Elysium
Zemo is in the library. It is late evening, the wine is untouched, the lamplight is golden. Bucky is sprawled nearby, halfway through a nap and a peach. Zemo’s voice drifts through the hush, not dramatic, not grand, just the quiet reverence he always has when reading something that pleases him. An ancient dialect. Lyrical. Gentle.
But then something shifts. A candle flame flickers blue. The air tightens. Bucky’s eyes snap open and he turns around.
“Helmut?”
Zemo blinks. “Did I say something?”
That night, Morpheus finds them in the dreaming. Velvet robes, voice like rustling starlight.
“You spoke her name. The one who sleeps between time. The one memory that was forgotten on purpose.”
Zemo, elegant and composed even in dreams, only lifts a brow. “I was simply reading aloud.”
“Yes. And she heard you.”
“Is she angry with me?”
“She is interested.”
“Ah.”
“Oh, no, my dear Baron. That’s infinitely worse.”
“I didn't mean anything by it,” says Zemo. “The word was so beautiful. I couldn’t help but say it aloud.”
Bucky grunts. “You said it in three languages.”
“Baron,” murmurs Morpheus. “You uncovered a name even the gods have forgotten. Speaking it aloud even in one language has stirred something sleeping. Now that something is stirring back.”
*
Morpheus grants them passage to Elysium, just off the divine grid, tucked between lost dreams and summer eves. Elysium’s quiet veil offers protection from being seen by the thing searching for them. Until the thing searching for them stops searching and returns to slumber.
They flee, not in haste, not in chaos, but elegantly, through twilight paths and mist-curled glades.
Now they are hiding there. Lying low. Disguised, of course, but not well enough to fool the birds who keep chirping suspiciously nearby, or the river that definitely giggles when Bucky tries to skip a stone across it.
For now, they have slipped through the cracks for a while. Just to be. To taste ripe pomegranates. To sleep long and slow. To fall in love again with nothing at stake but the hours between kisses.
A garden grows around them, slow and lush. Time gentles. The air hushes.
Zemo spends mornings translating poetry onto fig leaves. Bucky swims in pools that remember stars. Zemo half-whispers arcane words just to see Bucky’s lashes flutter at the cadence.
And sometimes, just sometimes, Zemo will glance over at Bucky and whisper, “Tell me again what I said. The name.”
And Bucky will shake his head, his mouth crooked in that way that means he’s definitely not saying it. “Nope. One dream-god warning’s enough for me.”
*
It’s sunny. Always sunny here. Golden, soft, dreamlike. They lie on a patch of grass so lush it feels like velvet, a lazy creek babbling beside them. Bucky’s discarded shirt hangs from a low branch. Zemo is in linen. White linen. Impeccable.
Bucky props himself up on one elbow, squinting suspiciously at a pair of deer with flower crowns who have been watching them for an hour. “Weird place,” he mutters.
Zemo hums, eyes closed. “It’s paradise. Of course it’s weird.”
“I caught the moon singing to me last night.”
“Did you sing back?”
Bucky looks at him, deadpan. “I’m not an idiot.”
Zemo peeks one eye open, grinning. “I don’t know. I quite like to think of you moon-drunk and singing. Seems like something a loveable idiot would do.”
Bucky plucks a flower and flicks it at his face. “And you spoke the name of a forgotten god. Three times. Seems like something a fool would do.”
Zemo catches the flower, smooth as ever, and tucks it behind Bucky’s ear. “Then we’re well matched.”
***
A Few Days in Elysium
At first, they are diligent.
Zemo spends the first week in tailored linen and polished shoes, attempting to write sternly worded letters in long-forgotten dialects requesting reentry into the world of mortals. He has a gala to attend. He dictates them while reclining on a chaise, of course. One must maintain standards.
Bucky, meanwhile, grumbles about needing to pick up his motorcycle from the shop, mutters about schedules and routines and missing that one coffee place in Berlin that does real croissants.
Morpheus drifts by occasionally, pale and ageless and entirely unbothered. “Soon. Soon. Time is syrup here. Let it pool a little.”
So they wait. Patient. Polished. Reasonable.
Time doesn’t pass in Elysium. It meanders, like a lazy stream humming to itself. Bucky and Zemo drift through it in something dangerously close to contentment.
Morning:
They wake to light that filters through clouds shaped like mythic beasts mid-stretch. The bed is too soft. Zemo pretends to complain about it, but he always lingers. Bucky always notices.
“This place isn’t real,” Bucky mutters, stretching, shirtless and sun-kissed.
“Neither are half the enemies we’ve fought,” Zemo replies, watching him like he’s memorising a spell.
Breakfast is delivered by birds. Actual birds. Zemo and Bucky gossip about it afterward. “Did you see the little blue one with the hat?” “I liked the one who brought jam.”
The morning mist hums lullabies, and the trees lean in to eavesdrop.
Midday:
They wander. Through floating meadows and forests that smell like home but don’t look like any planet that ever existed. Sometimes the grass sings softly underfoot. Sometimes it sighs.
They find:
A lake that shows them a reflection of each other from another life, another world, always in love.
A garden where flowers bloom only when touched by laughter. Bucky makes one bloom with a snort. Zemo’s smirk triggers an entire hedge.
A path that leads nowhere unless you're holding hands. They test it. Several times. For science.
They nap in the shade of a dreaming tree. Bucky rests his head on Zemo’s shoulder. Zemo forgets to breathe for a while.
Evening:
There’s a firepit that lights when they tell stories. So they lie back and talk. Quietly. Honestly. Like they don’t have to protect anything.
Zemo shares a memory of the stars over Sokovia before the fall. Bucky shares one of Steve laughing so hard he snorted root beer. Zemo chuckles and says, “You loved him.”
Bucky says, softly, “I did. But not like this.”
They don’t kiss right then. It’s more than that. It's the hush between heartbeats. The soft certainty that they’re here, together, and they are seen.
*
Then comes the slight unravelling.
Zemo’s cravat disappears. His shirt develops a soft floral print. Bucky starts lounging on warm marble with grapes in his mouth and absolutely no idea what day it is. Someone teaches him to play a kind of dream-lute. He’s quite decent at it. Annoyingly decent.
Zemo perfects the art of sighing poetically into a glass of moonlight.
Messages arrive from Morpheus.
Small scrolls, inked in starlight. You may return now. The path is open. Time yawns for you.
Zemo tilts his head. “Do you think ‘yawns’ is an invitation or a warning?”
Bucky, sprawled in a fountain, shrugs. “Maybe he means we should nap on it?”
They nap on it.
They wake to rose petals in their hair and absolutely no memory of what they were supposed to do that day.
By week who-even-knows, Zemo is attending dream-salons hosted by Persephone’s cousin. Bucky has a fan club of nymphs who bring him new sandals and refer to him as “The Soft-Eyed Storm.” He pretends to hate it, but he doesn’t.
Morpheus sends another message. It shimmers like fog and smells faintly of pomegranate:
The world waits, darlings. Eternity will forgive your absence. Your tailor, perhaps not.
Zemo frowns at it. “Do you think he’s actually saying it’s time to go?”
Bucky steals the scroll, folds it into a paper boat, and floats it down a stream that only exists in memory. “Let’s ask him again tomorrow.”
Later, a fox with antlers delivers a note in a tiny gold satchel.
My dearest war criminal and beloved supersoldier: You are cordially invited to get off your asses. Love, Morpheus.
Zemo reads it aloud with an exaggerated sigh. “Shame. I was just starting to enjoy this.”
Bucky hums. “We’ll find our way back. You’ll make sure of it.”
Zemo glances sideways. “You sound quite certain.”
“I know you,” Bucky says simply.
The sky changes and twilight blooms into stars. The invitation hovers, glowing faintly. Zemo tucks it into his coat pocket with a flourish.
They walk toward the tea garden hand-in-hand, with just a trace of moonlight in their eyes.
Morpheus keeps dropping notes in increasingly ridiculous ways: carved into a peach pit, written in the ripples of the brook, whispered by a pine marten.
A scroll delivered via dandelion fluff that assembles itself midair and loudly clears its throat before unfurling. Zemo. Barnes. You’ve been cordially not-banished. Eternity hates to be kept waiting.
A message written in looping gold script on the surface of a perfectly poured latte, accompanied by a cherry tart that keeps trying to climb off the plate. This is not a threat. But the stars are starting to gossip.
A squirrel in a waistcoat appears, bows, and opens its mouth to speak. Instead, it produces a kazoo and plays a tune that somehow translates to: The seam is leaking. Please fix your timeline. Or we will start holding brunch in your pocket dimension.
Each time, Bucky just raises an eyebrow. Zemo lounges and reads the notes aloud with theatrical flair.
*
A nymph with violets in her hair, brings new sandals for Bucky, and whispers. “Wouldn’t a little gathering be divine?”
And somehow, without ever agreeing, Zemo finds himself in a flowing robe of dusky gold, sipping nectar from a glass shaped like a flower. Bucky’s lounging on a swing suspended between two fruit-laden trees, pushed gently by a satyr who keeps calling him “darling chaos.” He doesn’t correct them.
The garden is vast. It wasn’t this big yesterday. But in Elysium, memory folds like origami. expanding and changing shape with every laugh.
There’s music. Ethereal, winding. No instruments are visible, but everyone sways.
There are guests, too. Familiar and unfamiliar. A poet whose name the world has forgotten, a philosopher who only speaks in riddles, a dream given form just for tonight. They greet Zemo with cryptic reverence. They hand Bucky figs so ripe they fall apart in his hands.
At one point, a pair of twins draped in moon-thread start a dance that loops in on itself until no one can remember where it began.
Zemo watches it all from a low marble bench, one ankle crossed over the other, head tilted, a half-smile playing on his mouth. Bucky drops beside him, hair tousled, sandals missing, cheeks a little flushed from too much sun (or wine, or the joy of not caring which).
“This is nice,” Bucky says, voice slow with contentment.
Zemo looks around. The way the vines curl lazily around statues, the way the breeze murmurs like a remembered lullaby. The way everyone is barefoot, or nearly. “It’s entirely impractical.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Zemo hums.
Later, as starlight begins to gather, one of the hosts raises a goblet and toasts. “To the beloved, the lost, the ones who linger. May you always find yourself exactly where you forgot you were.”
Everyone cheers.
Zemo watches Bucky laugh, eyes half-lidded and hands sticky with something sweet, and thinks. ‘Yes. Exactly where we forgot we were.’
The music is slow, honeyed with harp and something that might be wind chimes or laughter in the distance. Lanterns sway overhead like captured stars, strung between olive trees older than memory. Zemo’s hand rests lightly on the small of Bucky’s back; Bucky’s fingers are curled against Zemo’s shoulder. They’re moving lazily, almost hovering, a dance with no destination.
“I’m not wearing shoes,” Bucky murmurs.
“You’re barely wearing anything,” Zemo replies, admiring the way the lamplight pools in the hollow of Bucky’s throat. “Not that I’m complaining.”
From the shadows at the edge of the party, Morpheus appears in person. Not with a crash, not with a trumpet. Just a gentle diffusion of presence, like fog settling into a garden. He’s draped in silks that ripple like the edge of a dream, eyes soft as dusk, hair haloed by moonlight.
“I do hate to interrupt,” he says, voice like warm velvet. “But I thought I’d drop by. Offer you a choice.”
Zemo arches a brow. “A choice?”
Morpheus gestures lazily, as if painting possibilities in the air. “You may stay, if you wish. Elysium is fond of you. People disappear from the waking world all the time. Lost on hikes, sailing into mists, slipping through cracks in their own dreams.”
Bucky glances at Zemo. “Wouldn’t be the worst place to disappear into.”
“No,” Zemo agrees, his voice quiet. “But it’s not home.”
Morpheus smiles, not disappointed. Perhaps even pleased. “You are wise. Or sentimental. It hardly matters.”
He steps closer, brushing his fingers along the lantern light as if plucking notes from it “You’ve lingered longer than most. Elysium will remember you kindly. It may even let you visit again. Not everyone earns that.” Then he adds, more softly, “The veil is thin again. When you’re ready, simply walk toward the gate in the cypress grove. It will be open.”
And just like that, he’s gone. A shimmer in the air. A shift in the music.
Bucky sighs, dropping his head against Zemo’s shoulder.
“I really liked the peaches here,” he says.
Zemo tilts his head, looking at him fondly. “We’ll plant a tree.”
They keep dancing a moment longer. One last slow sway beneath golden lanterns. Then hand in hand, they turn toward the cypress grove.
***
They wake up curled together on the sofa.
Not a celestial chaise in a garden of eternity. Just their sofa. The velvet one Zemo insisted on reupholstering himself, even though Bucky said it was a ridiculous amount of effort for a piece of furniture no one ever sees.
Sunlight slices through the blinds in lazy golden bands. The kind of morning light that means they slept late and the world didn’t mind.
Bucky shifts slightly. He’s still in yesterday’s shirt, soft and stretched, half-buttoned. Zemo’s fingers are curled into the hem of it like he might float away otherwise. There's the faintest trace of glitter on his jawline, like a dream still clinging.
“You dreaming?” Bucky mumbles.
“Unsure,” Zemo says, blinking slowly. “Are we back?”
Bucky turns his head, looks around the familiar chaos of their living room. Books on every surface. Music coming faintly from the kitchen. One of Zemo’s ridiculous houseplants has grown aggressively overnight and is trying to colonise the armchair.
“Feels like we are,” Bucky says, stretching.
Zemo makes a soft, thoughtful sound, then sniffs delicately. “You smell like peaches.”
“You’re welcome,” Bucky says with a grin.
They don’t rush to get up. The music keeps playing. A breeze stirs the curtain. Somewhere outside, the city is carrying on, oblivious.
Eventually, Zemo shifts just enough to press a kiss to Bucky’s temple.
“No more forgotten names for a while,” Bucky murmurs, eyes half closed.
“Not even the particularly intriguing ones in the third volume of Theban incantations?”
“Especially not those.” Bucky grins lazily, then adds “You did keep one of the wine bottles, didn’t you?”
Zemo smiles. “Of course. I’m not a barbarian.”
And somewhere, tucked safely in the back of the pantry behind the Earl Grey and the emergency apocalypse chocolate, a bottle of Elysian wine glows softly. Just in case.
***
It’s been two weeks.
The real world has resumed, with all its uneven pavements, blaring car horns, and email chains titled “re: re: URGENT.” Bucky’s collected his bike. Zemo’s attended his gala, with exactly the right amount of disdain and three pocket squares. Leftovers get eaten. Laundry piles up. Grocery lists are written and spectacularly ignored.
But something still lingers, like the warmth of sunlight behind the eyes, or the scent of something sweet caught in an old scarf.
One night, Bucky comes into the kitchen barefoot, except for the sandals. Those sandals. The ones with the little gold filigree straps that twine up his calves, absurd and beautiful.
Zemo blinks once, twice. Tilts his head. "James."
“What?”
“You’re wearing the sandals.”
Bucky shrugs. “They’re comfortable.”
“They are nymph-crafted nonsense, forged in nectar-drenched frivolity.”
“Still comfy.”
Zemo stares a moment longer, then, quietly, without saying anything, he goes to the bedroom and comes back wearing that shirt. The one patterned like a garden at dusk. Soft. Faintly shimmering. Indulgent.
Bucky doesn’t bat an eye.
They open the glowing bottle. It tastes like orchard breeze and velvet laughter. They sit at their table and eat dinner with slow reverence, like the food is remembering summer. Bucky keeps glancing at Zemo’s shirt. Zemo keeps brushing Bucky’s ankle with his foot, like he’s checking that he’s still real.
Afterwards, the dishes are left on the table.
Zemo wanders into the library. The house is quiet, save for the creak of floorboards and the faint hum of city life muffled by thick drapes.
He runs a hand along the shelves, pausing, inevitably, at that book. The one with the cracked leather spine and the pages that flutter like sighs. He pulls it out with care, turns, and catches Bucky leaning in the doorway.
“I knew it,” Bucky says, smirking. “You’ve been thinking about it.”
Zemo tilts his head, mock-innocent. “About what?”
“You know what.”
Zemo opens the book slowly. A whisper of old ink rises. Then, with that devilish, utterly unrepentant grin: “Should I say it again?”
Bucky’s eyes flare with something warm and reckless. “I mean, we haven’t finished the wine yet.”
Zemo gestures to the armchair, voice velvet-soft. “Then sit down, James. And let’s see where the night takes us.”
Outside, the moon is full. Inside, the air starts to shimmer. Just a little more than usual.
***