thecapitol | [Open] He says, it's mine to give, but it's yours to choose

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[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.

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It's a strange, liminal state Punchy's in. Since they're sending him out onto the battlefield, they need him to be more responsive than a mere Avox, but appealing to his programming is the easiest way to get him to cooperate. He's been fighting back harder than ever - on the last mission he even went so far as to pull out his earpiece - and so they had to do some 'tune up' brainwashing, a few days in solitary to remind him of his worth.

But that's as far as they've gleaned onto the vital fact that he's been using others as his tethers to himself. That he's been using his love for them, his affection and friendship and loyalty, to keep his head above defaulting entirely. If they had gone any further, they'd know better than to let him visit around the Detainment Center.

They would know better than to let him stumble around making apologies.

It's that same forthrightness he showed Albert back when he apologized for getting Bucky shot. It's the same stiff lip, the same awareness that it's him at fault, not the Avoxing or the situation but him. This time it was just who he is instead of what he was doing - he doesn't know that Albert wouldn't have made a run for it with any other captor.

"Don't worry, homes, I ain't got a piece to wave at you this time," he says, walking up next to the cell.

He could say he wasn't worried then, that the fact that Punchy had a gun didn't mean he was at all concerned about being shot. Even if he hadn't been a full cyborg at the time, near entirely metal and bulletproof, Punchy has never held any threat for him other than in negligence.

He opts to keep that to himself.

"How are you?" His voice is raspy, raw not with yelling but more akin to disuse. He's mostly communicated until now in grunts; even in Thirteen before this he had stopped being terribly communicative save in very specific cases.

Punchy is a specific case, as odd as it is to hear a man who looks like he's gone ten rounds ask his apparently physically healthy visitor how he is.

"On the grind," Punchy says. It's as honest an assessment as he can get. For being brainwashed again, for having every trigger for his programming hammered at again and again, he's holding up surprisingly well. He's managed to keep himself sheltered, like an orchid in palm in a hurricane.

Albert seems, somehow, the opposite of that, but not weaker for it. He seems a mountain face eroded into majesty by the winds. Maybe Punchy's just that desperate to see an old ally.

"You sound like you ate up a pack of cigs." Punchy pats at his jacket, thinking of the times in the past where they shared those handrolled ones Albert had in Thirteen. "You want one?"

"God, yes." The question is barely out of Punchy's mouth as Albert answers, the lack of cigarettes hardly being chief among the cyborg's worries in the Capitol, but if he can get one he'll take it and enjoy it aggressively.

He could have easily been free of nicotine had he not fallen back on old habits at Site B, but the addiction's never been about the drug inside the things for him, but always about having something to take the edge off through an action, the movement of his arm or the air through the filter. He needs it because its a comfortable action. He knows with a mostly Human body like this its probably horrendous for his health, but he can't bring himself to care when for the longest time it would do very little to his entirely synthetic system.

"It's been... difficult." He answers the unasked question.

The cigarettes get passed through. They aren't handrolled, some shi-shi Capitol brand with different flavors and tips that glow in swirling colors, but they're nicotine.

"Church." Punchy takes a seat on one side of the bars, lighting up one for himself. He exhales a long plume into the air. Engineered by Capitol technology, it comes out as a herd of cloudy, rolling horses for a second before the smoke dissipates.

"You heard what happened to Jet? I didn't get a chance to before they booted you into the trap, I got my ass hauled up to..." Punchy bites his lip, then raises his eyebrows. "Reconditioning. It ain't reprogramming. Not that intense. But I didn't see what was the haps with your boy."

He hates these Capitol cigarettes but it's something and he takes it gratefully, trying not to suck right down to the filter on the first go. As it is, the tip goes through a windmill of color like the inside of a rave before he exhales his own galloping derby. It tastes like a mint julep and he supposes it could be worse.

It takes a long moment for Albert to respond, leaning against the wall of his cell with his eyes trained on the smoke dissipating with silent whinnies to the mercy of the air vent fan. The corners of his eyes tighten.

"I saw him. I wouldn't cooperate until they brought him to me." Hence some bruises and cuts, mostly all under his clothes. They're still Tributes here on some level, still expected to make personal appearances or so he's learned. They can't have him seen in public with obvious evidence of roughing up. That, and his arms and legs are still metal thanks to the Captiol's own doing. Hard to make bruises stick there.

"He's..." He finally looks away from the vent, as if his own head is too heavy to keep looking up. "He's not doing well. They've been doing something to him."

"Hey, you ain't foolin' around if you cooperate on a condition." Punchy sounds a bit awestruck, a bit dubious, as if he can't picture a world where he could charge any price for his obedience. They just pull it out of him. They make it happen no matter what it is he wants or how fervently he believes.

"You know what they been doing? I could nose around. They don't get all suss on someone like me." Former Avoxes, or current Avoxes, are somewhat invisible. The idea that they would be agents of betrayal is foreign to the Capitol, so used to treating them as basic automatons. Punchy doesn't even bother to hide his words..

"It doesn't much matter what happens to me otherwise, if I'd be facing forced servitude without hope." That's Jet to Albert. Hope, but also a reason to make it easier on himself, to care about what happens to him instead of just everyone else. And it isn't just Jet that does that for him now. He's made a family, and they've made it abundantly clear that he should care because they do. Sam, Initiate, Terezi, and...

He finds, again, that he cares what Punchy thinks of him and wonders if he'd consider it a burden to be a little bit of that family too.

"I don't know what, exactly. Something mentally, I think mostly to keep him pliable, it doesn't seem like brainwashing. He's just mixed up." Just. There's nothing 'just' about it, in either sense of the word.

"Anything you can find out - safely - would be appreciated."

"He got his tongue still, right? I ain't seen him with the 'Vox crew."

Punchy does care, and it's only because of circumstance that he hasn't shown it. Typically Punchy wears his affection on his sleeve, his enthusiasm and his passions as if they were puppetmasters to his own mortal body. But being back in the Capitol, and before that, being in District Thirteen undertaking a sort of penance for Bucky's injury, Punchy's been muted. The huge gestures, wild rebellion and deep emotions have been muted into nothing but his strange vernacular, which he refuses to relinquish.

But he does care for Albert, and that's why he's here - and why he agrees to what Albert asks of him. "Church."

"Yes, he's not an Avox." Punchy's blunt question makes Albert's stomach do an uncomfortable flop. Jet isn't an Avox yet. It's always a threat hanging over their heads here, and a fate nearly worse than death if he were forced into brutal honesty.

He's quiet for a long time, bringing the cigarette down to the filter and looking all his age behind those bars. He feels it, too. Always feels it when backed into a corner like this, imprisoned and made impotent by circumstance, even if it was ostensibly his own fault for ending up here. He could have fought, maybe if it had been someone other than Punchy, or if Jet hadn't been already captured and kept. Maybe if he cared a little more for his own safety or well being. Instead, he sits there, exhaling galloping smoke and feeling the same cloud curling in around his insides, dragging him down as it pushes itself up into his head like a live thing, whispering what he can't do to help, how useless it is for him to be anywhere, let along in the Capitol's hands.

He exhales again until he's short of breath, trying to expel the cloud from his lungs. When his breath is gone, the cloud remains, and he inhales again with reluctance.

"I don't know what to do." Not a whimper, not a lament, just a helpless statement from a man behind bars.

Punchy respects Albert, bristles at him at times, sees Albert as an authority when he's so hardwired to buck tradition and power figures and commands. There's always been that tension there, even as the oppositional tension between them has shifted angles into something more parallel.

None of that matters, though. In this moment, Punchy sees Albert the leader less than he seems a marker of suffering, and the good part of Punchy, the part that defends the weakened and defeated and hopeless, rises up inside him. He exhales another herd as well and meets Albert's eyes.

"Don't do nothing for now. Just tend to yourself." He rests the cigarette in the cup of his lip, folding his arms, eyes full of kindness, of earnestness. "I'mma find for you what I can, a'ight? Then you can stress up about what you gonna do."

He doesn't know how to do that, to take care of himself. He'd spent so long with Jet to do it, or with other things he had to tend to beside himself, that now where the best thing he can do is keep himself a rock for others to lean on he doesn't know how. He doesn't know how to keep still when he's been moving and working and fighting for so long.

This isn't the first time he's realized. He'd realized it with Initiate wanting to step back, he'd realized it even with Punchy, when he'd gotten Barnes shot, when he'd tried to pick himself back up and keep going despite it taking a part of him. How he didn't want to help in that way, however necessary, and yet now here they are with Punchy volunteering and Albert being forced to lay down arms, at least for now.

He shakes his head and lets his eyes fall on the far corner of his cell, far away and burdened. "There's little I can do even for that in here."

"Bullshit. Even Avoxes jerk it sometimes." Vulgarity aside, Punchy sounds convinced of what he's saying. Sometimes the only way to tend to yourself is to simply exist without guilt. Sometimes it's the only favor you can do to yourself and, paradoxically, the way to make atonement possible.

It's something he's learned in blood in the last few years. Those years have aged him more than a decade, have made his bones wirey and tight, his eyes dark, his muscles perpetually and habitually tense. But they've also done some good to him, blunted the edges of his youthful foolishness.

"Chow down when you get food. Get your sleep in. Use hot water when you shower. You just got to hold steady for now."

Punchy's crass denouncement of Albert's despair has the cyborg looking up and blinking for a moment, before a smile overtakes him unbidden. He laughs helplessly, some of the tension going out of his frame. "You have a way with words, my friend."

He lets out a long breath between his teeth, turning more towards Punchy physically, instead of just his gaze. "I'll try and keep that advice in mind. I have a tendency to fall into hopelessness when there isn't something to immediately command my attention. Remembering that the small things still have weight is... helpful."

Punchy smiles back, grins - taking it as a personal point of pride to have pulled any such reaction out of such a sad and despondent figure. It even brings a little flush to his cheeks. It stokes that guttering but eternal fire there in the deep of his chest.

"I got your drift, homes." He taps out a hip hop rhythm against the wall. "I'mma catch you on the flippy, a'ight? Keep me at your shoulder, you be aces."

It's not often, perhaps because of the difference in how they carry themselves, but Punchy reminds Albert of Q in that moment. The boy who's in too deep and needs taking care of himself being willing and able to help him in turn, to bolster him up when by all rights the roles should be reversed. It makes Albert miss those he'd left behind for all that was said and done. He may still prefer Panem - something he's certain others would call him crazy for - but he does miss Q for all his faults and hiding things.

"I will." And he means it.

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[Open] He says, it's mine to give, but it's yours to choose

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