Fragile

Characters: Penguin. Rating: T. Warnings: Mentions/implications of torture

Shachi was gone. Penguin didn't know why he'd left in the middle of the night, shades abandoned on the table, but that wasn't a concern. The ginger would be back when he was back, and Penguin suspected it would be a while.

He rolled over, unable to see anything in the darkness, and buried his face in his pillow. Underneath his body, his right hand was pressed against his sternum, clenched into a fist. It was uncomfortable, aggravating the wounds on his wrist, to say nothing of those on his arm and torso, but pain was fine, even good.

Pain meant that he was still alive. He wrenched his fingers from their fist into a clawed position, awkward in their makeshift prison beneath his body, and they dug in to his chest, the sensation easily bypassing the thin top he wore to ignite his nerves. Still alive. Awake and alive, in the Polar Tang. Safe.

Alone. Shachi had left the room, mumbling something about the bathroom although Penguin had heard the tears muffling his voice and felt when he'd knocked against the bed in an uncharacteristic act of clumsiness. No, Shachi wouldn't be back for a while, if at all that night, and Penguin felt the tears come.

There was no-one around to watch him, no-one he needed to hold together even as he fractured more and more under the strain. He didn't have to be strong anymore, so he screamed, biting the pillow as a gag and clutching tighter at his heart. His left hand clawed its way up the blankets until it found the pillow, clenching it like a lifeline and tearing the fabric.

He hurt, his nerves burning where his fingernails dug in, burning where the fabric rested over healing wounds, burning. In the morning, maybe he should procure more painkillers, but for the moment he let the pain bloom, because he was alive.

They were all alive, by some miracle. The poison that had seared his throat had tortured yet failed to kill. Jack's men, the blades, had failed to sever their connection to the world. Law, his vivre card little more than regenerating ash, had survived and come back to them. They were all alive.

But that didn't stop the pain. It didn't stop Penguin screaming his anguish into his pillow, tears streaming down his face and soaking into the fabric, because the pain meant they were alive, but it would have been so much kinder not to be. They hadn't asked to be drawn into a war, they hadn't asked to be told about Raido, forcing them into being guardians of a secret that wasn't theirs to protect but they didn't have a choice, because the minks trusted them and for Bepo's sake, they could never betray that trust.

The poison, the blades, Law's vivre card. The pain, unimaginable yet real. His body was shaking, the pillow now soaking wet with tears held back for too long. They were alive, they had survived, but it was a hollow victory when he couldn't stop his limbs from trembling or his voice from screaming itself raw in the safety of the night now that it finally had a chance to break through the layers of responsibility holding him back.

He'd held it together for the crew, then he'd held it together for Law. For the crew – Shachi, Bepo - again, letting them break as they needed because he was the one they looked to for strength and strength he would give.

But his strength wasn't inherent, couldn't withstand the pressure forever, and in the lonely darkness of the room with no-one to see, no-one who needed him to be strong, he finally broke.

It's been a while since I last did an angsty chapter, so I thought it was about time I threw another one in. Sort of a companion to Shatter (Chapter 79).

Thanks for reading!
Tsari