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Darker Pain	By : pronker Category: +M through R > Penguins of Madagascar Views: 280 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I make no profit from this fanfiction set in Dreamworks' Penguins of Madagascar franchise and I do not own Dreamworks.

Chapter List
- 1-1/1
- 1
Title: Darker Pain
Author: pronker
Era: Sometime during the show after S01E42, "Otter Things Have Happened," although this is the AUiest of AUs.
Summary:
"To learn that you have been deceived
By one you loved ...
That's dark despair
But darker pain to learn of it
And find you no longer care."
~Don Blandings
IOIOIOIOIO
"Sir, come home with us."
Skipper slammed down the almost full shot glass until it slopped. "No way, José."
Kowalski wiped Gammel Dansk from his beak. He waved to Private behind Skipper's back. No one could make Skipper obey for his own good, but Private came closest.
Private rubbed his flippers together in that way he had until Rico shoved him towards the bar. Glaring over his shoulder at his teammate, Private stumbled forward to try his luck.
"Skippa, Marlene picked Julien over you for the St. Valentine's Day Serenading Sleepover."
Skipper downed the stomach bitters in one gulp before rubbing his chest. "Thank you, Private Obvious. Do you have to rub my beak in it?"
The Elephant Café proved the only space on site to find liquor, so after seeing which way the wind blew with his former love, Skipper broke into the café's kitchen to drown his sorrows. Ghastly amounts of shattered window glass littered the floor of the place, along with broken bottles that looked like they might contain booze, but didn't. Pancake syrup made the biggest mess; the dark brown bottles cracked like nobody's business. If there existed a penguin who could read labels or read anything else, he or she would be fast tracked to Skipper's team by the Big Boss. No such bird lived on Planet Earth, however.
"Sorrysorry! It's best to face facts and, and move on. Skippa, it's wot you've taught me -"
Kowalski's temper flared. "Private, I could have said that! Get into formation by Rico! Mind the broken glass." The situation was worse than he'd assumed; Skipper made no attempt to break in covertly and this room would take huge amounts of damage control.
"Aye." Private's head hung to his chest while he mumbled wot a morale officer you are, Private Weenie. Rico's tsk tsk produced slumped shoulders to add to Private's woe in the disordered kitchen.
Kowalski flogged his brain; as second in command, it was his duty to step up when the commander needed options. He studied the scenario: Skipper just went on staring at the bottle prior to pouring himself another. The option of boozing until your heart stopped hurting was no option at all, unless -
"Men, tennnhut!" Without looking, Kowalski knew he was obeyed. "For'ard harch!" Six steps towards the bar, he calculated, so right about now - "Halt!"
Skipper continued self-medicating. Kowalski jabbed him with his elbow. "Gimme that. Sir."
Skipper laid his head on the bar top. "Here." He shoved to his left the unusually shaped bottle the color of the ocean 253.67 feet down.
Kowalski gestured to Rico and mimed drinking from a glass. Rico seemed to understand and vaulted over the bar to reach the glassware suspended by their stems above it. Private pointed his toes together and counted them as his senior teammate set up three more glasses. When Kowalski indicated Private, too, Kowalski realized in his heart of hearts that Private bellied up to the bar without yet understanding the strategy, but with all the trust in his pure soul.
Skipper jolted from his funk. "What ya doon - "
"We're joining you. Here's a toast to our loves past, present and future!" Kowalski poured a smidgen into his glass and slid the bottle to his left. He swirled the fluid and as it spun, his thoughts centered upon a certain dolphin who returned his feelings for a short while.
Rico topped his shot glass with fragrant liquor before hoisting it. "Xochi!"
After downing the shot in one gulp, Rico lay his head onto the bar top, too. Kowalski took the bottle to fill his glass to .2518 percent full from its original .1629. "Doris!" He swallowed hard before swallowing the delightful herbal restorative. After passing the bottle to Private around Skipper's back, he also laid his head onto the oak bar, which wasn't an actual bar top, dear readers, but a butcher's block with stools all round it and glassware rack suspended above.
"Why why why?" exploded Skipper. "Is it because Ringtail sings better'n me?"
Private had yet to toast.
Kowalski would address one issue at a time. "Well, sir, that is true - "
"Thanks a lot!"
Rico poked Kowalski's back perilously near his tickle spot between shoulder blades. Kowalski twitched and switched tactics. "I am troubled by your moral collapse, Skipper. What if Blowhole or Hans attacks?"
"Let 'em." Skipper's belch punctuated the bald statement.
Private seemed to have reached one of his two crushes to toast. "Shawna!" Leave it to Private to select an actual human.
Private sipped and choked, spluttering until Kowalski nearly halted the whole strategy. Tears streaming, the youngest penguin offered a watery smile to his commander, who had flipflopped his head from his left, and Kowalski, to his right, and Private.
Private wilted to rest his head on the oak, too. "S-Strong, innit?"
"Yuhgoodtho," came from Rico in a small voice, followed by a yawn.
Kowalski analyzed the situation of four little penguins in a row with their heads down. No tears, thank the Maker, no, Skipper did not weep easily. It might be better if he did. For three minutes, all was quiet. A rasping snore surged from his left which signified that Rico's constitution could not handle Gammel Dansk as well as it could cobra venom the time when he saved Skipper's life.
So much for the past. "Skipper, how about contacting Kitka? She has the advantage of being a bird, surely the better option than a mammal such as Marlene?"
I promise I'll make it up to you for this libel, friend Marlene.
"S'whut I like about 'Eenie," Skipper mumbled morosely. "She's different than us birds."
Kowalski bit off It's what I like about Doris, too, in his beak.
"Gimme, Lieutenant Kowalski."
Kowalski sat up and shook the bottle. "Doneski." Strategy successful! No more alcohol to add to the problem -
"So imma gonna crash their lil party." Skipper tossed the bottle over his shoulder to a satisfying crashtinklegrit.
Nooooooo! We were done with this! "No."
Bleary sapphire eyes displayed ruby red streaks. "Don' you tell me no."
Uh-oh, Routine Twenty-Seven: Backpedal. "We'll crash their little party, because never swim alone is our team motto, sir."
IOOIOIOIO
Ten minutes later, Skipper rolled his mostly sober body over Marlene's brick habitat fence. From underneath her plane tree, Kowalski had no idea how the inebriation drained away unless it were cold rage that froze it to carbon dioxide-like mist. He determined to inquire about the method, when emotional skies were clearer. Today's February thirteenth actual sky had dotted the sun with swift-moving spindly clouds; tonight was cold, with haze from a recent frost.
"Stealth mode, sir?"
"Yeah, I guess so."
Private whimpered, yet obeyed. He fanned out per Skipper's silent signal to approach Marlene's cave. When they reached the cave entrance, Skipper appeared more solid to Kowalski, more the righteous seeker of justice rather than the jilted lover. What would happen when Julien pranced around Marlene in the close confines of the cave he did not wish to consider.
The three penguins sidled into the cave, plastered against the walls until they reached the main chamber. Marlene had her back to them as she poured herself a cup of what smelled like Tie Guan Yin oolong. She hummed break up to make up, that's all we do first you love me, then you hate me, it's a game for fools.
This was not going to end well.
Skipper cleared his throat and Marlene jumped.
"Guys! Knock next time, huh?" She took the cup, meandered to her bed and sat down. She sipped the flowery smelling brew daintily.
"Why?"
"Because, Skipper, I like company as much as the next otter, but it's just good manners to knock or something."
"No, why are you dumping me?"
Direct, to the point and off-putting. Maybe he wasn't mostly sober, after all.
Marlene put her cup beside her on the bed, the same one that she and - Kowalski derailed that train of thought.
"It's complicated," she said.
"Try us."
Marlene rose to her feet, paws akimbo in Skipper's favorite stance. "Yeah, see, us. Why is the whole team here - wait, where's Rico?"
"Never mind Rico. I want to know now."
Marlene held her ground. "Why so serious? Julien came up with these plans for me, I agreed, and St. Valentine's Day Serenading Sleepover gathers the ticketed guests into a ginormous event tent after their sunset walk-around. Human singers sing them to sleep as they snooze on their cots. Julien and I will, well, enjoy the holiday. I hope you guys do, too." There it was, the haughty look that was not as attractive as it used to be; Kowalski thought this, and he was not even in love with Marlene.
Marlene took a step back from the ire she witnessed on Skipper's face.
"You have been planning this speech for some time, right?" The hurt pride that Kowalski noted in the kitchen was gone. Now all that was left was anger. "Where is Ringtail?"
"H-He's out with Maurice and Mort to gather cherry blossoms."
"What the hell for?"
She must have been getting flustered, because she dropped her paws to clasp them in front of her. "Did I say cherry blossoms? I meant crocus b-buds." Ah, now came the dithering. "It's waaay too early for cherry picking, I mean cherry blossoms, well actually any sort of cherry - "
Kowalski cringed for his friends' predicament. Not one single option bloomed to soothe their way.
"Stop that." Skipper's voice reached absolute zero.
"Stop what?"
"Stop treating me like I'm not here, like I'm not one hundred percent Antarctican male, saying stuff like cherry and Julien and I will enjoy the holiday." Was absolute zero minus one an option? "You know damned well I wanted us to celebrate together."
She firmed her lips. "This can't continue. We can't continue, because I, I, just don't want to." Her nostrils flared. "This is how you treat me when I choose to move on?"
"Move on? You mean move away. From me." All right, that was unfair and petulant and some other qualities that did not bear close examination. Skipper appeared unable to stop the flow of words, which was most un-leaderly. "I take it back. You are ready to move on. And so am I."
Moving on, except for his mission of protecting the zoo; it was going to be next to impossible to safeguard her without him seeing her each day to churn memories. At least Doris swam in faraway seas so Kowalski himself could get beyond the heartbreak.
"Wait, I'm not done, honeygirl. This thing with Julien is because he sings good, right? What if I take lessons - "
Before pathos could descend into bathos, Private spoke up, bless him. "Skippa, it's over, let's go home." He looped Skipper's flipper through his and tugged.
Kowalski matched his boldness and grabbed the other flipper that felt like basalt. "Your team has your back, sir, but it's time to leave."
The basalt trembled, perilously near a return to its liquid magma stage when Marlene said, "Not before I tell you something, Skipper. I've changed because I want more than a fling. Julien and I are both mammals and yeah, he's lemur and I'm otter, but it's a start to commit to him."
Kowalski and Private tugged some more; it was like trying to relocate Cleopatra's Needle from outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 64th.
"And you'll be a queen." Skipper's far-ranging battle mind must have come up with this scenario because it was light years ahead of Kowalski's own options. He couldn't believe Marlene's reply.
"Um, I hadn't thought that far ahead, but you're right about that, you're right. What gal wouldn't want to be a queen?"
The basalt regained control. Skipper shook off restraining flippers and growled, "Never mind. I'm going. You made your point, Your Highness. I liked you better as an ideal before we got together-together, and I got to know you."
Leave, leave, leave. Julien might return any moment and deep down, Julien was feeling over the moon happy that he had taken Marlene from Skipper. So what if Marlene wanted the lemur because of the holiday's serenading? So what if the humans on the sleepover caught sight of the two in either Julien's habitat or - no, it would be Marlene's habitat because she lived alone. Kowalski couldn't picture the lemur king's wooing with song, or other means, with Maurice and little sad-eyed Mort nearby. No, Marlene would entertain Julien where she had entertained Skipper. Kowalski's imagination volcanoed: she would lead Julien into her kitchen, into her living room, into her -
"Get out!" The teacup sailed to its target, which ducked with commando reflexes.
"Jerk!"
"Slob!"
"Loony!"
"Nitwit!"
"My mother warned me!"
Private and Kowalski picked up Skipper between them to hustle him to safety.
IOIOIOIOIO
The teacup may have smithereened, but the floor of the Elephant Café gleamed. It smelled nicely of Clorox, too.
"Rico," babbled Kowalski when Skipper remained sunk in silence, "you've mastered the cleaning superpower I always knew was inside you that's a talent maybe we could hire out your wonder tum - "
"Wot did you do with the broken glass?" Rico beckoned to Private before opening his maw to show his gullet.
"Oh. Good job, Rico."
Rico shut his beak with a snap! before shooting a look at Skipper, who hung out underneath the broken window. It was obvious their leader wanted to leave for the comforts of home. "'Kippaaaahkay?" he whispered.
Private seemed gloomy, too. "K'walski, fill him in." He stepped to Skipper's side and they both regarded the jagged edges of the sill.
"She's finished with him and vice versa."
Rico's awwwwww alerted Kowalski to the demolitions expert's tender heart. He swiftly placed a flipper over Rico's beak. "No eruptions from you! He's had a tough enough day without explosions."
"'Kay."
Rico and Kowalski joined their teammates under the window. At Skipper's silent signal, they leaped one by one through the gap towards home without getting cut.
IOIOIOIOIO
The End.
IOIOIOIOIO
- 1
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Darker Pain