Please, Remember Me: Arc I: Tailor's Son

A piece of fiction set in the Zootopia universe

Greywolfe, 2016

DISCLAIMER

I do not own Zootopia or the characters found in Zootopia. Zootopia is the property of Disney, and is not my intellectual property. There is no financial gain made from this nor will any be sought. This is for entertainment purposes only.

Prologue

There's a lot of darkness in my past. A lot of things that – if I could, I would change. Certain situations where even just taking back a sarcastic remark might have made all the difference. Perhaps I could have re-arranged my plans. Included others in my thinking. Walked that extra mile. It doesn't matter. What matters is that there are various sins I'm not proud of. I don't talk about any of this to anyone.

I made a choice, long, long ago that I would not allow anyone to see anything other than what there appeared to be: a shifty, shady fox.

Which is why it made complete sense for me to be a con artist. If mammals don't trust you, then you're one step ahead. All you have to do is be a little smarter. Having done that rather successfully since I was twelve, it's easy now. Second nature almost.

You just have to remember the magic words: "Never let them see that they get to you."

… And then she came along.

I still don't talk much about my past, but… little inklings have slipped past the cracks. Little tremors that have turned to quakes of revelation on my part as I talk to her.

But that darkness…

Given her optimistic disposition, I try to never let it show.

Chapter I: Ghost of a Touch

It is autumn in Zootopia and all around me, trees have turned orange and red as their leaves wither and die so that they may fall to the ground in a soft blanket of amber.

We don't always have slow shifts, but this particular Saturday is like that. A peaceful day where not much of anything is happening in the world. I am on shift and she is not. Which probably means that she's spending her afternoon talking to her mother and father, catching up on the news from The Bunny Burrows.

As for me? I'm on break. It half-crosses my mind to call her – to find out what she's up to, but much as I'd love to hear her voice over the phone and as much as I'd love to trade witticisms back and forth, I also half-think that she needs a little space and time of her own, besides. There's our next shift together for that.

So, I make my way across the carpet of gold, hearing the sound of leaves as they crunch under paw until my bench comes into view. Well, that's how I've always thought of it when there's no one sitting on it and I'm alone on-shift.

Over the last three months, as the Night howler case has drifted into memory, I have shared this bench with her, have heard her soft laugh and her effusive stories about her family. Have shared lunches and case files. Have made more and better memories with her than I would have thought possible.

There's something in her that reminds me of who I was, once upon a time.

Before time, life and circumstance stripped those values away and replaced them with simpler, more cynical ideals. Did I need to survive? Yes. So I came up with ways to do it that would, very gently, buck the system, but never run too roughshod over it. Did I need friends? After a fashion. So I made some that I could always keep at arm's length.

In truth, I could have found proper work at a proper establishment and could have made do, but…

...remembering my Father.

Remembering what he went through and how the city crushed him.

Remembering how it took him in and spat him out the other side, a broken, defeated mammal who retreated back to being a first-rate fox.

That darkest gift that the city gave gently dissuaded me, and in the end, I grew up as a consummate con artist.

Those memories are stirred in my mind like stew in a cauldron. Ordinarily, I'm not quite so introspective as this, but today, something about her not being here or the leaves, like a carpet on the ground, indicating the passage of time, or the way I see others – so carefree and easy as they talk to one another… All of these things make those memories swirl and shift, tumble and roil… and then, there's a voice..

"Nicholas Piberius Wilde," it says. Softly, softly, like a wind through the trees.

And then again. Louder. "Nicholas Piberius Wilde." Closer now. I tip my ears this way and that, trying to discern where the voice is coming from, but to no avail. It. She? The voice sounds feminine. It is riding the waves of the wind. Sailing until it hits the shore of my bench.

"After all this time," she says, and yes. It's definitely a lady, "after all this time I have found you."

That confuses me.

"I have always been here," I tell her or at least I try to tell her. There's no real way to know where she is other than guesstimating that she's near my bench. "And if I'm not here then I'm at the precinct. If there's some sort of cri-"

She cuts through my words, slices through them like butter. "There has been no crime, Nicholas Piberius Wilde" — and this – the repeated use of my full name – this worries and scares me. I even try to broach the subject, but she will have none of it.

"I am Nick. Just Nick."

"You are more than 'just Nick,'" she says, the ethereal gust of her voice moving this way and that, like she's looking me over.

"You are Nicholas Piberius Wilde. You found the Night howlers. You wanted to become the first predator Junior Ranger Scout. You wanted to start a business with your Father. You..."

I'm not sure why she trails off exactly here, but it seems like there's more she wants to say. Maybe she can't? Or maybe…

...that darkness gets ahold of me. She knows a little too much about my history. Maybe it's a con. Maybe she's running some kind of scam. Whatever it is, I want none of it.

"I don't know who you are, and I'm not sure why you're reciting all these things, but I had better..."

She doesn't verbally cut me off this time. No. Instead, she just drops the act completely and materializes – that's the only real word for it – right beside me. Even when she does become visible, there's a translucency to her that makes it possible to see through her to the bench beneath.

The gawp on my face must look tremendously funny, because she chuckles. A throaty, low sound that seems to start in her belly before spilling from her vulpine lips. She is a fox. A beautiful, ethereal vixen with a dress made of glowing white light, a cane of solid birch and a kind of crown that keeps shifting and churning – changing like the shapes you might see in the clouds.

"I am The Keeper Of Memories," she explains.

I pick my jaw from the floor and the first thing from my lips is a quip, and belatedly once my brain catches up with my mouth, I realize – horrified – that the first thing I say to her must sound like an insult. Probably because it is, but that's my mouth. It never knows when to quit.

"Why aren't you an elephant?"

"Oh," she gazes at me, but doesn't look down to inspect herself. This is just an everyday event in an everyday lifetime of being some kind of celestial being, "I am not an elephant to you," she says simply. "I would most certainly be an elephant if I had been summoned by an elephant."

"Waitwaitwait," I say, holding up my paws. At long last, my customary confidence is re-asserting itself. That fogginess of being lost to memory all-but-gone. "Summoned? I didn't summon you. There's no chalk marks on the ground. No ritual candles..."

"That's...not really how it works," she says, a smile crossing her lips. I can almost see myself in that grin. I might have worn it as I slid the last piece of a police puzzle into place, or might have flickered with such a look at a mark before departing with their well-earned cash if it were a con. "How it works is: you get to thinking about your past, maybe because she has moved you toward introspection, and then I show up."

"I've never heard of you before, though..." I counter, lifting my arm up onto the back of the bench, so I can laze. I've decided that I'm hallucinating this whole thing. I haven't had enough sleep and here I am on my scheduled lunch break and I'm dreaming a kind of fox-angel that knows my past. Any minute now, one of the kids that uses the park as their own playground is going to see me, walk past me, nudge me and return me to wakefulness. Yes. That's exactly what's going to happen.

"I'm very rare," she shrugs, making no effort at all to deny my claim.

"What makes you show up for me? As opposed to other mammals?" This is a legitimate question and she shrugs it off. Her answer is only somewhat committal Again, almost like there are things she can't tell me, or things she won't tell me. "I don't really know. You're just… Part of The Plan some how."

Now I am pretty sure I'm hallucinating. The Plan? It sounds capital-letter-y.

"And this Plan? It advocates what, exactly?"

"That you – Nicholas Piberius Wilde"—that full name again—"need a little...fine tuning. A little rewiring."

"And if I don't take this opportunity? To be rewired, I mean?"

"Did you love your Father?"

This is so far out of left field that my immediate answer is completely unfiltered. Given time, I might have had a more succinct reaction, but my gut is truly punched, and she has me on invisible strings.

"I did," I declare. It is a solemn, simple declaration, because it is the truth. As with every story, of course, this truth is really a little more complicated than just that visceral reaction, but the visceral reaction seems to suit her well.

"And you miss him?"

I nod. I miss John Wilde so much that my heart aches every time I think of him. So I try not to do that too much.

"And you'd like to see him again?"

I shake my head. Now the hallucination has gone too far. I try not to think about him too much, but when I do, I go visit him. Well, sort of… I visit his headstone in the graveyard where he is buried. I put flowers there. I talk to him, and it always hurts. Somehow, the gulf of time should have erased the incalculable sadness, but it never has.

"That's... not possible," I say, somberly. "He has been gone for almost two decades now." I hope the emphasis is clear.

"He is not gone," she says, quite simply. "He is here. He is inside you." One of her clawed fingers points at my heart. Pressing against the gold of my badge, and I suppose – in a technical fashion... That is true...

"And if he is there and you loved him, then you can see him again."

My ears flatten. I miss John. I miss my Father.

I think she can see the sadness in my eyes, because one of her paws reaches out and touches along my shoulder, and just like that, I'm no longer there. I'm no longer on my bench. Instead I'm here.