Chapter 13
Now
They boarded Zemo’s private jet the following day. It was registered, Zemo assured them, under the name of a fake Hungarian diplomat that would garner little notice, negative or otherwise. But still, Bucky was wary. His guard was always up when Zemo was involved.
His head was still aching from the night before. He was vividly aware that he had neither slept nor taken a single pill since his conversation with Nat the night before. He wasn’t physically dependent on the pills to the point where there were physical withdrawals, but he did feel their absence. Everything was sharper, brighter. He was irritable. And Zemo did nothing to temper his irritability.
“Mimosa, Agent Romanov?” said Zemo, offering them an ornate champagne bucket.
“Got anything stronger?” Nat asked.
“A woman of taste,” said Zemo, producing a small flask. “Scotch, aged 17 years.”
“We’re on the clock, Nat,” said Sam.
“Come on, don’t be such a cop,” she teased. She allowed Zemo to pour her a couple of fingers worth of scotch, then she kicked off her high heels and draped herself across a chair next to Bucky.
“You seem pretty unfazed by all this,” said Bucky. He gestured at the plane, but she understood that he meant Zemo and the mission.
She shrugged. “Not hard to surprise me these days. Good guys? Bad guys? What even are those anymore?” She drained her glass with a sigh.
“You’re not wrong,” he said. “SHIELD? HYDRA? The U.S. government? Seems like everywhere wants to kill us.”
“Well, you tend to make enemies in our line of work,” she said nonchalantly. She then gave him a more meaningful look. “Are you good?”
“Yeah. Well. Not goodgood>. But you know.”
“I do,” she said.
—
Not ten minutes later, Natasha was asleep. He’d been staring out the window when he felt a gentle touch on his shoulder, and flinched. He turned, a dread filling his stomach that was difficult to explain. Being touched without permission or warning was what his therapist would call a “trigger.”
But it was just Natasha. Her head had lolled onto his shoulder, and she looked so peaceful. Like a child, sleeping soundly on a parent’s lap. It took trust to sleep like that - especially for a former spy. Bucky felt a sudden, overwhelming tenderness toward Natasha. An instinct to protect her. He wondered at the feeling. He hadn’t felt this tender toward anyone, not since Steve. It wasn’t like love, or even friendship. It was…like Nat was his family. Without thinking, he reached down and pulled a lock of her red hair off her face, smoothed it back over her ear. So, this is what it feels like, he thought. To care about someone. I thought I’d forgotten how.
“Mind if I sit?” said a voice. Bucky was jolted unpleasantly back to reality. Zemo was gesturing at the seat facing Bucky and Natasha.
“Yeah, I mind,” he said.
Zemo sat anyway. Bucky glanced up and saw that Sam was asleep too. Just him and Zemo.
Zemo looked at Natasha. “She’s a sweet little thing, isn’t she?” he said. “Damaged. Like you. You two go well together.”
“We’re not a couple,” said Bucky. He felt himself flushing with embarrassment.
“Maybe not,” said Zemo. “Perhaps it’s too soon for you to love again. After your beloved Steve.”
Bucky felt anger welling in his throat. “Keep his name out of your mouth,” he growled.
Zemo ignored him. “Funny how damaged people always seem to find one another in this world,” mused Zemo. “Maybe there’s a chemical, or a scent, that the damaged emit. Like a signal for all the other poor lost souls out there. You try so hard to fill the gaps in each other’s lives, to be the glue that holds the ramshackle little boat together. But your boat…well, I’m not sure there’s enough glue in the world to hold that together.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” said Bucky quietly. The anger was gone from his voice. He felt the familiar blanket of despair creeping into his brain. He didn’t want Zemo to be right about him. But the words stung of truth.
“I know everything about you, James,” said Zemo. “I have studied you. You were abandoned by your government. Left to die in a hole in some HYDRA facility. Tortured. Humiliated. Brutalized.”
Bucky looked down. If it wasn’t for sleeping Natasha on his shoulder, he probably would have grabbed Zemo by the neck and watched the life go out of his smug little body.
“I don’t bring this up to upset you,” said Zemo. “On the contrary. I think you and I are much alike, James.”
“I doubt that very much,” said Bucky.
“You think that you’re the only one to make an enemy of HYDRA? You think you’re the only one who suffered at their hands?”
Bucky laughed. “Suffered. Yeah, that’s a word for it.”
“You think you’re the only one who has lost family?” said Zemo.
Bucky shrugged. “You make a deal with the devil, you get what you get.”
“A deal,” said Zemo. “You imagine I signed a contract? Sent away for a uniform? Took an oath? No, James. You know as well as I do that HYDRA do not ask people to work for them. They tell. And they have ways of keeping you in line.”
Bucky stayed silent. He hated Zemo, and he didn’t want to believe any of this. But he could see it. He could remember being in that room. He could remember them showing him pictures of Steve. Letting him believe that Steve was captured, tortured, killed.
“You see,” said Zemo. “The way any powerful group stays in power is to create fear. Whatever you believe about me, James…I am capable of fear. And love. And HYDRA took those things away from me, as they did you.”
Bucky could feel the truth in Zemo’s words. And he didn’t like it.
“Well,” said Bucky. “You’ve still got a private plane. I think you’re doing just fine.”
Zemo smiled, then recited: “If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.”
“Pretty words,” said Bucky. “But it seems to me that your ambition escaped intact.”
“Ambition and desire are not the same,” said Zemo. “They rid me of my desire. By killing those I loved, those I became close to. Until there was nothing left for me to wish for.”
“Except power,” said Bucky.
“Power for power’s sake brings me no pleasure,” said Zemo. “But seizing power from the hands of the guilty? That does interest me. SHIELD, HYDRA, NATO, the United Nations. I take their power so that the world can be rid of them. This is how I will repay my debt to the world.”
Zemo leaned forward and looked at Bucky intently.
“Tell me James…how will you repay your debts?”
Bucky didn’t have an answer.