Chapter Twenty-Eight
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It was all Bucky could do not to immediately attack.

Didn't care that this man was king. Didn't care Bucky was accused of killing this man's father, not to mention countless others. Only that he got between Bucky and Mia and from tearing Zemo's head from his shoulders.

He was already preparing to lunge when Steve came charging down, helter-skelter, leaping over hedges and dropping down the hill. "Bucky, wait! Don't kill him!"

"Mia might be here right now if it weren't for him!" he shouted back, bile on his tongue.

That helicopter was long gone, the sound of it already swallowed up by the oncoming storm. There was the smell of ozone, of lightning, mixing in with the rising stench of blood carried on the wind. The chaos of the party had since dwindled to a cold, eerie silence. The Power Broker's once great estate, now a haunted, desolate place.

"You would be dead right now if it weren't for me," The King retorted, raising his wrist to show the white bangle. "Without this, he would have turned you into one of those… things."

Of course, after the fact, Bucky had no doubt the Madbomb would've killed him — but he was too embarrassed to admit that he had been so foolish in the heat of the moment. It didn't matter. Nothing else had mattered. "I'd take my chances."

Out of breath, Steve finally dropped to the ground behind Bucky. He was missing his suit jacket and tie, and the shirt beneath was torn at the shoulder, blood all over his collar. "King T'Challa, we're not —"

"And kill your daughter, and yourself, in the process?" The king cut him off, and Bucky reconsidered the idea of attacking him again.

"And what, you don't want that? We're the ones responsible," Bucky threw out his arms. It was almost a certainty that if he hadn't planted that bomb, then it must have been Mia. And he already had a terrible feeling in his gut on who was the culprit. "You'd get your justice either way."

"That is not the justice I seek," King T'Challa's glare was as cold as Bucky's, meeting him ice for ice. "I have since come to understand that neither you nor your daughter were acting under your own willpower. Unless I'm mistaken?"

Bucky exchanged a look with Steve, who looked as startled as he felt. Steve said, "How did you know that?"

"I recently acquired information from a friendly source," The King replied. His suit, a fine black material that had a strange purple shine to it, almost metallic, reflected a near-invisible pattern only when light was cast directly on it. Through his scope, Bucky had noticed it, and now with his own eyes could make out the geometric pattern, resembling the panther-headed crest of the Wakandan royal family. The fabric was in remarkably good shape after tackling Bucky off a building. "I was inclined to believe them."

"Who?" Bucky asked, baffled. Who was out there that knew these things? Moreover, who knew that the King of Wakanda would trust them? The only people who knew were in the Raft, Bucky figured, and the King would have mentioned who it was specifically. But the timing felt… off.

Behind him, Natalia, Wilson, and Carter were scrambling to join them from the palace, hindered by their fine clothes, tossing aside shoes and purses. On the other half of the wall, two of the Dora Milaje appeared, the King's entourage. All standing together in that little pavilion, Bucky thought they made quite the strange little party. He felt a little underdressed, the only one in heavy boots, pants now ripped at the knees, and a canvas jacket. And unshaven besides.

"Please tell me we're on the same side," Natalia huffed, cheeks flushed as she caught her breath. Both she and Wilson were covered in a sheen of sweat, likely the exertion of having to escape the vault. Her lovely coiffed hair, ruined; her black dress, ripped up the leg. "What we saw in the ballroom, was that —"

"Zemo," one of the Dora Milaje responded. She seemed the senior of the two, geometric tattoos on her scalp, and a prominent gold necklace. "He activated the Madbomb. That seemed to be his target all along."

"We thought it was nuclear material," Carter said.

"So did we," the King frowned, studying the white bracelet for a moment. "But it appears we have both miscalculated his goals. This is only another phase in his plans. Do you have insight into what his next step would be?"

"What, like we're on the same team now?" Wilson snorted in disbelief. "I seem to recall you trying to kill us the last time we met."

"Then allow me to apologize." The King gave a slight bow, a deferential nod of his head. "I didn't know then what I know now. I have strong reason to suspect Zemo was playing us all for fools. My father was a mere pawn in his game, a sacrificial lion in order to gain infamy. He thinks our family shall be a footnote in history. I intend to prove him otherwise."

The tension in the air eased ever so slightly, though Bucky was the last to lower his hackles (after a pointed nudge from Steve). Maybe the King saw the correlation as well; a hundred years ago, it had been Franz Ferdinand. Now it was the old King of Wakanda. The lynchpin to another World War.

With reluctance, he sighed. "The enemy of my enemy. I guess. What led you here?"

"The same way you did," The King replied, and gestured to one of the Dora Milaje. "Okoye has been keeping track of our own intelligence resources."

"I suppose it shouldn't surprise me to know Wakanda has field operatives," Carter said, folding her arms over her blood-splattered dress. It was difficult to say if she was disapproving or impressed. "How long has Wakanda had a spy network?"

"As long as any other country," The King said with a shrug. "We have always kept ourselves aware of world politics, even if we did not participate. You needn't worry yourself, Agent Carter. We have plausible deniability in anything you might question."

"Well, now I'm a little jealous," Natalia had that small smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "I'm surprised you didn't send one of your agents instead. You took a lot of risk coming here, your Highness. We'll be lucky if none of us are associated with this mess. Madripoor already doesn't have a great human rights' record."

"I know, but it was a risk worth taking," T'Challa said, casting his eyes about what remained of the Avengers. "I don't have to tell you just what I myself am capable of."

"We could use your help," Steve said. "That is, if you're offering."

"I am," The King nodded. "I've heard many things about this team of yours, Captain. These Avengers. Both good and bad. And I'm willing to see the good. With a man like Ross, who pursues glory instead of justice, hampering the capture of Zemo, I believe it's in our mutual interest for a temporary alliance."

"Only temporary?" Bucky asked. What happened when it ended?

"For now," Was all the King chose to say. "After this is over, we might revisit the topic. At the moment, I recommend we retreat to my ship before the media arrives, yes? We may still have a chance at following Zemo's trail, wherever it may lead."

~o~

The Madbomb hummed quietly in the corner.

It wasn't quite a nuclear warhead, but it was close. It would be the next phase in modern warfare. Zemo knew how terrified everyone was of another world war. But they were afraid of the wrong things.

"That was way too close," Crossbones growled, his voice picked up by the headsets. Otherwise, the thrumming of the helicopter blades would have drowned him out. "The Avengers are back on our scent again. Even with your new toy, we don't have the kind of power to fend them off."

"For now," Zemo replied coolly. Perhaps Rumlow had a right to be worried; he still bore the scars of his last encounter with the team, such as they were. "But you underestimate the weapons I have now required. To call them toys is a gross underreaction to what we witnessed."

"Fucked up is what it is," Crossbones said, swaying as he hung onto the handle from the ceiling. "You made a lot of enemies in Madripoor."

"They're no concern of yours," Zemo said. Soon enough, all those degenerate criminals and thieves will be dead. And the world will be all the richer for it.

"Still not sure if it was worth the price."

"I don't pay you for your opinions, Crossbones," Zemo sighed, adjusting his gloves. The mercenary was used to being in charge, so he couldn't blame the man entirely. But it was getting annoying. "Remember your loyalties. Remember our cause. Trust that I know what I'm doing."

Crossbones scowled out the window. "They could've killed us all."

Outside, the ocean stretched on and on, the twilight casting an eerie silver-blue glow across the flickering expanse. It took several transfers between different aircrafts to get this far, refueling would have taken too long; but they were almost to their next destination. Zemo could hardly sleep with the excitement of it all.

Aside from the massacre at the Power Broker's estate, Zemo's entourage were largely untouched. He was still dressed in his finery, seeing as it hadn't been ruined, and the rest of his guard remained in their fatigues. Zemo thought the Soldatka had made her own fashion statement amidst the criminal socialites, with that red skull emblazoned on her chest. It's no Chanel, but Hugo Boss would have been proud.

"Doubtful." Zemo gestured to the girl standing next to him. "As long as she stands by my side, the Avengers wouldn't dare make any hasty decisions."

She had operated perfectly, of course. The Soldatka never hesitated to take a bullet if necessary. She, too, eyed the Madbomb, though her expression gave nothing away. Still, Zemo smiled at her. "Fearsome, isn't it?"

The girl's eyes flicked from the weapon to him, unblinking. A moment passed before she answered, her voice hoarse. "Yes."

Zemo tilted his head. "Do you know fear? Understand it? I would expect that to be eliminated with your protocol."

The Soldatka didn't answer, her stare unshakable. Zemo surmised he asked too difficult a question, and so rephrased. "Do you feel fear?"

"No."

"Then why do you consider the Madbomb fearsome?"

The girl considered, like a computer formulating a response. "The carnage. There's no warning. No defense. It's indiscriminate."

"So it is, so it is," Zemo smiled, pleased by her response. To Rumlow, he directed, "See? She understands. She sees it just as I do."

The man sneered. "She doesn't see anything. Not unless you command her to."

"Indeed," Zemo said, utterly serene. Rumlow seemed disgusted, as if this quality was not exactly what Zemo desired in the perfect soldier. To the Soldatka, he spoke again, "What would you consider the better weapon? The Madbomb, or a radioactive one?"

The Soldatka thought, then shrugged. "I don't know."

"Have you ever seen a nuclear explosion?"

"Only through video."

"Ah, but that's nothing compared to the real thing." Zemo said, closing his eyes. He could see it as if it were yesterday. "When I was twenty-eight, I witnessed my first atomic bomb explosion. It was three times the size of the bomb that razed Hiroshima. It was so powerful, so bright, that closing my eyes, covering them with my hands, did nothing. I could still see the black columns of my metacarpals."

The Soldatka watched him, and said nothing.

He raised his hands, fingers outstretched. Side by side with the other men in that bunker, those who would be less fortunate than him. "I hadn't known then what it would do to me. The amount of radiation I was unwittingly exposing myself to. Mankind did not yet know the true strength of nuclear energy. How it unravels your very DNA. Spreads disease and cancer impossible to cure. If it doesn't kill you, then time will. It is a patient beast."

"I didn't know at the time that my father had left me a great gift." Zemo continued. "His legacy, one meant to outlive him. The Americans' won that arms race. But my father made sure that our vengeance would outlast their short-lived advance. The world would catch up to nuclear power in time. We would have long lost that battle by that time. But he ensured the war could still be won."

He turned to the Soldatka and smiled once more, "As you well know, wars are fought with more than just soldiers."

"You…" The Soldatka struggled to speak where she was not bid to. Her brow furrowed. "You were… a soldier? Like…" she pointed vaguely to herself.

"No, not like you," Zemo said, barely restraining a sneer of disgust. "Not a super soldier. Not the base, violent creature both Shmidt and Erskine wanted to create. My father had far more sophisticated goals. I noticed the change in myself — that is, the lack of any — during the Seventies. It was a decade since my exposure and I hadn't aged significantly. And people so rarely notice it in themselves until they look at old photos."

He had none with him to demonstrate. Zemo wasn't a victim to nostalgia, absolutely not, he did not hold onto mementos. Only things of true value, like Barons' old coronet. A symbol of power.

"I had to remake myself, over and over again. Every decade or so. I first escaped to South America after the war. Gained a new name, and traveled through America for a time. Witnessed their golden age, the great prosperity made of my people's suffering. And how quickly it degenerated into the Sixties and Seventies. Embroiling themselves in pointless wars, feeding into the same oppressive machine they had once claimed to be against. So caught up in their own hypocrisy they didn't see the hydra growing right beneath their feet."

"I tended to that creature, best I could. Kept my influence subtle. A Von Zemo would've carried great weight around in that new HYDRA, but they grew too quickly, their ideals shifted with the changing era. I knew it would soon grow too big for its own good, and kept my distance. And for many decades, I allowed myself to believe that our original plans for the world might still be achieved. Until one day, some years ago, Captain America returned."

Zemo's jaw clenched instinctively just thinking about that man. He'd seen Captain Rogers in Madripoor — much like Zemo himself, the man had barely aged a day since Zemo last saw him in 1943. They were contemporaries, born within a few years of each other, though now Zemo looked at least a decade older. And he had seen so much more. Done so much more.

But it wasn't enough.

"An old wound had been reopened. It never healed, truly. Pierce had advised against my seeking justice, assured that we could turn Captain America into a tool for the very force he despised. Pierce was a sentimental man. He believed Rogers could be swayed to our side, given the right motivation. Americans," Zemo spat at the floor. "I shouldn't have wasted my time. Either way, he failed. And in his failure, the destruction of everything I had built in the last century, so much achieved with Rogers out of the way. Less than a decade in his return it all fell to pieces."

The irony did not escape him. Wherever Captain Rogers stepped, destruction came in his wake. The ideals of the Third Reich would never survive infancy so long as he walked this earth. And for there to be a Fourth, Rogers and all his allies must die. Zemo no longer believed conversion to be possible. Not in this day and age. The world and its views had been warped too much.

"You could imagine my surprise when I realized one of his old allies was still breathing as well. Sergeant James Barnes, the man who put a bullet in my father's head. Now he killed indiscriminately. How amusing to see he'd been just as active as I, but his record was far worse. And far easier to weaponize. And it came to me; to destroy Captain America, you must not use weapons. But his own friends. His family."

With that, Zemo opened his arms in a welcoming gesture. "And now, here we are, at the advent of the West's destruction. My father shall be at peace, and I shall once again resurrect HYDRA, reborn from its ashes. Raze this earth of all that's spoiled it, and place it into the hands of its proper caretakers. And I shall take the helm as its rightful leader."

Crossbones stared at him. "Wait, so you're — are you saying you're immortal?"

His disbelief was amusing, but Zemo could only shrug casually. "Perhaps. I'm almost a hundred years old, Rumlow, and I have yet to feel the ache in my bones, the weakness of muscle or mind. I maintain the youth and energy of a man in his prime, though lacking the unwieldy physicality of Rogers and his ilk. They will be an extinct species soon enough."

For the death of his father, Zemo could not tolerate the survival of any super soldier. The Soldatka had her use, but there would come a day where Zemo would have attained his seat of power, and would no longer have need of her. Even a good weapon must be retired at some point.

"And this gift you have," Crossbones said, and by his expression it was clear to see the gears turning in his head. "Do others have it?"

"I believe the Russians have developed their own serums, both of my design and of the super soldier," Zemo said, but it was of little bother to him. Russia was its own superpower to be sure, but it had only become so after Germany had fallen. And it too no longer had the strength and vivacity it once had during the Cold War. Second rate, as always. "But besides myself, no. It will take time to reverse engineer the serum from my DNA, but I have intentions to gift it to my most loyal followers, as well as my heirs, when I have them."

Though Zemo considered himself functionally immortal, he wasn't stupid. He still only had the strength of an average man, and a bullet to the head — or drowning, or suffocation, or any number of murder methods — could still kill him. He had to ensure his lineage; his power did not die should the worst come to pass.

But he knew what Rumlow was getting at. And though Zemo did not yet consider the man worthy of such a gift, it didn't hurt to string him along. "Rest assured, my dear friend, you shall receive your just reward when all is said and done."

Rumlow had seemed somewhat ill at ease the entire time Zemo was talking, but now he came to relax, a smug look on his face. "I know you got dibs on Captain America, but I'd like to put a bullet in one of their heads myself, if you don't mind."

"But of course." If nothing else, Zemo understood the desire for revenge. "Never let it be said that Baron von Zemo was an uncharitable man."

At last, the helicopter finally came to rest upon a rooftop, overlooking the city below. It was early morning, the sun not yet breaking across the horizon. The streets are still empty and dark against the purple-pink sky, the giant clock tower ringing the hour. Those same cobblestone streets and old buildings, still bearing the faint scars of the Blitz.

Madbomb in hand, Baron Helmut von Zemo stepped off the helicopter. Ready to deliver a reckoning upon London.

It's been long overdue.