So I promised (a long while ago) mumblybee, completelysane and shaherazade that I would make penguins sad. Here it is:

“Do you get it?” Wash asked eagerly. Connie smiled her uncertainty and shook her head. “They mate for life! Don’t read too much into it, I just thought it was, you know, cute. So I have one and you have one and…Connie, there’s no need for that face.”

She smiled, genuinely this time, and said, “it’s just…sometimes it really is like you stepped out of one of those really cheesy movies. You’re giving me a little penguin figure and talking about how they mate for life and, Wash, do you even listen to yourself? I feel like I should be in a musical number or something. Birds should comb my hair every morning.”

“What’s wrong with that?” he asked, pressing the small ceramic penguin into her palm. She kissed him.

“Nothing. It’s just unexpected.”

A few weeks later, after they had exploded so spectacularly that both of them could still see fireworks whenever they were in the same room, she walked up and handed the little figurine back to him.

“I looked it up,” she said as he stared at the small penguin. “Those are emperor penguins.”

“Yeah,” he confirmed, still staring at the figurine.

“They mate for a season, Wash. And then they move on.”

He swallowed his response and looked up at her, expecting softness or compassion or even pity. He found, instead, that she was staring at him in some form of cruel, superior triumph, and his words came back to him as he said, “maybe it’s better that way.”

She looked as if he had hit her, and then, unexpectedly, hit him with anger and indignation and a fist, and walked away as he held the future bruise she had just branded him with. The figurine had fallen and shattered on the ground, and he stepped over the forgotten pieces on his way to get an ice pack.