happy to hear and talk to his smaller ‘Carrots’ yet again, “you’ve made yourself comfortable whilst settling in the lonely and isolated back offices of the ZPD HQ?” 

“Yes, Slick,” Judy replied sarcastically with the same tone as the one on the other end of her line, “but have you still managed to keep your cover a secret?” 

“To all of the locals on this island: yes,” he paused as he thought whether or not to reveal the truth of who he revealed his true identity and intentions to, “except for my desert doe companion of mines. But don’t worry; she knows how to keep a secret.” 

“How can you be so certain of it, though?” Judy questioned, her tone slightly sharp with suspicion, trying her best to keep their mission professionally successful. 

“Well, she managed to keep her secret long enough with me, so I thought why not tell her mine and she’ll tell me her’s?” 

“Which was?” 

“Remember the last call between us last morning when you felt like she sounded familiar, right?” 

“So, is she ‘Zara Shagatuff’?” the questioning older doe curiously asked; “Your top priority of your ‘not so’ undercover mission, now?” she asked afterwards, her professionalism toning down to a rather playful level. 

“Yep, well done, Officer Judith Holmes,” the answering tod teased with little laughter, “which begs the question of why you didn’t tell me your suspicion about Z in the first place?” 

“You call her nicknames, now, already? You haven’t exactly changed all that much since we first met all those years ago, have you, sly tod ?” her teasy temperament blossomed and rosed higher, her tone sounding more playful than professional now. 

“Well, fun bun , how can I resist when Zara reminds me a lot like you when you were her age, probably ?” the teasing tod’s tone imitated his closest-bonded doe’s one, hearing a cheeky giggle among the other call’s end after his ticklish tease. 

“ Stiiiiiiiiill ...,” Judy sung softly yet shortly, “you started calling me similar things quite quickly as we solved that hell of a chaotic case leading to the conspirator’s arrest.” 

“And yet you started calling your Zootopian ‘buck-friend’ just-as-similar ones not long after you first met him.” 

“Oh, shut up and go to hell,” Judy joked, her teasing tone still the same, “Jack also reminded me of you as much as you did to your number one target of your assignment.” 

“That figures it out, anyway Z’s still in the next room if you wanted to talk to her; she also has something she wants to chat with you about, privately .” Nick’s tone shifted sternly at the end of his slowly serious sentence. 

“About what?” 

“Her past, traumas, and other things related to being a rabbit, especially a female one.” 

“Okay,” the more mature and knowledgeable doe agreed with close certainty, “sure; just pass your radio onto me. I also won't tell the others about what she says if she prefers to keep it that way.” 

“Thanks, Judes.” Nick then entered back inside through the then-closed window from the rooftops, admiring the warmly glowing sunrise as he talked with Judy. He then passed his paw over to the younger, delicate doe before placing the radio to her smaller ones, carrying it comfortably in her gracious grip behind her somewhat unsettling, shivering interior. 

The radio passer then went back out the now-open window, ready to vape his ‘peace-pipe’ alongside chewing some minty, green gum. 

“Hello?” Z anxiously greeted, her posture and tone chilly with anxious adrenaline. 

“Hello to you too, Zara,” the helping communicator greeted back, her professional yet soothingly sympathetic tone smoothing her voice back to strong, stern seriousness, “what was it you wanted to talk to me about?” 

“It can be hard to talk about it.” 

“Just try your best; it's better to let it all out to me rather than letting it bother you by suppressing it deep inside you. I’ve had conversations like this with Nick before, so you have no need to worry explaining to me.” 

“Okay,” the trembling, troubled teenage doe rigorously replied with remorseful roughness, inhaling like a calm sea’s waves before exhaling back out before its upcoming storm. “So, since you’re also a rabbit and had many siblings regardless of sex and gender growing up,” she paused briefly to tip a tear from her watered, light lavender irises prior to her crying continuation, her terribly terrifying traumas flooding back inside her fragile, nearly broken brain, its mind and its thoughts. 

“I wanted to ask you advice of to how I deal with my now gradually paining period cramps and the amount of blood I’ve been leaking recently?” 

“Don’t you have any pads, tampons, or any other menstrual health products you could use near or on you?” 

“No,” the pubescent, period bleeding bunny embarrassingly expressed, her voice and skin underneath her rusty, rough, desert sanded hair and fur burning rose-red in the provoking process, “none at all. ” 

“That sounds tearfully tragic to deal with,” the older, post-pubescent adult rabbit sadly sympathised, her tone nearly as teary as her patient’s, “how long has this been bothering you, dear darling?” 

No answer at all... until: “A few years ever since I gave birth; I haven’t had any safe access to abortion or any other healthcare needed to treat it, and it continues getting bloody worse and worse like a brutally burning hell!” Z’s terrible trauma then toned herself to sob like a stream leading up to the deeper, wider, colossal sea’s storm weeping wet with rough, rigorous rain. 

“Calm down, hun,” the advisor advised, trying her damn hardest not to cry as carelessly alongside her advice asker and seeker, “I’m going to try my best to make light and give you hope enough to fulfil your needs as my best fox friend and partner helps bring you back home safe and sound, okay?” 

The breaking-down bunny streamed and sobbed more traumatically tipping tears and desperate breaths to calm her sad, striking storm down enough to continue the confessing conversation, “Okay; I hear you.” 

“Based on my own current research, you sound like you could be dealing with some sort of medical condition, with at worse being a disease or infection; that’s not usual to happen after childbirth, sweety.” 

“Fuck!” Zara cursed crazily with cold, chilling chaos underneath her as badly brittle breath, desperate to death to find an alternative solution to save her own health and life, wanting to come back to her old life of living in the way more innocent, trauma-free and calm city of the diverse metropolis before her upcoming fainting, fatal fate crawling closer to her already rigorously rough reality. 

She only hoped to her god, their messengers and her own deceased ancestral family, including those she never seen, lived with and knew, that they will give her the answer and advice needed to aid living for as long as her own already brutal body and miserable mentality is capable of, far and distant away from passing away to join the afterlife she was brought up to grow and believe in. 

Chapter Text

As Nick and Zara parkoured avoiding any potentially dangerous attention across the rooftops of Baroara’s slummed streets leading towards the island’s only town centre, they hoped for assistance from Z’s only friend group she can rely on help them, especially from Salah: The Arabic desert wolf. 

They witnessed and commented upon the citizens with their unique dress codes of their colourful, tribal patterned cloths with many of them wearing them from head to paws, but they still knew they couldn’t waste too much of their time running and hiding from the island’s aggressive authorities now hunting them down with fierce force. 

Once the runaway fugitives finally reached their destination of the ever-so-busy town centre, they swiftly squeezed their way through the explosively colour-expressive crowd prior to entering the darker alleyway where Salah loves to hang about in. 

“Hey, Salah,” Zara greeted as calmly as she can against her piercing, paining panic troubled by the sensation of the entire authority forces tracking her and her older canine partner down daring to do so even to the edge of the entire lock-downed island of beautiful Baroara. 

“You too, sister,” the wary wolf replied, tense with disappointment and concern of the latest news infecting the island’s entire media like a vicious virus, “just what in the bloody names of Allah and his prophet’s many wives happened back there at the shore?” 

“I just sort of snapped is all I can say,” the tensely troubled teenage doe answered anxiously, trying to hide it down away inside herself with anger and remorselessness, “don’t forget that bastard of a buck has raped me and many others on this goddamn island alone.”  

“Still, Zara ,” the older wolf continued to object, his tone slightly scolding, “that still doesn’t give you the right to take Carlin’s life like that.” 

“So, you’re saying it wasn’t justified and he didn’t deserve it, then?” 

“NO, no,” Salah denied with disapproval against Zara’s accusatory allegation against him, “I didn’t mean it like that; I was just trying to say that your actions have triggered the entire lockdown and quarantine of this island.” 

“But-” 

“I agree with Salah, Z,” the older male member spoke up, “no matter how of an evil prick he was, it made things so much worse as compared to just ignoring and leaving him alone.” 

“You two aren’t my dad, y’know!” 

Silence streamed through the air for a few short seconds before Nick finally ended it, “Well, at least we are the closest ones to being one for him as of now,” he treaded his words carefully, his tone steady and slow. 

“What the FUCK are you implying, sly shit!?” 

“Eliza!” Salah called the accidentally slurred doe pushed and pressured from her confused yet frustrated fury from the slur-victim's riddled and slightly insulting description of her own father. 

“So,” Nick started off before pausing briefly, breathing in and out for enough air to continue the sad story, “ever since you went missing, both of your parents' mental health declined further and worse each passing year.” 

It was at that part of the ‘story’ that Zara’s eyes began to flood with tears, “No,” she choked from her own drowning breath, “please don’t be-” 

“They both tried to get the best therapists they needed, with your mother actually improving and getting better and better, despite the media coverage about your disappearance throughout the years.” 

“About what?” the young, delicate doe questioned as she cried, seemingly distracted from finding out both her parents’ final fate in the end of their tragic tale, at least. 

“That you were recruited to join some terrorist organisation with their being a divisive debate on whether or not you should be allowed to come back as a legally recognised Zootopian citizen, or to ban and-or revoke you as well.” 

“Of course they’d think shit up like that!” the discriminated doe exposed with extreme, aggravating anger and aggression, “’Cause they definitely wouldn't be if it was a rabbit of European descent, now, would they!? Hell, I even was called things like that back when I was still in school or if I was playing with the other kids, which they also tried multiple times to pull my scarf of my head!” 

“Just try and calm down, now, sister,” the older, middle-aged male wolf suggested softly instead of his previous scold-tensed tone, “you want to listen to your fire-fox brother to find out what happened to your parents while you were gone, right?” 

Zara in-and-exhaled in a consistent and precise pattern, cooling her hot temper down to its very core; her rain of tears dried up leaving her veil violet’s petals around its deep black pollen dehydrated from its respiring relaxation. “Please,” she pleaded peacefully, “carry on, Nicholas.” 

“Your mother, Fatima, seemed like the only light to her husband’s, Zaekheev, hope to live on in their new world without you there, anymore, until...” the narrator paused briefly to catch a teary breath, the story obviously striking and soaking his already weeping wet nerves. 

“Yes, Nick?” 

“Your mother was killed unexpectedly, with your father taking his own life afterwards.” 

Chapter Text

After Zara processed and listened to the fatal fate of both her parents, she couldn’t stop herself but to soak her own tears in the older fox’s chest of his coat, with Salah joining in to comfort her with empathising warmth heating the crier up from his hot, burning heart. 

“It’s ok, now, Zara,” the warming wolf softly suggested from his sun-streaming breath, “me and Nick will take care of you until we get off this island.” 

“I hope you two will,” the young, delicate doe subtly prayed, hoping for both their god to guide them off the island and back to a safe, somber life back to the mainland metropolis. She shed a few more wet, weeping drips of tears before pulling her own head out of the shorter, younger red canine’s chest, taking a short yet brittle breath as she opened her eyes up to one of her new caretakers. 

“We’ll get you back safe and sound,” Nick assured with aiding awe, his eyes shining like the emeralds they are, “and then find you a new family happy to call and treat you like their own daughter.” 

Zara sobbed and teared down her fuzzy cheeks before thanking the fatherly fox, “thank you,” she simply shushed with somber and silence. 

“But first,” Nick began to add on, “I need to contact Judy to see how the hell we’re gonna get out of Baroara and back to mainland Zootopia; just give me a moment to spark some ideas, okay?” 

“Yes,” the breathless bunny agreed from the sorrow that swept her face with drips of drowning raindrops, “please.” 

Nick, Salah and Zara all broke up from their hug of cozy comfort before the fox finally brought out his radio from his coat pocket up to his muzzle, “Judy: me, Zara and a bloke she knows well called ‘Salah’ are currently having a rest in an alleyway where me and him met the day before. You have any ideas on how we can all get of this damned island?” 

“I have a few in mind, actually,” the supportive rabbit, partner and friend on the other end of the line started to suggest, “You’re in the exact alleyway in the town centre from when we had our call yesterday morning, right?” 

“Exactly, so first off: where should we go at this time? The whole entire island’s patrol is out hunting us all down, now.” 

“I heard from our unit’s hackers that they managed to finally hijack Baroara’s whole radio and television signals; it took some extreme effort to get that sorted with such little information we could gather, and from the sound of it sounds like the borders are on complete lockdown and are using nearly all of their patrol units everywhere to track and catch you.” 

“That’s right, sly bunny,” Nick complimented carelessly, his tone still teasy yet tense, “so unless we all play ‘ninja’ here, how the hell are we gonna get out of here?” 

“Okay,” Judy simply said to give herself enough time to think of a possible solution, “just give me a mo’ to think.” Silence then filled the radio’s speakers, all three on the other end on the quarantined island waiting patiently with tension. “It might be a stupid option, but it seems to be the only one without risking lives from a ZWAT raid.” 

“Which is?” the teenage doe on the island impatiently asked, desperate for elaboration; she couldn’t bear to live on the criminally corrupt island of the yet so beautiful Baroara, especially when her only chance to escape was here: right now, after so many terrifying, traumatic years of being stranded and alone, with very few that would even bother to dare aiding her a helping hand. 

“Whilst still hiding yourselves from the patrol, you need to be able to reach the main government’s building, if it even has one.” 

“Yeah,” Salah answered, “but it’s pretty far into the island’s woodlands where its tribes live; the latest and current leader decided to make a deal with the locals to have the governmental estate hidden somewhere deep into the forest, so only very few of us know where the actual location of the place actually is.” 

“So, I’m guessing neither of you two have no idea where their state building is in that forest, still?” 

“Why bother even asking that question,” Zara bolted with aggressive anxiety at the terrifyingly tough thought of the cruel consequences that may follow furiously after bringing and exposing themselves right in front of the highest top ruler of the entirety of Baroara, “when me and Nick are literally being wanted and hunted down for murder?” 

“But you didn’t do it out of cold blood, did you?” Judy treaded her words carefully, cautious to prevent any negative reactions, which although never eventually ended up being so, she instead received a more neutral one based on the younger one of her own species: a dead silence accompanied by an open-eyed yet frowned expression, paled with poison from the older rabbit’s morally loaded question that triggered Zara into a brainstorming crisis of gross guilt and sickly shocking shame. 

“Of course she didn’t, Carrots,” Nick butted in, his tone dead certain in his words, “you already heard she had a very shitty childhood ever since she was trafficked to Baroara, right?” 

“Yes, Nick,” Judy replied remorsefully, apologetic to the way she made herself sound the question prior, “and sorry, Zara.” 

“It’s okay,” the younger desert doe forgave the older grey one, “me and Salah will help your partner out with his and your mission into finding wherever on this hell of an island the government’s ‘hideout’ is.” 

“That’s good to hear, thanks,” Hopps gladly graced with empathetic sympathy, “Also, Miss Shagatuff, adding to our conversation we had last night:” 

“Yes?” 

“If you don’t manage to find any products to help with your painful bleeding condition, I’ve promised to the rest of the ZPD that we’ll be more than happy to contact the nearest mental and physical rehabilitation centre that will help check-up and give you whatever you need to aid in your journey into bringing you back to top shape when you’re ready to live the rest of your life back into the mainland’s society, okay darl’?” 

“Oh my god,” Z exclaimed her and Salah’s god’s more Anglicised name, expressing her ignited light in her already darkened hope in society as a whole no-thanks to the atrocious abuse she sickly suffered from the ‘outcasted’ island that dared plague her with it. “Really, Judy?” 

“Of course,” the assuring leporid confirmed, sounding as certain as her heart can burn off. 

“Thank you!” the ill teenager thanked, her mouth stretching upwards as big as her paler-furred cheeks can contain, and her eyes blooming ever more lavender in a long era of her many, youthful years, “You better not break it.” 

Judy giggled graciously with Zara’s hopeful happiness spreading over to her sensitive side, “Not with Chief Bogo agreeing to the deal, and trust me and Nick saying he can be a tough oversized nut to crack open.” 

“She rarely breaks her words, little lady,” Wilde added on, his face glowing as much as his own blood-ambered fur, “me and her have had our troubles and arguments with ‘buffalo-butt’ more than enough times to know that fact about him.” 

Zara stayed silent for seconds on end, her mind now flowing free from pain and filling with peace; she excitedly embraced the mindful moment to think and feel of the dreams and hopes that warmed her heart and pumping boiling blood, from the tips of her long, lengthy ears of enormity to downwards way below where her bleeding pain pierced and agonised her most ever since she birthed her only surviving son on her god’s damned island for all those few years ago... 

The sights, feels and emotions fuelled her heart to imagine how much the mainland metropolis of Zootopia had adapted and evolved ever since she was as tragically as she was traumatizingly trafficked away overseas to start to lose her sense of sick sanity that putridly plagued all of what heights, happiness and hope she still had left for the world as a whole.