Please check this fic out on deviantart because a fabulous artist named moonwolf03 will be illustrating for the story. You will also be able to find the art on her account, so please check her out, and I doubt you will be disappointed.

The song doesn't fit all the way, but it works for what it's worth.

The title is based off a quotation that is as follows:

When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one. ~Epitaph of Leonard P. Matlovich, 1988

A MEDAL FOR A MAN

BY THE YOUNG AND FREE DRAGON

If you only knew

I'm hanging by a thread

The web I spin for you

-If You Only Knew by Shinedown

"If you want him, you can have him." Marlene said

Kowalski had felt the need to confess his feelings for Marlene's boyfriend to her, but he certainly wasn't suspecting that answer.

"Pardon?"

"Skipper... isn't like himself when he's with me. He's hyper and unfocused and that's what I liked about him. I'd prefer to be in love with his romantic side and not the side that rejects me, but it doesn't seem like that's going to happen."

Kowalski's scientific mind rolled this over, and tried to comprehend it. This was almost as hard to understand as his feelings for Skipper. He'd come to realize them because he had though he was in love with Marlene. After all, the jealous feelings started when Skipper and Marlene became an item. But as he found out, his affection was actually for his leader and not the otter, who had taken him from him.

Now, he'd actually expected anything but an invitation to take Skipper. But nnow that it had come, he was feeling dizzy. He'd worked the possibilities of his relationship with Skipper last night and the option that this would happen had numbers that even frightened him a bit. He shook his head and went unsteady for a moment before pushing the anomaly out of his mind and focused on what was before him.

"But Skipper really likes you... You're going to just throw him away?"

"I'm not throwing him away," She replied. "I'm placing him in the flippers of someone I trust."

And with that Kowalski's heart swooned and he fainted.

When he awoke, he found himself in the penguin habitat. A cool, wet towel was draped over his forehead and his clipboard was beside him, with a pencil sharpened and ready. He grabbed it up, and sat up, forgetting the towel which he brushed off his board as it dropped on to it, and began scribbling equations. Someone could read him like a book. Nothing soothed him more than working on his board. As he began calculating the probability that Skipper would not only accept him, but return his affection, his flipper began to squeeze harder on the pencil and as he furiously carried a two over the equation (things always seem to go wrong there) his pencil snapped. As he looked at the broken fragments, all of his emotions that had been being released through the tool were now bottled into his stomach and as they rose in his throat, he felt like crying, though all he had to do was sharpen the pencil again. But he didn't. He dropped it and sat up, deciding to get his bearings and try to distract his mind. He set into his lab, more out of instinct than will power.

He saw a short, stout penguin turned away from him, shoulder rocking in sobs and a tape recorder held in his right flipper, braced against his side like a teddy bear.

"Skipper's log... 0700 hours. Things are looking grim for the team. Our remaining... member may have to carry on as Skipper... for his leader may not make the journey..."

He clicked the record button and the tape stopped turning, as did Kowalski heart, Skipper's words imprinted in the blood that rolled through his body.