Chapter 2
A storm swallows the castle, holds it in its gullet for days.
Days of being out of cryo, untouched by the ice that seeps into its bones, by the black sleep that opens to eat it or spit it out, shivering and unmade.
Days of being indoors, but above ground, with windows full of angry screaming sky. Free sky.
Being human-warm, in rooms kept for comfort, not function. The gray of the castle expertly and thoroughly covered by tapestries or art or hunting trophies, portraits that gaze balefully or smugly from their roosting places, landscapes that look dreamlike, those ever-warm stretches of hills and valleys and farmland peopled by the soft brushstrokes that make human shapes at work.
The Soldier wonders if it will be taken back soon.
It cannot deny any longer that it dreads it. And it hates Helmut Zemo for that too. A traitorous thing, is hope.
“He doesn’t leave the castle.” It prods without preamble, staring at Oeznik’s coffee cup while Oeznik adjusts to the surprise of being addressed.
“The Master leaves often enough when it suits him.” Replies the butler. His voice is a pleasant mixture of professional-but-earnest friendliness, and a recrimination mitigated by some strange affection the servant has for the newest and most obtuse resident.
“Where does he go?” The Asset presses.
“Anywhere he deems appropriate for the situation, I suppose.”
“What about when he doesn’t leave?” This is the real question. The storm has made the roads unsafe, the gardens and the grounds unnavigable. And still, the Baron finds ways to disappear for most of the day.
“I don’t know what you mean, sir.” Oeznik resorts to his most immovable and unreadable English, straight from a textbook. “I have work to do. May I get you anything?”
The Soldier is nearly out of military rations, and itching for training or missions instead of haunting the castle like a ghost.
“I’m functional.” It says quietly.
It cannot read Oeznik’s expression in response to that, so it doesn’t know if the answer was correct.
Oeznik rinses out the mug, places it upside down in a dish tray above a perfectly functional dishwashing machine, as if he himself is slightly out of sync with the present. He makes dainty but thorough work of drying his hands on a kitchen cloth before he leaves.
“If you were to want anything, you may speak to me, or ask An. I’m sure it would put her mind at ease.”
At the crease of confusion on its brow, Oeznik supplies, “An likes to feed people, which is why she is so good at it.”
An, that would be the castle chef, then. It is confident in its initial assessment that she is civilian, not undercover. It says nothing.
Oeznik makes a little sound of displeasure, mild as with everything he does, and makes a brief farewell.
The Soldier scans the empty kitchen; its eyes pass over the industrial fridge and the cold room, as ancient as anything in the building, but fit with an insulated steel door with a viewing window, through which the Soldier can see a frankly impressive store of raw meat in sizes that simply wouldn’t fit into a fridge. The image of whole and half animals cleaned and hanging from meat hooks scratches something familiar in the back of its brain. Perhaps it used a cold room in a previous mission.
The storm rolls its voice overhead, booms into the castle corridors and makes the Soldier feel suffused with its trembling roar.
It goes to the library, but Zemo is not there.
Though the storm is a convenient cover for an armed extraction team, HYDRA does not come for it.
It stares at the last week of rations in its duffel bag and reluctantly begins to fast.
The headaches start within a day.
The worst part is, Zemo looks at it like he can sense the pain. Perhaps it gives it away in the face, finally losing its touch for the stoic mask.
'There's a reason you're the Fist of HYDRA and not the Brain.' A memory-voice says, from a man who has probably since died of old age.
It has always been perfectly held, unfeeling and unflinching. It is the Fist of HYDRA, and a fist may feel pain or discomfort, but only to inform it in combat. It doesn't question the order to strike. It doesn't wander off from the head. Now it is adrift and everything, once ordered and safe, is dissolving in the amber color of a man's heated eyes, and turning wrong.
The Asset wonders if it overestimated its value to HYDRA. Helmut Zemo is only a man, surely. What chance does he stand against the imperative to retrieve their asset?
Why have they not come?
It is now nearly a fortnight. Nearly half of one month since the facility outside Novi Grad was taken. It stares at the last packaged ration and debates eating it. The people of the castle avoid it, because it has taken to glaring them down.
"He's grumpy now." Observes the brother Maximoff, and they both know it's too much of a bother for it to try and hurt him, so it simply gives him the same hollow-eyed stare as everyone else.
"If you want me to, I can keep him from running away while you hit him." Wanda says from beneath a hooded gaze. She hides the mischief in her voice, but not her eyes.
"Hey!" Pietro yips.
"That's okay." It says mulishly, surprising them both into silence. Then it thinks, pauses, and observes "I can always just wait until he falls asleep."
Pietro's expression leaves an immense pleasure circling around in its chest for the better part of a day.
It goes to the library. A common occurrence now. But this time it is not humiliating itself, seeking its pseudo-handler like a duckling after its mom. Instead, it enters the room with the simple goal of reconnaissance.
The library lacks any newspaper or serial publication after the previous month. It lacks tech. There is only a phone on the desk, and it’s corded, with a call button - no doubt a luxury product meant for mansion-owners of a particular age. It picks up the phone and listens for a dial tone, and is prompted to do something in Sokovian by a robot voice, presumably enter a passcode or extension to dial an outside line. It replaces the receiver with a heavy click back into its cradle.
With no news and no internet, it is cut off. If HYDRA is waiting for it to respond, it has no means to do so.
“Need something, dear one?”
It shutters itself up behind its eyes, turning slowly to face the Baron.
“Are you hungry?”
“No.” It says, which is a lie, but also an answer it has learned to give.
But still, it is a lie, and Zemo seems to taste that on the air, or perhaps he knew already, asked not as a question but to make a point. The man’s eyes pin like a bird and narrow to slits.
“Why do you lie to me? That doesn’t seem like such a hard thing to admit to. You can eat anything you like here.” The Baron strides into the room and takes up the phone himself, pressing the button. “Oeznik?” He says, following with an affection-laden slurry of Sokovian, its soft cadence like the beat of dove wings against the Soldier's ears.
“Why do you not send me on missions?”
“Why would I?” The man challenges, quirking up one of his brows.
”You stole the Winter Soldier.” It reiterates, for what feels like the hundredth time.
“I disagree.” The Baron shrugs, replacing the phone and taking to rifling through the drawers of his enormous desk.
The Soldier bristles. “What would you call it?”
“I believe you English-speakers might say you ‘liberated’ something from your enemies. I find the term uniquely apt in this case.” The man chuckles at his own humor.
It ignores the, frankly, stupidly obvious bait for disagreement. It knows how to be interrogated. The Baron can fish for information all he likes. “But no missions. Why bother?”
”Why do you assume I need an operative?” The Baron says with an infuriating tilt of his head.
“Why would you-“ It stops, noticing suddenly that the Baron is close, that he is lingering and watching and the Solider can smell the scent of clean, expensive soap, of cologne, of inexplicable smoke.
“Have you considered that I might simply keep you to look at and talk to?”
Something happens in the Soldier’s throat that almost comes out - it is surprised that it has to stop itself from braying out a disbelieving laugh.
”You’re not serious.” It accuses, more to enforce the idea.
“Have you never been told how handsome you are?” Zemo says without a hint of shame or self-conscience.
“You’re naive.” The Soldier says in a dangerous voice.
”Perhaps. Yes. I still don’t know your name.”
A strange, worrying shudder goes up and then down the spine.
”But I shall learn it in due course." The Baron continues. "That much I promise you.”
The room is warm. It is quiet.
Fire leaps and dances merrily on the grate.
“I am the Winter Soldier.”
Names are for human beings.
“You are a man, my dear. You have a name.”
It looms. The smaller man stands calmly in the heat of its gaze, with a steadfastness that itches, in the back of its brain, again. Once. Once there was... Someone. Small. Steadfast.
No. No.
“You’re wrong.”
”That’s an exciting possibility, but, no… You are no golem. You are no tin soldier set to life. You are flesh and soul and fractured mind. And I will find you." Zemo murmurs. "Every piece of you. And all of you will be mine.” The Baron exudes a confidence, a strength, he can’t possibly have, not next to a super-soldier. “HYDRA came into my home. They attacked and stole my people. And worse, they sent an idiot to mind it all. I have never been so insulted. They came to me with false smiles, with Strucker,” he pauses, “but they also brought you. I knew I must have you, from the very moment I saw you at the front door.” The Baron positively simmers with energy, like a pot about to boil over. There’s a gleam to his eyes that looks like light flashing off the ice in a glass. “I was terribly angry… and then, there you were. A gift.”
Despite everything, the Soldier feels its throat go tight, feels the urge to step back. It doesn’t. “You stole me from the facility.”
“I merely collected you… I had stolen you long before that, cabochon.”
The Soldier’s mind will not obey, will not present the memories. It lowers its face and shuts its eyes and groans as it comes up against the wall of damage in its brain. But the damage is necessary, a casualty of the work done to make it stable and field-ready. It is.
“Strucker brought you to visit me.” Zemo continues. “A show of strength. An entreaty that I should join his cause. It was not meant as a gift, but it may as well have been, because he will always be a terrible fool, as poorly suited to appreciate beautiful things as he is to hold onto them. A loose fist that lets diamonds fall through its fingers. We have something of a family motto to that effect.
“He was the weak link in your HYDRA. I think they know this too. They did not give him your name or your records, even though they shared with him a series of control words. Even had they not, I am confident I could have taken you… You were beautiful, and you were terribly alive. They had no appreciation for you, my darling. So I took you. And I won’t be giving you back.”
”They are going to kill you. They’re going to come here and use me to do it. You can’t fight them. Nobody c- Nobody-“ The voice goes weak as water.
The Baron sighs heavily in sympathy, and puts his hands on its face, holds it as precious as a bird's egg. His eyes crinkle with heat in their rye-honey depths.
“I will take all that they have done to you and burn it down around their heads. I will bury them in the ashes and watch their eyes burst from the heat. I will bring you their bodies. I will bring you your name. I will bring you the book that makes you their slave, and we will burn it together… I will keep a place for you here until you can content yourself to be mine. Any and all of this I will do.” The man burns with ardor, a ravenous delight in his softly smiling face. “You are mine, because I knew how to take you, and I know how to keep you. That is what I will do, soldier.”
"As I've said, you can run. You can try." Zemo's knuckles stroke across its face, and it leaks out a little sound as warm tingly lightning seems to jump all over its body from the simple point of contact. It can't move. Why? "I wouldn't be offended at all..."
"Would you like to try?"
A soft knocking at the doors, as Oeznik steps inside with a wheeled serving cart better to aid his age. The cart is laden with heavy silver domes, and the humid, hot scent of many kinds of food is thoroughly sickening. It does not eat. Cannot eat.
"I've an idea, cabochon." The man says, smiling and nodding a dismissal to the butler. "You are conflicted. You want to be loyal to your masters, but you don't know who that is. Hydra, or Zemo. It is only right that you test the hand on your leash to see that it's worthy... So I say again, I will not punish you if you try to leave, so long as you don't hurt or threaten the staff.
If I then bring you back here successfully, you will eat. Of course... We can skip to that now, instead."
And oh, the baron must think himself a master of temptation, bringing smelly (mouth-watering) local foods, a hot meal when it has not been fed anything but the chalky, gunky rations meant to sustain its serum-enhanced biology and no more. The Baron lifts away the ridiculous silver cloche on the food. Fresh breads. Stew in a minimalistic set of tableware. Pickled things and fresh things. It is all clearly meant to dig and fish for anything that might appeal to it, might finally win against its self-control.
The Asset turns its face and wrinkles its brow, trying to show nothing.
"Run, and let me catch you and have done with this. Or eat, cabochon. I will not permit you to mistreat yourself." He plucks up some bread, steaming and soft, dips it in something dark red.
It feels frozen like a deer. The baron slowly lifts his hand, holds it between them with the morsel, watching his quarry with a mix of mirth and confidence.
Zemo waits a beat before grinning and popping the bite into his own mouth. The Asset stares, realizing with a start that its lips slightly parted, as if muscle-memory had it ready to accept the bite-guard from a handler. It shuts its mouth quickly.
"Close." The man observes. "Will you take the next one? Or do you need a firmer hand?" He must see something in the next moment, because without much pause, his voice gains steel and he rumbles.
"Kneel."
From its new place on the floor, it sees Zemo renew his delicate handful of food. He holds the bite's worth of bread closer to the Soldier's lips this time, and its mouth almost drops open obediently.
"Open."
Briefly, with a surge of fear at itself, it realizes its shaking its head 'no'.
"No? You need to eat, dear one. You'll make yourself sick. Hm?"
It doesn't know what to do. It doesn't sound like a threat, like a promise of punishment. There's no clap across the face for accidentally saying 'no'. The man just ...waits. Watches.
Its body makes a weird gurgling noise in its torso. Its eyes flash up at Zemo, and, yes, he heard it too, with something amused and perplexed on his face.
"I will not," he declares softly, "force a thing past your lips. Take, or don't."
The Asset feels his voice, gentle on its skin, a tender thing, and it feels soft and weak all over. In the jaw, too, the fear of punishment or of being sick grows weak, too weak to hold it shut. It even finds itself leaning forward a little, lips and teeth parting to accept food.
The flavor explodes on his tongue. Even before that, it muses, the edge of the mouth, the cheekflesh, everywhere is alight with sensation.
It looks up nervously and finds Zemo nearly incandescent with warmth, watching in pleasure as it finishes its small bite.
"Good." He smiles, eyes thinned.
From the bottom of his belly, it hears the body cry out in a growing voice, 'More!'. The eyes follow the stomach's desires and flicker between Zemo's hand and the platters. It's subtle, but the baron is a master of observation and very motivated to notice.
"More? Perhaps just one more bite, hm? You might like the zimnica, but perhaps it is too soon for so many strong flavors."
It takes the next small offering, feeling oddly like it did when the baron would talk to it, read to it. It has no word for this feeling.
It flinches a little, when the flavors really are too strong, and the baron
the baron
strokes his hair beneath a warm, firm hand. And it can't help but shiver into strange, slothful stillness under the touch. Even the thoughts slow in its brain.
"Beautiful."
He groans in reply, opening for one more bite, this one of a sweet smelling dough torn and glimmering.
The baron looks down at him with undisguised adoration as he whimpers through the pastry. "You like sweet things." He says with terrible fondness, with a hunger in his eyes that feels less frightening than it did. "Of course you do. That one is tulumbe. Hm? Perhaps you want a little more?"
The Asset feels as if in freefall. A kind of deep inexorable gravity, pulling it toward Helmut Zemo, toward his hands, his voice, his freckled eyes. It knows it was frightened once, of this, but it can't want a single other thing. The world has shrunk down to the two of them and everything is absurd and beautiful and simple.
And sweet.
It offers its parted lips with shy courage and stares up in expectation.