One Year Later…

Nick awoke, paws scrabbling at his neck, entangled in a suffocating cocoon of blankets. He was clutching at where the collar had been. For a long moment he blinked, pulse still racing, vision adjusting to the darkness.

"Nick?" Hopps' voice, sharp with concern.

"I'm fine," he said, "just…"

"Another dream?" Hopps asked, and Nick could feel her snuggling next to him, gently freeing him from the tangle of blankets he'd managed to trap himself in. Nick nodded slowly, forcing his paws away from the collar. If he yanked at it then it would shock him again.

"Yeah," he forced himself to breathe evenly, to dispel the ugly fog of dread and terror that still lurked in the corners of his mind, "it's over…" Hopps' paws made their way to Nick's neck, caressed gently, over empty fur, unmarred by a collar.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Hopps asked. Nick glanced over to the bunny, managing to smile.

"I am now." He kissed her between the ears and Hopps laid her head on his shoulder.

"Was it the same dream as last time?" Hopps asked after a moment. Nick nodded slightly.

"You'd think that I'd have gotten used to it by now," he said with a rueful smile, "like my brain would go: 'Nick, you're having the strangling dream again, cut it out buddy.' But I guess that's not how it works…" He trailed off.

"What time is it?" Hopps asked. Nick glanced over to the glowing digital face of the clock on his nightstand.

"Four fifteen…sixteen now." Hopps sat up, working out a crick in her neck before stretching.

"Well…I do have to get up in a half hour anyway," she said, "were you planning on going back to bed?" Nick thought about it for a moment, then shook his head.

"Nah." He flicked on the lamp on his side of the bed, bathing the bedroom in warm light. It was small and cozy, tucked away someplace not too far from Downtown. Rent wasn't even especially horrible.

Hopps blinked in the light and swung her legs out of bed, stretching once more before padding into the bathroom. The light flicked on, Nick watching her go, leaning back against his pillow.

How had he ever gotten so lucky? It felt surreal sometimes, when he was still waking himself up on mornings like this. Almost like he was still dreaming and at any moment he'd awaken to find himself back in his old apartment, boiler kicking on just above him.

"Coming sleepyhead?" Hopps asked from the bathroom and Nick smiled to himself, leaving the bed, traipsing over to the bathroom.

A ruffled, somewhat tired looking red fox stared back at him from the mirror, fur mussed and a thin scar standing out at the base of his muzzle. He had similar scars on his back, all the work of Balthazar the bat. Next to him Hopps was putting toothpaste on a toothbrush. Sticking it into her mouth she applied a little bulb of paste to Nick's brush and handed it over. Nick mussed the fur between her ears with a smile, she elbowed him playfully in the side.

"What do you want for breakfast?" Hopps asked as they made their way to the kitchen some minutes later, freshly showered and dressed for the day, fur still spiky with moisture.

"I'll cook," Nick said, "I woke you up after all…and besides, you know you cant reach those high shelves without my help." Hopps rolled her eyes but couldn't keep herself from laughing.

"I'm expecting a high class banquet Mr. Wilde." She said, affecting a mock posh accent. Nick opened the fridge, giving Hopps a sideways glance.

"I am nothing if not a cultured artisan Madam Hopps," he preened his whiskers as he spoke, "now would you prefer caviar or foie gras as a starter?" Hopps giggled.

"Honestly, I'm feeling like venturing into smoothie territory this morning. Now hand the fruit over fox." Nick did so, selecting some eggs and bread for himself. Their fridge had taken on something of a segregated appearance, eggs and fish and protein supplements occupying the higher shelves, more bunny appropriate foodstuffs crowding the bottom.

Nick looked out the window as he chopped fruit for Hopps' smoothie (he practically had to wrestle her to get her to sit still and allow him to do something nice for her). The view wasn't anything spectacular, just buildings and the barest glint of light off of the river, but Nick liked it.

"You working late tonight?" He asked. Hopps sighed and then nodded.

"Chief is probably gonna stick me on a stakeout," she said with a shrug, "but the good news is that if we nab the guy we're looking for then we might just catch a break on the whole collar fraud epidemic going on in the Docks." Nick paused, then kept going, his motions tighter, angrier.

"Why even crack down on them Judy?" He asked. Hopps sighed.

"Nick…" She folded her paws over the surface of the kitchen counter, coming up alongside Nick.

"I understand that it's the law, but…Christ, it doesn't feel like anything's changed." Hopps put a paw over Nick's, steadying the beginnings of a tremble.

"There are ten thousand predators in Zootopia who don't have to wear collars anymore," she said, "next year it'll be a hundred thousand, then a million the year after that. The collar is going away Nick…but not all at once, and if we get people faking test results and paperwork then that damages the credibility of those that actually worked to get their collars off. Like you." Nick let go of the knife and stared down at the fruit sitting on the cutting board, chopped raspberries and strawberries staining the plastic red.

"You're right," he said at last, "sorry…sore subject for me." Hopps smiled gently, squeezing Nick's paw.

"In a decade nobody but criminals will be wearing collars." She said, then paused, surprised by her own words. Only a year before such a statement would have been unthinkable. How quickly things changed…

"Yeah." Nick said absently, and chopped another strawberry.

"You look distracted," Hopps said, then paused before adding, "you probably shouldn't stare into middle space when you've got a knife in your paw." Nick couldn't help but smile.

"I'm being careful," he assured her, getting ready to blend Hopps' breakfast together, "just…thinking." The blender hummed and vibrated, Nick handed the tropically colored results over a moment later.

"About your visit?" Hopps asked. It was perhaps a needless question.

"Yep."

"Why are you going to see that psycho?" Hopps asked, taking a sip of her smoothie and then giving Nick a thumbs up. He made a mock bow in appreciation of her silent praise.

"It's been a year," Nick said, "I…I guess I want some closure." Hopps was silent for a moment.

"I hope you get it," she said, "but if he starts trying to play games with you, like he did on that rooftop, just get up and walk away." Nick nodded dutifully.

"Of course." He turned the stove on and dropped a pat of margarine into the pan, watching it melt away.

Some time later, with breakfast finished and the sun just beginning to poke its rays above the horizon, Hopps slipped on her vest and tucked away her handcuffs.

"You know," Nick said, padding up behind her, "I don't think I can overstate just how cute you look in that uniform." Hopps rolled her eyes.

"Flagrant use of the C-word," she teased, "that might just count as harassment of a law enforcement officer." Nick grinned.

"Well, the last time you tried to arrest me absolutely nothing went awry, so…" Hopps smiled and wrapped her arms around him. Nick returned the hug, giving Hopps a squeeze.

"Oof, careful there," the bunny laughed, "I've already broken those ribs before, no need to repeat the experience." She planted a kiss on the tip of his nose, then ruffled his ears.

"Let me walk you out," Nick said, opening the door for her, "I've gotta get going too." They exited out into the hallway, empty this early in the morning. The apartment complex they lived in was solidly middle class, nothing fancy but definitely comfortable.

Hopps' parents hadn't been…thrilled with her decision to move out, especially when they learned that she'd be living with Nick, but in the end they'd relented. There had certainly been a lot of very teary MuzzleTime calls in those days.

The street was busier, and though Nick tried hard to ignore them he couldn't help but feel the stares of other mammals burning into him. A pig in a construction worker's getup giving them a glance from down the street, a sheep in the front passenger seat of a car glaring as he cruised past.

All attracted by the sight of a ZPD officer and a collarless fox standing together. At times like this Nick felt all of the old doubts creeping back. How had he come into all of this? Did he deserve any of it?

Yes. He said to himself. Firmly. And took ahold of Hopps' paw as they made their way to the subway station. Hopps still took the train to work each morning, but now that they lived in the city proper her commute only took a few minutes.

Hopps calmly ignored the looks they attracted, and Nick felt the anxiety melting away. Like it did every time they walked together. It seemed to be a constant cycle: fear, doubt, then a sort of bliss as he remembered just what had driven him and Hopps together. What made them inseparable.

"I'll see you tomorrow I guess," Nick said with a smile as they approached the platform, "get in touch if the Chief doesn't end up making you spend the night in a patrol car." Hopps smiled and reached up, putting her paws on either side of Nick's face before drawing him down into a kiss. Nick felt a brief flash of concern as he considered the people surrounding them, then released his inhibitions and melted into it.

"I will." She promised, and a moment later had gone, vanishing into the crowd of mammals starting their morning commutes. Nick watched the train depart, smiled to himself, and walked back out of the station, Hopps' kiss still tingling on his lips.

...

The prison was a massive place, all poured concrete and razor wire, guard towers and sliding steel gates. The guards wore dark blue, their clothes similar to ZPD uniforms, only without the badge or vest.

"ID?" The guard at the entrance checkpoint asked. Nick moved to present his collar, then fished for his wallet instead after his fingers grazed through bare fur. It was strange to have to carry an ID card, after so many years of just having people scan his neck whenever they wanted to know who he was.

"Nicholas P. Wilde?" The guard asked. Nick nodded. "Date of birth?" Nick told him. The guard let him go through, the steel gate sliding smoothly open on a well oiled track. Nick could see cameras at the bottom the track, designed to search for contraband clinging to the bottom of any vehicle that passed through the gate.

The security was unnerving, and even though he was only visiting, Nick felt vaguely frightened of the high walls and glinting razor wire. The prison felt oppressive, lifeless.

He passed down a walkway bordered with high featureless concrete walls and presented his ID once more to a guard situated in a Plexiglass fronted booth next to a steel security door. The door swung open noiselessly and Nick headed in.

It was like he was delving deeper and deeper into some sort of cave. There were no windows, and the only light came from a bank of fluorescents shielded by chicken wire.

A hippo guard lumbered out to meet him, looking down and then checking a list with contemplative care.

"Mr. Wilde?" He asked.

"Yes," Nick said, "your six thirty visitor." The guard nodded curtly and moved heavily over to another door, glancing briefly at a camera feed before turning back to Nick.

"Through there's the visiting room," he said, pointing a finger at the security door, "it's monitored and there are guards on standby in case anything happens. If you feel unsafe or wish to leave before your half hour of visitation is up then stand and approach the door, we'll open it for you. Understand?" Nick nodded slightly, feeling oddly nervous now. His heart thudded in his chest, he wondered briefly if he'd made a mistake in coming here.

But it was too late to back out now. The security door swung open, just as silent and smooth as the others, and Nick walked in.

The visiting room consisted of a series of steel tables with similarly drab steel chairs bolted to the ground on either end of them. A Plexiglass shield stood in the center of each table, perhaps to dissuade prisoners from leaping at their visitors. Or vice-versa.

The walls and ceiling had been painted a clinical white that almost hurt Nick's eyes just to look at, while the floor was polished concrete. The security door clicked shut behind him. Nick took a seat, folded his paws on the table in front of him, and tried to think of what he would say.

When Hubble came in he was escorted by two guards, both his ankles and wrists cuffed together. Nick couldn't help but blink, surprised by how different Hubble looked.

The rabbit sitting across from him was thin and drawn, white fur no longer quite so pristine, an emptiness where one of his ears had once been. The absence made him look almost lopsided, like Nick should have had to cock his head to the side just to look at him straight.

And, most surreally, around Hubble's neck was a collar. Prison issue. Green light glowing peacefully. Nick had known that everyone received a collar in prison, but even looking at the thing put chills through him.

Hubble sat down, eyes flickering over Nick momentarily before moving down to the surface of the table. The guards busied themselves cuffing him to the chair, then walked briskly away. Their door shut with a clunk.

"You're my first visitor." Hubble said a moment later, voice quiet and sedate. He seemed slightly caught off guard, alarmed to have someone coming to see him.

"Nobody else came to see you?" Nick asked. He knew that Hopps hadn't, knew that nobody else involved in the case had really bothered, but hadn't at least a single one of Hubble's underworld contacts dropped in to say goodbye to him? Hubble said nothing, just gave Nick a glance that told him everything he needed to know.

"Why'd you come here Mr. Wilde?" Hubble asked at last, breaking an icy and uncomfortable silence. Answering a question with a question. Wasn't that just typical…

"Well, it is the one year anniversary of your diabolical plot to destroy the city," Nick said with a shrug, "I figured that that was significant somehow." Hubble pursed his lips slightly, looking annoyed.

"A year," he said vaguely, "it feels like it's been longer." Nick nodded slowly. Hubble appeared slightly blurry through the Plexiglass shield, like he was speaking to a wraith rather than the rabbit that had tried to kill the city.

"You don't look like you've been enjoying your time here." Nick said lightly. Hubble's eyes went flat and defensive.

"So that's why you came…" He said, voice dropping into toneless menace, "to mock me? To rub it in?" Nick blinked, feeling fur bristle up on the back of his neck.

"I want to talk about the rooftop," he said, alarmed by the rabbit's sudden mood shift, "I want to know what you were trying to do to me up there." At this the emotion drained back out of Hubble's face and he settled back in his seat, eyes going back to dark glass beads, face to something that wouldn't have been out of place on a doll.

"You'll have to answer a question of mine." The rabbit said. Nick blinked, cocking his head slightly.

"You're playing games again," he said spitefully, "I ought to just get up and walk out. It's not like you're gonna get any other visitors to mess with." Anger flashed in Hubble's eyes and he started to rise up before jerking to the side, clawing at his neck. His collar had shocked him. Nick flinched back, instinctively reaching up to his own neck. Hubble sat back up, his posture rigid, whiskers trembling.

"Ironic," he said, breathing jagged, "how I'm in a collar and you aren't." Nick thought about getting up and leaving, but for some reason didn't.

"One of the lucky few," Nick said, wishing that he could scoot his chair away from the table, away from Hubble, "but the program is expanding. Soon they'll be able to test hundreds of predators each day." Hubble regarded Nick for an uncomfortably long moment.

"That's related to what I wanted to ask you," he said, "do you miss the collar?" Nick blinked, caught off guard.

"No." He said sharply. Hubble's gaze was unwavering.

"I've heard that there are predators out there who don't want their collars off. They don't think that prey will trust them if they remove the one thing that society believes is keeping them from going savage." Nick sat back, unnerved by the bizarre new trajectory the conversation was taking.

"What does this have to do with anything?" He asked, almost afraid to find out how Hubble would answer.

"Have you ever thought that all of this new collar legislation passed since Holt's plot failed is only going to make things worse?" Nick gritted his teeth, Hubble was still dead serious, face a mask.

"I don't agree with a lot of it," he said, quite truthfully, "but it's a start. The collar is being phased out." Hubble adjusted his own collar, very carefully, lest it shock him again.

"They were thinking about putting you back in a collar." He said, and Nick glared.

"But then I was acquitted, me and Lieutenant Hopps both. You on the other paw are here for life. Without possibility of parole." His words were angry, tone vicious. Hubble didn't seem fazed.

"I believe the District Attorney advocated bringing back the death penalty for me," he said with bizarre fondness, "what an exit I would have made had that gone through." The whole conversation felt surreal, Nick almost wished that Hubble would go back to rambling about collars.

"I'm glad it didn't," Nick said, "you deserve to spend a couple of decades in here before you make your 'exit.'" At this a flash of anger crossed Hubble's face. He hid it, but not well enough.

"What I was getting at about the collar," he said, with philosophical deliberation, "is that removing it is going to scare a lot of people. And when crime rates don't drop, when predators don't miraculously move up the social ladder overnight like a whole galaxy of suburbanite prey animals think they will, then tensions will start rising again. And at that point you'll have absolutely no way to stop them." Hubble shrugged, chains clinking.

"Is this some convoluted way to validate what you did?" Nick asked. Hubble shook his head.

"No. What I did doesn't need validation, it's already perfectly legitimized in my mind. And that's really all that matters."

"Then what?" Nick asked, frustrated by Hubble's bizarrely evasive answers, "are you trying to scare me?" Once again Hubble shook his head.

"Warn you," he corrected gently, "I suppose I do owe that to the one mammal that genuinely surprised me." Nick sighed.

"Then you can join all of the other psychos in the city with their END IS NIGH signs. I don't think the guards will care much, but you've still got your freedom of speech." Hubble bristled, Nick's eyes flickered down to the rabbit's collar but Hubble avoided a shock.

"Do you really think that anything will change just because the collar is going away?" Hubble asked, eyes dark with a focused kind of anger that made the fur rise on the back of Nick's neck, "prejudice is in here," he tapped the side of his head, "not here." He tapped the collar briskly and continued staring.

"I think I've got it," Nick said after a moment, "you're not crazy, or generously warning me about the 'collapse of society.' You just don't want to lose." At this Hubble blinked, caught off guard. Nick pressed ahead.

"I caught you on that roof," he said, "I shot you down and then…I…I didn't kill you. That's what you wanted me to do, so that you didn't end up in a place like this for the rest of your life." Nick was grinning wildly now, bizarrely ecstatic. Hubble's face had gone slack, he stared in shock and growing fury.

"You…" The collar shocked him. He hissed and slumped sideways in his seat.

"You know I'm right," Nick said, "and guess what Hubble?" He gave the rabbit a moment to answer. Hubble elected not to, just staring sullenly instead. "You're gonna die, but not in the way that you planned. You aren't gonna make any sort of memorable exit, not in an electric chair or on the roof of a hotel. You're gonna die in here fifty years from now, a forgotten old rabbit that nobody cares about. That's what's gonna happen to you." Hubble's breathing had gone jagged, his eyes black with incandescent fury. The collar shocked him again but he hardly even moved, just cricked his neck to one side.

"When I get out of here," he said, voice low and deadly, "I'm going to kill Judy and you. I'm not going to mess around with any sort of plot or plan, I'm just going to kill you both. Because you're right Nicky," Nick blinked, alarmed to hear Koslov's old nickname for him coming out of Hubble's mouth, beyond alarmed to hear the rabbit use Hopps' first name, "I don't like to lose." Nick stood up.

"Goodbye Hubble." He said, and turned briskly around.

He remained practically statuesque in his stoicism until he got home. There he sat down on the couch, hugged his arms around himself and started to tremble. He had faced down judges in the past year, sued Zootopia's largest news syndicate for libel (and won), braved the unknown wilds of an interspecies relationship, and yet…listening to Hubble speak had been by far the scariest experience of them all.

"But it's over now." He told the empty apartment, and sat back.

Trying not to entertain the dark whispers in the back of his mind that he might be wrong.