“She…she didn’t make it.”
Is actually so chilling. Everything Pawbert says to Nick is deeply terrifying.
“But with snake bites you…go fast. You’ll see.”
“She’s gone Nick, just get it over with.”
“You’re done. Know when to quit.”
“Leave it! You’re gonna kill us both. It’s not worth dying for.”
The ONLY thing Nick does through this narration is fight. The ONLY words he says are “Where is she?” “JUDY!” and “Agree to disagree.” That is the entirety of everything Nick had to say to Pawbert. At no point does he try to converse, talk him out of anything, question, trick, bargain, rationalize, nothing. And all Pawbert knows Nick as is That Fox Whose Entire Reason For Living Is Judy Hopps.
It’s chilling because Pawbert knows that telling Nick that Judy is dead is going to destroy him, and he believes that it’s enough to let him cave and give into death entirely. He sincerely believes that Nick’s entire purpose for self-preservation is to keep Judy alive and if she’s gone, he might as well be, too. And he’s not even entirely wrong. Pawbert’s final plea, the complete 180° turn, “it’s not worth dying for,” isn’t “keeping her alive isn’t worth dying for,” it’s “YOU CANNOT SAVE HER, STOP FIGHTING, YOU HAVE NO REASON TO LIVE, SHE IS DEAD.”
But Nick saw her lifeless body. He heard she was dead and he SAW she was gone. And all he could think was, “If there’s even a fraction of a chance she’ll be okay, I can die knowing I did everything I possibly could to protect her.” The pure desperation in his eyes as he fights for that pen, not even sure if it’ll work, but fighting to do EVERYTHING he POSSIBLY can to save her. Even if he’s already SEEN that she’s dead. Which he has.
And then suddenly he’s looking her in the eyes and crying.
The slow-mo and pacing make it hard to grasp how fast it all happened, but he saw her, DEAD, and within sixty seconds he thought he was dead too, and then suddenly he was staring her in the eyes and panting. And all he could hear in his head was
But she’s right there. Alive.
“It’s not worth dying for.”
As a matter of fact, she is.
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