S04E21 - Map Day

"Map Day" is the twenty-first episode of Season 4 of We Can Fix Pawbert. Set days after "Routine", it turns from Pawbert's reentry work to Luther's own history. Luther has spent weeks filling an old notebook with a color-coded plan for a single day out, and has told Pawbert nothing about where it goes.

Synopsis

Before dawn at Pawthorne Mansion, Pawbert Lynxley wakes to find Luther Pawthorne filling a worn notebook with a color-coded itinerary, weeks of planning for a single day out together. In the kitchen, Nick Wilde burns hash browns while Judy Hopps stands ready with a fire extinguisher, and Judy suggests that she and Nick revisit their old neighborhood. Luther and Pawbert walk to the Rainbow Falls ZTA station and ride the Inner Loop to Big Dune, the old quarter of Sahara Square. At the spice market, Kamila, an old fennec fox vendor who knew Luther's parents before they married, recognizes him and sends a jar home for his mother, Maris. Behind an unmarked door, Sira, a jerboa who has known Luther since he was fifteen, tells Pawbert that the teenaged Luther spent hours in her back corner, hiding rather than thinking. They travel on to a clearing at the edge of a Tundratown ice field. There, Luther describes the three decisions he made at fifteen: to serve, to protect the mammals who matter to him, and to never let the Pawthorne name define him. He came out to his parents the same week. He has never brought anyone else to the viewpoint. They return at dusk to find Nick and Judy home from Acorn Heights with takeout. Luther and Pawbert shower together, and in bed Luther says he is tired of hiding and tells Pawbert he is the map's destination rather than part of it.

Plot

Before dawn in the master bedroom, Pawbert wakes to a reading lamp angled away from him and Luther propped against the headboard with an old notebook open in his lap. The page is dense with routes, times and contingencies, worked in four colors: transit in blue, walking in green, meals in red, and in yellow the stops Luther has labeled points of interest. Luther will not give him a time beyond calling it early. When Pawbert asks what he is planning, Luther turns the notebook around, and Pawbert picks out district and station names before he works out what the whole thing is. Luther says he wanted to take Pawbert somewhere and show him something, that he has been planning it for a while, and that he said nothing because he wanted it to be right. Pawbert kisses him and asks to see all of it.

In the kitchen, Nick is at the stove with a pan of hash browns well past saving while Judy stands by with a fire extinguisher, until she reaches past him and kills the burner herself. Luther and Pawbert come down dressed for a day out, Pawbert in his mother's green sweater. Asked where they are going, Luther says only that they are going out. Judy raises the idea of going back to their old neighborhood and stops mid-sentence on the fire escape where Nick first brought up marriage; Nick drops the teasing and agrees to the trip. Luther and Pawbert leave on foot rather than by car, walking the estate grounds and the quiet streets to the ZTA station at Rainbow Falls, where Luther confirms a schedule he has already memorized, along with the weather, crowd and delay contingencies behind it.

The Inner Loop carries them across the weather transition into Sahara Square, the air drying and warming as the architecture changes, and they get off at Big Dune. This is the district's original core, older than the Palm Hotel and the tourism that reorganized everything around it, its thick walls built to hold out cold and now holding out heat. Luther explains that history as they walk, and says he read about it as a young wolf because he wanted to understand how the city was put together. At the spice market he orders from memory, and the fennec fox behind the counter recognizes him partway through the order: Kamila, who has run the stall longer than Luther has been alive and knew his parents before they married. She sends a jar home for his mother, Maris, with a message that she remembers her. She looks Pawbert over, then tells Luther he should have someone. Luther pays more than she asks, and Pawbert notices without saying anything.

A few streets on, Luther stops at a narrow unmarked doorway and takes Pawbert into a small, dim tea house lined with hundreds of labeled jars. The owner, an elderly jerboa named Sira, greets Luther by name, tells him she thought he had forgotten them, and serves tea she chooses for them herself, raising the tray to table height on a small brass pulley. Luther has been coming here since he was fifteen, when he needed somewhere to work out who he was going to be and whether what he wanted would be allowed. Sira points to the dark corner where the teenage Luther used to sit for hours, and when he says he was thinking, she tells him he was hiding. She asks Pawbert whether Luther still does. Pawbert says not as much, and Sira leaves them with the tea.

They change trains and ride into Tundratown, the windows frosting as the climate shifts, and get off at Glacier Falls. Luther leads them away from the commercial blocks, through residential streets and parkland, out to an unmarked spot on the lip of an ice field, with the glacier standing across it. He tells Pawbert he did not come here as a teenager to think but to decide. At fifteen, standing on this ground, he made three choices: that he would serve something that kept mammals alive rather than the family business or the Pawthorne legacy; that he would protect the mammals who mattered to him, whatever it cost; and that he would never let the name define him. He came out to his parents the same week, and the two felt connected to him, both choices and both frightening. His father told him his heart was nothing that needed solving. His mother asked if he wanted stew.

Luther says he did not know then that the work would take everything, that undercover assignments would mean being no one for long enough to forget what being someone felt like, or that it would take meeting Pawbert to remind him he was a mammal rather than an operative. When Pawbert asks why he is being shown this, Luther says it is his answer to the tent site: the empty lot in Sahara Square where Pawbert had planned to start over, and the future he gave up. He wanted Pawbert to have the before as well as the after, including the version of himself who stood here in the cold at fifteen. He has never brought anyone else to the viewpoint, and says he wanted Pawbert to be the first and the only. They stand together in the wind until Pawbert suggests heading back before the schedule falls apart.

On the evening train Pawbert leans into Luther's shoulder and tells him his map worked. Luther starts to object to the word again and Pawbert overrides him: it is a map of them, of Luther, of the places that made him. They walk from Rainbow Falls through the neighborhood at dusk and find the mansion lit and occupied. Nick and Judy are back from Acorn Heights with takeout spread across the coffee table, having done the old haunts and the same noodle place as always. Nick calls the spice market romantic as a joke, and Luther agrees with him without irony. Judy asks Pawbert how the day was, and he tells her it was the best one.

Luther and Pawbert shower together. Pawbert stops him first to scent him, and the day carries into sex that ends with the two of them tied on the shower floor, the water off and the steam clearing. Afterward, Pawbert tells Luther that what he fell in love with is the whole of him, the before and the after both, including the fifteen-year-old on the ice field who decided to become someone who could save mammals. In bed, Luther says the tea vendor had it right, that he hid constantly for years and is done with it. When Pawbert says he likes being part of Luther's map, Luther corrects him: he is not part of it, he is where it goes. The house settles with both couples under one roof, and Pawbert falls asleep against Luther's chest.

Key Moments

• Luther reveals the color-coded itinerary he has spent weeks building
• Nick burns hash browns while Judy stands by with a fire extinguisher
• Judy raises going back to the old neighborhood and stops mid-sentence on the memory of the fire escape
• Luther and Pawbert walk to the Rainbow Falls station rather than drive, at Luther's insistence
• Kamila recognizes Luther at the spice market and sends a jar home for Maris
• Kamila sizes Pawbert up and gives her approval
• Luther pays Kamila more than her asking price
• Sira tells Pawbert that the teenage Luther was hiding in her back corner rather than thinking
• At the Glacier Falls viewpoint, Luther lays out the three decisions he made there at fifteen
• Luther reveals that he came out to his parents the same week and that they accepted him
• Luther explains the day is his answer to Pawbert showing him the tent site
• Luther says he has never brought anyone else to the viewpoint
• Nick and Judy spend their own day back in Acorn Heights
• Luther and Pawbert shower together and stay tied on the shower floor afterward
• Luther tells Pawbert he is the map's destination rather than part of it
• Both couples end the day under one roof

Key Lines

Characters Introduced

Locations

• Pawthorne Mansion — Master bedroom, kitchen, driveway, entryway, master bathroom
• Rainbow Falls ZTA station — Walkable from the estate; departure and return point
• Big Dune station — Sahara Square; the district's old quarter, from before the Palm Hotel
• Sahara Square spice market — Kamila's stall
• Sira's tea house — Behind an unmarked door in Big Dune; hundreds of tea varieties
• Glacier Falls viewpoint — Tundratown; unmarked ground on the lip of an ice field, the glacier visible across it
• Acorn Heights — Nick and Judy's old neighborhood (mentioned)

Items

• Luther's itinerary notebook — Old and well-worn at the edges, the writing inside fresh; color-coded blue for transit, green for walking, red for meals, yellow for points of interest
• Spices from Kamila — Two purchases at the stall: the pack's own kitchen set, and a jar Kamila sends home for Maris with a message that she remembers her
• Green sweater — Pawbert's mother's; worn through the whole day