victorvon_doom (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} victorvon_doom) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} newalliance,@ 2015-03-11 12:38:00 |
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Where: State University
When: 1992 (retro)
What: No one really had any idea what this taciturn student was going to turn into. The anger was never leaving him. Nor was memory of a piano.
Rating: PG
Americans, he decided, were extremely soft and spoiled. At least this higher society lot that went to the science academy. They babbled about relationships, about sports, playfully insulted each other as a means of camaraderie. He wanted none of it, making his way through the halls while half glaring ahead to get past the senseless noise.
“Hey, Victor! Wait!”
He cut sharply away though, steps knifing down another hallway and striding on. He had no desire to talk to Reed today. Presumptuous fool. If he had needed help to argue against their half-wit professor concerning the perceptions of time and dimensions as humans perceive and how it really existed, he would have asked. He wasn’t the least impressed that Reed understood the concept--anyone should be able to. It was the fact that he may have been seen as losing the argument (he hadn’t been) and he wasn’t sure what Reed wanted.
Things were not free here, after all.
He slipped into a room, shutting the door behind himself and quieting his presence. A life of slipping away from soldiers had made him quite adept at these little tricks to disappear. The hallway outside remained abuzz with students until the bell rang. He opened his eyes, listening to the last fading steps. He didn’t need to hurry to his next class, after all. The next three hours the military liked to give him free reign of the lab.
That was the payment for being here, away from constantly fleeing, constantly fighting, constantly shouldering the safety of the family units that both feared and learned to rely on him. The families would go back to their old ways of scurrying and hiding for a time, as they had for years before his cleverness and inventions had made the soldiers leery of approaching the Romani wagons. For now he was educating himself, expanding his horizons, and being a science dog for the military. (Or at least posing as one--he was the one in control. Not them.)
Time… I just need time to steady my hands. That’s all.
He glanced down at his hands. Steady, unshaking. Victor von Doom clenched them into tight fists. He was a von Doom, child of a woman who sang to devils and a man who could heal thousands of ailments with simple herbs and touches. Strangling one soldier should be nothing to him. If his vision for the future came to fruition, there would be much more blood on his hands.
But for now he was just a student avoiding other students and realizing he was alone in the room with an instrument. A piano.
Victor looked at it sternly for only a moment then approached it decisively. The life of travel before had made keeping a piano impossible, but they’d always interested him. There was something elegant about the instrument, practical and flexible, prestigious and aesthetically pleasing. He took a glance at the closed door, judging the rooms acoustics and the likeliness of the sound traveling down the hall. Then he slid the cover back and touched a key.
At first he pressed it too soft and slow to hear it. Then he pressed a little more firmly, giving a soft muted f. He lingered, feeling the vibration subtle and sweet under his fingertip and under his shoes, listening to it ring in the room and slowly fade away.
Victor sat down, softly pressing up the row of keys, absorbing their sound with his inner ear. He had a very good sense of tones and vibrations. It was one reason he was so good at naturally picking up magic. Everything was truly as Tesla described: energy, frequency, and vibration. In India they taught the Universe came into being via sound. Chant forced vibration from the vocal cords all the way through to ones feet, all the way to the Earth they sat or stood on. The irritation faded away from him as he tapped the keys, trying two at a time, finding the ones that wrapped together in chords.
He set both hands on the keyboard, carefully, slowly starting to pluck out a tune, one he had heard on a music box a long time ago. It was slow, the tempo off as he slowly figured it out. Then he became more confident in the note placement, touching a single note on the lower keys to accompany the simple melody.
He stopped when his finger slipped off B flat, making a jarring sound with B. Victor’s lips were a hard line, eyes straight ahead and hard.
He hated making mistakes. Not that it was entirely his fault. He couldn’t feel his middle and ring finger on his right hand. He withdrew from the keyboard, looking briefly to his hands. He remembered all too well when those fingers had lost their nerves to frost bite. He’d been less than ten when his exhausted father and he had been fleeing soldiers. His father had wrapped him up in his own coat and they’d sat to wait out the heavy snow fall.
Victor had woken unable to move. His father’s arms had frozen around him and he’d been too weak at the time to free himself. Had Boris not found them, he would have frozen to death with his father. Werner had later died. Victor had gotten away with a touch of frost bite. Father in ice. Mother in fire. Always running...
Someday he’d replace those nerves. He had plans on how to culture and replace them. It would just take time and a bit of research. But he had more important things to do first.
I’m so sick of running.
The piano cover clanged closed and he left the room. There would be time to pick at pianos later. He had work to do. Specifically a machine to work on. Mother’s soul came first. Then he’d repay the Latverian monarchy for all their sins. Yet he wasn’t going to forget the bittersweet sensation of playing those notes or the way they pressed back his anger. Pushing back his anger these days--that was a feat.
Rage was never going to die in Victor von Doom.