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"Hey, Nick," the rabbit said, her voice still with her signature tone of enthusiasm (or as Nick would say, her "Judiosity"), though it seemed a bit mellowed out and somber at this moment.
"Hm?" The noise was akin to a soft and miniscule yelp. As the sun gradually set, the fox stared out at the heavenly sea of emerging stars, the bubblegum pink sky slowly becoming more of a calm, dark purple.
Judy looked out at the sky as well. They were both on the roof of the gym above Nick's apartment in Sahara Square. Technically they weren't even allowed to be there at the top, where the access was restricted to only God knows who, but Nick, for whatever reason, had the key. He forgot where or how it even got in his possession from many years ago, but either way, Judy didn't need to know this was prohibited. He'd let her live in this blissful ignorance, up there with him.
She spoke again as she looked back at him. "Have you heard of the multiverse theory?"
He raised an eyebrow at her. "You been watching too much Star Wars, Carrots?"
"Nick!" she exclaimed as she gave him another sucker punch in the gut.
He winced and howled, though this was all a ruse. Any fake reaction he'd make just for Judy to smile at him. And as he saw her grin turn into laughter, he thought it was all worth it.
"I haven't been watching Star Wars at all!" she continued. "I don't even think they have a multiverse thing going on there. You might be thinking about Marvel."
"You're such a nerd." He extended his little run of pretend pain, putting his paws on his abdomen, as if she shot him. "I've never seen you punch any prey. What happened to your whole everyone living in harmony shtick? You're a predator-hater!" he joked.
"Hey, I don't punch any other foxes!" she told him. "Just you."
And he hoped it stayed that way—those last two words shot through him like Cupid's arrow. It turned out Judy would shoot him after all, huh.
"Okay, Hopps," he conceded. "What about this nerdy 'multiverse theory' thing?"
"It's not nerdy at all!" she insisted, though still grinning. "You know Schrödinger's cat?"
Nick played with an ant that approached his finger. "I know it's surprising, but I did go to school, you know," he said as he picked it up.
"In a way, that kind of falls under the concept of a multiverse too," she explained. "So it's really not a nerd thing."
Nick brought the ant up to the front of his snout, examining it like a little child. "You're telling me bringing up Schrödinger's cat while we watch the sunset isn't a nerd thing?"
She wouldn't tell him, but she thought the way he looked at the little insect made him look adorable. She wished she had her phone on her, but she didn't want any distractions when she was with him.
"I'm just wondering, you know..." she trailed on, "do you think we're still friends in every universe?"
"Well..." Nick surveyed the barren ghost town from atop the abandoned corn silo before speaking again, having heard something in between a vague, sinister howl and cursed, otherwordly weeping. "I certainly hope so."
"Me too," Judy said. "Don't think I'd survive without you."
"What do you mean?" he asked as he returned the ant to his home—which was apparently the corn silo. He wondered if there was any corn left in there. "You're way stronger than me. All the other rabbits I know would've died."
"How encouraging," she remarked. "I almost lost my other foot today, Nick," she said as she adjusted her tourniquet. "I don't want to slow you down."
"Are you calling me unreliable?" he asked as he split up a piece of beef jerky and handed it to her.
"No?" she answered back, a little confused. "Why would I—"
"Sounds like you are," he said, taking out his map. "If you lost your other foot, I'd just make you another one of those prosthetics." He wiped the sweat off his brow. "You telling me you didn't like the first one?"
"Not at all! Actually... it's made me faster than before, I think..." she admitted.
"See?" Nick said as he wrote something down. "Look." He showed her the map. "If we stay at the same speed we've been in the past month, we should arrive at the New Zootopian Republic in around three months. And it should get safer too around halfway through once we reach this area in the West. Most of the dangerous ones can't survive past this mountain range. Our biggest threat'll be dehydration if this map is correct, but that guy back in the Third Quarter said it should be flooded around there though. This map's pretty old."
"I'm tired of all this walking to Zootopia."
"Oh, I don't got a problem with carrying you if you want," he said with sincerity.
Her face became red. "No, not like that! I mean... I'm fed up with this. All this walking and running and trying to survive while going to the place that's the entire reason we're in this situation? They didn't think to even consider every other innocent animal around here when they started this nuclear summer?" Judy said, looking at a bone nearby, unsure exactly what animal it was from. "All because of some pesky mammal-avian dispute? I hope they all rot."
"It is what it is, unfortunately," he sighed in agreement. "Completely unrelated: what's wrong with me carrying you?" He grinned like a jackal. "You doubt my strength?"
"Ugh, I hate you." Judy groaned and covered her face with her ears, not wanting to think about it. Him carrying her? With those toned, slightly muscular foxy arms...
She shivered.
"I wonder if some other universe," she continued, trying to forget about his innocent offer, "our lives aren't this difficult."
"I hate to break this to you, my Lady," Nick said as he poured her cup of tea, "but our lives..."—he set the gold-rimmed teapot back on its small, white ceramic plate—"...aren't difficult at all."
"Just because you're cute doesn't mean I can't fire you, Slick!" she said as she punched him the gut again.
"Hey, if I was still holding the teapot, I could've spilt it all over you!" Nick yelled, his normally refined tone of voice as a butler now almost betraying his former conman life. "But what do you mean you wish your life wasn't so difficult?" he asked on the balcony overlooking the river where the sun set, looking around to the open luxury velvet curtains behind them, revealing the inside of Lady Judy's four-story house, with over-the-top chandeliers and statues made of white marble left and right. "And such language is unfit for a Lady; you should refer to me as Mr. Slick," he jested.
The house that Lady Judy lived in practically one gram of gold away from becoming a palace.
"It's just so boring!" Lady Judy answered. "How do most people in the world live like this?"
He stared at her. "Most people don't live like this."
"I could've done something in my life!" she said, "practicing" her jabs and uppercuts into the air, the sight hilarious to see for Sir Nick—such a dainty lady in her frilly, yellow dress, assaulting the air around her like it took her newborn and dropped it in a well. "You think I could become a good police officer?"
"You could never," Nick told him as they walked back home after school, the sun setting since they went to the arcade first. "Too weak."
"I'm not too weak!" She let out a growl. "I'm the strongest girl in the prefecture!" she yelled as she punched her chest like an ape (and wincing a little).
"Yeah, back in Bunnyburrow Prefecture maybe," he told her, dodging another punch from her. "You think you could compete against the tens of millions of animals here in Zûtopia? What with all the lions, and the rhinos, and the tigers, and the yakuza?"
"Ah, yes," Judy said, "the yakuza is my favorite species of animal too, Nick-kun."
"You know what I mean," he said with a sigh. "And don't call me that!" He crossed his arms. "I'm just talking to you cause Bogo-sensei assigned us to that project about that one stupid, gajillion-year-old book. Doesn't mean we're friends. We met less a week ago and you're 'kun'-ing me already—I'm your senior, you know!" He snickered. "You got a lot of guts for a transfer student from a prefecture mostly populated by wheat and grain."
"Wheat is a grain," Judy said (with her swearing she heard him mumble something about her being a nerd after the correction) as a faint gust of wind blew by, her navy blue school uniform skirt moving a little with the sharp breeze. She shivered a bit, but tried not to show it too much. The day was quite warm, but she hadn't anticipated it would be so cold come nighttime. "And you're saying we're not friends, but you didn't make a fuss at all when I invited you to the arcade, did you, Nick-kun?"
Despite her attempts to hide her aversion to the current climate, Nick noticed, especially now with her little shivers. He thought they were a little cute, those country bumpkin shivers.
"Take my scarf," said the troublemaker fox as he handed it to her. "Looks stupid on me anyways, all purple and girly and stuff."
"I'm not cold!" she insisted as she gently pushed it away. "In fact, it's actually a little warm today!" she lied upon seeing a vending machine. "Woah, ichigo-matcha milk tea, super freezing! Just 150 yen too. I'm gonna buy a can—you want some?"
He came closer and wrapped the scarf around her head. While it fit perfectly on Nick, it was a bit big for Judy, though Nick presumed this must be better for her anyway. He was used to the city's cold, but he gathered it was probably warmer down in Bunnyburrow prefecture, hence why the rabbit beside him was now shivering.
"I never said you were cold," he told her. "I said to take my scarf."
Under the streetlights of the metropolis, she smiled up at him, and he awkwardly smiled back.
While he would've wanted virtually any other (study) partner, transfer student Judy Hopps wasn't so bad.
"Don't joke around with me!" Judy yelled as she threw back the purple scarf at him, laughing. "It's, like, 25 degrees out here!" (Or 77°F for those of us living in the Land of the Free.)
"Hey," Nick said as he put the scarf back into his backpack, "the sun just set. I'm sure the temperature'll drop soon."
"We live in Meowxico City, not Tundratown," she told him lightheartedly, looking around at the trees of Chapultepec Forest. The two were on a jogging trail, but the two were doing nothing more than a light walk, admiring whatever stars were able to be seen amidst the light pollution.
"Whatever," he said. "But if you get too cold, my arms are always right here for ya."
"Ew, gross!" she said as she sprayed him with her water bottle.
"How refreshing." He shook himself about, like a particularly mischievous dog after swimming, and sighed with relief. He gazed up at an airplane in wonder. "Have you ever been on an airplane before, Pelusa?"
"Honestly, no, not really," she answered. "Well, I guess I did one time, but just when I was a little bunny. We were going to Juárez to see family. The family part was fun, but apparently my parents said I puked on the plane." She gave him a little jab to the arm. "And don't call me 'Pelusa'!"
"Fine," he said with a little chuckle. "I'm guessing you're not into heights?"
"Oh, no, I don't think it was that..." she said.
"Well then," Nick told her, "let's go bungee jumping tomorrow. You know, that place that just opened in Cuajimalpa near Flash's?"
"Okay, maybe I'm a little afraid of heights."
She said this with a laugh, trying to make light of the situation at hand.
"Now look what you've done, Wilde," Mayor Bellweather said. Her tone wasn't ominous. If anything, it was as if she was scolding a child for spilling a glass of milk. "Now she'll die, all because of you." She shifted her attention to the rabbit. "Why didn't you listen to me, Judy?"
Her calm voice echoed in the forest as the harsh rain fell.
"You hid the evidence!" Judy yelled back with whatever energy she had left.
"And what if I did?" Mayor Bellweather asked, her voice seeming to get louder and closer with each word. "Why do you spend so much energy trying to save the 10% of the population that couldn't care less if you died?"
"That's not true!" the rabbit shouted, looking up towards her partner. "Nick," she whispered with intent.
As he looked down, holding onto the abandoned, rickety bridge, he saw Judy, his Judy, his friend, his partner, his pack, gaze upwards, starting to tear up.
His one arm, the one he was holding onto Judy with, was stinging from the gunshot wound, and his other felt hellishly strained as he held on for dear life to the bridge, all rusty and orange. He gritted his teeth as she dangled off the bridge with him.
"Nick."
She said this with a smile.
"Judy..."
He didn't know whether to smile with her or to start crying.
With a deep breath, she continued.
"It's okay, Nick."
"I won't, Judy. I... I can't."
His hand trembled.
He tried pulling her up, using all the strength he could muster, but it was no use.
He looked down at her partner one last time, still with that smile on her face, that smile he swore to protect.
She let go.
The rabbit jolted up.
Looking down at her hands, she sighed in relief.
Ah, she thought. It was all a dream...
She laughed, almost gagging at how clichéd it was.
"You okay?" asked the fox beside her on the bed, his voice a bit raspy and low. Perhaps he just woke up recently as well. She hoped it wasn't because of her.
"Yeah," she answered, "just had one of those dreams. You know, when you think you're falling but you aren't, and—"
"Oh, one of those, I see," Nick said. "Phew, thought it was your time, you were breathing so rough. Don't you dare leave me!" He pulled down the blanket to reveal a much smaller baby bunny, dozing off on his chest. "Especially not with this rascal."
Judy and Nick, now 35 and 42 respectively (though they still looked relatively young for their age), adopted a bunny around half a year ago.
Foxes and rabbits biologically could not have any offspring (though as Nick would say jokingly, to Judy's embarrassment: Believe me, we tried!), but that didn't matter now.
Who cared about blood relations? At least that was what he thought when he pulled back the covers over the little bunny, caressing her comically oversized ears. Yet another rabbit in the pack he was a part of, a pack most people would call "family," but he wasn't that cheesy. (Yet.)
"I won't!" she promised. "Though I'm sure even if I did, she wouldn't be losing too much with you still with her."
Judy had to admit he was a great father; a little better than she anticipated, not that she was complaining though. He still looked like he was going to puke every time he had to change a diaper, his face becoming grass-green every time (which Judy didn't even know was possible with his orange fur and cream muzzle), but he'd learn.
"Whether or not she'd lose much is irrelevant," he argued. "I'd lose everything!"
"Oh," she said with a chuckle, "so it's all about you now."
"I'm just saying," he told her with an outstretched arm, bringing her into the cuddle huddle, "if you left us you'd leave quite the hole."
"You're such an overreactor!" Judy said as she dusted his teacher's desk. "I said I got an offer to teach at that other school. I never said I would go."
"Well, you better not!" Nick crossed his arms. "And for the last time, you don't gotta dust my desk every time you're here."
"I just don't understand how your desk gets so dirty and dusty," she told him. "I come here every day!" She sighed. "If this is what your work area's like, I wonder how your home is."
"Well for starters, let's just say I live near a gym," he muttered.
"How impressive," she giggled.
"I know, I know, takes a lot to maintain this bod," he said with a stupid grin as he licked his pawpsicle.
"No, I mean it's impressive, living near a gym and still having such an unathletic body."
He stopped licking. "You just want an excuse to see my chest again."
She remembered the time she walked in on him in the morning before the official schooltime, since she bought him a warm cup of coffee, with an ungodly amount of sugar, just the way he liked it, though as she walked in, he accidentally saw him changing into his shirt. Thankfully the pants were already on, though he swore he locked the door either way. Thankfully, it was just her that saw, not a student.
"You shouldn't be changing in here to begin with!" she argued.
"Hey, it was just the shirt!" he argued back. "Some of my pawpsicle dripped onto it!"
"Like it's doing right now?"
He looked down and saw red where there was supposed to be white.
"Well," he said blankly, "thank goodness for bleach."
"I gotta stop coming in here," she said as she slowly transformed his unruly amalgamation of papers into an organized stack. "A student called me Mrs. Wilde today," she told him with a gentle laugh.
"Which one?!" he inquired with a vaguely angered tone.
"Hey, what's wrong with being married to me?!" she asked. "H-Hypothetically," she quickly added.
"Well.. nothing wrong with that, of course..." he answered. "It's just the principle, is all..."
"Maybe I will move schools then," Judy huffed. "Clearly I'm not needed here."
"I'm joking, I'm joking!" he pleaded with laughter. "It wouldn't be the same without you."
She giggled. "Fine, I'll stay."
"Wow, you're that easily persuaded?"
She pointed at Nick with mocking anger. "You are on thin ice, Mr. Wilde!" She got a buzz from her smartphone, and brought it out. "Crap," she said, "forgot I had to tutor this one kid... Remember Mikey? He's adorable, but he's not the best at math..."
"If anyone can tutor him, it's you." Nick looked at her with hope. "It's not like he's a troublemaker or anything."
She scoffed. "Yeah, unlike you."
"Hey!" he yelled, a mixture of joking contempt and foxish laughter. "See you tomorrow?" he said as he saw her open the door to leave. "Wait, no, duh, it's Monday, of course I'll..."
She let out a soft giggle, melting his stupid little heart. "Yeah, see you tomorrow, you goofball."
A little hesitant, he brought up the courage to say those words again before she left—the words he told her when they first became book study partners in school, though it might have been a heat of the moment thing after getting that A+ at the end.
It was a good thing he brought that scarf.
"Love you, partner."
She looked back and smiled.
"Love you too, partner," she said back to him.
"Love you too, partner," she texted back to him.
"Akoe djoega mentjintaïmoe, partner," dia membalas kepadanja.
"Love you too, partner," she signed back to him.
"Love you too, partner," she said back to her.
«Мен де сені жақсы көремін, серіктес», — деді ол оған.
"Love you too, partner," she wrote back to him.
"Love you too, partner," she said back to him, atop the Gym Trunks gym. Now the sun was fully gone, but at least he was still here.
He unknowingly gave her a tender smile, with a bit more emotion than he might've meant.
Not that he was complaining.
But there was something mischievous in that smile somewhere...
She heard the type of sound that was way too familiar for her.
A sort of mechanical rewinding.
"Love you too, partner," she heard, the words vaguely muffled through electronic static.
She gasped as she saw a carrot pen in his paw.
"You did not!" Judy exclaimed as she tried to grab it back, laughter all around, but it was no use.
"Hey, how come when you do it it's okay but when I do it I'm the criminal!" he asked with a chuckle, still pushing her away with an outstretched arm. "It's 'cause I'm a fox, huh? Wow... some things really never change."
"I still have your tax files, Slick!"
He gasped. "A police officer dealing with blackmail, and I thought I was the petty one."
With a hop, she somehow leaped over him and grabbed the pen that way. Turning back towards him, she looked rather self-satisfied. "It's called a hustle, sweetheart."
He let out another chuckle. "I've taught you well."
This "multiverse" theory, hypothesis, hootenanny, whatever it was, it all sounded silly to him.
But as he tried to grab the pen back, under all the stars in the sky, he hoped only one thing:
That maybe, in every lifetime, in every universe, in every moment, she would be his pack.