Albert Heinrich (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silberfuchs) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thecapitol2016-02-06 08:23 pm
silberfuchs) wrote in thecapitol2016-02-06 08:23 pm
Entry tags:
[Open] He says, it's mine to give, but it's yours to choose
Who| Albert and Jet, Albert and Sigma, Albert and YOU
What| After having to shoot his husband out of the sky during the last District mission, Albert's been captured.
Where| Detainment Center. Visiting room, cafeteria, etc.
When| After the D8/D9 liberations
Warnings/Notes| Violence, suicidal topics, past body horror, forced drug abuse, body horror, probably other horrible things.
1. Arriving (Closed; for Jet)
He didn't resist.
Not when Punchy brought him into the enemy camp with a wavering gun and Albert's hands on his head knowing that a bullet of such small caliber, even at that close range, would just glance off of his metal body. Knowing that Punchy wouldn't shoot him, that he wouldn't go through Punchy to get away either, no matter how easy it would be.
Not when the Peacekeepers, an ironic use of the words, put the butts of their rifles to his face and back anyway as soon as they'd moved him to where he could be secured, where they could make sure he wasn't loaded, wasn't a bomb about to go off. He didn't feel it, not matter how he went down.
Not when the powers went off and he felt all those bruises, felt his skin taut on his cheek bones shiny and purple and tender to the touch. He doesn't touch it. He lets it be, a visible statement to how he must look inside.
He doesn't struggle, doesn't run, doesn't fight despite a myriad of opportunities. He barely even reacts until he's been put in his cell, the forcefield a barrier of static between himself and his captors. And even then it's one simple sentence.
"Show me Jet Link."
It's a threat despite its simple delivery, and it still somehow carries weight despite the energy barrier between anything Albert could do and those who wouldn't survive if he did it.
2. Settling
It's surprising how much prison and the military have in common as far as regimentation. There's a schedule for everything, rigid and unyielding. It would almost be a comfort in the irony of how similar it is to Thirteen's overly structured environment if it didn't also bring Albert memories of Black Ghost, of occupied Mocawa, of a lack of every autonomy that makes Thirteen bearable and keeps Albert grounded instead of adrift in memories he's sought for decades to repress.
Get up. Push ups until the force fields go down he couldn't do push ups at first, not when they'd kept his legs and arm for testing. Impossible to do push ups with only one extremity, shower not as cold as on Ghost Island, he thinks. He couldn't feel temperature right in those days, food, forced reeducation violence for its own sake, or for fear's sake. It's easier to detach from than being picked apart piece by piece, to know you died on the table at least twice but that didn't stop them and you're still here, still here with little else to focus on than the agony inside and a voice in the vent.
But there's no voice in the vent. There's no vent, and the voice is...
Gone.
No. He refuses to believe that. Jet's still there, and Albert will find him and bring him back and they'll turn this around just as they did with Black Ghost. Just as they did on Mocawa. Just as Jet was able to reassemble Albert into a functional human being, Albert will do the same for his husband. That's the first step.
And it starts with him playing along. Tired grunts and stiff movements, no complaints as he's taken out and paraded through the day from one meaningless event to the next with as much resistance as a windless sea. But embers burn in the back of his psyche and there's something truly unsettling in the way he complies, the same reaction to a soft word as a barked order, as a shove. It's all the same for now.
It may not be later.
004 doesn't forget voices. Doesn't forget faces.
004 can wait a very.
Very.
Long.
Time.
--
It's only been a week, but Albert's rarely seen in any company when there's down time, either the cafeteria or in the exercise yard. He exudes an aura of nothing. Void, cold and uninviting but a little sad as he does nothing more interesting than eat his food or stand against a wall. He barely says a word, but looks, watches, and sees.
Sometimes, he'll offer a hand with a task, wordless but there at the right time to steady someone before a fall, or catch something as its dropped. Sometimes, he'll stare too long at someone, perhaps deciding if further association is wise, or maybe willing them to come at least partially fill that void that surrounds him for lack of ability to overtly invite. Sometimes this is someone he knows, sometimes it isn't.
As time wears on, he looks at the ground more than people, looks at his shoes more than faces, trying to focus on something known only to himself. Or so he might think. It's obvious how sickness of the heart wears on a person, even one as old and experienced as Albert Heinrich.
3. Tinkering (Closed; for Sigma)
It's not long before they come for Albert too.
There are no drugs involved for him because they're not needed; direct control isn't necessary when they have what they know is dearest to Albert's heart under a proverbial gun, ready to have the trigger pulled the second he misbehaves. So he goes quietly, under guard, to the facility's infirmary.
He's not sure why, he feels fine, but instead of a doctor they bring in someone who's clearly an engineer, small precision tools and a work apron instead of sanitary whites and needles. For Albert, it's just as bad anyway. He's tense the entire time, even if he lets the man at his arms and legs without complaint, poking and prodding with the same manner as one would go at a leaky sink. He's not a person here, even less so than the cog he was in Thirteen. Here he's barely even an appliance.
Albert attempts to distract himself as the man whistles through his teeth thinly and tunelessly, the cyborg's eyes wandering to whoever else may be in this part of the facility. He doesn't recognize most, but one individual catches his eye, someone who before he was taken to Thirteen, Albert would have readily shot on sight given half the chance.
Sigma Klim.
Now, the German's eyes meet the other cyborg's and plead silently and faintly for a moment, an intervention despite Sigma's clear need for repair himself. And maybe that would be a good distraction, a way to get this man to leave Albert alone, repair Sigma, and then leave, letting the two old men if not talk, then at least breathe without a third unknown hanging over their heads so directly.
What| After having to shoot his husband out of the sky during the last District mission, Albert's been captured.
Where| Detainment Center. Visiting room, cafeteria, etc.
When| After the D8/D9 liberations
Warnings/Notes| Violence, suicidal topics, past body horror, forced drug abuse, body horror, probably other horrible things.
1. Arriving (Closed; for Jet)
He didn't resist.
Not when Punchy brought him into the enemy camp with a wavering gun and Albert's hands on his head knowing that a bullet of such small caliber, even at that close range, would just glance off of his metal body. Knowing that Punchy wouldn't shoot him, that he wouldn't go through Punchy to get away either, no matter how easy it would be.
Not when the Peacekeepers, an ironic use of the words, put the butts of their rifles to his face and back anyway as soon as they'd moved him to where he could be secured, where they could make sure he wasn't loaded, wasn't a bomb about to go off. He didn't feel it, not matter how he went down.
Not when the powers went off and he felt all those bruises, felt his skin taut on his cheek bones shiny and purple and tender to the touch. He doesn't touch it. He lets it be, a visible statement to how he must look inside.
He doesn't struggle, doesn't run, doesn't fight despite a myriad of opportunities. He barely even reacts until he's been put in his cell, the forcefield a barrier of static between himself and his captors. And even then it's one simple sentence.
"Show me Jet Link."
It's a threat despite its simple delivery, and it still somehow carries weight despite the energy barrier between anything Albert could do and those who wouldn't survive if he did it.
2. Settling
It's surprising how much prison and the military have in common as far as regimentation. There's a schedule for everything, rigid and unyielding. It would almost be a comfort in the irony of how similar it is to Thirteen's overly structured environment if it didn't also bring Albert memories of Black Ghost, of occupied Mocawa, of a lack of every autonomy that makes Thirteen bearable and keeps Albert grounded instead of adrift in memories he's sought for decades to repress.
Get up. Push ups until the force fields go down he couldn't do push ups at first, not when they'd kept his legs and arm for testing. Impossible to do push ups with only one extremity, shower not as cold as on Ghost Island, he thinks. He couldn't feel temperature right in those days, food, forced reeducation violence for its own sake, or for fear's sake. It's easier to detach from than being picked apart piece by piece, to know you died on the table at least twice but that didn't stop them and you're still here, still here with little else to focus on than the agony inside and a voice in the vent.
But there's no voice in the vent. There's no vent, and the voice is...
Gone.
No. He refuses to believe that. Jet's still there, and Albert will find him and bring him back and they'll turn this around just as they did with Black Ghost. Just as they did on Mocawa. Just as Jet was able to reassemble Albert into a functional human being, Albert will do the same for his husband. That's the first step.
And it starts with him playing along. Tired grunts and stiff movements, no complaints as he's taken out and paraded through the day from one meaningless event to the next with as much resistance as a windless sea. But embers burn in the back of his psyche and there's something truly unsettling in the way he complies, the same reaction to a soft word as a barked order, as a shove. It's all the same for now.
It may not be later.
004 doesn't forget voices. Doesn't forget faces.
004 can wait a very.
Very.
Long.
Time.
--
It's only been a week, but Albert's rarely seen in any company when there's down time, either the cafeteria or in the exercise yard. He exudes an aura of nothing. Void, cold and uninviting but a little sad as he does nothing more interesting than eat his food or stand against a wall. He barely says a word, but looks, watches, and sees.
Sometimes, he'll offer a hand with a task, wordless but there at the right time to steady someone before a fall, or catch something as its dropped. Sometimes, he'll stare too long at someone, perhaps deciding if further association is wise, or maybe willing them to come at least partially fill that void that surrounds him for lack of ability to overtly invite. Sometimes this is someone he knows, sometimes it isn't.
As time wears on, he looks at the ground more than people, looks at his shoes more than faces, trying to focus on something known only to himself. Or so he might think. It's obvious how sickness of the heart wears on a person, even one as old and experienced as Albert Heinrich.
3. Tinkering (Closed; for Sigma)
It's not long before they come for Albert too.
There are no drugs involved for him because they're not needed; direct control isn't necessary when they have what they know is dearest to Albert's heart under a proverbial gun, ready to have the trigger pulled the second he misbehaves. So he goes quietly, under guard, to the facility's infirmary.
He's not sure why, he feels fine, but instead of a doctor they bring in someone who's clearly an engineer, small precision tools and a work apron instead of sanitary whites and needles. For Albert, it's just as bad anyway. He's tense the entire time, even if he lets the man at his arms and legs without complaint, poking and prodding with the same manner as one would go at a leaky sink. He's not a person here, even less so than the cog he was in Thirteen. Here he's barely even an appliance.
Albert attempts to distract himself as the man whistles through his teeth thinly and tunelessly, the cyborg's eyes wandering to whoever else may be in this part of the facility. He doesn't recognize most, but one individual catches his eye, someone who before he was taken to Thirteen, Albert would have readily shot on sight given half the chance.
Sigma Klim.
Now, the German's eyes meet the other cyborg's and plead silently and faintly for a moment, an intervention despite Sigma's clear need for repair himself. And maybe that would be a good distraction, a way to get this man to leave Albert alone, repair Sigma, and then leave, letting the two old men if not talk, then at least breathe without a third unknown hanging over their heads so directly.
no subject
But maybe Nitou should stop staring at persons of interest and start paying attention to what he's doing, because his shoe has come untied in the middle of his exercise routine, and he's about to face-plant on the ground. Hard.
no subject
He remembers Nitou, not just from Arena coverage but from his run-in in the Districts, helping Haruto escape. There was something more than the connection of enemy soldiers between Haruto and Nitou, one that Albert's seen more than once among his own team. Based on that, and what had happened to Jet, Albert doesn't believe the boy to have fought them of his own accord. It's the Capitol's doing. Again.
Although how Nitou will react to Albert's rescue is another thing.
"Careful," he grunts, not having much in the way of words lately.
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"Nitou, yes? Haruto's friend?"
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"Friends."
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"Well, he's been trying to work on rescue, if that's a comfort." Not that they can get very far when the battlefields are the only time that the Rebellion and the Capitol sides meet and all the fighting becomes too chaotic to reliably snag any specific person in most cases. That, and Nitou's brainwashing...
Albert's voice is low, reliant on the long standing knowledge of experience that jailers rarely care to know what their charges are talking about even if it's sedition unless they're in large, threatening groups. Two of them hardly count as that. "He maybe be able to, if you can keep them from brainwashing you before the next battle."
no subject
...and then all the wind is taken out of Nitou's sails at the mention of brainwashing. "I...don't..." He massages a temple. "I've got these holes in my memory, man, I don't know what they're doing. What they've been doing, what I've been doing, I guess..."
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But perhaps if Nitou knows, he can fight it. "Experimenting, maybe."
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At least Nitou has the blessing of not remembering. Or curse, if it prevents him from helping himself.
"I'm sorry, I don't know what else to tell you."
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He wishes he could just burn it all down, stage a revolt, an escape, anything. But they have Jet. They have Jet, and they have Sam, and he can't be the reason that they suffer further.
"I... Well. As I said, Haruto and I are friends, from similar teams in fact. If you need to talk..." He still wants to try, though, to keep reaching out.
no subject
So he manages a grin for Albert--it's somewhat forced and a little weak, but Nitou is trying. "Yeah, sure, I think I'd like that."
no subject
He just has to be incredibly careful. If anyone suffers for it besides himself, he's not sure he'll have the strength to continue.
"Any time, Nitou." Even now, if he so chooses. Frankly, it would be better than arguing with himself internally about if he has leadership qualities.