Stranger

Characters: Penguin, Law. Rating: K+. Warnings: None

When Penguin opened his eyes, consciousness returning with a rush and accompanied by a definite throbbing in his skull, he panicked. His – he'd call them companions for the moment - were unfamiliar faces, and he had no recollection of meeting them.

The taller of the two was annoyingly smart, not falling for his attempt to casually get information about them and silencing the ginger when he did fall for it. With that tactic a failure, Penguin had to resort to another, deflecting the question back at his interrogator because the last thing he remembered had nothing to do with the pair, and if they were a pair of innocent Samaritans that had happened to find his unconscious form and treat him with no ulterior motive, Penguin would eat his hat.

When he was asked if he knew who he was – his deflected question completely ignored – he couldn't help the derision that slipped into his voice. He gave them his name only because it was already on his hat, which he spotted resting on a nearby bed. Whether or not they believed him was a moot point, as far as he was concerned.

Where was he? Well, clearly this was an infirmary – a well stocked, state of the art infirmary. He didn't voice his further suspicions (on a ship, and not one on the right side of the law, for all that the infirmary was as hospital-grade as they came), hoping to be underestimated. He didn't expect his blunt answer to almost knock the ginger off that flimsy chair he was sitting on and narrowed his eyes slightly. The other man ignored the commotion.

He didn't know who they were, but from the way he was acting it was obvious this man was the ship's doctor. The front of his top proclaimed a jolly roger, and Penguin's stomach sank. Pirates. He was on a pirate ship. The only saving grace was that he wasn't restrained at all, although whether that was because they didn't think he was a threat or for some other reason he didn't know.

If the man wasn't a pirate, he might have felt sorry for the ginger as he toppled off his chair, crashing to the floor with a cut-off cry, but the ginger was a pirate, and so Penguin more or less ignored him as he asked after his condition. They were acting like he had amnesia, and he could admit that some things didn't quite add up in his mind.

How did he know they were pirates? That insignia wasn't a skull and crossbones like most were, and they were doing a good job of keeping the bloodlust concealed. He must have heard of this particular crew before, but how? And perhaps more importantly, why? Had he met them before, or was this the first time and he'd just seen them in the News Coo before? Either way didn't bode well – both demanded some sort of reputation, and pirate reputations were never for community service.

The ginger exploded at him first, as fiery as his hair colour suggested, and finally Penguin got some information, or at least, the information he was supposed to hear. The doctor hadn't silenced him this time, leaving him to spill some ridiculous story about how he was a pirate. As if. Penguin hated pirates.

He couldn't deny he was taken aback by the sight of the eyes behind the shades, bright with tears of pain as desperation as they wept, clearly damaged beyond repair. Was this ginger stupid? Revealing such a weakness to a stranger could be suicidal, and he'd been doing a good job of hiding it with his shades. Penguin hadn't noticed a thing in his earlier observations. The doctor once again let the ginger talk, to Penguin's surprise. There was no way that was faked, so there was no benefit to feeding him that information.

Seeing another opportunity to coax some information out of them, he asked what had happened, feigning ignorance. The most likely response would be for the doctor to silence the ginger again, maybe giving some plausible-sounding but wrong answer. Penguin was almost interested what lies they'd come up with – he knew what snowblindess looked like and the ginger clearly had it; lies would be easy to pick apart.

He had not expected the ginger to wail and flee the room and something that felt a little like guilt bubbled up in his gut. He quashed it. The man was a pirate, pirates deserved no sympathy. Even if there was some uncomfortable parallels with the way the ginger had claimed they'd grown up together, and the snowblindess that was common on Swallow Island.

"Aside from Shachi, the only one who knows what happened exactly is you," the doctor said, picking up the fallen chair and sitting on it.

"You're not really trying to convince me I'm a pirate, are you?" Penguin asked, disbelieving. It was true he couldn't actually remember what he was, but a pirate? No way. Even if he did somehow know the ginger from Swallow Island, that was impossible. "Instead of wasting your breath, shouldn't you pay more attention to that guy?"

"His name is Shachi," the doctor corrected. It didn't escape Penguin's notice that he'd yet to get the name of him. "The rest of the crew will help him." There was a slight quiver in his voice now, a new addition that caught Penguin's attention. The man wasn't steady as his first impression implied.

Either he was a brilliant actor, or there was more truth in what he and the ginger had been saying than Penguin was comfortable admitting.

"So, do you have a name or am I going to keep calling you doctor?" he asked, watching the man's jaw tense momentarily.

"Law," the man admitted instantly, a stark contrast to earlier when he refused to volunteer any information at all. Penguin figured the best way to play it was to go along with their inferences that they were acquainted. If he said what they wanted to hear, maybe they'd tell him information he could use.

"Is that what I call you?" he asked, and something that looked a bit like hope flashed across the doctor's face.

"Sometimes," he said, resting his elbows on his knees and seeming to relax slightly. Of course, he had just made it sound like he maybe remembered something. "Or Captain." Penguin forced himself to nod along, despite the fact that several things were wrong with that. It was another suggestion that he was a pirate, of all things! Also, did you even get doctor-captains? Weren't they completely different things?

It might explain why the infirmary was so well stocked… and Penguin was not going down that route. Keeping hold of who he was was difficult when he didn't remember what he did, but there was no way he was a pirate. For now he would have to gather as much information as possible and go from there.

If he was lucky, maybe he'd get some memories back to help disentangle truth from lies.

"So, Law," he drawled, watching something that looked a little like hurt flick across the other man's face. He'd been hoping for 'Captain', had he? Or maybe a friendlier tone. No, Penguin didn't trust him enough for that. "What happened to me?"

People wanted more from Recall, so more you can have! I know for a fact there's at least one more directly-related instalment on the way at some point.

Penguin is scared, paranoid, and doing his best to hide it because pirates. Working out exactly what he remembers and what he doesn't is pretty tough, especially as Shachi - an almost constant presence in his life - has been removed from his memories.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari