In the initial app to Vatheon, we opted to keep headcanon out of the app, which is why the lack of expounding on their relationship as we headcanon it happened (since it's not canon for what's presented in the series.) Here's our version of events:
Albert first met Jet in the mid 1960's when the German was brought to Ghost Island to be remodeled as a cyborg after he'd suffered his injuries and the loss of his fiancée at the Berlin Wall. Before he ever had contact with the American, Albert was subjected to several major surgeries in a row, replacing his broken human body with a fully synthetic one outfitted with all the weaponry Black Ghost could fit on him. This left Albert in excruciating pain despite the pain medication they gave him at the time - morphine and similar, considering the time period - and lead him to continually wish to die, a sentiment he continued to express for the entire first month of his incarceration to varying degrees.
Jet heard all of it through the grate in his adjacent cell. Every cry of pain, every plea to let him die, every sob of Hilda's name for that first week or so made it through to his ears and Jet's heart went out to Albert. Moreover, Albert was the first voice Jet had heard in nearly a year or more that didn't belong to one of the scientists of Ghost Island. So Jet spoke, and continued to speak to Albert almost unceasingly for days. Weeks. Months. Jet's voice became a tether for Albert, something bright in the midst of his constant suffocating misery as Black Ghost continued to experiment with his body and subject him to an endless cycle of surgeries, pain killers, withdrawals therefrom, arduous physical therapy, and deadly field testing against a myriad of robotic opponents. Albert rarely spoke during Jet's rambles, letting the red-head go uninterrupted about airplanes, baseball, New York, or anything else that happened to pop into his head. Jet's voice became the only thing to keep Albert sane and grounded.
Then one day, Albert heard Jet returned to his cell after a field test of the flying cyborg's abilities and Jet didn't say a word. Albert could tell the other cyborg was there, he could hear him breathing in that labored sort of way that Albert had come to associate with injury before Jet could be fixed up, but there was no accompanying prattle at all. Faced with silence, Albert finally opened up a little, picking up the slack by talking about nothing important really - soccer, music, whatever he could think of - to fill the empty air. It was at that point that Albert realized that he cared for Jet, and how important he'd become not just for Albert's own sanity, but for his general emotional wellbeing.
All without having seen his face.
As the testing wore on, Jet and Albert were eventually allowed contact with each other and with Francoise, designated 003, who had been taken not long before Albert but kept separate until the scientists could correctly calibrate her enhanced hearing and eyesight to not deafen her every time she stepped outside her soundproof, low-lit room. Not long after they were all able to meet, Albert's body began to reject his cybernetics and all three of the cyborgs - plus their infant teammate Ivan (001) whom they'd only really spoken to via telepathy (he was kept separated too. He's a baby after all, and needs special care even if he's psychic) - were placed in cryogenic stasis until the technology caught up enough for them to function properly.
When the cyborgs were awoken in 2001, there were five new additions to their team and one of the scientists in charge of the Zero Zero project had had a change of heart. Together, the team of nine cyborgs and Professor Gilmore escaped Black Ghost and spent the next several months hiding out at Gilmore's husband friend Professor Kozomi's place while they fended off attacks by Black Ghost assassins; other cyborgs of the same series as the initial nine, specifically built to hunt down and either capture or kill the errant 'borgs. During this time, Jet became standoffish and frustrated and Albert still struggled with his inner turmoil over no longer being human, so there was little progress made other than their willingness to defend each other in times of crisis, something which Albert rationalized he would do for any of their new surrogate cyborg family.
Eventually, the team goes on the offensive and decides to hunt down Black Ghost once and for all. During a game of aero-nautical cat and mouse with the cyborg's ship the Dolphin and a Black Ghost airship, Jet flies up to see what's going on. Unfortunately he's spotted and shot down. Despite the fact that Pyunma could have easily gone to retrieve Jet and brought him in safely, Albert panics and orders the Dolphin to surface, allowing the team to be captured. Luckily, Ivan saves all their butts (he does this a lot) and it leads to a showdown with Skull (Black Ghost's leader) and his subsequent apparent defeat, but it leaves Albert feeling unsettled about his feelings concerning Jet and whether they're somehow effecting his judgment (spoilers, they are).
Jet, with his amazing sense of timing, confesses his feelings to Albert after Black Ghost's defeat. Albert reacted with what appeared to be a brush off, giving Jet no answer at all and going back to Germany as the team split up during this time. Really, Albert needed time to process, trying to sort out whether he felt the same and what that meant in terms of the memory of his fiancée and his own sexuality on top of the massive relief of no longer being hunted by Black Ghost but still having the anxiety over not being accepted by normal society if he was ever discovered as a cyborg. It's a lot to deal with!
After Black Ghost's defeat, there are still remnants of the cyborg soldier project to mop up. One of these remnants is the Mythos cyborgs, created by Doctor Gaia, whose approach towards cybernetic augmentation differs theologically from Doctor Gilmore's. While Gilmore sought to enhance and improve existing abilities and allow the cyborgs as people to determine how best to use these, Gaia thought a person's past experiences would hinder their abilities as cyborgs and so wiped the memories of each subject in his experiments, instead leading them to believe they were the Grecian pantheon of gods. The truth is eventually discovered and the Mythos cyborgs die tragically, but not before a harrowing battle with the Zero Zero team, during which Albert and Jet take some significant damage and are forced to be repaired in the Dolphin before the final fight. Considering they were both nearly killed, it kicks Albert's butt into gear and he finally tells Jet that he returns the feelings that the younger cyborg had confessed to him months ago.
Albert has really shitty timing and Jet let him know that, but they became an official couple despite Albert’s terrible round-about way of reciprocating by telling Jet all of the reasons why it wouldn't work. That he's much older than Jet, that he still has unresolved grief over his dead fiancée, that he'd never really thought of being with a man before, etc etc., all the while privately examining his feelings for Jet. Finally, he simply tells Jet (who thought he'd been rejected by that point with all the reasons Albert gave him on why it would be a bad idea) to be patient with him, allowing himself to open up enough to at least try.
For a time after the Mythos cyborgs' defeat, the 00 cyborgs' lives are relatively peaceful, some going back to their home countries and some staying together with Doctor Gilmore. Albert is one of the ones to go home, though for a time he and Jet visit each other as often as they can between New York and Berlin. Albert works various blue-collar jobs, trucking and the like, and keeps a shabby but serviceable apartment without many creature comforts. In terms of their relationship, Jet begins to start bringing up the subject of physical intimacy between them after months of nothing much more than necking but Albert is reluctant due to a variety of reasons, mostly being an old set-in-his-ways fogey but partially also because of his self-image problems concerning his wholly cybernetic body. Of course he doesn't explain that to Jet and thus they have something of a blowout fight, Jet retreating back to New York in a rage and Albert stubbornly not following.
During this period Albert receives a call from who he thinks is Doctor Gilmore asking him to investigate some strange goings on in an old castle in the German countryside. Once there, Albert is forced to fight a robotic version of himself, a tireless juggernaut with all of the same weaponry and physical capabilities as he does. It's a long and hard battle, but Albert finally wins not through overwhelming strength, but because he had the compassion to save a falling owl's nest instead of dodging to where the robot thought he would be. The robot's brain hiccupped and Albert was able to use the opening to destroy it. Standing over the sparking mess, Albert was confronted by Doctor Gilmore, who said he'd constructed the robot to prove to Albert that he could not compete with modern technology and that he should upgrade himself into a more powerful weapon. Convinced Gilmore would never do such a thing, Albert similarly executed the Doctor, which turned out to be a robot double as well.
This brush with death and juxtaposition of his own humanity thrown in sharp relief against his double's automaton nature finally sets Albert's head straight concerning not only his life but what he wants from it, a major fixture of that being Jet. Resolved to set things right, Albert decides to make a pilgrimage to New York to see the younger cyborg and try to hash things out.
Of course he ends up in Vatheon instead.
Albert took his first opportunity to apologize to Jet, not knowing that his boyfriend was from another point in time further down the line. Jet didn't clue him in just yet, and instead they did the thing. (Which is not in the thread, it's safe for work)
After being in Vatheon for all of a week, Albert was impatient to find a way out. Jet on the other hand was suspiciously (at least to Albert) complacent about the entire thing, including the curses that were visited upon the denizens of the bubble from time to time, something which Albert found unacceptable and far too akin to Black Ghost in their dispensation of personal sovereignty and freedom. In response to Albert's general sour disposition and him hounding Jet for answers, the redhead finally snapped at him and told him he was from the future, where he would die. Faced with potential despair over it, Albert instead vowed to fix it.
From that point on, everything Albert did was to the end goal of getting himself back home and saving Jet's life, but was thwarted and eventually calmed down at least a little bit, as outlined in the app. If presented with another opportunity to achieve this goal (i.e.: a wish via Zephyr) he may become focused on it again and it will be something he and Jet need to work out.
This focused drive stems mainly from Albert not wanting to lose someone close to him again, especially someone who is so fundamental to who Albert has grown into since his remodeling. Losing Hilda and his humanity sent him into a depressive spiral that, were it not through Black Ghost's constant monitoring, probably would have ended in his killing himself, but it's Jet that Albert attributes his survival to, the nasally voice in the grate that kept him going. If he'd allowed himself to realize it, Albert likely would have recognized that he fell a little in love with Jet right there, but he wasn't ready to love again so soon after Hilda's death and even forty years later he continued to have trouble with letting go of his late fiancée.
In the series, there's an entire episode dedicated to Albert's backstory. In it, he is shown to wear his engagement ring on a chain around his neck, presumably under his clothes normally. It's the only episode where it's shown and it's early on, but it's an excellent canon example of Albert's issues with moving on, particularly where Hilda is concerned. He mourns her of course, as he really loved her dearly, but he also mourns with her the loss of his ability to have a family or even have intimate relationships entirely due to his remodeling, but also to his guilt over what it means if he is able to move on.
When Jet first confesses, Albert gives him what's ostensibly a brush off because he can't bring himself to answer without serious soul searching. Albert takes a couple months to sort himself out, weighing all the options, visiting the Wall to 'ask Hilda's permission', and even briefly convincing himself that it will end badly for Jet simply because he's crazy enough to have feelings for Albert. Ultimately, he decided that he wanted to be more than a cyborg weapon, a sentiment he expresses more than once in canon, and allowed himself to follow his heart (a very human thing!) and return Jet's feelings.
That doesn't mean it's always easy though. Albert still runs into hiccups where he feels he's betraying Hilda by doing one thing or another, one major instance being half of the reason why he had trouble being physically intimate with Jet for the first time. Not only was he incredibly self-conscious about his blocky, unnatural body but he hadn't been physical with anyone like that since Hilda and he felt as if he would be betraying her somehow if he crossed that line with Jet. It was a very private feeling and not one he ever expressed to his current partner, blaming the entire fiasco on his physical hang-ups.
Even currently he's still slowly getting over his guilt. He no longer has the ring, since he had stopped wearing it by his canon point (kind of awkward to wear a token of your dead lover when you're with your current one) and Vatheon's draw mechanic didn't bring it with him. He still misses it, but wonders if he should because he's with Jet and he loves Jet but he does still love Hilda but she's dead and-- this goes on in a feedback loop in his head every so often until he gets fed up and does something else like take a nap. It's something he's still working through and he's worried it always will be.
Revisions 1/2
Albert first met Jet in the mid 1960's when the German was brought to Ghost Island to be remodeled as a cyborg after he'd suffered his injuries and the loss of his fiancée at the Berlin Wall. Before he ever had contact with the American, Albert was subjected to several major surgeries in a row, replacing his broken human body with a fully synthetic one outfitted with all the weaponry Black Ghost could fit on him. This left Albert in excruciating pain despite the pain medication they gave him at the time - morphine and similar, considering the time period - and lead him to continually wish to die, a sentiment he continued to express for the entire first month of his incarceration to varying degrees.
Jet heard all of it through the grate in his adjacent cell. Every cry of pain, every plea to let him die, every sob of Hilda's name for that first week or so made it through to his ears and Jet's heart went out to Albert. Moreover, Albert was the first voice Jet had heard in nearly a year or more that didn't belong to one of the scientists of Ghost Island. So Jet spoke, and continued to speak to Albert almost unceasingly for days. Weeks. Months. Jet's voice became a tether for Albert, something bright in the midst of his constant suffocating misery as Black Ghost continued to experiment with his body and subject him to an endless cycle of surgeries, pain killers, withdrawals therefrom, arduous physical therapy, and deadly field testing against a myriad of robotic opponents. Albert rarely spoke during Jet's rambles, letting the red-head go uninterrupted about airplanes, baseball, New York, or anything else that happened to pop into his head. Jet's voice became the only thing to keep Albert sane and grounded.
Then one day, Albert heard Jet returned to his cell after a field test of the flying cyborg's abilities and Jet didn't say a word. Albert could tell the other cyborg was there, he could hear him breathing in that labored sort of way that Albert had come to associate with injury before Jet could be fixed up, but there was no accompanying prattle at all. Faced with silence, Albert finally opened up a little, picking up the slack by talking about nothing important really - soccer, music, whatever he could think of - to fill the empty air. It was at that point that Albert realized that he cared for Jet, and how important he'd become not just for Albert's own sanity, but for his general emotional wellbeing.
All without having seen his face.
As the testing wore on, Jet and Albert were eventually allowed contact with each other and with Francoise, designated 003, who had been taken not long before Albert but kept separate until the scientists could correctly calibrate her enhanced hearing and eyesight to not deafen her every time she stepped outside her soundproof, low-lit room. Not long after they were all able to meet, Albert's body began to reject his cybernetics and all three of the cyborgs - plus their infant teammate Ivan (001) whom they'd only really spoken to via telepathy (he was kept separated too. He's a baby after all, and needs special care even if he's psychic) - were placed in cryogenic stasis until the technology caught up enough for them to function properly.
When the cyborgs were awoken in 2001, there were five new additions to their team and one of the scientists in charge of the Zero Zero project had had a change of heart. Together, the team of nine cyborgs and Professor Gilmore escaped Black Ghost and spent the next several months hiding out at Gilmore's
husbandfriend Professor Kozomi's place while they fended off attacks by Black Ghost assassins; other cyborgs of the same series as the initial nine, specifically built to hunt down and either capture or kill the errant 'borgs. During this time, Jet became standoffish and frustrated and Albert still struggled with his inner turmoil over no longer being human, so there was little progress made other than their willingness to defend each other in times of crisis, something which Albert rationalized he would do for any of their new surrogate cyborg family.Eventually, the team goes on the offensive and decides to hunt down Black Ghost once and for all. During a game of aero-nautical cat and mouse with the cyborg's ship the Dolphin and a Black Ghost airship, Jet flies up to see what's going on. Unfortunately he's spotted and shot down. Despite the fact that Pyunma could have easily gone to retrieve Jet and brought him in safely, Albert panics and orders the Dolphin to surface, allowing the team to be captured. Luckily, Ivan saves all their butts (he does this a lot) and it leads to a showdown with Skull (Black Ghost's leader) and his subsequent apparent defeat, but it leaves Albert feeling unsettled about his feelings concerning Jet and whether they're somehow effecting his judgment (spoilers, they are).
Jet, with his amazing sense of timing, confesses his feelings to Albert after Black Ghost's defeat. Albert reacted with what appeared to be a brush off, giving Jet no answer at all and going back to Germany as the team split up during this time. Really, Albert needed time to process, trying to sort out whether he felt the same and what that meant in terms of the memory of his fiancée and his own sexuality on top of the massive relief of no longer being hunted by Black Ghost but still having the anxiety over not being accepted by normal society if he was ever discovered as a cyborg. It's a lot to deal with!
After Black Ghost's defeat, there are still remnants of the cyborg soldier project to mop up. One of these remnants is the Mythos cyborgs, created by Doctor Gaia, whose approach towards cybernetic augmentation differs theologically from Doctor Gilmore's. While Gilmore sought to enhance and improve existing abilities and allow the cyborgs as people to determine how best to use these, Gaia thought a person's past experiences would hinder their abilities as cyborgs and so wiped the memories of each subject in his experiments, instead leading them to believe they were the Grecian pantheon of gods. The truth is eventually discovered and the Mythos cyborgs die tragically, but not before a harrowing battle with the Zero Zero team, during which Albert and Jet take some significant damage and are forced to be repaired in the Dolphin before the final fight. Considering they were both nearly killed, it kicks Albert's butt into gear and he finally tells Jet that he returns the feelings that the younger cyborg had confessed to him months ago.
Albert has really shitty timing and Jet let him know that, but they became an official couple despite Albert’s terrible round-about way of reciprocating by telling Jet all of the reasons why it wouldn't work. That he's much older than Jet, that he still has unresolved grief over his dead fiancée, that he'd never really thought of being with a man before, etc etc., all the while privately examining his feelings for Jet. Finally, he simply tells Jet (who thought he'd been rejected by that point with all the reasons Albert gave him on why it would be a bad idea) to be patient with him, allowing himself to open up enough to at least try.
For a time after the Mythos cyborgs' defeat, the 00 cyborgs' lives are relatively peaceful, some going back to their home countries and some staying together with Doctor Gilmore. Albert is one of the ones to go home, though for a time he and Jet visit each other as often as they can between New York and Berlin. Albert works various blue-collar jobs, trucking and the like, and keeps a shabby but serviceable apartment without many creature comforts. In terms of their relationship, Jet begins to start bringing up the subject of physical intimacy between them after months of nothing much more than necking but Albert is reluctant due to a variety of reasons, mostly being an old set-in-his-ways fogey but partially also because of his self-image problems concerning his wholly cybernetic body. Of course he doesn't explain that to Jet and thus they have something of a blowout fight, Jet retreating back to New York in a rage and Albert stubbornly not following.
During this period Albert receives a call from who he thinks is Doctor Gilmore asking him to investigate some strange goings on in an old castle in the German countryside. Once there, Albert is forced to fight a robotic version of himself, a tireless juggernaut with all of the same weaponry and physical capabilities as he does. It's a long and hard battle, but Albert finally wins not through overwhelming strength, but because he had the compassion to save a falling owl's nest instead of dodging to where the robot thought he would be. The robot's brain hiccupped and Albert was able to use the opening to destroy it. Standing over the sparking mess, Albert was confronted by Doctor Gilmore, who said he'd constructed the robot to prove to Albert that he could not compete with modern technology and that he should upgrade himself into a more powerful weapon. Convinced Gilmore would never do such a thing, Albert similarly executed the Doctor, which turned out to be a robot double as well.
This brush with death and juxtaposition of his own humanity thrown in sharp relief against his double's automaton nature finally sets Albert's head straight concerning not only his life but what he wants from it, a major fixture of that being Jet. Resolved to set things right, Albert decides to make a pilgrimage to New York to see the younger cyborg and try to hash things out.
Of course he ends up in Vatheon instead.
Albert took his first opportunity to apologize to Jet, not knowing that his boyfriend was from another point in time further down the line. Jet didn't clue him in just yet, and instead they did the thing. (Which is not in the thread, it's safe for work)
After being in Vatheon for all of a week, Albert was impatient to find a way out. Jet on the other hand was suspiciously (at least to Albert) complacent about the entire thing, including the curses that were visited upon the denizens of the bubble from time to time, something which Albert found unacceptable and far too akin to Black Ghost in their dispensation of personal sovereignty and freedom. In response to Albert's general sour disposition and him hounding Jet for answers, the redhead finally snapped at him and told him he was from the future, where he would die. Faced with potential despair over it, Albert instead vowed to fix it.
From that point on, everything Albert did was to the end goal of getting himself back home and saving Jet's life, but was thwarted and eventually calmed down at least a little bit, as outlined in the app. If presented with another opportunity to achieve this goal (i.e.: a wish via Zephyr) he may become focused on it again and it will be something he and Jet need to work out.
This focused drive stems mainly from Albert not wanting to lose someone close to him again, especially someone who is so fundamental to who Albert has grown into since his remodeling. Losing Hilda and his humanity sent him into a depressive spiral that, were it not through Black Ghost's constant monitoring, probably would have ended in his killing himself, but it's Jet that Albert attributes his survival to, the nasally voice in the grate that kept him going. If he'd allowed himself to realize it, Albert likely would have recognized that he fell a little in love with Jet right there, but he wasn't ready to love again so soon after Hilda's death and even forty years later he continued to have trouble with letting go of his late fiancée.
In the series, there's an entire episode dedicated to Albert's backstory. In it, he is shown to wear his engagement ring on a chain around his neck, presumably under his clothes normally. It's the only episode where it's shown and it's early on, but it's an excellent canon example of Albert's issues with moving on, particularly where Hilda is concerned. He mourns her of course, as he really loved her dearly, but he also mourns with her the loss of his ability to have a family or even have intimate relationships entirely due to his remodeling, but also to his guilt over what it means if he is able to move on.
When Jet first confesses, Albert gives him what's ostensibly a brush off because he can't bring himself to answer without serious soul searching. Albert takes a couple months to sort himself out, weighing all the options, visiting the Wall to 'ask Hilda's permission', and even briefly convincing himself that it will end badly for Jet simply because he's crazy enough to have feelings for Albert. Ultimately, he decided that he wanted to be more than a cyborg weapon, a sentiment he expresses more than once in canon, and allowed himself to follow his heart (a very human thing!) and return Jet's feelings.
That doesn't mean it's always easy though. Albert still runs into hiccups where he feels he's betraying Hilda by doing one thing or another, one major instance being half of the reason why he had trouble being physically intimate with Jet for the first time. Not only was he incredibly self-conscious about his blocky, unnatural body but he hadn't been physical with anyone like that since Hilda and he felt as if he would be betraying her somehow if he crossed that line with Jet. It was a very private feeling and not one he ever expressed to his current partner, blaming the entire fiasco on his physical hang-ups.
Even currently he's still slowly getting over his guilt. He no longer has the ring, since he had stopped wearing it by his canon point (kind of awkward to wear a token of your dead lover when you're with your current one) and Vatheon's draw mechanic didn't bring it with him. He still misses it, but wonders if he should because he's with Jet and he loves Jet but he does still love Hilda but she's dead and-- this goes on in a feedback loop in his head every so often until he gets fed up and does something else like take a nap. It's something he's still working through and he's worried it always will be.