Chapter Text

I let out a solid yawn as I finally opened my eyes. Man, I hadn't slept that well in ages.

"So Sigrid, can you tell me a bit more about this Jarl of yours?" Came a voice. "I think I've got him narrowed down to a few different people and I just want to make sure..."

I blinked away the blurriness in my eyes and noted that I was not in fact on Francine's back. I was staring down at a badger with a laptop who looked a heck of a lot smaller than before.

I stared at my paws. The panic attack started almost instantly. No, no no... Not again.

Fangmeyer was on me in an instant. He took off his button up uniform top and passed it to me. "Quick, put this on!"

I blinked at him. "What?"

He locked eyes with me. "Trust me. It will help. Now slip it on and look in the mirror."

More curious than anything else, I did as I was told, carefully putting on the jacket (over a random blue T-shirt that had somehow ended up on me) and straightening it out. It fit pretty well all things considered.

I turned to the mirrors lining the dance studio's walls and eyed the wolf reflected back at me. Her uniform was rough, but she was clearly a ZPD patrol officer.

I felt oddly more comfortable. Not comfortable enough, but more so than last night.

I turned to the white wolf in his undershirt. "Thank you..." I fingered at his sleeves. "How did you know this would help?"

He smirked. "Judy Hopps is a cop, before anything else. Besides who better to deal with body dysphoria than me?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Huh?"

Fangmeyer blinked. "Uh... I'm trans." He broke out into a grin. "Wait, you actually didn't clock me? I thought I didn't pass at all."

I stared at him, suddenly very embarrassed. "I... I guess I just-"

"She's a bunny Fangsey," Nick said idly, appearing in the room with a 'Sofia & Katya Dance Studio' coffee mug clamped in his claws. He took a sip and threw on a casually smug smirk. "She doesn't use scent nearly as much as us canines."

I looked between the wolf and Nick. "Nick, you knew?"

He tapped his nose. "I thought you'd be able to smell him with the new hardware, but I guess that scent difference wasn't something you were trained to look for."

I thought back to the photos in Fangmeyer's apartment and several pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place. I turned to him, suddenly very curious. "So wait, does that mean you-?"

"Careful how you finish that sentence Hopps." Came Francine, who was still lying down on the floor with her eyes closed.

Fangmeyer shot the elephant a flat look. "She didn't say anything Francine, and it's not like I need you to defend me like some delicate snowflake."

The elephant groaned and rolled over, causing the floorboards to creak audibly. She propped her head up in her hands and narrowed her eyes. "Well excuse me for trying to have your back partner, I just thought you'd had enough of that crap last night."

Fangmeyer crossed his arms. "Are you still on about that? Sigrid's from the tenth century and she figured it out pretty quick. I think we can cut her some slack."

"They had trans people in the tenth century too." The elephant said, "Personally I think you're giving her extra leeway because it feeds your knight in shining armor complex." She batted her eyes and adopted a swooning look. "Oh Fangmeyer! I killed people for centuries and am currently raping your friend, please save me from myself!"

The white wolf snorted "Oh come on, it's not like Sigrid is inside her by choice."

The elephant rolled her eyes. "I swear Greg, you act like this whenever we bump into some cute wolf girl on-"

"Okay!" I called over the bickering duo. My eye was twitching. "Let's back up to how I'm being raped."

"Oh!" The Badger piped in, with a frighteningly cheery smile on her face. "She's saying that because we spoke to the spirit of the Viking Skald (that's a bard/storyteller girl) that's living inside your brain. She's currently slightly merged with your consciousness so it's an extremely intimate situation."

The badger put a finger to her chin, thoughtfully. "Buuuut... she didn't ask to be there or anything, and all the initial murder prodding stuff was because she's been forcibly loaded up with this magic testosterone called riastarthe. So it's less like she's raping you and more like the universe is forcing you to have brain sex at gunpoint."

Satisfied, she clapped her paws together. "So, anywho, could you put her back on the line for a minute? I'm filling in the pieces to so many puzzles!"

I stared at her. My brain was trying to process all of that information, but I was having a hard time getting past "buwuh?".

Nick took my hand and squeezed it. "It's going to be okay Judy. This is actually a good thing, now we have another piece of this crazy. Plus, we can actually reason with this girl, so it's not like you're strapped to some starving beast or anything."

A growl came from the corner. "Damnit you idiots! Nothing's changed!"

I turned to Wolford, still chained up in the corner. He grit his teeth, glaring at the room at large. "It's a lie, it's all a demon's lie and you bought it hook line and sinker."

Nick groaned, nonchalantly taking a sip of his coffee. "Wolford, do you have some kind of bondage fetish? I will gag you."

"Gag this!" Wolford shrugged off the shoulder of his coat, revealing a very nasty set of scars. "You know who did that? Stella did that! A sweet eight year old girl who liked coloring books and wanted to be veterinarian so she could spend all day playing with parrots."

His eyes grew cold, haunted. "You know, she had my parents blood on her muzzle when she came for me. It was all over her rocket ship pajamas. I freaking begged her to stop as I ran, but she didn't even flinch..."

He shot Nick a hard look. "You know who tore her off of me? A Sheathed Fang trooper. You know who put her out of her misery? A Red Wool. One of the same Red Wools that the demon in Judy railed against."

His voice was firm. "You're all just sitting around chatting with your new friend Sigrid huh? Did you all just conveniently forget what she did to that guy at the fish market? About what she made him do to all of those animals? Fangmeyer you spent two hours picking up scraps from what was left of that moose at the docks and all you can do is whine about how we should be cutting her slack? Have you all gone completely mental?!"

The room was silent.

Finally I walked over to wolford's gear belt and drew the silver knife.

Nick dropped his coffee on the mats, staring at me in shock. "Carrots what the hell are you doing!"

I sighed. "Taking out an insurance policy." I turned to the bound wolf. "This will kill me?"

His fur slicked. "Judy, no! You can't... Damn it, just let me take the fall! Clearly no one gives a used fig about me, I never wanted you to-"

I put a finger to his muzzle. "Wolford, just stop. This isn't your fall to take. It's mine."

Nick got between us. "Judy no! No, no, no! You are not killing yourself. You are going to be fine! You- You have to be!" The fox was quaking in his boots.

I smiled. I guess some part of him really did love me. I put the knife in my breast pocket, right by Fangmeyer's badge. "Like I said. It's an insurance policy. I'm not going to give up or anything, but we have to face facts. If it comes down to me or other people..."

I grit my teeth, my heart pounding just a little faster as the implication sunk in. Still, I couldn't back down. "I'm a cop Nick. Sometimes cops die. I knew what I was getting into right from the start." I took his paw in mine and gripped it tight. "But that's not going to happen, okay? We're going to fix this thing."

The fox was speechless. He looked so helpless when I was this size. I gave his hand one more squeeze and turned back to the room at large. "Okay, so did the voice... Sigrid I guess, have anything useful to say?"

Suddenly everyone found something far more interesting to look at than me.

I narrowed my eyes. "What? What now?"

Fangmeyer coughed. "Well, she gave us an idea..." he said, "But you're not going to like it."

#

The fire in Judy's mind burned bright. But that just made it all the more dangerous.

I panted. My fingers were blistering from the heat and covered with splinters.

Just one more log... One more...

My fingers were slipping, aching... But I managed to toss on the last leg.

I fell to my knees, finally managing to draw in a few scant breaths.

I eyed my handiwork wearily.

The use of riastarthe was a skill honed through generations, but the principle was simple, construct an analogy that worked for you and stick to it. Weave an elaborate tale, a complicated scene that explains the flow of energies through you, and then you'll be able to control the energy of battle rage just as you did the forces of the mundane world.

I had heard of mill workers who imagined harnessing the power of rushing streams, ship's pilots who flew through the waves with their power as though sailing on gale force winds...

My method was far more simple. To me at least, riastarthe was not rushing water or flowing air... It was fire.

It came in a flash if given wood, but would burn you if you did not dig a proper fire pit... Or left tinder lying around.

When I was young, my uncle and I had built a whole mead hall in my mind with two hearths and a cook stove to make sure the temperature and fuel was perfectly controlled.

But now my mind was so scattered and my spirit was so broken that all I could think of was a blazing heap of wood surrounded by a dark frozen forest of crumbling trees.

It burned bright, brighter than any fire I could remember. With such power I could undoubtedly burn the whole world to the ground.

But I would burn with it, and where torches could be lit by smaller flames, this one was far too hot to harness safely.

So I sat in the mind of a prey creature I did not know, the side of me away from the flame always freezing, throwing deadfall onto a fire and praying the forest didn't burn down around me.

Or at least that's what I was doing. After all this time I just didn't have the strength. The fire was the size of two garou stacked on top of each other and I'd barely managed to ring it with stones before it lit up all of the frosted brush surrounding it. I had been furiously throwing wood on the pile for what felt like years and those damn branches just kept crumbling around me.

By now I could barely move. I never knew the dead could tire. I tried to pick myself up, but my muscles ached and my breaths came shallow... Besides, the fire was warm in the cold night. I knew I would burn if I jumped inside it, but at least the chill would leave my bones wouldn't it? It would have to...

"You know that's not how it works Sigrid." Came a voice.

I turned my head in shock, just at the edge of the fire's light was the deer I wanted to see most in the world. I lunged to my feet. "Astrid!"

She held up her hooves. "Stay by the fire! Don't worry, I'll come to you."

Always a practical one, my love. She hopped over a few stray branches and the moment she was within arm's reach I pulled her into a desperate kiss. I stared at her. "You... You're here? How?!"

She took my hand in her hoof and squeezed it. Her face was surprisingly somber. "You have a wonderful imagination."

I stepped back. Of course, an illusion, a phantom with no substance. A common quirk of the mind.

I fell to my knees. "I... Oh gods I'm so sorry."

She knelt down an pulled me into a hug. "It's okay. You died trying to protect me, Sigrid I couldn't possibly ask for more than that."

She could have. She could have asked for so much more. Deserved so much better.

The deer frowned at my expression. "Here," She pulled out a stoppered gourd and passed it to me. "Drink this, it will warm you up."

I opened the bottle and sniffed it. It was a good spiced cider, still piping hot and rich with cinnamon.

I blinked. "Where did this come from?"

She smiled back. "Could you really imagine a version of me that didn't bring refreshments?"

I chuckled. "I guess not." I downed the rich appley cider and felt the chill fade from my bones. Then I leaned on Astrid's shoulder and nuzzled into her fur, so different from a wolf's, so sweet smelling and perfect.

Another branch fell near us, a large one. I scrambled to my feet and Astrid rose as well. "We'd best get to it." The deer said. "With the two of us it won't be so hard."

I stared at her, "Wait? You can help me?"

She smirked, that calm, infuriating, knowing smirk that had drawn me in the first time I laid eyes on her. "Can you imagine a version of me that wouldn't?"

I broke out into a grin.

The managing of riastarthe, was all about analogies. She may be just a figment of my longing imagination, but all things in the mind had power.

I picked up one end of the fallen branch and she lifted another. I felt a dim hope light inside me.

I've bought you some time Judy... The rest is up to you.