The Trouble with Gods

Zemo finds himself walking along a marble corridor, somewhere in his dreams, the air thick with stillness and iron-sweet breath. Three women, black-veiled and silent, turn towards him, eyes like dark stars. He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t speak. He simply inclines his head politely.

They begin to talk. Not in unison, but as if completing one another’s sentences. Soft, low. Curious. "You knew what justice cost.” “You paid the price.” “You did not waver."

He replies, “I made a promise.”

They circle, almost catlike, but never threatening. “You could stay with us,” one murmurs. “There is always work,” another adds. The third smiles, “Or simply be seen. Truly seen.”

And that is the temptation. Not power. Not pleasure. Recognition.

But then, from the edge of the realm, something breaks the silence. A voice. A memory. A laugh. Bucky.

Zemo turns. “He still sees me,” he says. Quiet. Sure.  

The Furies understand that kind of bond too. Fierce. Relentless. They nod. They let him go. One brushes his sleeve as he passes, and says, “We will call on you, later.” But it’s a promise, not a threat.

*

He dresses with care. Crisp shirt. Waistcoat. Polished boots. He is always composed when the world changes.

And then they appear. Throughout his day, he sees them. Not all at once, but one by one. At the corners of rooms. Reflected in mirrors. Standing on the opposite side of the street and never quite blinking. Until finally, he finds himself somewhere else. Somewhere marble-cold and ash-scented and so very very still.

They are waiting. Three women. No wings. No fire. Not tonight. Tonight they wear silk and shadows, their beauty both strange and precise. One runs a hand along the seam of her glove, like she wants to run it along his thigh. Another watches him with a gaze that could pin nations to their knees. The third just smiles. A little crooked. A little hungry.

“Baron Zemo,” they say, voice threading between them, threefold and flawless.

“You know what I am,” he says calmly.

“We know what you did,” one murmurs, circling. “And what you would do again.”

“You are one of ours,” says another. “In bone and breath.”

“And you are tired,” the last adds. “Let us remind you that fire can also warm.”

He does not ask why. He does not resist. He simply says, “Yes.”

And what follows is not conquest. It’s communion.

Their realm is all soft light and whispering cloth, cool marble and fingers trailing across skin like the first brush of a knife. They don’t devour. They devote. Zemo is touched like he’s something sacred. Their hunger is not for flesh, but for recognition, to be seen not as monsters, but as instruments of balance, as women who chose justice over peace.

Zemo understands. He’s been that too.

So he lets go. He moves with them, amongst them. Their mouths find his scars and kiss them like scripture. Their hands know the difference between cruelty and precision. He becomes their warmth, their reprieve, their quiet fury made tender.

When he finally sleeps, it’s not a restless sleep. But a quiet slumber.

They don’t rush him. They are, after all, the keepers of patience. Vengeance waits. Years. Lifetimes. They have held the threads of justice for so long that the idea of urgency has no weight. So with Zemo, they take their time.

One combs her fingers through his hair in slow, even strokes. Another traces the lines of his wrist, the callouses, the small white half-moons of old scars. The third simply watches, her gaze a quiet shield, as if daring the world to try and take him again.

Zemo lets them. Not passively. Not in surrender. But in offering. He watches them with reverence, not worship. He recognises this. He sees how the weight they carry has shaped them. Not broken them. Just refined them. Honed them.

“You are not what I expected,” he says once, his voice quiet in the hush of their space.

“And what did you expect?” one asks, lips ghosting the shell of his ear.

“Claws,” he murmurs. “Fire. Teeth.”

“You saw those already,” another says, cupping his jaw. “When you were a man of knives and plans.”

“And now?”

“Now,” she breathes, “you are a man of truths.”

They feed him fruit like bloodied jewels. Rich pomegranate, soft peach, slices of honey-soaked fig. His mouth shines with sweetness and their fingertips. They kiss him like he’s a riddle worth solving. They do not take from him. They receive him. And in return, they offer him something mortals never get from gods: equality.

He is not a plaything to them. He is not a prize. He is theirs, for now, because he chooses to be. In the hush that follows, tangled in silk and shadows, one of them rests her head on his shoulder and whispers “Did they call you a villain?”

“They did.”

“And did it fit?”

“Only for a while,” he says.

There is a small hum of approval, almost like a lullaby. “We’ve worn that name too,” she murmurs. “We wore it until it bled.”

Another strokes the inside of his arm, where the veins run blue and visible. “We know what it is to be hated for the right reasons.”

“And to be needed after.”

Zemo closes his eyes. There is no guilt here. No lingering ghost of war or blood. Just warmth. Just understanding. And a strange, deep peace.

They don’t ask him to stay forever. They know better. The thread will tug, and Bucky’s voice will call him home. They don’t ask him to explain himself. That, too, is part of the gift. No demands. No confessions. Just space. Space to exist in his full, complicated self.

But for now, he stays. And they let themselves love him. Just for a little while. Quiet, wild, holy.

One curls beside him, her legs tangled with his, fingertips playing along the freckles of his arm like it’s a map. Another sits at his feet, braiding something into a delicate chain. Threads of hair, slivers of night, the smoke from his breath. Zemo watches, fascinated.

“What are you making?” he asks.

“A reminder,” she replies. “That beauty can still be coaxed from brokenness.”

He nods, thoughtful. “And pain?”

She glances up at him. “Pain can be laced into something useful. You already know this.”

The third lies beside him on pillows of storm clouds and velvet, watching him with the languor of a lioness who has already eaten her fill. “You mourn what you lost,” she says, “but you haven’t yet counted what you gained.”

Zemo considers that. He sips something dark and fragrant, of berries and spice and earth. He feels the warmth settle low in his belly. “I gained clarity,” he murmurs. “Purpose. A cleaner kind of anger.”

“And what now?”

He hesitates. “I think I want softness that doesn’t cost anything. Not forgiveness. Just softness.”

The one braiding pauses, her hands stilling. “Then you are further along the path than most.”

The bed rustles as the third sits up. She smiles, not kindly, not cruelly, just knowingly. “Vengeance cannot stay warm forever,” she says. “Eventually, the fire burns down. You either feed it more, or you let it go out.”

Zemo shifts, the silk of the sheets whispering against his skin. “And what do the Furies do when the fire fades?”

They look at each other. Then at him.

“We find a man like you,” the first one says.

“And we remember,” the second adds.

“And we rest,” the third finishes.

He breathes, slow and steady. Their hands are still on him, one in his hair, one brushing his chest, one anchoring his thigh like a talisman. The quiet deepens.

“I was afraid,” he says suddenly, the words not planned. “That if I stopped being angry, I’d forget why I began.”

One of them, he’s not sure which, cups his cheek with surprising gentleness. “Then remember. But don’t bleed for it anymore.”

He nods. He doesn’t say thank you. Not aloud. But they feel it anyway, in the way his body softens, the way his hand brushes against one of theirs, his thumb tracing the edge of her knuckle.

Outside, the sky shifts from charcoal to cobalt. The scent of myrrh and wine lingers. And somewhere far away, a winter morning waits, and a man with a metal arm is already making breakfast for two.

*

They are draped over him like shadows and heat.

Zemo is half-reclined, his body boneless with the kind of weariness that comes not from exhaustion, but from being worshipped properly. His clothes are discarded somewhere amongst the velvet and smoke. One Fury lies across his chest, tracing her fingernail down the centerline of his sternum. Another is curled between his legs, her head on his thigh, humming something low and dark. The third trails her fingers through his hair, murmuring something in a language older than fire.

He sighs. Not in longing. In contentment. A rare and precious thing.

There is a sudden pulse in the air. The sound of a strut, more than the strut itself. The Furies feel it before they see him.

They rise like a wave: one breath, three bodies, all muscle and fury and flash. Wings snap out like thunderclaps. Hair twists and writhes, coiling with hiss and heat. Their faces shift. No longer women, but avengers. Snakes for hair, fire in their eyes, claws like obsidian blades. They stand between Zemo and the intruder, ready to rend and scream and tear.

But Bucky Barnes just stops a few feet away and raises an eyebrow. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t lift a weapon. Doesn’t reach for the knife tucked into the back of his jeans. He puts his hands behind his back and leans a little to the side, squinting around the terrifying triad of vengeance made flesh.

“You good?” he asks Zemo. “Want me to come back later?”

Everything stops for an agonising second. Then, like water receding, the rage drains from the room. The Furies blink. One snorts. Another laughs, a low, delighted thing, dark honey and brimstone. The third tilts her head at Bucky, curious now, not violent.

Zemo rises smoothly. Every line of him says: unbothered. Every motion says: elegance. He does not reach for trousers, boots, gun. Just his shirt, which he lifts from the tangle of cushions and shrugs over his shoulders. He buttons one button. One. It’s barely modesty. It’s punctuation.

He turns to the Furies, each one now returned to the beauty of their chosen forms, eyes still glowing faintly.

“Thank you,” he says, with that old courtliness he wears like a second skin. “For everything.”

They circle him one last time, slower now. A touch to his shoulder. A brush of lips at his temple. Fingertips at his wrist, lingering just long enough to mean something. They whisper things that aren’t meant to be remembered, just felt.

Then Zemo turns, barefoot and calm, and crosses to Bucky. He doesn’t kiss him, that doesn’t seem appropriate at the moment.

Bucky tilts his head. “So. Furies.”

Zemo smirks. “They called me beautiful.”

“You are,” Bucky says, matter-of-fact.

They fall into step and walk away. No fanfare. No need for it. Just the small, sacred hush of reunion. The realm folds behind them like the closing of a curtain. The scent of smoke and pomegranate clings to Zemo’s skin.  

And somewhere, far behind them, the Furies watch their retreat, eyes still gleaming, lips parted with the ghost of a smile.

***