Chapter 11
The field was dark in front of him, miles of barely used pasture lit by the glow of the faint stars above. The blinding light below him only illuminated about half a mile outwards before fading into the gloom, enough to reveal the pristine asphalt of the basketball court and recreation area, surrounded by barbed wire topped fences and a few metres of the grassland beyond it. There were a few deep shadowed indents in the dewy grass, showing where a few of the sheep had chosen to lay before being scared off by the howling alarms.
Speaking of the howling alarms his head was ringing, and he wondered if it would be enough to give him tinnitus. As it was it made everything else sound muted by comparison.
His heart was pounding, chest heaving in low, uneven gasps as he fought from doubling over. They were only halfway done after all.
He narrowed his eyes, trying to peer into the darkness of the tree line far off in the distance.
A female voice was speaking, words harsh and venomous even as they swam in the cocktail of sirens and screaming voices. Somewhere below them, a muted metallic snapping, smooth with practice.
"A civilian? Are you braindead?!" She barked. "And why the fuck is he unconscious?! I thought I'd made this operation idiot proof, so explain to me how you botched it this fucking badly!"
"Don't know if it's his fault-" A male voice this time, low and breathy with lingering excitement.
A sharp metal click shut them up. "Shut it, You're not part of this!" The female snarled from somewhere behind him. "Kowalski!"
He awoke with a start, as if called, flippers already flailing towards the source of the electric shock. His eyes snapped open, then immediately shut again as he tamped down on the hiss in his throat at the piercing blue light burning through his retinas. Everything ached, from the sharp fire of his brain down to the bone deep exhaustion as he finally yanked the smarting electrode from his chest, turning onto his side to cup his skull in tight flippers as he ground his beak and shivered.
It never got easier.
Behind the sheer veil of his eyelids the light clicked off again, the ultra violet blue vanishing and leaving him in controlled darkness once again. It helped, even if only slightly, with the pounding in his head. The fire was back with a vengeance, burning through his skull with a practiced blistering heat. All he could do was hold on and try to ride the wave of agony rocking through his body with the force of a monsoon.
Eventually, like the tide, the pain retreated, washed away in the repetitive harsh breathing clawing out of his throat until he was left panting into the darkness, anxious to move lest it resurface.
Not that it ever did.
Finally releasing the low growl that had been trapped in the bubble in his throat Kowalski was reminded of how while the mind could recall in broad strokes what pain was, it could never really hold onto the exact feeling. He had a suspicion these headaches would prove to be the exception, sure the feeling of drowning in the white-hot pain would be seared deep into his brain by the end of this.
He let his eyes open slowly to the darkness. There were no lights on besides the ever present low led glow of the EKG monitor beeping rhythmically from beside the bunks. The quiet, high pitched chirps from the machine would occasionally be lost in a deep sleep sigh or murmur, the robotic whirr of the filter an added white noise to the background.
With less coordination and skill than usual he pulled himself out of the bunk, not worried about waking his team mates. The doses of medication soup dished out with a clockwork regularity did a spectacular job of keeping them asleep, even with the caffeine added to keep their hearts on a hair pin trigger and make the leap out of deep sleep more obvious to the machine monitoring them every second their eyes were closed.
Rico was half rolled out of his bunk, almost tangled in the wires stuck to his feathers and skin, spare flipper caught in the knotted mess between his temple and other flipper. His feathers were spiked outwards, face twisted in discomfort as he whined and murmured words that were utterly intelligible to anyone listening in. They were more than likely gibberish anyway. Below him Skipper was laid out like he were in a coffin, body a straight pin drop and flippers crossed over his chest that was rising and falling in low smooth intervals. Private was tucked away under a blanket, only a single flipper poking out to cover the exposed part of his head. A low lilac glow was concentrated on a peak of the blanket shroud, a tell-tale sign the unicorn plush was also present in the makeshift fort he had constructed.
Surprisingly Private had been the easiest to pluck feathers from, and while his toes had curled and his flippers had been tight enough on the cinderblock to risk taking hunks of rock with them when he finally let go he hadn't asked for a break once. It had been more than unusual, and Kowalski had been guilty enough to keep double checking he was sure. Private had only whined, eyes still scrunched tightly shut, and nodded gingerly, opening his clamped beak only to hiss in another harsh breath.
Skipper had been another story entirely, flinching heartily with every removed feather, shouting near curses and recoiling with ever more frequency towards the end of the procedure.
"CHRIST!" He hissed, lunging out of reach to latch his flipper onto the raw exposed skin and press down. "Hold on a minute soldier! I'm not a god-damned thanksgiving turkey!"
It had gotten old quickly, and was only exacerbated by the fact he refused to admit he couldn't handle the pain, smacking Privates flipper away when he offered to let Skipper squeeze it to brace against the feeling, claiming incorrectly he was doing fine.
Rico had simply shaved his off with a rouge razor blade he had procured from somewhere, and while Kowalski admired his quick thinking, it was also a stupid thing to do. He'd hacked off more than necessary, and the hard sheathes of the feather follicles were already growing back in. And that was without mentioning the slight nicks and gashes he had accidentally cut into his skin in the process.
If Rico had heard Kowalski's lecture about the dangerous complications that could arise from having severed his feathers in such a way, he certainly didn't act like it, only staring directly over Kowalski's shoulder with misty, distant eyes.
He'd at least managed to convince the other two not to attempt the same thing should their feathers grow back in too quickly, which was at least a partial win.
Rico let out another muttered sentence, the words, if they were words at all, slurred and pressed together so incorrectly as to be incomprehensible.
Groaning, Kowalski turned away from the web of wires, some spilling across the floor and others pulled thin and straining against the machine. It looked like the business end of an exceptionally long string of power lines, a mess of twisted cables strung unevenly into the power grid.
His eyes were steadily adjusting to the darkness, but he still had to feel his way over to the table, worried about knocking something vital over. They'd covered the porthole windows with newspaper, but the low, faded light still snuck in around the edges. Given that he couldn't follow the text on both sides of the paper clearly it must have been night, and reaching for the edges and pulling one lose his theory was confirmed. The water outside was an inky black, but the faux vintage street lights set up along the zoo paths still sunk through the depths enough light to increase the ambient glow of the base to the point edges of furniture and the mess on the table were highlighted in a faded halo.
A large pitcher was the centre of attention, at least a third drained already.
Private and Skipper had insisted on helping, and while Kowalski had been reticent at first, having extra flippers around to aid in de-capsuling and crushing pills back into fine powders had actually been an asset, even if Skipper had spent half the time rubbing the exposed skin on his chest instead.
The medications had obviously been dosed for adult humans with at least 10X their mass, and given the sheer amount of different types of pills they would need to take at the same time to get the desired outcome there was no way they would be able to simply pop a couple of pills and be done with it.
Skirting on the edge of caution Kowalski had used the mismatched set of measuring spoons to dose out the correct ratio of the powdered medications from their eclectic mix of bowls and cups into the pitcher. From there he had added water, dissolving only some of the powder, and at least suspending the rest. While it might have been easier to simply take the powder as it was, it would have been nigh on impossible to accurately dish out the tiny amount they actually needed without risking someone overdosing.
There were four plastic tumblers on the table as well, haphazardly mixed among the ceramic bowls and mugs still holding a fair amount of medication in each. He'd marked all of the cups with a masking tape line low to the base, indicating exactly how much of the drug cocktail they needed for a single dose.
Simply sir it up to redistribute the settled particles and pour a glass. I didn't get much easier, and he had demonstrated so, pouring everyone a first dose as he explained.
There had been an undeniable tension to the air as everyone had taken their cup, the unnatural silence of the base crackling with the static of worries and curiosity, and Kowalski had run out of words to fill it with, staring at the murky, grainy liquid in his cup and swirling it gently to keep the flecks of undissolved medication from dropping to the bottom.
Skipper cleared his throat, putting on what he probably thought was a convincing smile as he raised his cup over the centre of the table. "To lost memories found!" He announced, smile faltering but never failing
Private clicked his glass against Skippers with a murmured "hear hear." And Kowalski and Rico had copied automatically.
The fear was back, and it had ratcheted up to an eleven now he was faced with the result of his preparation. There was no turning back, not now, and that in and of itself was making his chest constrict. They were all standing on a thin precipice, the wall behind them moving closer to the edge with every moment, intent on pushing them over. Every individual concern was back, the spinning mess they made impossible to sift through on a one by one basis and dismiss. Kowalski's only option had been to push them down as much as he could and hold on to the thin line of ground holding him above the yawning chasm of the unknown below.
"Well," Skipper toasted, raising his cup once more for good measure. "Bottoms up boys."
Refusing to think, Kowalski had thrown back the gritty, floury liquid, and dived head first over the edge.
That had been three days ago.
The liquid was unpleasant, both bitter in taste and repulsive in texture, but it was far from the worst thing he had ever consumed. No, the worst part of the medication soup was the fact it worked.
They'd all had a dramatic increase in the number of times they woke with new memories as opposed to simply rousing from slumber as normal, and with the amount they were sleeping it was easy to see the marked improvement. Unfortunately, that also meant the number of headaches they had to endure had increased significantly as well. This was on top of the exhaustion already plaguing them. For the amount they were sleeping, being constantly awoken after only one REM cycle coupled with the caffeine keeping their sleep lighter than usual had meant none of them had properly rested in days. Speaking of days, they'd all blurred together in a monotonous repeating pattern of gross medicine, short periods of unconsciousness and blindingly intense wake up calls. Leaving them to catch the sun moving across the sky through covered windows in distinct light changes, and then endure the somehow endless periods of the same darkness over and over until it repeated once again.
He needed a break. Kowalski decidedly ignored the pitcher, instead picking up the coffee pot, still half full of lukewarm coffee and after double checking the mug he had grabbed wasn't full of melatonin, or cetaphrine, or any of the other powdered medications poured a hefty measure.
As much as it seemed like progress, Kowalski only found himself more lost than ever. So far nothing revealed to him through his recovered memories had even seemed like a clue. Not to the mystery of their current situation, nor to the unexplained arson he had once dabbled in.
The coffee wasn't good, but he continued drinking it anyway as an excuse to avoid having to down another shot of medication and return to his bunk for the time being, sitting heavily on one of the cinder blocks with a low groan.
That last memory… He narrowed his eyes, sipping at the somehow both burnt and cold liquid in his mug as he mused it over.
He had heard that voice before, the female speaking. Whoever she was. She had appeared before, but the male voice was entirely new.
He hadn't been able to see her the first time either. He had been sitting with his back to a doorway in an uncomfortable leather armchair, facing a plain white wall and slick polished concrete flooring. There had been a plant, but he was pretty sure it was fake.
"I can't let you do this. Unfortunately, they're just un-accounted for liability."
That had been a male voice, deeper but clearer than whoever else had enjoyed a starring role in his last memory. They'd barely finished speaking before she had spoken for the first time.
"So what are you planning on doing with him? I know you can't let him go, and you can't use him either unless you can prove he's not a risk." The male had tried to speak, only to be cut off by a goading reprimand. "And don't even try to lie that you don't want him, I've seen his scores."
There had been a moment of silence, undercut only by a faint shuffling.
The male voice spoke again. "It's a risk we can't afford…"
"It's a risk I can afford, and it's one I'm willing to take. Sir, assign him to me, and I'll do all of the heavy lifting. If he passes then you can have him for whatever you want, knowing he's loyal, and if not then I'll just have to handle it."
He had no idea who they were talking about. Due consideration had been given to the idea that they were talking about him, but the eerie stillness and blissfully quiet thoughts he'd had at the time didn't really make it seem like that was the case. Hell, Kowalski was getting worked up just remembering the conversation with the notion they were somehow discussing him, there was no way he would have been able to sit there and just endure being spoken about so candidly while he could hear every word.
Although…
Rico shifted again, rolling towards the back of his bunk and back onto his back, taking some of the strain off the wires, though it did little to free him from the knots he had tied himself into.
That last memory. She had been berating him. There was no doubt about that, she had even said his name. But he hadn't been angry about it, just letting the words wash off his oil coated feathers like water droplets instead, and while he was stiffening now, eager to jump to his own defence, at the time it had felt like it was all just par for the course.
Had he really been such a different person? The kind who just let things like that go unmentioned? Or maybe it was speaking to a familiarity he no longer recalled. It didn't sound like playful ribbing, but maybe whoever that female speaking was, she just had a hairpin temper and he knew that?
He sipped again at the cold coffee, grimacing at the taste. Regardless of who they had been talking about in that first memory, there was still the issue of scores and assignments. It sounded like someone had been tested for something, and while passing, were for some reason ineligible for consideration for whatever they wanted them for. Leaving them to be assigned to whoever she was, armed with her with the venomous tone and cutting words.
Kowalski furrowed his eyebrows and tapped a flipper against the table. He'd been over it in his head a thousand times since. While it felt like a clue, it didn't necessarily feel like it related to their current predicament.
And that was really the crux of it. While every memory had told him something new, none of it had been relevant, and that fact was starting to weigh on him.
Apparently no one else had discovered anything either, and while Private had described sprinting and leaping through a city like some kind of action hero, or the inside of a freezing meat locker in gratuitous and unnecessary detail, none of it was in any way relevant or helpful.
Skipper had been decidedly tight-lipped about everything he had seen, but he had promised if anything relevant came up he would share. Considering who he was and how he acted, it was a concession Kowalski hadn't even been sure he would get.
Rico, if he had seen anything or hadn't, had also been quiet. However his silence decidedly had more to do with his extended absence from reality. He'd been vacant since him first dose, and had yet to come back to them in any meaningful way. It might have been concerning if everyone else wasn't also distracted and exhausted. As it stood it just felt like a normal Rico reaction to everything that was happening as opposed to a problem, so they'd all come to the unspoken agreement to just let him be. Wherever he was it had to be better than here.
Speaking of here, the stone walls of the base were feeling more and more like a prison with every passing day. They could still leave, obviously, no one was keeping them here, but every time Kowalski had considered it up to this point he'd been sucker punched with a feeling of responsibility. This whole thing had been his idea after all and it felt almost like taking a break before anything pertinent was uncovered would be skating free of his duties.
It didn't help that around him, his team was fracturing in small, but noticeable ways.
Private was a shell of his former self, and outside of relaying his one exciting memory of diving and flipping through a bleak cityscape, hadn't smiled once. His eyes were ringed in dark purple bags, and a deep unshakable anxiety was present in every move he made. Without the relentless positivity the mood had been significantly darker than usual, made only more overbearing by Skipper's growing irritability and blood-hound like focus that left him jittery and snarling at every minor inconvenience.
In the face of all of it Kowalski had simply kept his head down and refused to involve himself, decidedly not rising to any of the taunting bait Skipper placed in front of him, or even considering trying to comfort Private. He hadn't even bothered Rico for a few days now, giving up on badgering him into taking his doses of the medication and instead leaving him to set his own schedule, marked mostly by sitting in dark corners of the base brushing his dolls hair or staring intently at her. Although even that was becoming strange.
Usually he treated Miss Perky like a human, sitting upright on chairs or the floor, crisply pressed fabric dress sitting modestly on her plastic thighs and movable ball and socket joints carefully positioned in an uncanny mimicry of a person, but lately… well… not so much. Just the other day he'd found Rico staring blankly ahead, one flipper mechanically alternating between brushing and stroking her hair from where the doll was thrown haphazardly facedown over his lap. It had been a jarring sight, and between Rico's dead eyed stare and jerky movements Kowalski had looked away after only a few moments. Choosing instead to focus on eating something for the sole purpose of nutritional value just to be able to take another dose of the liquid medication and forget the unnerving sight in the bliss of unconsciousness.
The team was still asleep even as Kowalski forced down the dregs of syrupy coffee left in the bottom of his mug with a shudder. Surely now there would be no harm in at least poking his head out of the fishbowl, just to feel something other than stagnant air and the fake halogen mimicry of sunlight on his feathers.
Rico growled, a low feral sound rattling from somewhere deep in his chest before tapering into a sharp whine, and it set Kowalski's feathers on edge.
Just ten minutes, he rationalised, pouring another cup of the stale coffee. Ten minutes of fresh air and a splash of caffeine and he'd feel better about the whole situation.
The second the fishbowl slid loose he almost melted against the ladder. The crisp, fresh tang of fake sea-water, and beyond that the nutty warmth of trees and shrubbery.
It was gorgeous.
There was even a slight low breeze, and while once he might have complained about the chill in the air, now it was nothing but a welcome reprieve from the stale air circulating around their base without even a fan to help move it around the enclosed space. Even the dark was less oppressive out here, the city skyline shining over the edge of the Zoo walls and the lamps littering the pathways a warm yellow glow creating soft halos of light on the smooth grey pavers.
He decided to leave the fishbowl only half pushed into place, at least partially airing out the base as he took his break. The breeze was ruffling the tips of his feathers, and it reminded him of just how clogged they were with dirt and oil. The water surrounding the ice floe would be cold, but it might almost be worth a quick swim.
Kowalski rolled out his shoulders, trying to ease the crick in his neck that had been slowly developing over the last day and a half as he sat on the edge of the concrete. A swim might be too much right now given how cold the water was and the gap in his waterproof feathers would probably leave him damp and unable to properly get dry, but he could at least dip his toes into the crystalline water.
It was cold, and he hissed, relishing in the shock to his system as they dipped below the surface with a quiet sound. The sensation felt almost new after so many hours of the same thing, and Kowalski found himself kicking his feet idly, just to listen to the sound of the water lapping gently against the walls of the habitat. Even the icy feeling of the water on his skin was welcomed, he felt more awake than he had in days. The light breaking over the crests of the radial ripples was almost enchanting, he felt like a fledgling seeing the world for the first time as he watched, enamoured with the surface of the water.
In his defence, the entire zoo almost felt new he hadn't seen it in so long, and he found himself looking around with fresh eyes, taking in all of the small details that were lost in the day to day. The smooth metal curve of the top of the fence, the short pavers that jutted ever so slightly out over the water, the carefully designed silhouette of the zoo walls and clocktower against the light of the city beyond.
He never wanted to leave, shivering pleasantly as the breeze passed by him again and taking another long sip from the coffee mug in his flippers. Even the coffee tasted better out here, he thought ruefully.
"Hey… Kowalski?!"
Like a whiplash his peace was disturbed and he groaned, twisting around just in time to catch Marlene launching herself at the icefloe in a darkly shaded blur. She landed clumsily, but stayed on her feet, brushing down her fur as he righted herself. She was positively beaming, yellow eyes almost aglow in the lamplight. "Oh my gosh, It's been so long since I've actually got a response from you guys! It's been impossible to get your attention, and you never leave your habitat anymore!" She rambled, pausing only for a beat to frown. "You haven't been ignoring me have you?"
Kowalski shook his head, trying to quell the quiet irritation bubbling in his chest. "You haven't been able to get our attention probably because you've been trying to get the attention of holograms." He muttered. His voice felt raspy, like it was struggling under its lessened use.
Marlene nodded, crossing quickly over to where he was sitting. "I thought it must have been something like that! Wait, hey, I thought the hologram only covered the smiling and waving schtick?"
Kowalski put his cup down with more force than necessary. Could Marlene not read a room? The last thing he needed right now was a barrage of useless questions. After everything that had happened with all of its high stakes and the important questions, all still needing answers, he was here, wasting what little energy and time he had on an Otter who had nothing to do with any of it. "I upgraded it."
Marlene sat down beside him, clasping her paws together on her lap and leaning forward to peer at him with the same bright smile. "Of course, I guess what I really meant to ask was why, you know?"
On some level Kowalski knew his reaction had nothing to do with Marlene. Not really. He was tired, irritable and had been living under the oppressive and demanding cloud of Skipper's hair pin temper and Private's visible hopelessness. And now, just when he had found peace, he was interrupted. It was a storm of bad timing made only worse by the fact he just didn't have the emotional capacity to do anything with that realisation.
"That's classified." He grunted. Marlene's smile had dimmed significantly, eyes betraying a wary sort of hurt.
"Come on Kowalski, Only Skipper uses that line." She said, and the thin pleading tone in her voice felt like nails on a chalkboard inside his skull.
"Well that's all there is to it. So if you don't mind…" he said, getting to his feet. The water below the ice floe sloshed heavily back and forth and what was left on his feet sluiced off quickly, forming dark stains on the concrete where he stood. The once pleasant chill breeze was now nothing short of bitingly cold on his wet skin.
Marlene followed him, regardless. "I'm really worried about you guys, you're usually never this wrapped up in your commando stuff!" She stood as she spoke, bending down to scoop up the cup Kowalski had left perched precariously on the edge of the concrete. She held onto it for a moment, cupping the sides like she was expecting it to be warm. She was clearly at least somewhat surprised when it wasn't.
She continued regardless. "Julien told me he's not allowed over here for a month and Mason and Phil just told me to leave you alone." Marlene mumbled, offered the mug in some kind of trite peace offering. She tried smiling again, but it came out thin and strained in a way that sat wrong on her face. "Won't you just tell me what's going on?"
So many questions, each one of them digging for something. Kowalski couldn't pin point when it had reared its head, but his paranoia was back and chomping at the bit. The zoos were nothing but giant observation tanks after all.
Kowalski stared at the mug in her paws, but didn't take it. "Are you actually worried Marlene?"
It was framed as a question, but he wasn't sure it came out like one. His voice was hard, tone sharp and flexing quickly over each syllable in a clipped rush. The otter recoiled slightly, drawing the mug back into her chest, eyes wider than before.
"O- Of Course I am! You guys are-"
He didn't let her finish. "I only ask because if you were actually worried you'd probably spend more time asking about our well-being than fishing for gossip." he snapped. "So I'll ask you again, are you actually worried?"
The change was immediate. The hurt gave way to surprise, which became confusion, and eventually landed on anger, each emotion only a tell-tale snapshot flicker across her face. He'd only just started understanding what it meant when the coffee was shoved into the centre of his chest with enough force to bruise.
"Fine! Screw me for actually caring about you guys I guess." Marlene snarled, "Next time I'll just let you work yourselves into the ground or whatever!"
Maybe if he hadn't been so tired he would have apologised. Maybe if the idea of the rookery dead hadn't been following him like an unwelcome shadow he might have been less abrasive.
Unfortunately that wasn't the case.
"I'm just saying maybe you should stop sticking your nose in other animals' business." He replied coldly.
Marlene's fur bristled, the otter baring her teeth in a snarl. "I have no idea why you've suddenly turned into a jerk, but I wouldn't want to stick my nose into your business and ask!" her eyes had narrowed into pointed shards of topaz. "I'm only bothering to ask because I thought we were friends! Guess I was wrong about that!"
The penny dropped, and it took his stomach with it. She was really upset, and where the same part of him that usually bristled and snapped at Skipper when he acted this way was more than ready bit to spit back something equally venomous, the part of his brain that was still functioning finally managed to wrap around the absurdity of his callous response.
"Marl-" He started.
But she had already turned away, throwing her Paws in the air as she stormed over to the far edge of the ice floe. "Save it!"
He watched her leave in silence, beak still open in the aborted attempt at an apology.
She hadn't seen any of them in days, and with their emphasis on secrecy of course she had no way of knowing just how bone deep the exhaustion and frustration was running. He could almost reconcile it, imagining how Skipper might have torn her apart, or Private might have broken into a weeping mess the moment he was pressed, but it did little to help. He knew better than to let his emotions rule him like this.
He was better than this.
Kowalski was left in the same silence from before, but now it was far from soothing and as he glanced down at the mug in his flippers he caught sight of his reflection in the cold coffee at the bottom. His eyes were lined in dark purple bags, feathers messy and shiny from an overproduction of oil and clogged with dirt. He looked like the walking dead. Of course she would have been worried. They were friends after all.
And in his sleep deprived and paranoid state he had cut through her for it.
He let out a heavy sigh, shoulders dropping as he pinched his eyes shut. Nice going Kowalski, you really outdid yourself on this one.
He'd have to go and apologize, explain at least why they couldn't tell her and why he'd behaved how he had.
The thought of it only made his exhaustion return two-fold, and with it a deep frustration. If he'd had enough common sense to just keep it civil this could have been avoided. Unbidden, a bitter laugh broke from his chest. How many situations could he have applied that logic too recently? He didn't even bother to count.
As he peeled his eyes open, it became apparent very quickly the light around him had changed. The concrete was brighter, outlining his shadow in stark lines against the faded blue.
The half open fishbowl was spewing bright ultraviolet light, the colour reflecting sharply off the half polished tin. Someone else was awake.
He descended the ladder quickly, pulling the bowl back down into place behind him reluctantly. While the air in the base was now decidedly less stale, it was still stifling compared to outside and he was almost immediately wistful for the cool breeze again. Private and Rico were still both asleep in their bunks, although sleep was maybe a stretch for Rico. He was clearly awake now, chest heaving in quick shuddering breaths as his flippers clenched and unclenched rhythmically, eyelids flickering even as he continued to pretend as though he was still asleep.
The light wasn't on in his bunk though, but Skippers, and as Kowalski verified he wasn't still in it, it flicked off again.
His eyes had adjusted for light, and because of that the new Darkness was almost impossible to see through, leaving him floundering carefully for the ladder rungs as he reached out for the floor.
It wasn't completely dark though, there was still the muted glow of the EKG monitor, two of the quadrants now left on flat-line and one spiking worryingly, and beyond that Kowalski could now see the thin outline of light coming from beyond his lab door. He had to skirt around the far edge of the table to avoid the tangle of wires, avoiding stubbing a toe by only the thinnest margin as he cracked the door and slipped inside.
Skipper was sitting on a cinderblock, eyes drawn as he considered the mystery wall in front of him, eyes only glancing over briefly to confirm who entered.
"I thought you'd be in here." He said. It wasn't a question, or an accusation, or even an explanation. Just a statement delivered in a flat, quiet mumble.
Kowalski placed his mug down on the table. "I went topside for some air, just for a few minutes."
Skipper's eyebrows raised slightly, but his face otherwise didn't change. "Oh? How was that?"
"Terrible. Marlene came over to ask me where we've all been and I might have bitten her head off for asking." He muttered, also sinking down into one of the makeshift chairs.
Skipper didn't turn to face him, remaining still as his eyes traced a pattern over the wall Kowalski couldn't begin to decipher. "You didn't tell her anything, did you?"
He shook his head before realising Skipper wouldn't be able to see that. "No." He amended. "Though I think that might have been half of the problem."
Skipper shrugged and opened his beak like he wanted to say something else, but shut it before doing so.
Strange, but as had already been proven, none of them were quite acting like themselves anymore. He'd half expected Skipper to tear him a new one for daring to leave the base instead of jumping headfirst into trying to recover another memory, but it was becoming more and more apparent with each passing second that wasn't going to happen.
In fact… "I assume you weren't just looking for me because I was missing?"
Skipper finally looked away from the wall with a noncommittal grunt, swinging his legs clumsily around the concrete brick to face the table. Almost immediately his eyes zeroed in on their next target and he motioned for the mug.
"I already drank half of it." Kowalski warned, nudging it over with the back of his flipper. "It's also cold."
"Do I really look like I'm in a position to care?" Skipper muttered, downing the remaining coffee in a sharp motion. It would almost be impressive if it weren't more concerning.
Kowalski raised an eyebrow. "Good?"
Skipper sighed, placing the mug heavily on the table. "It's terrible." He replied ruefully, eyes shifting to the side to finally meet his gaze. "But it's caffeine."
Kowalski couldn't say he disagreed.
Skipper rubbed at his forehead, propping his elbows on the table. "I've remembered something," He started, stopping as his beak twisted into a grimace, flipper falling away from his face. "I don't know if it's important or anything, but it's different at least."
Different really didn't mean much when Kowalski didn't even have a baseline for what normal was with regards to Skipper's memories. Even trying to base it off his own wouldn't have helped. The spectrum was so wide and sporadic he couldn't have outlined a trend even if he had wanted to. It was almost hard to believe they were all his memories at all.
He glanced over at the drawing of the fire still stubbornly clinging to the wall where he had placed it. Some were more difficult to believe than others.
If Skipper noticed his attention drifting he didn't comment on it. "I was in a white room, but it wasn't normal white, it was… I don't know… surgical white? If that makes sense?"
It didn't, but Kowalski nodded anyway.
Skipper sighed. "It was too clean. It was… You don't paint a room that colour unless you're wanting to make sure there is absolutely no dirt on any of the walls. Sterile is maybe a better word for it." He explained, apparently somehow sensing his lieutenant was failing to follow. "My head hurt, and I couldn't really move, but there was a human there, leaning over me."
That sparked Kowalski's interest and he sat forward on his chair. They didn't really interact with humans, and it wouldn't take much to assume they hadn't before all of this either, but Genevieve Waters had been human, and she had evidently been through the same thing they had. Not only that, but they were here, at a zoo run exclusively by humans with what could only be the express purpose of keeping them under observation. "Do you think –"
Skipper nodded. "That they did it? Maybe." He paused, eyes darkening. "No, Probably, right? That's the answer that makes the most sense."
Kowalski narrowed his eyes. "You don't sound sure of that."
"Well I don't have a lot of information." Skipper snapped in reply. "But he must be behind it. We don't work with humans."
Kowalski put his flippers up placatingly. "No, You're right, I thought the same thing when you brought it up." Skipper seemed to settle at that, his hairpin trigger anger settling back under the surface. "Did you recognise them?"
"Not at all. Dark hair, light skin, male. That's all I know." He sighed again, more intensely than before. "I know it's not much, but the feeling I had…" He shrugged. "It feels important."
Kowalski smiled, half-heartedly. "Then for all we know, it could be."
Skipper nodded slowly, resting his chin on his flipper, eyes locked on the rough concrete slab of the table. "It could be." He reiterated bitterly, frowning.
He could empathise with the feeling. They still had nothing concrete, and while the memory recovery plan they had laid out was working, they hadn't found anything that made it worth it, and that fact was weighing them down with each passing day. The lack of any frame of reference only made everything harder on top of that. Everything they dismissed could have been important and similarly everything they decided was important could turn out to be nothing at all.
The EKG monitor in the next room was still beeping its steady quiet rhythm
"Why us?"
The question broke him forcibly from his thoughts, and he blinked a few times to try and orient himself again. "I'm sorry?"
Skipper lifted his head off his flipper, eyebrows drawn together tightly. "I said, why us?" He repeated. "Why were we, specifically, put through this?" He waved a flipper haphazardly, presumably trying to demonstrate what he meant by this. Unfortunately the concept of this as everything that had occurred to them was such a broad term it left him flailing in every direction. "It's been bugging me for a while, and I just can't pin it down."
"Well… It could be anything. I suspect we won't know until we get all of our memories back-" Kowalski started, only to be cut off.
"I know that." Skipper's voice was sharp. "But we can make assumptions, Can't we?"
There was something there, and Kowalski tipped his head to the side. "You have one?"
Skipper's chest moved, breathing out a sharp laugh that never reached his throat. "I have a few." He clarified. "The most obvious?" Again he waved around, but somehow this time it felt more contained then before. "Look around you. Look at what we do. You don't think someone would want to stop us from doing that?"
As amateur as it was, Kowalski had to admit he hadn't really given much thought to the why, beyond ruling out suspects. He'd always assumed the answer to the why would be tied to whoever did this to them, not to who they were. "You mean our operation?" He asked.
"I know we work under the key tenant of being invisible now, but what if we'd been sloppy before this? What if someone had found out." Skipper urged.
It was a valid theory, but even as he thought about it, he couldn't find the evidence to label it as anything but. If this was tied less to who did this and more to them, it still left them in the same place. They could have been anyone prior to this, and while evidence and leftover habits and skills did point towards commando training in at least some regard, there was no way of telling how or why they were trained that way.
"It's a compelling thought…" He murmured, carefully picking his way around his words as Skipper's eyes hardened. "But we don't have any proof we even knew each other before all of this."
Skipper frowned again, sitting upright as he did. "What are you talking about, we must have known each other."
Kowalski shrugged. "We feel that way, but remember how sure we had been that we weren't missing memories in the first place." He watched as Skipper's expression dissolved slowly, the surety draining from his face as his eyes went back to the table top, flicking back and forth as he searched his memories. "I'm not saying it's the truth, but it's an option we can't rule out." He paused, regretting his next words. "It's not worth it to try and figure out why, when we don't even know the how, who, where or when yet."
Even with how gently he was picking over the issue, he expected Skipper to lunge for his throat regardless.
But he didn't, instead putting his head into his flippers and letting the silence grow into the corners of the lab. The light was bright, and it was making Kowalski's eyes hurt, his body screaming for an actual deep rest as opposed to the snatches of light sleep had had been getting for days. The oxymoron of sleeping all day and remaining tired wasn't lost on him.
From the other room the EKG monitor started beeping louder than before, the quick chirps growing closer together.
"You're right." Skipper muttered finally. "But that doesn't rule out an important possibility I don't think you've considered."
Kowalski wanted to ask him what he meant by that, what possibility Skipper was so sure he had somehow missed despite the hours and hours he had spent pouring over this problem from every single conceivable angle.
"What do-"
That was when the base was filled with a high pitched screaming.
Skipper launched to his feet instantly, any lingering remnants of the tiredness gone in an instant.
Kowalski felt his body seize, flippers dropping to cling onto the cinderblock he was sitting on, needing something to hold onto. It wasn't just the volume, or the pitch, it was the sound. Whoever was screaming sounded terrified, not simply scared, but petrified for their very life, and the feral insistence and intensity of it made his blood freeze and ears ring.
Skipper bolted, throwing the heavy iron door aside like it weighed nothing. Kowalski was following before he ever realised he was actually moving.
The gory spectre of his paranoia was flooding his mind and the worst case scenarios kept growing in number. Skipper hit the light switch, and in that tiny moment before the lights came on, Kowalski found himself bracing for the worst, expecting even behind his double-time heart and twisted insides the base to be covered in thick, red blood.
It wasn't, but the screaming didn't stop even when the lights went on.
Private was tangled in his blankets and the electrode wires, thrashing wildly as his flippers shoved and yanked at them, body alight with a shiver so pronounced to be almost a spasm. He still hadn't stopped screaming, even with the lights on and Skipper trying to yell over him, to try and ask what was happening, but it was clear he couldn't hear him.
Kowalski could only watch in a numb shock and Private finally freed himself from the electrodes, falling out of his bunk in a violent spray of limbs. His eyes were wide, shot through with a hot terror as he kicked out his legs and scrambled away from the bunk, moving as quickly as he could without considering getting up from the floor.
"NO!" He screamed, voice hitching unnaturally as a sob erupted from his chest. "NO!"
Of course Kowalski had seen Private scared. They all had. But never like this. Never this shattering all-encompassing terror that left him scraping backwards along the concrete as he screeched like his life was on the line. The room felt wrong, the light too intense after such a long darkness, only to reveal this horrified fear.
Skipper crouched down, reaching out to shake Private's shoulder. "What's hap-"
The second they touched, Private threw his head back, his voice breaking as he tried to scream louder, the cracked pitch raw and open like a wound. He launched himself to the side and away from the contact as his legs struck out wildly, Skipper forced to recoil sharply or risk being struck. "NO! STOP!"
He wasn't talking to Skipper. It wasn't a demand to be left alone, or a polite request, but a desperate terrified plea.
Looking around you would assume nothing was wrong. The base looked exactly the same as before, and that dissonance between watching Private devoured by terror and the inability to understand why was making Kowalski's feathers spike up. Something had happened, that much was obvious but there was nothing around to even begin to try and work out what it was so he could fix it.
It felt like the room was spinning, centred on the youngest recruit howling like he had been stabbed.
But once again there was nothing to fix, whatever was wrong was happening inside his head, and it left Kowalski at a loss. He didn't know how to help, and while he could spout prose and peer reviewed articles it would all be useless. Private had gathered himself into a tight upright ball where he had backed himself into a corner, and he looked smaller than he ever had before. Kowalski's heart sank into his chest as the familiar bite of panic started to gnaw at the back of his neck. He'd spent so long haunted by the murder of Genevieve waters he couldn't shake it, and while his mind was racing faster than he could follow, it always came back to that looming shadow of death he'd felt hanging over them for days.
There was something familiar in the glassy haze in Private's sharp eyes, even as thick waves of tears started to spill between his hyperventilating gasps. "I DON'T WANT TO DIE!"
Kowalski couldn't move, and even if he wanted to he had no idea what he would even do. There was too much happening, and it was all happening so suddenly. He didn't even know where to begin. Every time he thought he had his bearings something new would crash into him and knock him back into the tornado of shock and fear leaving him lost in its dizzy spiral. He didn't want to die? Where did that come from!?
Private's face was so far from what he remembered it felt like he was staring at a morbid Halloween mask instead, the dark circles a jarring contrast to the fiery bloodshot scleras, made only stranger by the glossy sheen of the uncontrolled tears. "I… I don't-" The small penguin looked like he could barely breathe anymore, his chest hammering back and forth so hard and fast Kowalski was concerned he would fracture a rib. Each breath he did get was wasted on a wet half sob that sounded like it was being punched out of him.
It was a panic attack, he knew that, but he was still stuck in the spiralling pit of his own fears and anxieties. Skipper was still crouched on the ground, flipper outstretched even as his expression was lost in a panicked concern. Kowalski needed him to do something, anything, because he couldn't.
There just wasn't any room for thought anymore, not between the scream still ringing in his ears and the current raw sobs punctuated by desperate heaving gasps. It was so off, so wrong, a microcosm of everything else that had happened and now he was stuck in the centre of it, fighting to keep his own breathing steady.
He couldn't help, and it felt like a failure.
"Private?"
Private didn't react to his own name, but Skipper and Kowalski did, both immediately shooting their eyes over to the bunks where Rico was climbing unsteadily out of his. It would sound absurd to say Kowalski had almost forgotten about him, but he very nearly had. For the first time in days Rico actually seemed present, the hazy shroud gone as he dropped lightly to the floor and crouched down, reaching out with steady flippers as he shuffled closer to where Private was huddled.
For only a moment Kowalski thought it made sense. The feeling he got looking at Private was like staring down the business end of a primed explosive in desperate need of disarming.
But Private wasn't a bomb. And Rico wasn't good with feelings. The resident maniac could barely regulate his own emotions, and now, watching him creep closer to Private in the full throes of a breakdown with nothing short of careful determination written on his face… It was like staring into a fun house mirror.
The floor was falling away under Kowalski's feet.
Private was gasping, mouth only forming the word no, like he didn't have enough breath left to actually voice it. Each muted plea was met only by a soft shushing as Rico inched slowly closer.
"Hey… Hey… Come on, breathe with me." He urged, raspy voice breaking over each syllable. "Come on, in and out."
Private didn't seem to be listening, but when Kowalski looked closer he could see that he had stopped forming words with his beak, instead eyes shut tightly as he heaved out rushed and hurried breaths.
Rico was nodding slightly as he drew in close, offering both of his flippers slowly. "That's it. Breathe." He murmured, a kindness to his voice Kowalski almost found unrecognisable. "Look."
Private's eyes opened slightly, only to shut again just as tightly as he shook his head viciously from side to side. "No-"
"Shhh, you're ok." Rico assured him, pushing his flippers outwards again. "Hold on."
Private didn't move, so Rico did, at first tapping gently on the flipper he had clamped over his head. Private flinched, beak grit, but Rico didn't step back, instead tapping gently again. He didn't stop, continually bushing their flippers together for short seconds as he continued to urge the smaller penguin to breathe. Private stopped flinching, and without warning he twisted his flipper around to catch Rico's when he came back in for another short tap.
The grip must have been punishing, but Rico didn't react beyond a soft grunt. "That's it, hold on."
It was working. Everything Rico was doing was somehow actually helping. The same penguin that threatened to throw up at the very mention of romance or feelings was now coaxing someone out of a panic attack in a way that felt almost effortless. Like he didn't have to think about it at all to know what he needed to do.
That alone would have been just enough cause for the lurking unease rotting away in Kowalski's organs, but it wasn't the only reason for it. There was a moment after each pointed decision Rico made that Kowalski felt himself understanding with startling clarity why he was doing what he was, but it wasn't until each step was made that he could realise it. It felt like an old habit forgotten and now rekindled.
He clenched his flippers into fists, trying to focus only on how the muscles felt to be contracted so tightly, and trying to block out all of the external stimuli feeding his own rising panic. He couldn't panic now.
Rico had carefully drawn the flipper down, forcing Private to open his posture, chest no longer coiled in on itself. The feeling of exposure must have spurred him as Private lunged forward to latch onto Rico's other outstretched flipper with just as crushing of a grip.
"That's it." Rico praised, shuffling still closer. "Keep breathing. You're here…" He paused here, and for a second his own posture stiffened. "Z-zoo. Night." He mumbled, stuttering only slightly over the words before he shook his head. A motion so small as to be almost unnoticeable. "Safe." He added emphatically, squeezing Privates flippers back.
Private was still shuddering, but there was a moment between each gasp where his chest stuttered but no breath came out. "I can't-" He rasped.
"You can." Rico interrupted, voice firm but still gentle. "Keep breathing. You're here."
Kowalski wasn't even sure what he was witnessing, eyes fixed on the scene in some morbid curiosity as Rico continued to try and Coax the smaller penguin into deeper breaths. Over all of it however, was this encompassing sense of relief as the harsh wet gasping that had been echoing through the base started to slow, his own breathing no longer trying to keep time with Private's.
"Can feel me?" Rico asked, beak twisting as Private squeezed tighter at his flippers in response. "Good, we're here, together." He affirmed. "We're not there. Can feel that."
Private barked out another sob, and Rico shushed him just as quickly. "In and out, with me." He reminded Private, taking a deep, exaggerated breath in and holding it for only a few beats before letting it out. He kept doing it, and while it took a minute, Private started to try and copy him, periodically squeezing down on his flippers as he did. Each time they started to get close to matching, Rico would slow his breathing again, moving the goal posts and forcing Private to follow him.
"I- I-" Private squeezed his eyes shut, voice breaking. "There was so much blood-" He choked out, another heart wrenching sob cutting him off.
Kowalski saw Skipper stiffen. He felt his slowly relaxing body re-tighten. Blood?!
The realisation came heavy and fast. It was a memory. That was where the panic was coming from. The screaming, the broken crying… all of it caused by a recovered memory.
The cocktail of prescription drugs had been put together in such a way to heighten feelings of anxiety and stress. At the time Kowalski had done it because he had hoped it would help them cut through the noise right to the part where this had happened to them. He'd never even stopped to consider an outcome like this one.
He should have though. That was his job.
Rico tried to shush Private again, but it didn't work, Private instead hunching over and re-compressing his heaving chest. "The kids they-" He gasped, "They were-"
The nausea hit like a wave.
Private was just a kid himself.
"I couldn't- they were- I don't-" The wall of panic was broken, and there was nothing left holding back Private's shuddering crying. "I don't want to die like they did!"
Kowalski was going to be sick.
He and Skipper had been so careful, tip-toeing around Genevieve's murder lest they burst Private's bubble of innocence and youth, and yet…
"They're looking for me – I can hear them, no one left alive-" He let out a long mournful cry and the sound of it lodged in Kowalski's throat as Skipper staggered to his feet. "I don't want to die!"
When Private jerked forward Rico was there to catch him, one flipper tight around the back of his neck and the other curled up into the centre of his back, holding him firm as Private collapsed into his body. His words had stopped, nothing left now but the hiccupping and choking of his uncontrolled sobbing.
Rico didn't like emotions. He'd made that clear on every occasion available to him, but now he allowed Private to cry into his shoulder, even tilting his head down to press against the side of the smaller penguins. His flipper was moving in soothing circles between his shoulders as he shushed him gently.
Dead kids. The thought was stuck on a loop in Kowalski's brain, and all he could do was stand there and watch as the youngest member of the rookery broke down.
Genevieve waters had been one thing. There had been a reason for it. She wasn't a good person. But innocent kids? Why had Private seen this? What kind of world had he come from?!
The fire felt trivial now. His possible attempted murder meant nothing. None of it did. Not when Private, who was just a kid himself, had seen something like that. Not when he had been hunted down. Not when he could have died.
No one left alive.
The stillness in the base was only kept from silence by the deep rattling breaths Private took between each harsh cry. A smooth surface of water only disturbed by the wretched flutter of an insect's wings as it drowned.
It was too much, too suddenly. Too much change, noise, light, emotion, everything; and it had left Kowalski stranded without a paddle, stuck adrift with his churning, vile thoughts, and no sign of land.
Everything they had done as a unit had always felt like it had come with the caveat of a soft reset. No matter what happened, they'd always be fine, and while there was change it was either a glacial creep or it didn't matter in the end. Now it felt like they were living without that luxury. Consequences meant something and the changes that were coming in faster than he could track weren't simply going to vanish when the day was over.
They were in real danger. And they couldn't just back out of it anymore.
Private's whole body was shaking with the force of his sobbing and Kowalski was left mentally pleading for the sound to stop. He couldn't help, but he couldn't leave, and the lack of agency was only making his thoughts run faster. He should have accounted for this. He should have known how to help. He shouldn't be panicking when Private needed them, and he shouldn't be so desperate for it to end just so he could feel better. What a selfish thing to do.
Private's face was barely visible from where he was pressed into Rico's shoulder, flippers hidden and tucked up into his chest. Rico twisted as much as he could without lessening his grip, and while his eyes were clouded with a complex tangle of emotions, they were still clear and searching as he made eye contact with Skipper and tipped his head towards the bunks. "Blanket." He grunted.
It seemed to take Skipper a moment, but after an initial stumble he nodded sharply and strode over to the bunks to try and work the blanket free of the electrode wires still tangled in it.
Rico turned further around, and Kowalski felt his heart skip a beat. He couldn't help. Not with this. He wasn't able.
He didn't know if his expression was what tipped him off, but Rico's eyes softened as they met his. The unjust gentleness was unwarranted, and Kowalski felt his stomach turn as Private let out a particularly sharp cry.
He had been useless. He didn't deserve the kindness.
Rico tipped his head again, motioning this time towards the back of the base. "DVD." He murmured.
It took a moment for what he meant to click, but when it did Kowalski's skin prickled both with relief and disgust at that very same relief. He turned before he could dissect it, forcing himself to focus only on what he was going to do. Dwelling on his own emotions would be a terrible thing to do at such a moment. He could digest his own cowardice later.
The Lunacorns DVD had been a gift after a successful solo mission, and while Private had rarely gotten to watch it because of the rest of the rookery's obvious impatience with cartoon horses, it still sat proudly beside the bulky television. Kowalski only realised how hard his flippers were shaking when he went to pick it up and nearly dropped it.
The poorly rendered eyes of the pink unicorn on the front almost felt mocking in such a situation, and he wrenched the case open to avoid their piercing stare. It was lucky the TV was old enough to have come with a built in DVD player and as robotically as he could manage he loaded the disk and started it up, cranking the volume until it was barely audible, unwilling to blast the cheerful ukulele music of the start-up screen at such a time.
When he turned back around, Skipper had managed to tuck the blanket as much as he could around Privates shoulders, Rico carefully rearranging his flippers to keep it in place. They were speaking in quiet voices, Skippers face grim even as he poked the corner of the fleecy fabric into place. Private wasn't light, but Rico lifted him like he weighed nothing, an unusual carefulness to his movement as he carried him over to the couch, placing him down in the middle and folding the fabric in around the still sobbing penguin.
Private looked up as Rico sat next to him, eyes more bloodshot than before and wet with the tears still rolling down his cheeks. In the second their eyes met Kowalski felt his guilt spike and he hurriedly turned back to the TV to select play all and avoid the complicated mess of dark emotions clawing at his insides.
He should have done better.
He should be better than this.
As the opening sequence for the episode began to roll he stepped away, keeping his eyes downcast to avoid catching eyes with anyone else accidentally.
There was a moment where he wasn't sure what to do with himself, standing behind the ratty old sofa as he crossed his flippers across his chest and finally allowed the shaky breath that had been building in his lungs to escape.
Dead kids.
It was like a dark mantra he couldn't shake. Why did it seem that like every rock they overturned had blood painted on the underside? Where had they gone so wrong? They used to deal with Lemurs trapped in cameras, or Cats hiding from animal control.
Now they dealt with recovered memories of dead children.
The understanding was like a knife to the chest and he almost doubled over at the force of it. The blade was wedged somewhere between his lungs, but it wasn't the only reason he couldn't breathe.
After all, wasn't this all his fault?
If he'd just listened when Skipper had said the headaches didn't mean anything they wouldn't be here right now. If he had just been able to let it go like the rest of them none of this would have happened. And sure, maybe they would have died, but an unexpected painless death must have been better than this.
Logically he knew that wasn't true. Logically, they didn't just handle frivolous adventures and fun misunderstandings. But that wasn't enough to keep himself from entertaining the thought. If only for a moment.
Besides, what were they actually going to go back to after all of this? Dead kids and attempted murder? How could that possibly have been better than living out a life free of consequence in a Zoo where their every need was met, surrounded by friends and wasting the limited days away pretending to be important.
"What if we chose this?"
The words came out of nowhere, and he was brought back to focus to see Skipper standing by the table, a green cup of medication in flippers. His eyes were dark and heavy as he lifted the glass to swill the contents inside and watch the grainy particles of undissolved medication spin listlessly in the water.
"I'm sorry?" He asked, coming in close to avoid being heard over the bouncing music and shrill voices of the TV.
Skipper glanced at him out of the corner of his eyes before sighing and placing the cup down, leaning heavily against the table top. He was frowning. "That's what I had been trying to ask you. What if the reason we're here is because we chose to be?"
Their conversation in the lab felt like a lifetime ago, and it took a moment to remember the discussion they had been having before the screaming had started. Even with context though the question still left him confused. "Are you suggesting we did this on purpose?"
Skipper sighed, rubbing his eyes. "I'm saying look around Kowalski." His voice wasn't angry or argumentative, and somehow that was the worst part. "Murdered children? Setting Fire to houses? We're not exactly remembering sunshine and rainbows here." He paused, like there was something else he wanted to say, brows furrowed as he toyed with the plastic tumbler. "They sound like things you'd choose to forget." He mumbled instead.
Kowalski could hardly say he was wrong. In fact as the words sank in, he could only see the abyss of the unknown yawning behind his eyes, dark and deep, and threatening to swallow him whole.
Skipper shook his head, standing up from the table and running a flipper over his head. "I'm just offering a suggestion." He finished, evidently done with the conversation before it had even started. He left the cup where it was. "I'm going to go sit with Private and Rico. You're welcome to join me."
He could only watch as Skipper joined the remainder of the Rookery, slinging an arm over Privates shoulder and allowing him to lean against him. The crying had stopped for the most part, only the occasional shuddering exhale giving away he was probably still fighting through it.
The cup sat on the table, almost mocking. Like somehow it was daring him to try and recover another memory, ready to throw his attempts back in his face with an accompanying horror from his past he had forgotten. But what else could he do? Living in blissful ignorance of danger was a far cry from choosing to ignore it and wait for a shot in the back of the skull that could come at any moment.
He'd gotten them into this, and hadn't even been able to do anything to help when the repercussions came at full speed to destroy someone he cared about. He deserved whatever he saw, horror and all.
It felt like standing in that room again, waiting under a blazing roof for the inevitable collapse. It felt like karma coming full circle and finally making him pay up for his choices. The lights, all still on in the base, were shining through the plastic, leaving a pale green shadow against the concrete.
"Walski?"
His flipper stopped an inch from the cup.
Rico had his neck craned over the edge of the couch, eyes just as soft as they had been before. He smiled, a sad small thing that curled up only at the edges with a muted hope. He waved gently, careful not to disturb Private beside him who was still leant heavily into Skipper's side. "Come. Sit."
The kindness settled wrong against the toxic mass in his stomach. He knew he didn't deserve it, and that he should turn him down immediately. He should take his medication and everything that came with it, and leave the remainder of the rookery out of his botched attempts at making things better for once. He wasn't worth this attempt at charity.
Even so, there was something about the guarded hope with which Rico had offered he could latch onto. There was enough worry in the air for a lifetime, and adding to that wouldn't help. If he didn't join them, would that almost be worse?
Maybe not. But just for now he could convince himself that was the case.
Private appeared to be in a light sleep now, his eyes shut even with his furrowed brows as he twitched and shivered sporadically. He burrowed further into his blanket cocoon with soft mournful sounds each time, and each time Skipper would rub his shoulder affectionately until he stilled again. Skipper's eyes were half shut, blinking slowly as he stared blankly ahead, face drawn in a concentration. It melted away each time Private pressed tighter to his side, only to be replaced with a reassuring smile that did little to hide the sadness belying it.
Rico offered him a quirked, tired grin as Kowalski rounded the edge of the sofa, shuffling over to make a little extra room and twitching his head at the newly vacant seat.
It was a squeeze, and the show itself wasn't in any way compelling, but that was hardly the point. Despite himself, Kowalski relaxed, and the phantom knife lodged in his chest vanished, finally letting him breathe unrestricted.
No one said anything, but the quiet comfort spoke volumes. Kowalski craned his neck back against the couch, letting his tired eyes drift shut of their own accord.
He'd have to get up eventually. Take another dose of the medication and try to face his teammates without losing himself to the idea everything they were going through was, at its core, his fault. He'd need to apologize to Marlene, consider Skipper's theory, and figure out if what Private had seen was relevant.
He shuddered slightly. Please, don't let it be.
The idea kept plaguing him, this idea of murdered children sitting in front of place in his mind even with the knowledge of their current safety. No one was here to hurt them. Not right now at least, and even if such a tragedy had occurred in Private's life, it was a part of a past none of them could even reach yet.
He could feel safe, but even with sleep looming, the dark pit in his stomach refused to close.
Beside him Rico shuffled slightly, punctuating his movement with a deep sigh as he settled back into the cushions. Apparently the movement had brought them closer together, because now there was a slow brush of Rico's feathers against his own each time one of them would breathe.
Without meaning to, Kowalski held his breath just a little longer each time, counting the seconds until each inhale and subsequent contact between them. The piercing voices of the children's cartoon blaring on the television were lost in the methodical pulse of the numbers ticking past.
Rico had always been a mystery, and really only part of that was because of the speech issues that had left communication stunted. It was more so just the erratic idiosyncrasies that seemed to just be buried in his nature. Every time Kowalski thought he had him pinned, he challenged those assumptions without even meaning to. He was an explosives expert who liked art. He was a maniac who got nervous when his teammates left without warning. Even his mental state seemed to turn on a dime. One second he was a conscious, valued member of the team, and the next he was mentally AWOL and clearly running through the motions in body only.
He'd thought he was comfortable with that. Chalk it up to an abomination to the natural order and be done with it. But even now that part of Kowalski's brain that never shut off needed to know why? Why was Rico, emotion repulsed Rico, the one able to coax Private through a panic attack? His personality was like a mach speed kaleidoscope, and just when you thought the picture was complete, the light shifted and revealed another facet that had been previously hidden.
I wasn't quite his personality though, after all no matter what changed there was still always a steady core of unhinged commando in the centre. Even so, it felt like he was dressing up in oversized coats, swapping between personas with such a regularity it almost felt like purposeful obfuscation of the truth, whatever that was.
Kowalski opened his eyes as he felt a heavy weight lean against his shoulder. He glanced down, moving his head as little as possible only to see Rico's head had dropped onto his shoulder. His eyes were closed, and while he wasn't asleep yet, it was readily apparent he would be soon.
Who was he? Kowalski didn't have an answer. In fairness, he couldn't even answer that question about himself, so it was almost meaningless, but it didn't stop the suspicion.
It was of course totally possible all of this was a misunderstanding. None of the rookery had ever panicked quite like Private just had, and there was always the simple answer that Rico was dealing with a mental state far more disordered than he had first assumed. But there was something there he couldn't place. Something about Rico was wrong, and possibly always had been.
He could move, a slight shift just enough to wake him from his almost asleep state and get him to move. He should do that. He had his suspicions after all, and it wouldn't take much, but even as he considered it he felt himself relaxing once again as his head tipped back into the couch.
Too much had happened tonight, and even if Rico was an out and out liar he had still stepped in where no-one else could and brought their most vulnerable team-mate back from the brink. And that had to count for something, didn't it?
Rico's head was heavy on his shoulder, but the weight was almost comforting, like an anchor holding him firm to the earth even as he felt like he was drifting further and further away from it.
He was here. He was at the Zoo, and it was night, and he was safe. The words felt like a second hand jacket, too large in the shoulders and too short in the sleeves, but they felt like they fit.
Kowalski may not have known how to deal with a panic attack before, but he did now, and he knew it so deeply it was almost like he'd never forgotten now. He could hear his own voice repeating the same mantra Rico had, you're here, you're safe, and I'm with you.
I promise I'm here with you.
Poor Private :( I feel bad kicking him around like this. Sorry lil guy!
Other than that what to say? Kowalski's moving in hard to take Skippers place as the most paranoid Penguin thats for sure, and every new memory is only complicating things more and more and I'm getting really really exited about it to be perfectly honest! we're just about to hit the halfway point on this bad boy and next week's chapter is going to be a fucking BIG ONE so make sure you're all here for that one for sure!
I feel bad, because while I love writing the lemurs they really haven't gotten a huge showing in this story. Unfortunately, tone regulation dictates they be sidelined for the most part, although I do entertain myself by imagining King Julien being in every scene. He's just so fun!
Trying to remain as cryptic as possible, let me just say that from what I've heard from you guys it definitely seems like you're all picking up what I'm laying down, which is very rewarding to see! Can't use Chekov's gun if you never show it, am I right?
Also – a Big shout out to NPI and HappyNess! Your lovely comments made my day when I read them! 3
Ok, I'm out, but I'm veeeeerrrrryyyyyy much looking forward to seeing you all again next time ;)
See you all next week~
Peace!