Aphrodite
Vienna is all silk and light, music and shadow, movement and charm. The sky, at this hour, is the colour of old pearls. On the breeze drifts the sounds of a waltz, and the clink of champagne. People move as if on invisible currents of pleasure and politeness, swaying with the rhythm of the city’s heartbeat.
Zemo walks down the marble halls of a museum. He is alone, for once. Bucky is elsewhere. The space is hushed, but not silent. There are echoes of footsteps. The whisper of a guide’s voice somewhere behind. Zemo turns a corner, and something catches his eye. A gleam of light against glass, a swirl of movement, something else.
There is a woman standing before a statue of Psyche and Eros, backlit by the setting sun pouring in through the tall windows. The sculpture is already breathtaking, but beside her, it is dull by comparison. Her gaze lingers on the marble curve of Eros’s mouth, her expression unreadable.
Zemo stops, stock still. She doesn’t look like Aphrodite. That would be too obvious, too vulgar. No shells, no pearls, no trailing gowns of foam and gold. She looks like want itself. She looks like the memory of his first kiss: warm, awkward, unforgettable. She looks like the ache in his chest the day his wife died. She looks like every word he’s ever bitten back, every perfect thing he’s let slip through his fingers.
“Do you like the sculpture?” she asks, not looking at him. Her voice is low, smoky, the kind that unspools slowly and wraps itself around your thoughts.
Zemo’s spine goes taut. “I admire the craftsmanship,” he says smoothly, eyes narrowing just slightly. “Though I’ve never been one for overwrought romance.”
“Mmmmm,” she hums, finally turning to face him. “And yet, you linger.”
He allows the ghost of a smile. “Some things are worth a second look.”
Her gaze slides over him, not appraising, not predatory. Curious. Amused. She steps closer “You intrigue me, Helmut Zemo.”
He tilts his head, tone light. “You have me at a disadvantage, madam.”
She extends a graceful hand. “Aphrodite.”
Zemo is not surprised. He takes her hand, brings it to his mouth, brushes his lips against her knuckles. “Enchanted,” he says, before releasing her hand.
A breath passes between them, weightless, but not empty. Zemo doesn’t move. Neither does she. And yet, something has shifted, quiet as silk slipping to the floor. He meets her gaze, level. “And how is it that I intrigue you?”
Aphrodite searches his face. “I haven’t quite decided, Helmut.” Her eyes are very blue. A familiar blue. “That’s part of the pleasure.”
There’s a glint of challenge in her tone, like a dance just beginning, like the first chord of a waltz. Zemo recognises it instantly. He’s played this game before. He knows how to parry. But before he can respond, she smiles softly, then turns and walks away, without even a backwards glance.
He watches her glide through the room. She passes a young woman gazing at a picture. She gently touches her arm, whispers something to her. She passes a young man, looking at a sculpture. She asks him a question, turns slightly so he can see the young woman. As she leaves, they gravitate towards one another, smiling shyly.
Zemo shakes his head. Doubts he will see her again.
But he sees her everywhere. In the reflection of a shop window. In the surface of a lake as he adjusts his cufflink on the shore. In a mirror as Bucky brushes his teeth beside him. She’s there. Not fully. Just a whisper. Just a flicker. A suggestion of lips, or eyes, or golden hair that wasn’t there a moment ago.
In his dreams, she sits at his piano and plays something haunting. In the ballroom, her laughter spills like wine. In the moment before he wakes, he hears her sigh, as though lying beside him.
At first, he brushes it off. Then he tries to ignore it. Then he resists, as only Zemo can.
“You’re wasting your time,” he says one night, quietly, to his own reflection. He knows she’s listening. “You chose poorly.”
“Oh,” she says, her voice drifting from the shadows. “I never choose poorly. I simply choose early.”
He closes his eyes. “I am not yours to have.”
“But you could be.”
And then, one day, he’s gone. Gone without a note, without a sound. Bucky turns in bed to find only cold sheets. The tea is half-steeped in the glass teapot in the kitchen. The door is locked from the inside. Only there is the faintest trace of perfume, like sugar and smoke, in the air. He knows it isn’t Zemo’s cologne. But he recognises the divine. He waits.
*
The first thing Zemo notices is the ambience. It is warm, not with heat, but with want. Everything hums with anticipation, with the delicate tension of a kiss not yet given. The light is liquid gold, filtering through gauzy curtains that never stop shifting, even when there is no breeze.
He is standing barefoot in a room with no walls. Petals carpet the floor in lazy drifts. Somewhere, a harp is playing itself. And across the room, though distance feels strangely elastic here, she waits.
Aphrodite reclines among velvet cushions the colour of wine and dusk. She is not adorned with jewels or crowns. She doesn’t need them. She wears simplicity the way mortals wear longing: unconsciously, beautifully, and to the edge of pain.
“You came,” she says, though her voice holds no surprise.
Zemo, standing tall despite the disorientation, gives a small nod. “It seems I had little choice in the matter.”
Aphrodite smiles. “Ah. The illusion of choice. I forget how important that is to mortals.”
He arches a brow. “And yet, you clearly find it amusing to take it from us.”
She rises, bare feet silent on the petal-strewn floor. “You misunderstand. I didn’t take anything. I invited you. You accepted.”
“I did not.”
She moves closer, steps slow and deliberate. “Not with words. No. But I’ve watched you Helmut Zemo, whose heart is barricaded like a fortress. You resist and resist and resist. But your dreams,” Her fingers ghost along his lapel, not touching, but nearly. “They said yes.”
He flinches.
“You think desire is weakness,” she murmurs. “That loving is vulnerability. And yet, you do it anyway.”
“I do nothing you have not meddled in.”
She laughs, and it is infuriatingly beautiful. “Oh, darling, I didn’t make you love him. I wouldn’t dare. I only saw it before you did.”
There’s a pause. The sound of the harp grows quieter. The scent in the air shifts, myrrh, and honey, and something that might be fire.
Zemo’s voice, when it comes, is soft. “Why me?”
Aphrodite tilts her head. “Because you are beautiful,” she says, simply. “And not only in face. In tragedy. In loyalty. In your particular, rare way of loving. You love like a soldier: deliberately. With precision. And with sacrifice. That is intoxicating.”
He doesn’t speak.
She gestures, and suddenly the space is a gallery. A corridor lined with paintings, floating midair. Images from Zemo’s life: his family, his grief, his vengeance, his gentler moments with Bucky. Some are vibrant. Some are dark. All are painfully real.
“You carry so much,” she says, walking beside him. “Even now, you bear your past like armour.”
“I need it.”
“No.” She turns to him. “You need him.”
He doesn’t deny it, but he whispers “Don’t put that on me.”
Aphrodite reaches up and brushes a lock of hair from his forehead. This time she does touch him. The contact is light, but it floods through him like heat and memory and desire all at once. “I won’t,” she says.
He blinks.
“Did you think this was a trap?” she asks, voice almost teasing. “I could have taken you, if I wanted. But I don’t want a stolen thing. I merely wanted to see. To know what kind of mortal can resist me, and why.”
Zemo stares at her. “And?”
She steps back, expression softening into something dangerously close to affection. “And now I do.”
She lifts her hand. There is no flash, no swirl of magic. Just a feeling, like the sigh at the end of a story, the final stroke of a bow across string.
And he wakes up. Back in bed. Bucky beside him, curled into his pillow, still asleep. The perfume is gone. The light outside is faint and grey. But on the bedside table sits a single glass rose, delicately shaped, its petals edged with gold. And beside it, a note in looping handwriting: You are loved. Fiercely. Even by gods.
*
Zemo examines the glass rose for a long time that morning. He turns it slowly between his fingers, noting the fine etching along each petal, the impossible craftsmanship. It's too perfect to be manmade. Too real to be a dream. He reads the note again. It makes his heart stutter.
Bucky is in the kitchen when he comes down later, shirt rumpled, hair still damp from the shower. “Morning,” Bucky says around a mouthful of toast. He looks at Zemo and frowns. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Not a ghost,” Zemo murmurs, gaze distant.
Bucky crosses to him and presses a warm cup of tea into his hands, brushing their fingers in the handoff. “Bad dream?”
Zemo almost says yes. But something in Bucky’s expression makes him pause. The easy trust. The unspoken tether between them. “No, not really,” he says softly. “Just strange.”
Bucky leans on the counter beside him. “Well. You’re home now.”
Zemo looks at him. Yes, he thinks. I am.
Bucky doesn’t press him. He waits.
That night, when Zemo returns to the bedroom, the glass rose has been moved, set gently into one of their mismatched old mugs, the one with a faded cartoon owl. A grounding act. A reminder: no gods here. Just the two of them.
*
The rain is soft against the windows, more whisper than downpour. The kind of weather that makes the world fold in on itself, become smaller, warmer, quieter.
Zemo sits curled into the corner of the couch, feet tucked beneath him, a cup of his tea cooling in his hands. The book on his lap has been on the same page for nearly fifteen minutes. Bucky is sitting on the floor, back against the couch, legs outstretched on the rug, idly flipping through an old paperback with one hand and feeding the cat scraps of salmon with the other.
Finally, Zemo closes the book and says, without looking, “I saw her.”
Bucky glances up. “Who?”
“Aphrodite.”
There’s a pause. The softest creak of the couch as Bucky shifts. He glances over, the book lowering slightly. His expression isn’t alarmed. Just alert. Curious. “Oh?”
Zemo nods once, slow. “In a museum. At first. And then everywhere.”
There’s a long pause. Bucky watches him, waiting. Letting him speak in his own time.
“She’s not what you’d think, James,” Zemo says eventually. “Not just lust or glamour. Although there is that. She’s longing. Ache. Memory. The hunger you didn’t even know you were carrying until you see it in someone else’s eyes.”
Bucky hums. “Sounds exhausting.”
Zemo laughs lightly. “It was.” He shifts, unfolding his legs to sit properly, straightening up. He looks at Bucky. “She wanted me.”
“I mean, I get it,” Bucky says, without missing a beat. “You're very desirable.”
Zemo quirks a brow. “She made it very hard to leave.”
“Hmm.” Bucky sets his book aside, sits up. “But you did leave.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
Zemo’s voice is very quiet now. “Because I missed you.”
Bucky tilts his head, considering that. “That’s it?”
Zemo turns to look at him, surprised by the calm in his tone.
Bucky shrugs. “You’re hot. Even the gods notice. I’m flattered, honestly.”
That earns a smile. A small one, but real.
“What did she want?” Bucky asks.
“To understand,” Zemo says. “Why I love the way I do. Why I could resist her.”
“And what did you tell her?”
Zemo shifts closer. “I didn’t have to tell her anything, James. She saw it.” He tilts his head.
Bucky raises an eyebrow. “Me?”
Zemo nods. “Of course.”
Bucky pauses, then tilts his head in reply, his eyes crinkling up at the edges. “You’re gonna use this to win every argument now, aren’t you?” He mutters, suppressing a grin. “Even Aphrodite agrees with me.”
Zemo smirks. “Naturally.”
And then they’re laughing. Tangled on the couch like ivy and oak, with the rain still falling and the glass rose catching the light on the windowsill.
*
Aphrodite picks up her mirror and watches through the glass, one hand resting on its gilt-edged frame. Her expression is wistful and satisfied.
She sees them, Zemo and Bucky. She watches Bucky pluck that ridiculous cartoon owl mug from the shelf and nestle the rose inside it with great care. She watches Zemo smile like he never used to. Like he knows he’s smiling, and chooses to. She sees them together, tangled in one another on the couch, the soft light of their home warming everything it touches.
The goddess hums under her breath, a note that tastes like honey and endings. “Beautiful,” she murmurs. “Utterly beautiful.”
She presses her fingers to the glass, just for a moment, and it shimmers faintly at her touch. Then she turns away, her silk-clad form vanishing into the mist, like perfume, like a passing dream. Behind her, the mirror returns to itself.
And somewhere, Zemo glances at the window, a flicker of something brushing against the edges of his thoughts. But when he looks again, it’s only the rain.
***