Work Text:
Turning Point
By StupidStipulation
After so many years of this city, so many hustles and close calls, Nicholas Piberius Wilde finally started to understand the warnings of his mother. She had told him, back in highschool, that his lifestyle would kill him, sure as any bullet or hard drug. At the time he hadn’t taken it well, or seriously. He had heard time and time again that “crime doesn’t pay,” well, maybe it didn’t, but it still payed better than the alternative.
He left home that spring.
What stuck in his memory, though, was the tears in his mother’s eyes. It was the first time he had ever seen her cry. He’d seen her angry before, that’s for sure, but never had he watched her face screw up in sadness and openly weep. It made him angry. She hadn’t cried at her husband’s funeral, or her second husband’s divorce, but she’ll cry when he finally takes initiative to move ahead? What did she want from him? If it was to suffer in squalor trying to appeal to some sense of morality and duty that didn’t exist in the real world then he wouldn’t, couldn’t stay.
He left and didn’t regret it for over a decade. He regrets it now, though, sitting alone with his thoughts. Nick swung one leg over the other and slide down in his beach chair overwatching a small channel. In his hand was his last beer. The bridge above him blocked the sun, leaving him in a comfortable cool shade. He was celebrating, he did, after all, turn thirty in a few hours. Sighing, he took a swig and thought about the world.
He regrets being a fox. If he had been any other mammal he would have thrived. He was smart, clever, and resourceful. As a kid he assumed he would do something, be something great. Be a mammal that people looked up to, a mammal that worked to make the city a better place for everyone. Instead he gained a reputation for shirking the law and getting away with his muzzle clean and pockets full of cash. The best a fox could be, the height of achievement, shouldn’t he be happy? He became what he set out to be as a teenager, the opposite of what he wanted to be as a child.
Still, he never forgot his mother’s tears. That’s why, even though it would’ve been easier, he never dealt in drugs, never directly stole, always made sure the stuff he indirectly stole wouldn’t be missed. It took a damn lot of work. But he managed it. Remnants of a young fox that still believed in integrity, before the world spat on him.
Officially, technically, he had broken no laws. Everything he did was justified by a loop-hole or a flimsy excuse. He knew the law so well he could probably pass a bar exam. He had only ever broken the spirit of the law. He had felt proud of that, once. He could live off of the waste of the world, and reckoned he lived better than most.
His mother was right, though. It was killing him. He had no stability, no constants, and all it took was one wrong turn to ruin him. He wasn’t young anymore, no longer reckless and ambitious. So many of his cons that were the absolute pinnacle of cleverness, now only seemed insipid and cruel. What was once a Robin Hood-esque grifting of a mob-boss, now only seemed to be the taking advantage of a mammal who had lost his family. Cruel, and stupid, considering the family in question.
He was so stupid.
Slowly he began to realize that it was luck that had gotten him to this point. His clever plans, designed to take advantage of the inevitable gaps and discrepancies when such a diverse city comes together, could have all fallen apart on a dime. Most of the people in his business had been to jail or were dead. He didn’t see any way forward that didn’t land him in the same predicament. He didn’t want to die in a gutter, he didn’t want to constantly live a lie, he didn’t want to be a fox. He was only 29, but he felt old. Older than most in his business anyway. If only by experience.
Nick dropped his empty bottle back into the pack and registered the clattering of glass as it missed and rolled across the concrete. He stared as it came to rest, ugly and wasteful against a weedy crack. It fit perfectly in the city, he thought, empty, unwanted garbage in good company.
He was dying. His potential had plateaued, and he was a dreg of society. He wanted more and for the first time in his life realized he couldn’t get it doing what he was doing. His life, his lifestyle, kept his body alive but was killing him. He didn’t want to die.
He wondered if his mother was alive and a sudden influx of anxiety forced him to sit up, he didn’t know the answer to that question, how could he not know? He clutched the sides of the chair, the plastic creaking as his muscles clenched desperately.
Wait. Deep breaths. He would’ve been notified if there were any changes to her residence, he was technically her landlord in all but paper. A long-winded negotiation that took years to culminate meant he could ensure she kept her little apartment, though it meant he couldn’t afford his own residence. That was fine, fox’s were designed to be homeless, as her then landlord had said. That bitter wildebeest was the main season he did it. The rent was being raised every month and his mother was doing nothing but let herself get slowly kicked out.
His mother didn’t know that he was paying part of her rent or that he was alive. If she did, she would have found him, raked him over the coals, and forced him to take back the money. He would be happy never seeing her again if it meant she kept the money. Better he live in the streets than her. At least he knew how to deal with the real world. It came naturally to him, apparently, but he knew it wouldn’t come naturally to his mother. He wasn’t happy though, he missed her, missed family, but he had committed to this life a long time ago.
He wondered if she thought about him anymore, if she was wrought over with anxiety the same way he was. Guilt lowered his eyes and drooped his ears. Hindsight, even overly delayed hindsight, told him that she did, and what he was doing was the worst thing he could possibly be doing to her.
Those teary eyes, the most sad and afraid he had ever seen on her, he had caused that. And he likely had continued to cause it for years to come.
Nick hated himself then. Hated the world for his situation. Hated nothing and everything in general.
It wasn’t sustainable, something needed to change. Nick pulled his wallet out; Semi-forged credentials and fake names filled the woven material. He couldn’t remember the last time someone called him by his real name. He felt suddenly like a ghost, and realized that if he died, no one would know. It was a nauseous thought and he quickly buried it.
He stood, somewhat shaky, and started to walk through the streets. The area, a small industrial zone, was completely abandoned this time of year, only getting periodic use during the on-season. Some buildings, like the one he slunk into, go unused all year long. If a company tried to use this particular building, they would find they didn’t even own the rights to it anymore. Nick had bought it using a combination of bribes and squatters’ laws when he was 22. A clever trick considering he hadn’t started squatting in it yet. Due to strange and outdated zoning laws, he paid pennies for the actual building. Cheapest housing in Zootopia, not counting the bribes to make it happen with minimal records.
Inside the industrial building was a strange space. Rusty light poured in from the setting sun through blocky, warped windows. The concrete floor was carpeted, often in many layers, by a disparity of different styles and qualities of carpet scraps. Nick had salvaged them when a department store ran out of room for their remnants and were trying to get rid of them. He invoked a couple of laws technically meant for groceries and convinced the manager to let him take the carpets off their paws. He made a good profit for that hustle. He resold most of the larger remnants to smaller mammals as whole carpets and kept the irregular shapes for himself. No more cold paws in the morning for him, thank you.
Similar hustles throughout his years scored him all kinds of things. A top of the line grill that he had no way to run. A pile of sporting equipment for mice almost as tall as he was, all the detritus left over. Some were failures and bad investments; others were mementos of triumphs. Most had nothing to do with each-other. He’d found that the key to staying afloat in his business was versatility and adaptability. Nick was nothing if not versatile.
In a corner, were the clutter and carpet didn’t reach, was an old backpack. Nick slowly walked to it and picked it up. He stared at it, his disturbance sending a wave of dust and old shed fur swirling in the setting sun’s red light.
Inside were the clothes he left home in, long overdue library books to subjects he barely remembered, notebooks full of plans and ideas, and a few hundred bucks that quickly went into Nick’s pocket. They were probably some failsafe idea he had when he wasn’t as experienced, he had better ones now. Deeper still were some random odds and ends he couldn’t remember the purpose for and a small bundle wrapped up in red cloth.
He took the bundle and walked back to his eclectic den. With a heavy sigh he fell back into a giant recliner designed for larger animals and slowly unwrapped the handkerchief. An old wallet was uncovered, as were some outdated documentation he thought he would need in case he ever got caught. An unnecessary precaution, as he’d never really been caught. Opening the wallet, he stared at the learners permit with his adolescent face on it. He could’ve sworn it was a license, that he took the test before he went off on his own, but the proof was right there staring up in the image of his own face.
It was weird seeing his name on the card, disorienting even. He felt paranoid and laid bare despite over a decade of time separating the Nick in the picture and him. He was 15 when he set out. He’s met 15-year-olds, how had anyone take him seriously? He shook his head and spread out the cloth. A pine-tree motif mocked him from the corner.
Maybe he never stopped believing, he thought, why else did he keep the handkerchief? Certainly not for sentimentality. Brave, loyal, helpful, trustworthy; those were the words he swore by. The words feel so childish, insulting in their naivety.
Originally, he had kept the cloth as a reminder. A reminder that he could never be anything but a fox. He recognized the lie now. He kept the cloth for a far more heinous reason. He kept it because as deeply as he buried the desire, it was what he wanted to be, what he believed in.
He ran a paw over the embroidery, the keratin of his claws catching lightly on the thread. For all his cleverness, all his successful cons, the last time he had really felt proud of himself was when his mother had affixed this cloth surround his neck. Childish optimism, he supposed.
He was so full of conviction when he spoke that oath. He wanted to be brave, to face the world in spite of it’s overwhelming adversity. He wanted to be loyal. He wants to be loyal. It was exhausting being beholden to himself, he didn’t like himself. It was never rewarding for him to live for himself. His carefully maintained selfishness protected him in the streets but did not come naturally to him.
He wants to be helpful as well, despite his parasitical occupation. The few hustles he had that benefited everyone left him energized for months. There was a need to please in Nick; he had suppressed it long ago, but it was there. A need for people to like him, for a reason to like himself.
He wants to be trustworthy, but who could trust a fox? He didn’t. The only person who did was his mother and he proved her wrong every day. He still wanted it though, to be trustworthy. He wanted it with more passion than he had ever wanted anything. He would give everything he had worked at just to be looked at by the mammals of Zootopia as someone dependable, someone trustworthy.
With a snarl nick threw the handkerchief to the side. Nothing he had ever done in his miserable life would justify him as trustworthy. And even if he did, even if he did everything perfectly, he would still get the same looks, the same distrust. He felt the same anger he had felt as a child flush across his face and raise his hackles. He doesn’t owe Zootopia anything. They don’t want him, and he’ll die vindicated reciprocating that sentiment.
Why bother with anything else? He asked himself as his eyelids closed, I’m just a fox, after all.
The next day passed with the same routine Nick always followed, but when Nick left the factory building, there was a red cloth stuffed hesitantly in his pocket. Because as much as Nick was prepared to die a bitter, unfulfilled fox, he still wanted more.