Sunderance: Chapter 2

Katabasis

    It should not have surprised her that the train was abandoned for her trip into the city, but it certainly did nothing to calm her nerves. It had been easier to arrange to have herself delivered into a city that was hostile for a cause, with the conviction of her belief and goals strong in her heart, than it was to follow the darkly dressed fox. Her convictions had solid ground, certainty, and her years of study to support her and make her feel stable. This fox, this Red Fox, that she walked a few steps behind as he made his way towards the observation deck was an unknown.

    I can protect you.

    There was no mistaking the voice. There was no mistaking the professional, masculine tone which had assured her even in a single phone call that the speaker fully believed that he could protect her. She certainly had not expected her protector to be another bunny, but she had expected another prey species; someone who would sympathize with her, someone she could actually trust to keep her alive.

    She couldn’t trust this fox. She knew it. It was counter to everything that she had seen happen as she grew up, as she went through law school, and even as a lawyer. So many laws twisted and changed, the so called “Rabbit-Ban Act” slipping through the city council without a whisper of protest, injustices running rampant under the control of the foxes. Once she might have believed that there was good in everyone, in every species no matter the social stigma surrounding them. Once she had dreamed of going to Zootopia to uphold law and order, to prove that a rabbit could be anything they wanted to be.

    That had all been before the foxes had ruined her dream, taken the city she had looked on with hope and shown her that nothing was above corruption. But that did not mean that she wouldn’t fight to change that, and she would be damned if this little intimidation tactic by the foxes would change her mind.

    When the fox stopped at the top level of the train, leaving her with a view of her family and her home just as the forward momentum caused her stomach to lurch a little, she looked down at the platform to see Allan standing there. His eyes were on the train, and searched the windows until he looked up and saw her. He raised his paw in a wave, and she felt a little clutch in her chest as she raised hers in return.

    “You can’t go with him,” he said, his voice pleading. Though even as he said it sounded uncertain as he looked towards the door where the fox had vanished.

    She thought that he must have been as curious as she was about the oddly kind gesture from the fox, but she couldn’t think about it now.

    “I have to go, Allan, but I promise I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said with a soft smile, as she reached down to stroke her paw over the fur between his ears. She almost imagined that she could still feel the warmth left by the fox’s touch, but shook it off as she pulled the little bunny into a hug. “That was very brave, what you did for me. You stay brave, and take care of mom and dad for me, okay?”

    “I love you.”

    Leaning against the glass in silence for a moment after her family quickly faded into the distance, her mind lingered on the odd behavior of the fox towards her brother. His expression had almost never changed, never softened. She half believed that the little smile she had seen when he had eaten the blueberry had been imagination now. Even now, when her gaze turned to him, she saw nothing. He was still as he leaned against the glass in a similar pose, silent and unmoving. His ears didn’t even twitch as he stared out at the world that sped past them, his tail didn’t sway. If not for the fact that his chest rose and fell when he breathed, she could easily have mistaken him for a statue in a suit.

    “Cute kid,” came the smooth voice, one that came so suddenly that she hardly managed to suppress the flinch it caused. Instead, she frowned at her own jumpy reaction and directed her frustration at the most obvious offense.

    “Don’t call him cute,” she said, pushing for strength in her voice as she glared at the back of his head. She wished he would turn around, that she could at least see his eyes so she could get a sense of who she was dealing with. Some emotion, some reaction beyond stony silence and that relaxed stance.

    “Oh right, bunnies don’t like that,” he said, and rolled his body around without letting his shoulders leave the glass. Now facing her, she was met with her own reflection again and it infuriated her for some reason. “To other mammals it’s a positive thing. Bunnies are cute; especially the little ones. Maybe you should get over it.”

    “Get over it?” She was aghast at his blasé attitude, his dismissive tone, and the fact that he had used the term again without the least bit of hesitation. Just like a fox. The rules didn’t apply to him, so what did he care if it was an insult? “And what if someone called you shifty? The last time I checked the laws, it’s now hate speech to call a fox shifty, or sly. What if I called you shifty, or sly?”

    “I am shifty, and I like to think of myself as sly,” was his easy reply, looking down at his hand as he drew the red handkerchief from his pocket. She stared at him for a moment, not sure what to say as he unwrapped it and popped one of the blueberries into his muzzle. Then he waved the hand even as he chewed. “Elephants are huge, rhinos have thick skin, tigers have stripes, buffalo have two horns, weasels are… Well, weasels. Nasty little bastards, generally. And sometimes bunnies are cute. Deciding that you don’t like something doesn’t make it untrue, or unnoticed by the general population. Forcing silence is not making a change: it’s applying control.”

    “So I should just accept it when you degrade my brother by calling him cute?” she snapped, standing away from the window herself with her ears high. Swallowing the still strong desire to keep her distance, she moved towards him. “Ignoring everything else about him, and focusing on that one aspect of him as if it does him a favor?”

    “So you admit that he’s cute.”

    She had never actually been so frustrated that she ground her teeth together, mostly because it was a hard thing to do with the larger front teeth of a bunny. But her jaw tightened and she was grinding as she watched him calmly pop another blueberry into his mouth. She turned away from him, her ears pinned back again and her arms folded across her chest, not even seeing the world rushing past as she tried to ignore the fact that his words did have some ring of truth to them. It was cold, intellectual, lacking compassion or understanding, but it was true on many levels.

    “On one paw, Zootopia is a jewel of a city,” she heard him say, and while the words could have been taken as fond, they weren’t. Like everything out of his mouth, they seemed blank and edged with sarcasm. “The streets are filled with every species living together in harmony – except for bunnies, of course – with buildings that are tall and magnificent, a true testament to what happens when we all learn to play nice with each other. Everyone walks around, trying to remain unnoticed or trying to be noticed more than everyone else. Money is made, smiles exchanged, jobs worked and the system goes on without a hitch.

    “On the other paw, you have the reality of the city,” he continued, though she refused to turn to face him. Still stewing in her own annoyance, watching the trees turn into water as the train reached the bridge into the city. “It is a dark, dangerous place. That is the part of the city you’ll be walking into, fluff. The part where people will call you cute, and actually mean it as the derogatory term that it is. They may do it behind your back, or do it right up in your face with a grin. And those that grin will expect you to react. Expect you to turn your attention to that tiny, insignificant little detail so you’ll lose focus on why you’re entering the Foxes Den at all.”

    She realized that his voice was coming from directly behind her now, and spun around. Looking up into the looming face of the fox, she felt a kick of fear as her heart rate increased and her shrank in on herself. She half expected him to remove the glasses, but he kept them in place as he leaned forward and placed his paws on his knees to bring his muzzle to level with hers. Her nose twitched rapidly before she could still it. She smelled violets and blueberries.

    “And once you lose focus because you can’t even get past the use of one word,” he continued, his voice not derisive or mean, in a stance that was almost like a school teacher talking to a favored student. Still, his next words made her shudder and hug her arms a little closer to herself. “the city will eat you.”

    She trembled, and the part of her that was so certain of herself and her goals hated the fact that he could make her feel fear. She was suddenly very aware of where she was; aware of the fact that she had stepped onto a train with a fox, alone. A fox that was fully capable of killing her, making her disappear. The media would question it, there would be token searches, her family would no doubt do their best to find her. But it would fade. She would fade.

    “Why are you doing this?” she asked, using years of experience speaking in front of courtrooms in an attempt to keep her voice steady when she certainly didn’t feel that way.

    “Go back to Bunnyburrow, Carrots,” he said after a long moment of silence, drawing himself upright again and shoving his hands into his pockets. “It will be safer for all involved if you just accept what we are. Shifty fox, cute bunny.”

    He turned to walk back to where he had been before, seeming intent on dismissing her.

    She mulled over his words in silence, and tried to calm the quick beat of her heart by watching the world pass her by, by focusing on what was important. Otterton was a step, a very important step and she could not let him pay the price in the city that the fox had described to her. Not even her family knew that she did not intend to stop there.

    And the fox. He had terrified her, intimidated her without ever once directly threatening her, and then told her to go home. That was… Intelligent. Sly.

    “Is this how you intend to protect me?” she asked suddenly, breaking what had been long minutes of silence. She raised her ears and kept them directed at him as he turned his head to the side with his muzzle dipped low. She could almost see one eye, wanted to see his eyes. She was almost compelled to demand that he remove the glasses just so she could at least look him in the eyes one time before she continued. “By scaring me off? Hoping I’ll run back home, head low, realizing how amazingly right you are?”

    She could have sworn, again, that she saw the slightest twitch of a smile at the corner of his muzzle before he turned his gaze outward again.

    “It would be an impressive accomplishment, minus the details,” he said easily. “Contract fulfilled in less than a day. Bunny lawyer boards train, realizes her mistake, and then is escorted safely home. Everyone wins.”

    “Except Emmett Otterton,” she reminded him, taking a few steps closer to him without letting her gaze or her ears drop.

    “Otterton is a lost cause,” he said with a slow shrug, a motion that caused the jacket of his suit to shift against… Something. Something she couldn’t see clearly, but made her aware that there was something just below each shoulder. Why it surprised her that he would be armed, she wasn’t sure. “If the system of Zootopia wants him gone, then he will be gone.”

    “I’m not a part of that system.”

    She hadn’t expected the words to mean much. They had been reflex, annoyance, even a little spite. But she realized that they must have meant something to him, because he slowly turned to face her again. The line of his muzzle was tight, and if she could see anything at all on his face, she would have called the expression pensive. Contemplative. Curious. Then he turned away from her again, and looked out. The train took a curve, and through the line of trees the city could be seen coming fast in the distance.

    “No. No, you’re not.”

    Maybe it was the fact that his voice seemed somehow softer, somehow less sarcastic that allowed her to move closer still. She was almost standing beside him, allowing her to see the corner of that orange and cream colored muzzle as she looked up at him.

    “I will not run,” she said at length, her gaze not wavering and her voice steady. “I would have come to the city alone if there was no other choice.”

    “And the city would have killed you.”

    “Maybe… Maybe it would have,” she said with a small shrug of her own, feeling just a little easier now as she moved to stand beside him, her hands resting on the railing. She watched the city now herself as it moved closer, her gaze resting for a moment on The Tower. The seat of Vulpine power within the city; the symbol of their superiority, of their oppression. “But a certain fox told me that I would be protected. Unless his intent was just to scare me off from the start, and he has no other talents.”

    She turned her gaze up to him, her muzzle curved in a challenging little smile. She managed to keep it on even when he turned his passive face down to her, and she was sure that it was the first time she had seen his ears show any sign of emotion as one twitched slightly. As if he were flicking it at an annoying itch.

    “I will protect you,” he said at last, his voice hardening and cooling again.

    Somehow she didn’t doubt that he could. Putting aside the fact that she was still not convinced that she could trust him, and had the suspicion that he had been sent by someone to watch her as much as act as her body guard, something about him told her that nothing frightened him. Even if it could have been bluster and bragging, she didn’t think so.

    “You still haven’t told me how much you expect to be paid,” she reminded him, returning her gaze to the city.

    “We’ll get to that once you’ve settle into your new office,” he reminded her. “Just remember the rules, Carrots. One open door, at most. By the time your case is finished, you may be begging to go back to Bunnyburrow.”

    She felt a little twist in her stomach, but tried to push it aside. She had not forgotten that she had given him full access to her life as a condition for his protection, but that had been before the fact that he was a fox had become clear. Now she would have sleep knowing that he was there, leaving herself not only closer to a fox than she had ever wanted to get, but vulnerable. Helpless…

    She didn’t even know his name.

    “Do you have a name?”

    “Nick.”

    She looked up at him with one brow and both ears raised, waiting a beat. Expecting more, perhaps. Maybe even thinking that it would be something a little more impressive than a four letter name that could have belonged to anyone she met. Not that she expected it to be ‘Flamefur the Terrible’ or anything like that, but something more than ‘Nick.’

    “Huh,” she said, squinting her eyes at him a bit with a bit of a wry smile on her muzzle. “All right, Nick. I guess I’m stuck with you. Just try not to call Allan cute.”

    “And if I call you cute?” he asked, without turning his gaze to her.

    She gave a small snort, her eyes resting on the approaching tunnel leading into the city proper. “Only if you think I am.”

    “You’re positively adorable.”

    This time, she was one hundred percent certain that she saw a ghost of a smile at the corner of his muzzle, before his face grew cool again when they entered the tunnel.

    “Well, Miss Hopps,” he said, the shadows of the passing structure cutting through the observation deck as the train sped towards Central Zootopia. “Welcome to Zootopia.”