thecapitol | [Open] Herzlichen Glückwunsch nachträglich

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[Open] Herzlichen Glückwunsch nachträglich

Who| Albert and anyone
What| It's a few days after Albert's birthday and he's in a rather good mood for once so he's playing the piano
Where| Tribute tower lobby
When| A few days after Eva's blackout
Warnings/Notes| Talk of mental health, suicide.

In general, Albert ignored his birthdays. They sort of lose meaning when you're not really aging and since he'd hit his twenties he'd rarely had one he didn't spend at work, locked in mortal combat for his life, or completely alone. If brought up to others they'd express their dismay, but Albert doesn't much care. It's just another day to him most years.

This year though, he's happy. Their mission to extract information from the Capitol had been a rousing success, he's out of the arena, and in a couple of weeks he should - finally - be able to get married to the man he's dedicated so many years to. So, true, it's a few days late, but in an effort to spread his good cheer, Albert's decided to do something utterly self serving that he hasn't indulged in for over a decade.

It's mid-morning when he steps out into the lobby of the tower with a few books under his arm. He knows he's seen an instrument somewhere around down here... Ah yes, there it is. A little off from the far wall, across from the elevators and partially obscured by a large potted plant is a baby grand piano. What it's doing there Albert has no earthly idea - maybe someone's poor thought on how to make the tower seem less like a prison and more like a high class hotel - but today he's going to take advantage of it.

He settles himself on the bench without much preamble and does a quiet scale to see if its in tune. Either they've improved even that technology or the Avoxes are charged with tuning it, but it plays beautifully and it's not long before strains of concertos and sonatas played from memory are filling the tower, wafting through hallways and any open door, either not noticing or not caring if anyone stops to listen.

Unless they say something, of course.

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Jet, for his part, had left after breakfast with just a mention of 'picking something up' and left Albert to his own devices. Ever since their successful mission, they were both in much better spirits in general. It was refreshing. They'd intended to spend the day relaxing and he still intended to do that, but Jet was not unaware of the date, he knew what had come and gone and considering everything that had been going on, he'd chosen not to mention it, but that didn't mean he'd let it go.

Over the years it had always been him and Frannie to remember Albert's birthday and Jet had always made a point of giving something small to the German for his birthday, something to remind the older man that Jet, at least, was glad he'd been born that day.

So he made good time heading to the bakery and picking up the little cupcake he'd special-ordered the day before. He briefly debated a candle but decided one was hardly enough but any others and he'd be carrying a little ball of fire instead of a pastry.

When the blond stepped back into the tower lobby, he paused, listening to the music he was sure hadn't been playing before. It was familiar. He'd already formed an idea of what he'd find by the time he located the piano and the man playing it and the sight made the New Yorker smile. Albert's playing had always been wonderful to him, no matter how much his partner would brush it off, Jet would push him to play more and let Jet hear a bit more of that magic. He hadn't heard it in a lifetime and it was just as familiar, magical and breathtaking as he remembered.

Jet silently moved over to the instrument and sat beside Albert on the bench, the cupcake earning a perch on the unused music rack.

"It's good to hear you play again...by the way, congratulations on turning ten-thousand years old."

"I think you may be off by a few millennia there." He continues to play, though the cupcake meets his eye and he smiles warmly. A decadent chocolate cake with whipped cream and a cherry, similar to the Black Forest cakes he used to insist on for various celebrations with their cyborg team. It's those little remembered details that Jet collects that make a warmth bubble happily in Albert's chest.

His fingers float over the keys for a moment, pausing to turn and allow him to kiss his fiance without being interrupted by his own playing. When he pulls away, he goes right back to playing. It's happier than what he used to draw from memory in those days staying at Kozumi's house, all fugues and dirges. This is a pleasing melody and, as music has always been an extension of Albert's mood, a good sign.

"Any requests?"

"Yeah? Math was never my favorite thing."

He took the kiss given to him happily and settled in, elbows resting on his knees as he listened. The music brought a smile to his face, not just for it's sweet sound, but also for the fact that Albert had never played something so light before, as far as he could remember.

"Not really, just keep playing. I'll listen as long as you play."

Of course, even as he sits there listening, his mind travels back to a little theater in Germany whose piano he and the man at his side had played on until those sirens had marked the end of their night out. It brought a serene smile to his face as his arm lightly brushed Albert's.

"That could be awhile. I'd rather you participate." A smile plays across his lips and he stops playing in order to scoot over and lend Jet access to the upper keys. "I know there's at least one song you know."

More modern music has never been Albert's forte, not unless its contemporary, but he'd dabbled in some rock and roll or similar in his day. It was impossible to escape in the late fifties and early sixties, people even making bootlegged records on old x-rays. It's the simple melodies that stuck with him though, and this one in particular holds deeper meaning just for himself and Jet.

An outright grin at his partner and Albert starts playing the beginnings of "Heart and Soul," exactly like that night they'd huddled together in the closed theater Jet had broken them into.

Edited 2014-09-25 05:51 (UTC)

As with the last time they met, it's music that draws them together, the fishing line being reeled in to bring her to shore.

She didn't want to wake up. When she did, and when she did with that brand still on her face, she felt more cheated than anything the Gamemakers had ever done before, than any of the myriad pieces of her soul they took by the fistful. She spent so long in her bed, staring at the ceiling, stroking the scar on her face with her fingertips, that her Escort had to come in and get her to agree to come out.

You'll have your medicine again, the Escort said. Things will get better.

And so she goes through the motions of a person. She isn't even the shadow of the girl who so peppily put herself in hot pants and tank tops and danced through the gymnasium, lounged on the couch, sang to the coffee maker. That girl's ghost lives everywhere in District Five except in Venus Dee Milo.

She leans against the wall and listens to Albert play, eyes closed, her lashes making awkward smiling faces against her own listless expression. She sways ever so slightly in rhythm.

"You play better than some pros I've met."

A smile breaks out brighter than before at both Albert's smile and the familiar notes coming from the piano. The younger man quickly re-positions himself on the bench and picks up the melody of the song right on cue.

Heart and soul, rhythm and melody, 004 and 002; the two of them expressed through music. If there was a 'their song,' this was it.

The music filled the air joyfully and Jet quickly forgot there was anything outside of their little melodic corner, just enjoying his partner's presence and mood.

Music. Music is not something Gannicus has ever really been familiar with. In his own lands, music consisted of drunk gladiators shouting songs at each other about blood and cocks. Gannicus knew the words off by heart - he'd sung enough of those songs himself. But actual music? It was a Roman thing, he thought. A pleasant, boring fuss of noise. Delicate harps and pretty little bells, designed to be cover Roman ugliness with a charming distraction.

But this sound? He has never heard anything like it at all. The piano's notes have a depth of soul he had never thought a sound could ever achieve - even from across the lobby, he finds himself stopping in his tracks to listen. He moves automatically toward it - the strange wooden table and the man seated behind it - until he is almost within touching distance of the black veneer.

Not that he dares to try and touch it. He doesn't want to break the spell.

"You possess skill," He says in a murmur of admiration.

"That's kind of you to say," he murmurs over his playing, slowing a bit but not stopping even as he glances up to meet her eyes and find them closed.

"I haven't played in..." He has to pause to think, even his fingers floating over the keys for a moment to afford him the quiet to do so. He returns to playing when he gives up. "Feels like ages. It probably has been, by some calender."

To him it feels like a few years, maybe three, but as a clone he knows he's technically never played and in ages of the world who even knows. He has no earthly idea of the date now, or the date he'd come from when reaped to the Capitol. The last he remembers it was two decades into the twenty first century and even then he played only sparingly. He'd rarely felt the need. Really, he'd rarely felt the need to do much more than go through the motions in those days. Nothing provided much fulfillment, not his job nor his hobbies what few of those there were. He'd been told that was a sign of depression but he'd shrugged it off. What had he had to be depressed about?

Funny that here he should find small measures of happiness, enough to play again, enough to make friends again. Maybe that says something about him as a person, or maybe it says something about Jet. About his dependence on his partner that makes him want to not just move forward for its own sake but actually live, let the colors bleed in over the blacks and grays and the static noise turn to rhythm and song. If there's anything comparing then and now proves to Albert, it's that Jet - that love - makes all the difference in the world, no matter how terrible that world may be.

He realizes he's been frowning down at the keys for several minutes and catches himself, looking up again at Venus. Or no, Delilah. She'd entrusted him with her name, he feels he should think of her by it. The whole person, not just the persona. She needs something too, something to bring the color and music back, only he's not quite sure what it is. He fails in that, unknowing of it when his thoughts are maybe not as progressive as they could be, but he was brought up to believe that some things were just a weakness in character, at least for himself. Depression as a condition wasn't recognized until he'd woken up abruptly in 2001 and the world had turned and left him behind four decades before.

But maybe talking is something. Knowing she has a friend is something.

"Sit with me, will you?"

"Sure. Long as you keep playing."

She slides in next to him, taking up not much space on the bench so that she doesn't hinder his attempts to get towards the higher keys. She's been around pianos this nice, before - recording studio pianos, where she laid down some demos, frilly little dance tracks about deep kisses and strong drinks and things she didn't have much experience in at all. She's learned that she's the vocalist, and she's not supposed to touch the instruments.

She's wearing a cardigan - dressed modestly, by her standards - and she pulls it tight around her even though there's no chill. She's small in her body, she's just a wire deep on the inside that's wrapped in stuffing and a face, and if she could really be the size she feels she could fit inside the palm of Albert's hand.

There are few places where she'd trust herself to be, but that might be one of them. He's explained hopelessness to her, but knowing how deeply he understands it hasn't been something she's learned through anything he's explicitly said - it's a feeling, it's the kindness. She hasn't had to say 'bipolar' for him to understand. He hasn't had to say 'depression, despair'.

"Did you stop playing, or did you just not have a chance?" There's a difference, and she knows it.

"I stopped. I convinced myself I didn't have the time, but things like this, if you want to do them, you find the time." The classical melody he'd been toying with slowly starts to become something more modern, or at least more modern than Baroque composers. It's a little more somber and has the smokey air of an underground dive bar. It makes him want a cigarette but he's left his pack upstairs. Tough luck.

"Initiate got me thinking about it before this last arena, actually. I made some excuse to him about it feeling wrong to play here, but he put it in perspective. Music's not something you do for others, not the sort I play anyway. It's for yourself." He tinkers in the middle range thoughtfully. "It's too easy to forget to feed your soul, especially in a place like this."

Not that he's sure he believes in a soul, per se, but there's certainly something at the core of people that makes them up and in Delilah he can see it decayed like his once was, like it still feels sometimes when he's sure he's broken and can't find the joy others seem to be able to take in small pleasures, much less large ones. It's a shriveled feeling and as she pulls her sweater closer around her shoulders, Albert feels as if she's echoing that sentiment through some ephemeral vibe he has no name for.

So maybe she needs her soul spoon fed.

"What sort of music do you like?" She'd had some popular thing he'd never heard on in the salon, but that could have just been the only thing on. He has no idea.

They play for awhile, Albert comfortable and cheerful in his partner's company and lacking any of the self consciousness he thought he'd have in coming down here to play. Initiate was right, there's nothing for denying himself music. It feels good, actually good to play again, even something so simple.

Maybe especially something so simple, given that it's Jet at his side.

With a grin, Albert takes his part and improvises on it, threading his rhythm through the melody part at Jet's fingers, having to literally thread his arms through Jet's in order to reach the higher keys. It likely messes with Jet's ability to play, but that's not really the point. It's the joy of it, playing together, old men being silly. They've earned a little bit of silliness, he thinks.

The resulting cacophony of them both missing keys and striking the wrong ones makes Albert laugh, deep and from his core, then plant an affectionate kiss to Jet's cheek as he withdraws his hands from the keys and wraps them around his husband to be's waist instead.

She sways on her hips, ever so gently, in time with the music, almost like a young tree in a hint of wind. She reaches up and pushes a lock of hair behind her ears (her Stylists permed and dyed it with blonde streaks even before she woke up, and she realizes it was probably around the same time they affixed the brand back to her face); she isn't wearing earrings, and something about how uncharacteristic it is for her to not be dolled up is more striking than any fluttering gold or pearl.

"Anything," she says, and then pauses. "No, that's a cop-out answer. I hate metal. I like a lot of dancefloor stuff, but I'm guessing that you don't listen to much Deadmau5 or Pharrell. Do you know any Nina Simone? Or, I guess, um, Gershwin, or I don't know, actually."

She shrugs. "I mean, you don't have to take requests from me. You can play whatever you want. I liked what you were playing earlier, too."

One has to feel they are worth something to put some oomph into making a request. She doesn't feel she's earned it, with the black marks on her record from good intentions landing flat and broken on the floor like birds too young to leave the nest. As kind as Albert is, as generous as he's being of his own volition, Venus doesn't know how to handle something being given to her from kindness and not with the expectation of something - a performance, a sexual favor, a nice word of mouth in whispered into the ear of a producer - and she feels as if she's taking advantage of him.

On the contrary, she's giving him something he doesn't feel he's ever received from anyone else - understanding. A real, deep understanding. Jet tries, and he does get what to do, but the underlying thoughts, causes, feelings that make Albert want to leave the world on bad days, he doesn't understand those. He can't, and something in Albert is so grateful that he can't because it means he's never experienced it. Jet's despaired before, but his reaction is to get up and try to do something anyway because what's the sense in laying down and not trying? He may hate himself sometimes, but he always strives to improve, do something, be something better.

But Delilah and Albert, they're two of a kind. They can see how easy it would be to just lay it all down, and what's worse is, sometimes, they can see it as a viable option.

"I know some Gershwin, Nina Simone too. I actually have a favorite of hers." He pauses for a moment, trying to remember how it starts with his fingers gliding carefully from key to key around the middle C. "I had to catch up on forty years of music all at once, but this stuck with me."

A short allegro to start, and Albert lays down the beginnings of Feeling Good at a lazy, plodding pace. The music rolls from his fingers and seems to crawl along the bench, coiling around them both and pulling at least a little bit of a hum from Albert. His voice is untrained and low, furtively quiet and completely overshadowed by his playing. It doesn't even seem as if he realizes he's making any other noise than through the piano at all.

Edited 2014-09-28 18:11 (UTC)

He'd been so engrossed in his piece, something he'd learned in his more advanced lessons as a child and managed to find a book that contained it, that Albert hadn't heard the other man approach. He stops for a moment and looks up at his sudden company, smiling a little at the compliment.

"Thank you. It's not what it once was, but I haven't played for quite some time." Years. Decades. He's lost count ad he has to wonder why he ever stopped for how much peace and joy he finds in it now. "You're a music lover?"

"A lover of many things," He rumbles in reply, lips pulling tight in a thin smile of amusement. It would almost be a poetic declaration were it not for the undercurrent of bleakness that cut through his words - he loved alcohol, he loved the black darkness of drinking in to oblivion, he loved losing sight of himself.

The smile turns wry as he adds: "Music never stood in their number."

Before now is the implication behind his words as he takes a step closer to the piano and reaches out to ghost a calloused finger against its lacquered curves.

"Was that the music of your homelands?"

The implication is not lost and Albert thinks that if he were a woman, he might have been getting flirted with. Even like this he wonders a little, what with his personal life on display view the entire network for everyone in the Capitol to see, but he's engaged and he simply smiles and takes the compliment gracefully.

As the question is asked, he turns back and picks at the keys again, a slow improvised melody coming from under his fingers as he responds. "That one, yes. Germany produced many great composers from before my time."

He'd hoped to be one of them, once upon a time, but the Nazis, the Communists, and Black Ghost had all seemed to conspire against him.

"I think I know this one. Hold on-" She closes her eyes again, groping in the dark for the words and tune to a song she hasn't heard in years, following the steps of the piano chords and the breadcrumbs of Albert's humming.

"Birds in the sky, you know how I feel- sun in the sky, you know, how I feel..." She doesn't remember the lyrics perfectly, stumbling onto 'sky' and 'sky' as a couplet, but she has the melody down pat.

Her voice is imperfect, not naturally earthy but not trained for something bluesy, and some notes are too smooth, too pop, others stumbling across slightly-off pacing or that natural break in her voice between her chest and her head. But it's not a bad rendition, and if the purpose of such a song is to tap into emotion, it's master-class.

When her voice breaks again over the back of her falsetto, as she scales and spirals up to that final peak, it's not from the limits of her vocal cords but a tightness in her throat, mirrored in the stinging in her eyes, the wetness that would have smeared mascara along her bottom lid if she'd worn it.

She slides down the last 'good', finding it easier to avoid that hitch when she's descending than climbing up, lazily, casually stumbling down like the last leaf in winter until the note she ends on dies as a warm rumble in her chest.

Like with playing, there's technical skill and then there's passion. Feeling behind the music that drives it. Without it, music wouldn't exist as all, or so Albert believes. It's born from emotion to express emotion and that's both what they're doing right now, feeling those lyrics and the melody wind into the meaning that they can't express in mere conversation.

His fingers on the keys take cue from her voice, trailing each rise and fall as a support for her notes, only taking over in lyrical breaks to improvise slightly with tinkling flares. When it finally winds down he keeps tickling the keys in the same melody, an underscore to their companionship.

"That was wonderful." The smile he gives is a real one, pulling the corners of his eyes into crinkled crows feet. Maybe the sun hasn't come out for her entirely just yet, but with that song maybe it can start to peek through the clouds just a little. "Just as rich as Simone."

"Man, don't even compare us. Nina Simone was the high priestess of soul." She tries to be subtle and quick as she wipes her tears with her fingertips and smiles, as if she were just clearing up her makeup, as if she'd worn any today. "Besides, it wouldn't be anywhere near as good without your playing."

She hasn't sung - hasn't really sung - in such a long time. Her voice has likely undergone a similar moratorium to Albert's fingertips. She wonders if, perhaps, dance music wasn't the right way to pitch herself back in the day, during her auditions, during her negotiations with men who spent twenty seconds talking about the songs and ten minutes on what she could wear in the music video. The recording contract never led anywhere - she ended up in Panem first - but it's possible she could have second thoughts to going back to it.

She laughs, unable to really hide those tears despite her best efforts. "Sorry. I'm all kinds of emotional today. Getting back on my medicine."

"I don't know much about soul music, but I do know that great singing comes from the heart and that you've done." He smiles again, a shy little thing, and looks back down at the keys. He doesn't disregard her compliment, but his playing gets a bit softer and slower, lowering the tempo. Still, there's emotion in it, variations on what the song brought out in the first place. It may be that the lyrics speak to already being at peace with one's state, but there's a tone to it that breathes hope, that lends the knowledge that things will improve and be better. A new dawn. A new day.

A new life.

What matters is how we move forward.

"Nothing wrong with showing a little emotion." He continues to watch the keys as he plays, granting her the dignity of pulling herself together in peace, even if he doesn't mind either way. It does explain how she'd ended her arena. Medicine isn't exactly plentiful on the inside, not unless you have generous sponsors, and with her being blacklisted... Well.

It still means it works, though. If the withdrawals are that bad he's certain he doesn't want to try, but it gets the wheels turning nonetheless. Maybe if he'd had access to something before things would have been different. Maybe not. He's not sure it's worth dwelling on now that he's in a good place all on his own but there's always the threat of those feelings coming back, that fear in the back of his mind that's always lurking like some nightmare beast from under the bed.

Its that fear that makes him want to ask about it, but he can't bring himself to do so. He just continues to play quietly.

"I used to be real good at hiding it. World's best poker face, you know? But whenever I go back on this stuff it's just waterworks all the time for like, a week." As if it's nothing, just a side effect like hot flashes or dizziness, entirely unrelated to anything on the inside of her head.

She composes herself and sets her hands in her lap, clearing her throat, letting him know he doesn't have to politely avert his eyes anymore. She can tell that he can play without having to look at the keys.

"But I can't really complain about it, because I'd be dead long ago without it. What I did in the Arena...that wasn't the first time I've done something like that. That was the fifth." One for every finger on one of her hands, she thinks. She takes a deep breath and now, it's her turn to look away from Albert, to avoid what might be the shock or sadness or judgment that people tend to have when she imparts information like that.

He's the first person she's told in a long time, and it's due to the trust they've built in such a short time, the understanding that comes from a place that others can't conjure from the ether.

"The two times I actively tried it I succeeded." He takes the song down into the lower register, as if to mirror the change in mood. "The first was an attempt to get rid of a villain. He'd tried to murder all of us, so I convinced myself it was the only way to do away with him, to get myself captured and act as a suicide bomber. He lived, I didn't. He brought me back as a monster."

He lets out a slow breath, eyes still on the keys even as his playing peters out into barely anything. "The second was out of grief. That first arena I was in... I didn't know we weren't playing for keeps, that they'd bring us back. Perry had killed Jet and I..."

He shakes his head, trying to clear that feeling from himself, but it still sits in his bones. Others might call it codependency, but Albert just knows he can't go through the grief of permanently losing someone he loves that much again. Living after that isn't living. "Other than that, there was always this general feeling that if I died, I would be alright with that. I don't feel that way much any longer, putting Jet through what I went through would be unforgivable. That and I've come to realize that dying is terrifying."

Finally he looks at her, and it's clear that it took him so long not because of any judgement he passes on her, but because of his own fear of her reaction. "But sometimes, even after all that, the thought of living can be even more frightening. If your medication can help make that feeling go away, then it's a good choice to take it."

Edited 2014-09-29 19:46 (UTC)

"Major key, please," she says quietly, finding that the music taking a more acutely dolorous tone and fading away is making the very air around her feel heavy, as if it's a cloud swollen pregnant with the weight of their confessions, ready to rain.

"The first time I tried, my aunt, she got so mad, she asked me how I could take everything she gave me for granted like that, and so..." And so eventually Venus joined a team of superheroes with a high mortality rate in fast-living Hollywood, knowing that would be a little harder to pin the blame on her. Starlets die all the time. It's no one's fault, but a vague condemnation of 'culture'.

She reaches over and, hoping it doesn't disturb his playing, the lingering sad notes, rests her hand on his knee.

"I'm glad they brought you back." Even if he might not necessarily be, although he seems much more adjusted, now, than she is. Much less eager to rush into the arms of sleep. "And I'm glad the medicine can tether me here."

Her request catches him a little off guard. He hadn't realized he'd slipped into more dour notes and so he scales up again. Even so, the fading melody of Feeling Good morphs into a soft rendition of Angel Eyes as they continue to talk, her hand on his knee drawing his gaze and a small smile instead of causing any disturbance.

"Thank you. I'm glad for both of those things as well." He looks at her full on, a gentle note of platonic affection in his gaze. "It took some time to come to terms with the first one. I know it may seem difficult now, but I believe you'll get there too."

She believes it's possible. She'd been starting to come to terms with her own happiness until recently, until the conga line of misfortune and personal blunders. The way he looks at her almost makes her believe that it could happen again.

"I was- I was happy, for a little while here. Because I had people I cared about, I was even in love, and for the first time I started feeling like- I woke up from one Arena and I wasn't sad to be awake. It wasn't like I opened my eyes and the world started flooding in like I'm some moldy old basement and-"

She sighs and finally, touches the piano. She leans her elbow on the top and runs her hand through her hair, the streaked, coiffed locks she woke up with.

"I'm not making sense. Point is I fucked it up between the last two Arenas and half my friends are dead. And I sound like an asshole because I was happy while we're in this- all this."

She waves a hand at the spotless, luxuriant Tribute Center, the perfect cage that imprisons them.

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[Open] Herzlichen Glückwunsch nachträglich

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