#lamberg

After the death of his mother, Sofia, Lord Ensel Von Lamberg commissioned extensive renovations on the family's country estate for when his wife and daughter would move in. Unfortunately, he never saw his plans come to fruition as he died in 1816. At this point, his brother, Lord Kristups, became the heir to the estate and completed the renovations. 

Eiffel has insomnia and will go hang out in Hilbert's lab and ramble at him when he's having particularly hard nights falling asleep

Eiffel falls asleep in Hilbert's lab sometimes, and sometimes Hilbert will wake him to send him back to bed, but other times Hilbert will just pull Eiffel's floating sleeping body back to his room and tuck him into bed, doing his best not to wake him

Sometimes Eiffel wants something to distract him from his thoughts so he'll ask Hilbert to tell him about whatever science experiment he's working on, and Hilbert will talk for as long as Eiffel's willing to listen about it because he likes being able to talk about his work even if most of what he says goes over Eiffel's head

Eiffel is extremely touch starved (and traumatized obviously) by the time he gets back to the Hephaestus after being rescued by the SI5, and he ends up breaking down sobbing about it during his checkup from Hilbert, and Hilbert hugs him for almost half an hour and Eiffel thanks him for it after but they never talk about it again

Eiffel thinks Hilbert's accent is sooo hot and he gets flustered every time he hears Hilbert speak Russian

Hilbert/Selberg had a secret romance with Lambert during their Hephaestus mission (this is relevant because Selberg/Lambert Eiffel/Hilbert parallels are very important to me)

Eiffel and Lambert looked pretty similar but not identical, Eiffel's hair is a warm dark brown and curly and down to his armpits, where as Lambert's hair was straight dirty blonde and chin length (plus he wore glasses), but they did both have very similar facial features of longer faces, pointy chins, and prominent noses, and they both had the same eye colour of soft light green, like new leaves in the springtime

Hilbert has never cared about having a good bedside manner, but he does try to be a bit extra gentle and kind with Eiffel because he's just so easily freaked out by all the medical and science stuff

Eiffel would never admit it but he really appreciates that Hilbert doesn't outwardly judge him for his jumpyness with medical/science stuff

Dog Tags (Deaths of your former self)

Doctor Alexander Hilbert doesn't have a clue how Captain Lovelace found their old dog tags. Something tells him they shouldn't even be on the Hephaestus anymore, the SI-5 should have scrubbed away all evidence of his old crew years ago.

And yet, one afternoon Lovelace shoves her way into his lab, her neck jangling with seemingly five sets of dog tags. He stares in confusion as she shoves one at him, the name on it reads "SELBERG, ELIAS".

"Found these in a box in the storage room. I don't know what the hell they were doing there, but here-" She says as she flicks the dog tags - his old dog tags - closer when Hilbert hesitates to take them. He grabs them after a moment and tucks them into his pocket.

"That's everyone?" He asks, gesturing at all the chains floating around her throat.

"Yup." She says briskly as she turns toward the door, it seems this conversation is done.

But she pauses in the doorway for a moment, barely long enough to notice, wonders to herself, "Does he want anyone else's tags? Does he care? He had been close with- No, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter for a second what he wants or who he might miss in his own fucked up way. He doesn't deserve any of them." She leaves quickly.

A few very near-death experiences and one very uncomfortable spaceship flight later they're all back on Earth. Goddard hasn't killed them, and they've gone through enough interrogations, signed enough paperwork, and been threatened about the consequences of revealing what happened enough times to finally be allowed to return to society.

He still has his dog tags, though he's not called "Alexander Hilbert" anymore. A new name, a new job, start again, try again, pick up the broken pieces and keep going again. He still has the dog tags, "HILBERT, ALEXANDER", "SELBERG, ELIAS". Dmitri never got his name inscribed in metal and looped around his throat in-case he died. Nowadays he doesn't know if that was a blessing or a curse.

He's not sure what to do with the dog tags. If he was a poetic man he might take them to the coast, any coast, and throw them as hard as he could into the ocean. If he were a sentimental man he might bury them, maybe even find his way back into Russia, trace his way to that small graveyard in the smaller village where his family lies, bury his old selves next to them.

But Dr Hilbert wasn't poetic or sentimental, and neither is he, so he doesn't, it would be a ridiculously impractical waste of time anyways. But, Dr Selberg had his moments of poeticness, and Dmitri Volodin was nothing if not sentimental, for better or worse.

So he does think about it, about traveling to the coast and throwing his dog tags into the sea, no less cruel and deadly than the void of space. He thinks about burying them in cold frosty ground, stumbling his way through a eulogy he can half remember fragments of his mother reciting. He thinks about it, walks through the steps in his head, plans it out, precise as a dissection. But he doesn't, won't, can't act on any of it.

So he keeps the dog tags with him, tucks them into a little bag which he puts in the small pocket on the duffel bag he hasn't let out of his sight or grasp since they returned, full of his surviving research, his most and only prized possessions.