#helmutzemo

     THE SERPENT

Baron Helmut Zemo did not fear much. 

He did not fear loss, or war as he had lived through both. He did not fear the promise of hell, or the thrill of death. Though he did fear people with vendettas. He himself was one of them. He had something to prove not just to himself, or the ghosts that followed him around throughout the day. He had to prove to the world that heroism breeds reckless naivety. That power and pedestals brought only destruction. That the Avengers were mere matches and embers, flitting about the mountains of paper and wood that made up the world. That everything they touched, ended up burned through. He wanted people to realize their impact, before everything was reduced to ash and char. Both of which still stained him. 

His reign to prove this, or what the media called his ‘bout of revenge’ was a broad thing. It was all encompassing. It was about every rich and powerful monster that walked this earth. The ones given a shield and an unlawful serum who went on to be gods. 

The ones called ‘heroes’. 

It took meticulous planning. And in the end he still fumbled to exact his revenge. What the puppeteer once believed to be strings, were actually intricate, sticky and acidic webbing that broke off at his mere brush of a touch. Still he had grasped at them. Whispers of promise dissolving at his grip, cloying and sticky on his greedy hands. Crimson ink and transparent veins of destiny tying his hands around in knots. 

The hands that once held a wife. Once held a son.

 All he could taste was ash now. All he saw was charred and gutted houses, rubble. 

In the end, the Avengers had nothing to fear. 

He was calculated, but unfocused on a single subject. He was not lacking in passion or precision. But his plan failed all the same because he did not burn with the fire they did. 

That you do. 

That goes to say that if Helmut Zemo,  the former baron of the fallen country Sokovia feared anything on this earth and the next, it was you. 

Not the cowardly, naive and expendable S.H.I.E.L.D agent he had first met. The one burned, charred to ash and left to crumble by the so-called ‘heroes’. No, there were only hints of danger then.

In your eyes that flitted, never quite resting, like a hummingbird. The glance of your gaze was a palpable thing, near a physical touch. Or the quick wit and thinking he knew from your captivity together. No, then you were but an unpolished rock thrown in with the sought after diamonds and jewels of the Avengers. The real heroes. Then you were just a minor pawn. An expendable asset. 

You weren’t anymore. No he was not scared of you then. 

He was scared of you now. 

He heard about the ways in which you went to grasp webbing. Stealing expendable agents left at Hydra bases just like you had been, over the span of months. The cries for change, that went wholly ignored. 

They did not fear you then, that was their mistake as it was once his. 

They did not take you seriously. The seriously traumatized former shield agent and woman, deemed unworthy by gods and heroes alike for rescue. 

They quickly changed their tune when you gutted a head S.H.I.E.L.D operative on top of his desk. Entrails and crimson seas drowned the hundreds of copies of denied extraction requests strewn about the room. You had made him bleed, burn and ache as you had. 

The hottest fire, the coldest ice and yet instead of ash, you left a flower in your wake. A seed yet to bloom. 

You sparked doubt in the highest ranks of S.H.I.E.L.D for their safety, trickling down to the bottom ranks to form rightful mistrust. Reminding the agents that they could be left behind too. That their own pleas would one day go unanswered by their comrades. 

For that alone, Zemo imagined, is why they named you a terrorist. The fact you killed a high operative was a mere afterthought. It was what the murder meant to others that gave you that label. Enemy of the state and terrorist combined. All flimsy labels that never quite stuck with the force they wished. Mere words that never fully encapsulated you. 

A taste of shame in his mouth burned as he made to even think of them. They did not fit you. For you were no monster he had helped create. You were not a crazy person grown mad from his influence, or that of external traumatizing circumstances. You were not a terrorist. Or an enemy of the state. And he found that he could not define you in words. 

Though comparisons did him no harm. 

So that’s what he did. 

He compared. 

Whispers and sighs of you transformed into things you once had, or could have been. Usually they took the form of a snake. Not the big spotted ones that grew long and lazy, or the cobras and vipers who hissed and shot out with fangs dripping poison. Maybe you were a black mamba, or even once a tentative garden snake. Such as the others. But with a strong will unknown to your serpent peers. An urge to bite, to poison, to harm those who harmed you. To burn. To grow. 

And he had harmed you, oh yes he had done so, so gravely it kept him up at night. The renowned terrorist and former colonel found sleep eluded him when he thought of you. 

You chased him out of dreams, out of sleep, every time he thought of you before bed, or throughout the day.  Which was often. And when the lights of his cell dimmed, you transformed.

In the stagnant silence of his repeating days, when he found the dark, you found him. Now on a cold night of a Monday, he heard the steady long grass in his mind shift. The place in which the memory of you remained still, moved, slithering to the forefront, curling under his brow and pressing with small fangs, to his temple in a fiery kiss.

==

He felt your presence on a late Tuesday. 

Helmut Zemo survived because he was a master manipulator, who was also a master observer. Take for instance, Lenny Orovizc. His longtime Tuesday night shift guard and as the five years prattled on, reluctant acquaintance. 

He was a burly and firm lipped man with a quirk in his brow and a slight lilt in his step. Probably a military injury and the heel lifts did nothing to even, or help his stiff gait as he paced back in between shifts. 

Zemo was deep into the same chapter of Anna Karenina, he always was on a Tuesday, when he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.  Warm shivers erupting from the back of his spine, smoothing up the back of his shoulders, dusting along the fine hairs on his forearms, to encase the back of his hands in an embrace. As if you were warm and pressed against his back, breathing your soft minty breath against his nape. 

Every nerve alight, every hair standing up. Your fangs poised to strike at his jugular, drain his artery. 

Brown eyes flickered up and he found nothing obviously amiss. 

Lenny paced back as he drew to the door to retrieve the hand off of his dinner. Zemo unconsciously flattened his back against the cool glass and watched. His fingers itched against the page, rough and scratchy, too much like your hair had been. 

Everything was the same. Zemo marveled at it. 

The small harrumph as Lenny folded over to grab his tray of slop and grunting. The man had a bad back after all. 

Eyes flitted to see the familiar way the half pressed dress shirt became untucked as his belly spilled over. Thick fingers scrambled for the press of the cool metal slate. Then the firm press of his lips, the serious slit to his pale mouth, the full mustache tickling his bottom lip as he turned. A painting of salt and pepper beard giving way to round high cheekbones. Deep pools of purple under ice blue eyes. 

All the same. 

The clink of keys on his belt. The shift in his approaching walk. The clank of a metal cup against the raised metal lip, the slight shuffle and scrape of his steps. 

Tink, shuffle, scrape. 

Tink, shuffle, scrape. 

Zemo felt his heart do an awful flutter as he moved closer, like a bird was caught in his chest, wildly flitting it’s pale wings about his organs. 

That made him sure. 

“Come get it.” Lenny drawled in his familiar southern accent. The slightest tilt of Canadian accent catching on from his time spent in Vancouver with wife number two. The same dust of freckles and smattering of sun spots that glowed a dull yellow under the fluorescence staring at him. 

 But Zemo knew. 

Although he did not hesitate to bend, hand stilling after the slightest hesitation,  reaching for the reflective plate past the food hatch of his cell wall.  

Before he could even breathe, his hand was pulled sharply by thick grubby fingers and he was slammed against the cool glass and metal wall of his cell so hard his teeth rattled and stark white flashed in his vision. The bright overhead light burned his eyes, the wall crushing his nose as he choked, the taste of ash, metal and spit ripped at his throat as he gasped.   

A sharp strike of electricity ripped up his spine as his eyes met yours.

He felt the familiar hum as Lenny, who was not actually Lenny held him. He recognized it then. The spark in your eyes that never dimmed, no matter who you transformed into. It reminded him of a faraway star, tucked into the expanse of a galaxy. It was just as bright. Burning an icy hue. 

His heart raced so loud in his ears he couldn’t feel anything but you. 

Your features seemed to flicker as if glitching, wrinkly and dry skin giving way to smooth and beautifully soft arm and graceful wrist. He came to focus on the humming of a song at the back of your throat,  as your much smaller fingers tapped an unknown beat at his pulse. 

Blood roared in his ears, sweat sliding down his cupid's bow, quivering as you smiled.  

From the illusion of Lenny Orovizc your face emerged, high cheekbones and long face melding to your stunning visage. He drank in the exact slant and shape of your eyes, the bridge and dip of your nose, the fullness of your lips and all the edges of your stunning face. You hadn’t changed a day; save for the small nick of a scar near your left eyebrow. Your face was haloed by the light, you were crouching on the balls of your feet, your true face framed by your hair, pulled up in a clip at the back of your head. 

Your hand gave his wrist a light squeeze, eyes half lowered and ever serpent like. 

Your lips once painted in a cruel sneer, twisted up into a smirk at Zemo’s evident fear. 

Then the serpent that writhed in his mind, the one holding his hand, spoke in a slow and perfect drawl. 

A mockery.