Chapter Text
The water bubbles as the temperature rises. A calming, familiar sound. Once which is used to echoing this dimly lit cabin. It’s a stark contrast, really, to the snowflakes that fall outside the windows whose latches had frozen shut months prior. In times like these, the snow falls so heavily that days and nights feel as if they merge. Though, that may be due to the lack of windows. The door was the only entry, the only escape into barren mountain lands that send ice-cold winds their way.
Together, they spend their days in the old walls, hidden from those very winds.
The tea has a refreshing smell, really. Cherry blossom had always been his favourite. It was a delight, a pure treat, and Zemo only got it out once a week. On every Wednesday, or what they guessed was a Wednesday, he would treat himself and his companion to cherry blossom tea. The Soldier still frowned at it, confused by the concept of something as beautiful as floral tea. Though, the Soldier was only just becoming accustomed to drinking water .
Zemo cannot help the pinpricks of guilt that stab the back of his mind every time he looks at the Soldier. A broken man, decades older than he, but he still had a part in ensuring the asset continued to be broken. Prolong the torture, even if it was just for a while. But he can’t just call him the Soldier or the Asset, no, even just thinking of it left a slightly bitter taste on his tongue. Despite the fact he’s barely a shell of who he used to be. Zemo remembers the files, the Asset was no soldier, no weapon, merely a man just like him and everyone else. And he had a name. A name he was yet to remember.
Zemo flickers his eyes up from his tea to the man sitting opposite him; still as stone, those eyes of his blank, staring straight into him. As if those super soldier eyes could pierce flesh. Zemo surpassed a shiver, and wrapped his hands around the warmth of the mug. He knew he’d have to tread this conversation lightly, for the last thing they both needed was for the man to have a breakdown with his mind in such a frail state.
For someone who has been through a wringer, there’s still a haunting beauty to him. Zemo notices it immediately: those sapphire eyes, so gentle and doe-like on such a man as him. The slight part of his full lip, how once his hair was washed away of oil and grease it fell to his shoulders like silk. For someone who, for decades, has struck fear into the hearts of many, here and now he looks nothing short of fragile. The woolen jumper he wore was poked with moth holes and his hands awkwardly resting on the table, as if trying to be at ease was doing everything but.
“Do you know who you are?” Zemo gently asks, and his voice feels tight. He waited, for any reaction, for anything.
“I am an Asset, the fist of Hydra.” The man returns in an almost robotic voice, a phrase Zemo has heard nearly a hundred times over by now. He takes a breath,
patience,
he tells himself,
“Do you have a name?”
This time, Zemo watches as something stirs in the man, like still smouldering embers of a dying fire, and for a heartbeat he looks
confused.
A normal man would have needed a microscope to see that expression cross the soldier’s face, but Zemo was no normal man.
“I don’t think so.”
The asset did not think for himself, no, this wasn't the Asset. This was someone else struggling to break through. The idea of just grabbing him and spilling to him everything about who he was before comes to mind, but Zemo restrains himself. Flooding did not tend to work, it was theoretically disproven to be effective. Nevermind that it could be dangerous.
“You do not think so?”
“No I--” The man falters, blinks, but too clouded in confusion to figure out exactly what it is he wants to say. He shuts his mouth.
“Would you like a name?” Zemo tries. Choice. The asset didn’t have freedom of choice, though he did hesitate. Maybe? Just maybe?
“I don’t need one.”
Oh. A little disappointing--but they’ll get there. Zemo bites his tongue, and restrains the disappointment.
“You can choose one for yourself, but nobody is here making you do so… you can choose anything you like.”
“I don’t need one.” The man stresses, and once again, the asset never showed any sort of emotion aside from fearful anger between memory wipes and activation, where his gut wrenching screams and cries echo through the complex. Zemo sighs, but does not push him,
“You don’t need one if you don’t want one.”
It doesn't relax the man in the slightest. It does not relax either of them.
Maybe the concept of wants was still a bit too much for the soldier to handle. After all, his memory had been corrupted by Hydra beyond recognition. But that would not stop Zemo for this moment, he had wants, and in this evening blizzard Zemo wanted tea. So he did exactly that. He sat near the soldier but not too near that he could be considered suspicious.
Suspicion was a whole new idea now that Zemo and the Soldier lived in this cabin. Zemo had to watch every move he made, every word he said, every tone in his voice or use of his muscles. It was all being scrutinized by the man he saved. Well, the man he hoped he had saved. There was so much progress to go, so very long before the soldier may even remember he did have a name. That he did have a need for one, that his name was once spoken by loved ones. That sometime, long ago, it was all stolen from him. Zemo was a patient man, though months had passed and yet, no name.
But here, hidden among the mountainous cliffs and rocky terrain buried in snow, they had all the time in the world.
“You may believe that you do not need a name…” Zemo changes the topic, “but do you have a need for any of the tea? Plenty to share, I promise.”
“Is it essential?” The Soldier asks, a wonder in his tone that strays from the robotic nature Zemo has made himself accustomed to,
“It is a pleasure. Sometimes, Soldat, a pleasure, a luxury,
is
an essential. Proper care for ones’ self is important.” That phrase confused the shell of a man, furrowed brow and the silence of processing.
“A pleasure can be an essential?” The Soldier repeats,
“Indeed.” Zemo takes a sip, smiles a little, before gesturing the cup his way, “do try it, it is a favourite of mine.”
They appear in a standoff. With Zemo’s hand outstretched in a manner so gentle and careful, aware that his wrist could be snapped at any movement. One wrong move, one err on the side of distrust. The Soldier stares him down, as if the cup could pose a threat. As if it could be so much more than a simple purple ceramic, that it’s indigo form held much darker secrets than black tea. Poison, maybe, as if he had not watched Zemo drink it moments prior. It is the exact second that Zemo goes to withdraw from the stalemate, forfeit the standoff, that the Soldier reaches out.
“A pleasure can be an essential?” He repeats once more, taking the mug in a way that Zemo may be somewhat delicate. As if he’s aware of Zemo’s preference for this mug out of the limited chipped remnants they have.
“It certainly can be.” Zemo smiles. It is at the exact moment, where the Soldier raises the cup to his lips and takes a sip, that Zemo feels grateful for the patience he has.
It could be considered an acquired taste but Zemo has been drinking it for so long that he cannot remember a time where cherry blossom wasn’t a drink he turned to on cold and dark days. Out here, between the Dixie Trail Pass and East Blackburn Mountain, it was mostly cold and dark days. That did not bother either of them. It was more difficult to find things in the dark, after all, and they intended to use that to their advantage.
The cabin itself was built in the early 19th century, built of solid wooden trunks with a chimney and fireplace. A single room, quite large however, all held together with nails crafted by hand by blacksmiths. They were heavy and dear to those who were short in coins. It was expensive for those who used to dwell in those walls, for they were not Zemo’s immediate family. No title of a Baron, rather, a beau who eventually abandoned the cabin in pursuit of one of Zemo’s long since passed relatives. Not only was such a traitorous relationship shunned from their family but the story of it was too. Zemo had only learnt it from his grandmother who spoke of the past 'too frequently'.
"Thoughts?" Zemo asked, watching as the Soldier blinked a few times at the liquid in the mug. Still it steamed and it was only then that Zemo worried maybe the Soldier's senses had been tampered with. Maybe temperature was difficult to perceive or, alternatively, emphasised and therefore the tea would scorch--,
"It is adequate."
Adequate . Zemo smiled to himself. That would do for now .