Chapter Text
Sterile. Everything with soft gray edges, not a single color that could suggest frivolity or merriment. A constant seventy-two degrees in the day time, shifting gradually to sixty-eight in the night time. There was a vague scent of lavender that sifted through the vents beginning at ten o’clock in the evening about an hour after the lights had been dimmed, seeking to lull everyone into a gentle repose. There were worse methods, surely, but these were those of a careful and considerate set of rigidly ethical bureaucrats. There was no Daylight Savings Time, there were no holidays, there were no collections of chatter that existed in the in-between spaces of humanity or the brush of human flesh against flesh that could spark a manifestation in the here and the now.
Disastrous sanity was a curse in such a place—a consistent knowledge of one’s presence and ability. The weight of knowing that one’s purpose had been ultimately fulfilled was crushing when one was kept alive, still, in a gray ether. It even felt like floating. Not in a massive prison but in a small tube of concentrated jelly, kept as a specimen of interest without need for poking or prodding. A brain in a jar once useful and now static. Zemo was alone. Some inmates were kept in pods of several but he was kept in one of the out-of-the-way spaces without even a single other to keep company. In such a world it was possible through the mind to at least lie upon the floor of the small cell and stare upward at the smooth ceiling and imagine the stars—all of them speckled and dim like the faintest pinholes in the quilt of night. As Camus’ stranger, one could release all hope and in its release be freed of any human burden…at least for the moment.
At least until one dreamt. Until one was pulled ceaselessly into the pool of radiant blue by Morpheus and drowned there in the vastness of surreality. Any colder in the room or any stronger the lavender then he might have stepped into a nightmare but most nights they were simple dreams. In one he was at his father’s country home, standing in the doorway to the guest bedroom watching Heike pull her sheer stockings up her calves and over her knees in the casual sort of way women do when they don’t expect a man to be watching them. In another he was sitting in comfortable warmth, reading out loud as though the Winter Soldier would appreciate it while he sat obediently across the room with standing orders to protect. Most of these were vignettes of moments he’d experienced: simple flashes of memory that were ultimately meaningless…aside from what they said about his current desires, of course.
He woke himself up in the middle of the night once, accidentally speaking aloud what his dream self was saying. Heike was telling him that his father was concerned though he knew not about what and so he was reassuring her, his voice calm and softly commanding, as he was with her always. It made her feel better to know that he was going to take care of them and that he had all faith in his ability to do so. He was certain that she didn’t know what he did for Sokovia—but he was also certain that she knew he was in some subtle manner a dangerous man.
“Keep faith, Heike. Listen to my father, and take care. It is never the end of the world.”
He stared upward at the gray above him, the stars he sometimes imagined now gone to the dull flat of the dark. He whispered the last few words he’d just spoken. “It is never the end of the world.”
Really, how many times had it nearly been just that? When rifts were opened between universes or artificial intelligence sent whole cities careening to the earth? And did the whole world matter or only what made the world matter to each of them as individuals? Would Heike’s world have ended more completely had she been the one to live and he had been the one to die? Would countless worlds have been left intact should he never have done what he did to the Avengers and to all those around them? Did he, in some small and yet unimaginably large fashion have some fated hand in The Blip? How many worlds had Baron Helmut Zemo ended after the end of his own? A dozen? One hundred? One thousand? Millions?
He took a deep breath of the lavender scented air and then reached to the small drawer which pulled out of a bedside table built into the wall and floor of his cell. He pulled out his single tube of chapstick and applied it, rubbing his lips together as he laid back down and pulled up the plain gray wool blanket. For being surrounded by water, the air in this prison was always so damnably dry. With that done, he was ready to place whatever little particle of memory film that was to the back of his mind and conjure a different one that might be a little less unsettling this time.
No such luck, of course.
Usually, since there was no natural light upon the Raft, the sunlight lamps that were present would slowly illuminate until they were at their full strength for the course of the day, mimicking the dawn even down to the quality of the light, diffused sometimes as though it were coming through cloud or sometimes pinkish as though the sun were reddish in hue that morning. This time, however, there was no such sweet transition. Even through his closed eyelids he winced as the lights were immediately brightened to their full extent, clicking on so quickly that they hummed with electricity in their bars above him.
Zemo raised his hand to his eyes, rubbing over his face and keeping them shut as not to cause himself any discomfort. Pulling his blanket and sheets away, he threw his legs over the side of his bed and let his socked feet touch the floor.
“Zemo.”
He recognized the voice—one of the usual staff of the Raft who’d been with him in his sector for at least a year or two now. He didn’t bother knowing their names: it was none of his business anyhow and his interactions with all of them were blessedly limited as he spent twenty-three of his twenty-four hours completely alone. He risked opening a sliver of an eye under the shadow of his hand. “Yes?”
For a moment he thought he might have inadvertently said something of import while he was sleeping—something that might summon his keepers to question him. But there had been nothing, had there? Nothing before that which had woken him up…after all, he was a light sleeper.
“Visitor.”
He frowned. “In the middle of the night?”
Another voice came to him. A woman this time, confidence lacing every word she spoke. “In the middle of the morning, actually. Would you care for breakfast, Baron?”
He let his hand drop to his lap and he squinted through the bright light.
“You can call me Valentina.”
“Are we already on so intimate of terms? It is not eight yet…I cannot eat.”
“I think they will make an exception for me.”
“My stomach will make no exception for me,” he replied. “When one has been here as long as I…you understand.”
She smiled, beautiful in a regal sort of fashion that belied some intrinsic quality of birth in his experience. He did not get up from where he sat in his rumpled bed with his messy hair and his sleep-warmed skin even though she stood expectantly at the horizontal bars beyond the bullet-proof glass. She held her hands behind her back, looking at him as though she were sizing him up for purchase—as though he were at auction.
Perhaps he was.
Her voice was commanding with a soft sort of power. “Baron Zemo, as you can imagine, it is somewhat useful to keep you around.”
“Mmm.” It was an agreement of sorts. After all, T’Challa had told him that the living were not done with him yet and it seemed they could not help but use him when it suited them. What often confused him were the circumstances. It was not as though he were the only man on earth who could do what he did—it was only that he was the one who had done it. “If you are about to ask me to do something for you, I will have you know that any ripened fruit left upon the vine will wither and I am far past such a point. Will you please have them wake me at a normal hour?”
“This is serious, Zemo.”
“Everything is always serious when someone comes to talk to me.” But it is never the end of the world. “Have you all not had enough of me yet?”
She put her hands out to the side of her, fingers splayed as she shrugged—a motion that seemed almost rehearsed from a woman so well-put together as she. “You did quite well working with the Avengers not so long ago. I hardly think you’ve withered much since then.”
“I have…never worked with…”
“Sam Wilson?”
A single streak of heat hit him in his chest and he was surprised by it—that it was even possible now. “Simply because I was used outside of here by a man who was once considered an Avenger does not mean I worked with the Avengers.”
“Pardon me,” she provided easily. “After all, Mr. Barnes likely had something to do with that as well. Was he convincing in getting your aid?”
He stared at her, keeping his face as blank as possible. “Tell them to wake me up at the usual hour.”
“Should I have him come and convince you?”
“You’ve done little convincing yourself. I do not even know why you are here in the first place. The last time, that is the time that he came, it was to ask me for my help with finding a recreation of the serum…and you? Are they out there again cooking up silly recipes to make more immortals? When will it stop…Valentina?” He eyed her, taking in her stance and her clothes—clearly designer though he was not certain as to the specifics as he had not kept up on the latest. Short-heeled leather booties under well-draped dress pants and a classic angora wool sweater. It was clear that if she could have she would have worn jewelry, as the mock neck would have nicely accommodated a pendant necklace and her pierced ears were missing their earrings. She was someone, he decided. He just didn’t quite know who.
She pulled in her lips slightly and then popped them in a delicate show of impatience. “This isn’t the only place they keep people with certain abilities. It’s also not the only place that has experienced a little bit of…turbulence…through the years.”
He lifted a brow.
“The Ice Box.”
“Alright?”
“There was a bit of a mishap, apparently. We don’t know every detail since the Canadian government has been rather tight-lipped about it, but they’d had an interesting denizen manage to escape.” She paced a little, back and forth in her booties though their rubber soles did not click on the metal floor. “I’m sure you read about it.”
He was silent, still watching her closely.
“He was a super soldier.”
Silence.
“From the Soviets.”
“Oh for the love of god,” Zemo sighed, rubbing his face with his hand. “You want me to find you Rossovich. Do you not have enough contacts in strange and shady places to find a hulk of a man who leaves trails of dead children in his wake?”
She looked away from him with a sigh. “He has someone helping him. He’s gone to ground. We need someone who has your speciality, who knows people who would not trust us otherwise.”
“And you think they would trust me, who has been in your hands and has something to gain by cooperating? I will tell you this again, Valentina,” he hissed her name, “Tell them to wake me at the usual hour.” He waited for her to say more but was vindicated when the lights slowly dimmed, leaving her standing there in the dark while he put his feet back under his warm sheets and tucked himself back in. He fell asleep almost immediately and probably before she even left.
When the next morning came just as all the ones before in all the years he’d been on the Raft, he smiled up at the gray ceiling lit by the brightening sunlight lamps and rolled onto his side, pulling open the nightstand drawer again and applying more chapstick.
A familiar voice, dark and graveled, drew cold blood into his hands, turning them numb for a moment. “They should install a humidifier in here.”
Without looking up, he snapped the chapstick’s lid back on with his thumb and dropped it with a small click into the plastic bottom of the drawer, hearing it roll as he closed it. “Do not tell me that you’re here as her puppy dog? She would know I could not resist those sad eyes you give me.”
“I can acknowledge my obligations.”
Zemo once again swung his socked feet to the floor but this time he stood up from the bed, pulling his sweatshirt from the chair at the tiny writing desk and tugging it on before he turned with his hands tucked into the front pocket. “Is this some kind of hint that I should acknowledge my own? I would not know where to start if it came to making amends…that is, since I am of the opinion that I owe only one.”
“You already apologized to me. For what it was worth…as I think you said.” Bucky Barnes was standing on the outside of the cell with his stance solid and his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He must not have felt how chilly it could be on the Raft as he was in just a t-shirt though that could simply have been his method of intimidation. His vibranium arm, sleek and black in its plated snake-like form shined in the overhead lights, purposefully on display—a weapon that was never surrendered at the door.
“I have concluded that though some things were not personal when it came to you…they were very personal when it came to me. It is difficult for me to admit that I might owe you something more than a simple apology.”
“And the rest of the people whose lives you destroyed?”
“No,” he replied flatly, rubbing under his nose with one finger before he looked up through his lashes into Barnes’ tired eyes. “No. Just you.” He shuffled toward the bullet-proof glass, examining his—the…the Winter Soldier. “Who is she?”
His mouth moved purposefully as he carefully enunciated every part of her name. “Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.”
Happily celebrating his deduction that she was, in fact, somebody, he raised a brow. “What is the Contessa doing wandering around dangling conditional and likely temporary freedom in front of my nose?”
“She’s the director of the C.I.A.”
“Does she have your book?”
Though Barnes likely wished to remain as stoic as possible, there was something animal that flashed behind his eyes. “Not that she could use it.”
“You do not think? If she really believed in it? If she put her heart into it?” He openly let his eyes float down to the soldier’s black Wolverine zip-side boots and then back up in an appreciation he could see put him on edge.
Barnes cleared his throat, adjusting his stance as if to wordlessly change the subject. “You know the guy they’re after.”
“I know of him. A failed experiment gone awry. What else were the Soviet’s good for, after all? It is fitting of course that they call him Omega Red. You’ll have to be careful around him, he’s particularly dangerous to those who place too much faith in their ability to heal.”
Barnes’ mouth ticked upward at one edge for a moment.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You were going to say something raunchy.” He took his hands out of his sweatshirt pocket and held them out splayed to his sides in a mirror of Valentina’s move that morning. “It is just us boys here. Go ahead, say it. Something about his tentacles?”
Whatever trace of humor had been evident in that tenth of a second was already gone. “Are you going to help?”
“Why should I?”
“Because you can. Because it would get you out of here. Because the C.I.A. might owe you something afterward.”
“What makes everyone sure that I can help you? I have no personal connection to Rossovich or any of his former handlers. I have no information about his whereabouts that could possibly be of use to you.”
“But you have the ability to ask people we can’t.”
Zemo waved his hand next to his face as though the statement were an errant bit of smoke. “If the precious Mr. Stark hadn’t found himself in the ground, none of you would even bother with me. He would be able to have Rossovich in a matter of days if not hours. It would be simple work for him.”
“How?” Barnes was closer to the glass now, the tips of his flesh hand gently touching the clean surface, leaving nearly invisible portions of prints behind. Memories and moments to be wiped away with the night time janitorial sweeps.
How? Information was always so crucial, he thought, and though it was so tempting to tell; to simply get it all out as if a confession to a darkly handsome priest, he faltered. Information was currency, even if it was mostly useless at the end of all things. He swallowed. “You’re not going to break me out, are you? At the end of whatever this is…would I come back here?”
“Last time was a little different.”
“Yes. This time you have whatever villain heads the C.I.A. now looking for her next great and terrible experiment. There was a reason he was considered a failure by the Soviets. I hope she understands.”
“That’s not my concern.” As much as Barnes often tried to separate himself from the Winter Soldier, the latter made himself known in unsettling moments such as these. “He’s out there and he’s dangerous; whatever she wants to do with him, I hope he’s less dangerous after.”
“You hope.” Zemo pulled in a sigh. “I suppose they will have us as traveling companions?”
“I suppose they will.” Flat. Unmoved. Still, for Zemo there was in every word just what Barnes had mentioned: hope. In every syllable the Winter Soldier spoke, there was the memory of Madripoor and the buzzing electrical tension Zemo had felt every time those crystal eyes alighted upon him of their own volition. “You haven’t told me how Stark would have helped.”
“And I won’t. Not until I’ve got my deal…one that includes freedom.”
“Conditional freedom, I’m certain.”
“Anywhere but here, I will take.”
From the shadows off to Barnes’ left, Valentina silently stepped forward, her expression smug as she placed her hands on her hips. “Wherever you like, Zemo. Within reason, of course. We’ve made far bigger concessions in the past.” As if to make a point, she looked directly at the side of Barnes’ face even though he refused to look back at her. “If I’d known you would respond so much better to Mr. Barnes, I would have sent him to begin with.”
Zemo cleared his throat to address her. “I respond much better to a full night’s rest, Contessa. I think most of us do.”
“Mmm,” she hummed dismissively. “We’ll hammer out the details outside of here, then we can get into business. I’m trusting you, Zemo. Don’t make me regret it.”
He didn’t bother to look at her, still holding Barnes’ eyes through the glass, trading the softest micro-expressions with him in silent commiseration.
She lies as she breathes.
“Tell me, Contessa,” he said, still not looking at her. “What made you choose Mr. Barnes?”
Her shrewd eyes flicked between them. “The same thing that made me choose you. A certain knowledge. A certain set of skills. It was only convenient that the two of you…worked together…in the past.”
“Worked together…” Barnes repeated, the nearly unnoticeable tightening around the lower lids of his eyes indicative of a particular sardonic humor Zemo recognized instantly and appreciated immensely.
He licked his lips to keep from smiling, the cherry flavor of his chapstick fresh on his tongue. Diplomatically, he drew his eyes to her at last and placed his hands behind his back where he clasped them. “Well enough. Should you like me bound or will they let me walk out of here upon my own free will?”
In answer, the magnetic lock buzzed, sliding the whole front of the cell upward until he was able to simply step out. Before he did, of course, he turned about to open his drawer and tuck his chapstick into the pocket of his sweatpants.
“Very good,” he smiled. “It is nice not to feel as an animal in a zoo.” He walked with them, pleased to note that Barnes held back a little in order to walk directly beside him as opposed to just in front or just behind. It seemed almost companionable, as though something of their last encounter together had left a residual effect over his perception. He spoke low with a casual tone as not to draw too much of Valentina’s concern. “Have you found a better therapist?”
Barnes tilted his head halfway to Zemo’s direction before he corrected himself. “Yeah.”
“Good.”
“They give you therapy in here?”
Zemo passed him a humored but incredulous expression.
“Oh, because they wasted enough money paying Raytheon, Lockheed, and Gichner for this floating monstrosity, they can’t pull through for therapy?”
He didn’t bother licking his lips this time, openly smiling as he walked along in his prison sandals over the metal floor. “Do you not know, Mr. Barnes, that it is much cheaper to regulate temperature and utilize aromatics?”
“Oh, is that what the perfume in there is for? To fix you?”
“To calm, not to fix. I think when one is here, one is considered well past fixing.” He ignored every member of staff, uniformed and peering at him curiously until he was surprised to find a particular witness to his departure in the antechamber before the enclosed landing pad. “Ah,” he smiled with genuine aplomb, “Lieutenant General Ross, you came to see them check me out as a library book? Do you expect to have me back?”
The white-haired, mustachioed Ross stared back at him dispassionately. “Bold of you to assume I’m not sending you out with an agreement to have you black bagged at the end of it.”
Zemo’s brows lifted and he tilted his head in Ross’ direction in consideration of the very real possibility before he passed a quick glance at Barnes to check if there were any threads of displeasure in the notion on the Winter Soldier’s face. He wasn’t certain what he expected but was happy to note that Barnes’ expression toward Ross was that of open disdain.
Valentina was quick to quip, “Don’t worry, Baron; Ross has no say in what happens under my purview.”
“Forgive me,” he replied, “But I don’t know you.”
She didn’t respond, merely opening the door to the helipad chamber with a smile.
Zemo felt the edges of his mouth tip downward before he even registered that he was feeling any kind of way about the air in this room—far more moisture-filled than any air he’d been exposed to for the last several years, the salt from the sound practically stinging his eyes. He reached up, wiping at tears which had materialized at once, soaking them immediately into the sleeves of his sweatshirt. When he looked over at his companions, they were looking at him as though he were a tad odd—as though these tears were perhaps a product of extreme emotion.
“Salt,” he provided in explanation, certain that should about do it to assuage the notion that he was in any way affected beyond that of the physical.
Barnes let go of a sudden breath through his nose that he recognized as a product of laughter, his handsome mouth curling into the first smile in many years that Zemo could keep as his own in memory and dream. “And the humidity, I bet. They’ve really done a number on you in here.”
He could feel his lips trembling when he returned that smile with a tentative one of his own. “Yes. I suppose they have.”
It was as though he could not even feel the cold of the rain in the air nor smell the grease and machinery of the helicopter as they approached it. He strapped himself into the back seat between Valentina on his right and the Winter Soldier on his left and felt strangely as though he were outside himself. His bare toes curled over the metal floor and anti-slip strips beneath their feet and he didn’t even feel how chilly they must have been. He kept his hands in the pocket of his hoodie, gently each other as he thought about how delicate this actual emotion was.
Being known.
How hideous and yet how exhilarating. It had seemed to have become some distant memory—having someone who knew him as a human and had similar human experiences. Of course Bucky Barnes would have had plenty of occasions to understand the ever-mercurial nature of humidity and so it was this that would melt through the awkward knowns and bring them into the comfortable ones. Ones that were not about being well past fixing or existing solely for the convenience of world governments and directors of particular three-letter agencies.
Comfortable knowns…the feeling of being next to him and in sync in all the ways that counted even if there was a wall between them—that of ultimate obedience or an uncertain truce. For once, there was potential here for nothing certain or uncertain between them, the clarity that comes from being equals in a world that wanted them both at its feet. A position that was both comfortable…and known.
Zemo chanced a look over at Barnes—James—next to him in the helicopter as it rose into the gray of a rainy autumn morning over Long Island Sound and was almost surprised when his gaze was met. Though he could have said something, having been given a headset in order to speak clearly through the whirr of the rotors, Valentina would have heard him as well and right now…well…right now he wanted privacy. Struggling, he drew in slight breath after breath as though to speak before he let out a helpless sigh.
Clearly feeling awkward, Barnes turned away from him to peer out the rain-streaked window toward the great expanse of water and the fog-dense city in the distance.
Zemo let his head fall back against the seat, feeling the cold seeping into his consciousness again while somehow he knew he’d been understood if only by the mirror of his soldier’s eyes.
I missed you.