Chapter 2
He needed a plan. Desperately so. And after almost two weeks of seeking one, mapping out and running possible scenarios in his head, Zemo had… nothing. Nothing that worked in his baby’s favour at least. If last time had proven something, was that he had no issues executing a prison break. But this time was different and very difficult given the fact that he was on a floating metal box in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. He could make it out, that much he knew, but it was a limited plan. As well trained as he was thanks to his past as a soldier and a Colonel, he still couldn’t physically swim his way to shore.
Granted, Zemo did have intentions of breaking out of The Raft, he wasn’t intending to rot in there forever. He still had some unfinished business to take care of. He had left specific others and had connections ready to execute this perfect escape in exactly a year from now. But Zemo didn’t have a year, not anymore. Hell, he barely had months. Maybe one, at best, before someone picked it up and he was busted.
He was an omega, after all. His body had cycles and needs every three months whenever a new heat would come, which meant that once a month they’d stuff him with heat suppressants. Then, every three months as his moon cycle approached, they did routinary check ups on him to ensure his heat was in fact controlled. They used to do the same thing when he was imprisoned in Germany. It was mandatory, even in a prison like The Raft—especially so. They ran those when he first arrived. They even did a pregnancy test, which had come back negative because it was way too early back then.
The omega licked his lips at the thought. He didn’t know for sure when his baby was conceived, but he does remember that the last time he had sex with James was the same morning he had escaped the Dora Milaje in Riga. He wondered if that had been it. His borrowed freedom had ended exactly four days after.
He took a deep breath, and sat down on the floor, between his bed and the small nightstand. He took his pillow, stripped the thin mattress off the cover and hung it from the table to the bed, placing two of his books on top of each end to simulate a fort. Then he grabbed his blanket, another book and then crawled inside his makeshift little nest.
He felt a bit silly, but he learned quickly the other day that doing this reduced his omega anxiety a little, and he was willing to take any crumb of comfort he could find. Because the lack of it was slowly, but surely, consuming him. His morning sickness was still there, but at least it was sticking to only the mornings for now. He never fully ate breakfast now, he’d still pick at the food though, because he was trying to avoid attention his way by refusing to eat. He didn’t want a visit from General Ross, not now. Or ever, for that matter. Though the man was a beta and he wouldn’t smell his disrupted hormones, just his presence was enough to make Zemo throw up on his shoes. He despised the asshole. His raging pregnant hormones intensified the feeling. So he tried his best to eat lunch, and then dinner he actually ate in full most of the time.
Looking down at his book he tried to concentrate on the words and the fantasy story he read, but his mind kept slipping back to memories. Of James. James with his beautiful and sad icy blue eyes, (that couldn’t help but think if his baby would take after). James with his plump mouth and innocent laughter. God, he had the pleasure of hearing him laugh. Genuinely. It was one time, they had just finished each other off in the tiny bathroom of his own private jet.
Sam was sleeping soundlessly just a few feet away from them. They were still panting against each other, cum drying in their toned stomachs. Zemo had one of his hands pressed back in a weird angle by Bucky’s vibranium arm. As the alpha had freed his hand, the omega let out a whine, rubbing his sore wrist between them. “I’m getting too old to fuck like a teenager,” He had complained, to which apparently Bucky had found hilarious at the moment, letting out a giggle. The sound made Zemo’s heart flutter.
“You feel old? Try being 106.”
“Oh, excuse me, not all of us are enhanced alpha super soldiers with insatiable libido.”
Bucky raised his eyebrows, looking at him amused. “Hey, you might not be enhanced, but I would dare to say that your stamina matches mine, sweetheart.” The little smile on his lips was so juvenile and genuine that Zemo was unable to look away or think of anything else but kissing him as the man spoke. So he did, after mumbling a soft and distracted “yeah’’ he grabbed the back of the alpha’s neck and sealed their lips together in the sweetest and strangest kiss they ever shared.
Blinking away the memory, Zemo also had to blink a few tears as well. His chest ached. This was happening a lot lately. The more he thought about James, the more miserable he became. The thoughts and memories, while they were pleasing and he held them dear to his heart, were not serving him any comfort. He missed the alpha, and his pregnancy felt like a lot with each passing day. He needed him and that terrified him.
Unable to think more over his situation, the omega resorted to the only way he knew of coping with stuff these days. He closed the book, putting aside, curled himself up and then took a nap.
-
The moment he woke up, Zemo knew something was not right. He physically felt the atmosphere shift as he awoke from his sleeping haze. He sat up quickly, too quickly actually. A wave of nausea rushed up his throat, making him place a hand over his mouth, covering it. He took into his surroundings and frowned in confusion. His cell looked different, felt different, too. There was a red hue to it, and as he peeked a look outside from where he was sitting on his nest; everything looked blurry. So was he still dreaming?
“Perhaps,” Said an unfamiliar voice, startling him. “Or perhaps not.” It took him a few seconds to realise that this voice also spoke to him in Sokovian.
A chill ran down his spine as he looked everywhere but didn’t truly see anyone there. All of a sudden a bright red glow formed a silhouette a few feet away from him and then a person appeared. The omega trembled a bit as he was approached. A petite- but deadly looking-woman was in front of him, staring with glowy scarlet eyes. A witch. It took him only a few seconds to remember to place her. Ah, yes. This was one of the Sokovian twins that Hydra had experimented on. Zemo clenched his jaw as recognition downed on him. The witch tilted her head.
“I take it you recognise me?”
“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit, Miss Maximoff?” He replied drily.
“You’re Baron Helmut Zemo,” she recited. “I do remember the royal family, the people would talk highly of you.” The witch sweeped her gaze all over the omega, as if she was scanning his being, gathering vital information from him that she needed just with that one look. Zemo felt on edge suddenly. “Honourable man, defended our decaying country from its currupters till the end. And yet, you lost everything. Your family diminished to ashes along with all of Sokovia. Am I correct?”
Zemo stood up, deadly slow, and with determined rage flaming in his eyes. “What. Do. You. Want?” He pronounced every syllable just as deadly, unafraid.
The pregnant omega knew how dangerous Wanda Maximoff was. He had read some of her files before. He had also seen her fight before. Such raw power flowing through a small and young omega. Zemo didn’t feel too different about her as he did for super soldiers or the Avengers. She was one of them. And once again, he would say it as many times as necessary, no one should hold that much power. He had also heard of the things she had done in that town less than a year ago.
He was judging her, and she knew that too.
“You think I’m abominable.” It wasn’t a question, more like a fact. Zemo didn’t correct her. “And despicable.”
Again, Zemo didn’t correct her. He didn’t know her personally. He only knew what the files and the news said. He had a right to assume the worst, though, because she was an enhanced one. And Zemo didn’t need to be an enhanced human to feel how consumed by power this girl was. Yet, he kept his mouth shut, because he didn’t need to speak his displeasure for her to know. He had a feeling that she was already deep in his mind. After all, it was clear that he was somewhere in his own consciousness right now with the witch and not awake in his actual cell-room.
“You’re correct, this is your consciousness,” The witch said, starting to pace around. She made a graceful movement with one of her hands while keeping the other behind her back. A red glow, just like the one that first brought her in here, was flowing from her fingers. “I am, in fact, in your head, yet, I’m not anywhere near you. I have learned a few new astral projection tricks this year.” She explained. Yet, Zemo could see her madness leak a little as she spoke. There was nothing sane with this girl, but at the same time it was gracious to see flaws, especially in people of her kind. “Oh, please. You think too highly of yourself if you really think we don’t share certain similarities. We’re not that different, Baron.”
The way she said his ex-title wasn’t exactly in a mocking manner. It didn’t hold that much respect, but she said it as if it was the correct way to refer to him.
“I am nothing like you.” He responded through gritting teeth. He wasn’t a supremacist. People like super soldiers and Wanda Maximoff, on the other hand, were.
Wanda turned around, sharply. The flame in her eyes glowed brightly as she approached him. And despite the fact that they were both omegas, Zemo felt his omega coward away. Her power growled like that of a mighty alpha, and Zemo looked away at that.
“Are we? Really that different, I mean.” She growled before his head was suddenly surrounded by scarlet glow and his mind was sent spiralling.
All of a sudden they were back in Sokovia, ash and dust covering the skies. Zemo’s blood ran cold. He saw himself sitting in crumbled ruins, tears staining the hard contour of his face as he held his son and wife lifeless bodies in his arms. His chest ache and his omega whined at the image. All of a sudden the scenery surrounding them changed. Again there was ash and dust and ruins, but it was a destroyed building. Zemo saw as a kid, a little older than his son had been, probably around ten, moved away pieces of walls and crumbled cement to reveal another child, a girl. Zemo realised soon enough that it was Wanda herself and her twin brother. He watched as the kids dug through the ruins to find the lifeless bodies of what the Baron assumed was their parents next to a missile. Stark’s name on it. They held onto each other, waiting for the thing to end them.
Zemo remembered that incident. He hadn’t been in Sokovia when it happened though, he was attending college in Germany at the time.
The missile never blew up. The kids survived as it was obvious. But it wasn’t by blind chance. Unknowingly to them, older Wanda and him watched how that red hue irradiated off Wanda as she and her brother hugged and stayed close. Zemo knitted his brow. He thought the twins' powers were created by Hydra when they were older than that. The scenery changed. The orphan twins protesting together in Sokovian rallies, more grown now. Flashes of them in refugees, helping others around. Doing their part as they grew up. Then the both of them walking up to Hydra, willingly. Zemo’s nose flared.
“You need to understand. We were alone, and we already had these abilities we didn't understand.” Wanda said, quietly beside him.
“Do I?”
The scenery once again changed. The twins being experimented on. Tortured. Chained. Wiped. Locked away. “It lasted five years before the Avengers came and then Ultron.”
Zemo flinched at that. Avengers and Ultron in the same sentence always made him squirm in rage and pain, and grief.
Fast-forward. A scene where the witch’s brother was shot to death was shown. Then the girl lost herself in a moment of shattering grief. “It felt like that.” Her words as she ripped Ultron’s heart out made Zemo gulp. He didn’t want to admit how much, how deeply, he felt those words, because yes, that’s exactly how he had felt when he had realised that his family hadn’t survived Sokovia’s fall.
The next scenario showed him, sitting on a bed, combat boots on, a gun in his hand. He was in Germany, he remembers. He was all packed up, plane tickets in his duffle bag. That was the day he parted to America. Full of rage and ready to avenge his family his way. The day he was officially ready to take down the Avengers.
“When Pietro and I joined Hydra, we weren’t thinking any different from what you were thinking here.” Wanda spoke softly once more. “We wanted to take revenge for what Stark had done to our family. To our home. We were so young, lonely, and with abilities that we didn’t understand.” She stared ahead, a moment in her memory being shown as a blinding yellowish light faced her in one of the many experiments the foul organisation was running on her at the time. They both watched as the light took shape into a similar future version of herself. Looking very much how she looked now, right there beside Zemo. “This was who I was supposed to be all along. Who I am now. I was born this way. All Hydra ever did was exploit me.”
“Still… You went to them willingly and hungry for power. That’s hardly what a saint looks like in my book.’’ The male omega couldn’t help himself as he reproached.
“You know of all the things that I would have taken you for, Baron, a hypocrite wasn’t one of them.” Ruby eyes gave him a stern look. The scenery around them shifted once more and then they were in Madripoor, he could see himself and James, mouths attached in a desperate, heated, kiss. Hands pushing and ripping off clothes blindly. “You claim that enhanced people shouldn’t be allowed to exist, yet, you seemed rather close… to this one in particular, didn’t you? All part of the plan to exterminate him, I’m sure.”
Zemo felt heat coat his face as he looked away from this woman once more. Wanda had, mercifully, shifted the scene away before it could escalate. “It wasn’t like that…” Zemo tried to gather the right words to formulate an excuse. A defense for his point. But it was hard to do so without sounding exactly like the woman had accused him. “James didn’t take the serum willingly. He is not blinded by power and supremacist ideals. But you, on the other hand…” The Baron tilted his head, studying the girl. God, he could feel it, smell it. All that raw power that consumed her, radiating off her. He narrowed his eyes at her, a soft smirk slightly tilting up the corners of his mouth. “I cannot say the same about you, can I, witch?” He crossed his arms behind his back. Ah, there he was. The unafraid mastermind that Helmut Zemo actually was. Not the one that Maximoff had caught all off guard and disorientated. The woman had the power to evaporate the other omega if she pleased, but Zemo refused to be intimidated any longer.
But Wanda mimicked his stance, deciding that they were equals in this debate. She darted her red eyes quickly to his middle and the Baron refused to give her a reaction. They locked eyes. “What would you say if I were to tell you that I have enough power to retake our lands and bring Sokovia back from the ashes?”
So that was the real purpose of the witch’s visit. Of course she wanted that. Of course she had gone to him. The last Sokovian royal in remaining.
“I would tell you that you’re delusional. What is dead, should stay dead, Miss Maximoff, or haven’t you learned your lesson yet?” Wanda had it in her to actually look hurt by that, but Zemo didn’t feel like lending her sympathy. “Though in all honesty, I don’t understand what you could possibly need from me if you claim you could pull something like that.”
Wanda composed herself as quickly as the emotion had leaked through her. “You are a Baron. The last of your name standing. You have knowledge that I don’t have. A country can’t be ruled without a king. And I have no intention of wearing a crown. I just want my home back.”
“Heavy is the head that wears the crown. I see… There’s nothing left of Sokovia, I’m afraid, I have seen what remains of her. A mockery to the rest of the world.” He said drily. “Only advice I can offer to you is to forget about such a mad plan. Is not worth it.”
Wanda pressed her lips together in a thin line and stared at the floor for a bit, letting what sounded like an exhausted sigh escape through them in the end. She looked at him once more, looking older than she was.
“I’m not here to antagonise you, Baron. I did lose everything, too. I asked my source of magic for help and for a way to guide me into finding my way home, and it pointed me in your direction. I’m not just here on my own accord. I’m here because the universe also wants me to be. I can see why now,” For a second time in this whole exchange, the Maximoff twin looked at his stomach, and Zemo’s involuntary panic arose. “I believe you also need me.”
“I don’t need anything from you,” The male omega snarled, covering his stomach protectively with his arms.
“Your baby might.” Wanda replied in a softer tone. Zemo closed his eyes. “I will give you some time to think about it, despite your beliefs against me, you can say no. This is voluntary.”
“How thoughtful.” He replied sarcastically.
Wanda ignored his remark and stepped away, walking towards the opposite wall. “Three days, Baron.” And just like that everything, including her, morphed away. And once again, Zemo woke up with a stralt.