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Bucky’s waiting on the rooftop for Zemo to finish his part of the operation. It’s just part of the setup for the larger mission, but they’d had to run it at night out of caution. The moon is big in the sky, not quite full but strong and the edges of light are sharp. It does strange things to Bucky’s mind, the shadows shifting and unraveling something in his hindbrain he doesn’t like.
There’s a muted clatter and Zemo climbs over the edge of the roof, breathing hard but triumphant.
“It’s done,” he says with vicious satisfaction.
He turns and the moonlight catches his profile, highlighting the curve of his cheekbone and deepening the edge of his smirk. The silver washes him out, making his face smooth and nearly young in the night. Zemo turns slightly, looking up at the moon, and Bucky stares. There’s an overlay, as though he’s seeing another Zemo in the night. He’s been here before. He’s seen Zemo in the moonlight before, young and dangerous and magnetic.
Powerful, raw, painful yearning suffuses Bucky. The urge to step across the roof and close the distance between them nearly pulls him forward. The need to touch Zemo, cup his face and feel him is so strong it shakes Bucky to his core. He shouldn’t feel like this about Zemo. He shouldn’t feel like Zemo belongs to him, in a way no one ever has. The sense of loss steals his breath.
Zemo runs a hand over his face and the illusion is broken, leaving Bucky barely keeping it together.
***
The soldier stands next to a tree, all but part of the sharp shadows. He’s silent, a specter, sent on yet another mission he doesn’t care about. He runs over the mission parameters. Approach the estate without being seen. Assassinate Colonel Helmut Zemo, enemy of HYDRA. Leave without being seen. Report back. It’s nothing the soldier hasn’t done before.
The moonlight catches on his silver arm as he ghosts across the open green, a blur in the night before he’s along the side of the house.
The window he needs is three stories up, but the brick face of the house gives the soldier plentiful handholds and he scales it easily. The window latch breaks under his metal fingers with the barest crunch, muffled in the leather palm of his fingerless glove. The room is illuminated by the moonlight through a second window, not the one the soldier came through - he’s in the shadows again, where he belongs.
He waits, listening to the quiet breathing of his target, still even and undisturbed. The soldier draws a knife and pads across the room, approaching the bed. The slight rustle of fabric alerts him and the soldier barely pivots in time to deflect the oncoming knife with his metal arm, the blade skittering across it as his target slides out of the shadows.
The soldier doesn’t know what to do with the surge of appreciation at the stealth of his target. It’s not a feeling he’s ever had before and it nearly throws him off as Zemo twists away from him. The soldier doesn’t have feelings, period, but admiration continues to build in his hollow chest with every attack Zemo parries and launches back at the soldier in kind.
It’s distracting enough that the soldier isn’t moving as quickly as he usually does, reacting more than attacking. Every time the soldier starts to recover, his target does something else unexpected. Zemo’s teeth flash in the moonlight, bared in an adrenaline fueled grin and the soldier falters again. The soldier takes some distant enjoyment in his own skills and successful missions, but he’s never felt the bloodlust and feral delight that’s written across Zemo’s face.
The fight is nearly silent, only their harsh breathing and the hiss when the soldier’s knife grazes Zemo’s bare skin, or the screech of metal on metal as the soldier uses his arm as a shield yet again. He’s never seen someone move with such grace before, and the fight continues far longer than it should. Zemo’s still human compared to the soldier’s machine-like efficiency and superhuman constitution, and he starts to falter from exhaustion.
The soldier steps in close and catches his wrist, sending Zemo’s knife flying across the room out of reach. He brings the edge of his blade up against Zemo’s pale throat, but he doesn’t press down. Zemo freezes, chest heaving and neck bared under the soldier’s deadly blade. His eyes are dark in the moonlight, darker with something that smells like arousal. The soldier is lost. He wants. He doesn’t know what he wants. Zemo’s head tilts against his knife and a dark bead of blood rolls down the curve of his neck.
Zemo smiles, sharp and exhilarated. The soldier can’t look away. Zemo slowly drops to his knees in front of him, forcing his knife away as he looks up at the soldier. His hands come up and rest on the soldier’s thighs, creeping upwards until they’re tugging on his belt and undoing his pants. The soldier is paralyzed with a need he doesn’t understand, only knows he needs to know more as Zemo’s hands reach into his pants and pull his cock out. It’s hard, the soldier hadn’t even noticed.
Zemo licks his lips. The soldier stares down at him, breath coming faster than it had during their entire fight. A distant memory tells him to wait and let Zemo wrap his hand around his cock and stroke it, the unfamiliar pleasure shivering through the soldier’s body. He’s so used to pain, the soft drag of Zemo’s rough palm is foreign to him. The heat of his mouth across the head of the soldier’s cock is even more startling. He nearly moans, but the soldier has been long since conditioned out of making a sound.
His hand shakes as it drops next to his side, knife forgotten in his palm. Zemo drags his tongue along the underside of his cock, pausing briefly before taking him deeper into his mouth. The heat surrounds the soldier, the smooth teasing drag of his mouth down his length and the way Zemo never looks away from the soldier’s eyes.
One hand digs into the soldier’s thick thigh, the other wrapped around the base of his cock and stroking him idly as Zemo takes him down more and more each time. His knees nudge out around the soldier’s boots and his hand drops from the soldier’s cock to move between his own legs. The soldier groans audibly at the sound of Zemo stroking himself off.
He chokes as Zemo pushes his cock down his throat, swallowing around the head so tight and hot. The soldier’s metal fingers flex by his side, wanting to touch but knowing he’s never allowed to touch. Zemo watches him, lips shiny and stretched by the soldier’s cock and moaning around him as though he’s enjoying this as much if not more than the soldier.
The burst of salty scent in the air and the way Zemo’s eyelids flutter tell the soldier he’d come, and it’s enough to push him over the edge into a startlingly sharp orgasm. Zemo swallows his cum and pulls off slowly, eyes lazy with satisfaction as he watches the soldier gasp for breath behind his mask. He tucks the soldier away and does his pants back up, as though nothing had changed at all, as though he’s not on his knees for the deadliest assassin ever to walk the earth.
The soldier staggers back. Zemo stays kneeling in the pool of moonlight, watching him struggle to recalibrate. His hand shakes as he sheathes the knife he barely used. He can’t look away from Zemo, his failed target, nearly glowing in the silver light. The line of blood is black on his neck and the soldier wants to lick it. He panics, another unfamiliar sensation after decades of nothing, and nearly pitches himself out the window.
He lands softly, training taking over more than any deliberate attempt to be graceful. He bolts for the woods, mind scrambled and body humming with satiation and a steadily growing need for that confusing, dangerous man.
***
The sheets stick to his sweat-damp body as Bucky tries to control his breathing. The room is dark, only a sliver of the yellowish streetlamps getting past the curtains. Uneasiness and growing loss collect in his chest. That hadn’t been a dream, it’d been too clear, but Bucky doesn’t know what else it could possibly be. He’s never seen young Zemo before, he’s definitely never had Zemo’s mouth on him. He can’t even remember being sent to kill Zemo, or having heard about him before he’d arrived in Berlin.
Bucky scrubs a hand across his face. There’s no doubt in his mind that was a younger Zemo. He doesn’t understand. He’s remembered so much of being the soldier, but never this. He’s never had an inkling of ever meeting Zemo before, and certainly no memory of anything that could cause this painful, lonely yearning inside him like his heart is straining to escape.
He tries to put it out of his mind as morning dawns bright and cheerful. Bucky moves through the world in a haze, part of him caught back in that dream. Zemo doesn’t hear him come into the kitchen, and Bucky watches him. He can still see the shape of younger Zemo under the softer edges of this Zemo. There’s two Zemo’s in front of him, one a ghost he’s not sure was ever real, and the one that arches an eyebrow when he catches sight of Bucky standing silently in the door.
“Is something the matter, James?” Zemo asks.
“No,” Bucky says, blinking the double vision back. “Just tired.”
“Coffee?” Zemo offers, holding out a cup.
Bucky steps closer to take it and loses himself for a moment in the scent of Zemo. It’s the same as the one in his dreams, that bright citrus note over a low, woodsy base. He’d never paid attention to it before, but now it’s all he can think about. He must have added the scent to his dreams, he decides, clawing for reasons why he’s dreaming things he has no logical reason to know.
The disconnect follows him over the next few days, through their planning and preparing for another piece of their ongoing mission. His unusual quiet gets him a few sidelong looks from Zemo, but he doesn’t press and Bucky’s thankful. He’s not sure how he’d explain any of this. He’s not sure he wants to. It can’t be real, no matter how far down the feelings go, this bone deep yearning for something he’s never had in a man he’s never known before.
It lingers. He sees flashes of that dream Zemo in every movement of this Zemo, in the way his fingers curl around a tea cup, in the way his smile tilts when he’s not paying attention, in the way he looks up at Bucky. The first night after that dream, Bucky had been worried about going back to sleep for fear of what his mind would conjure next. He didn’t need to worry, he hadn’t dreamed about Zemo at all.
Every subsequent night without another dream like the first makes Bucky miss it more and more. It’s probably not healthy for him to chase a false world in his dreams, but it’s more than he has when he’s awake. Zemo remains polite, his usual manipulative and clever self, but there’s a distance that wasn’t there in Bucky’s dream. Of course there would be, his dreams aren’t real, and he and Zemo have so much history fraught with violence and mutual damage that there’s no way he could ever find that odd connection again, if it had ever been there at all.
They plan another piece of their intricate mission, set again in the night. Bucky tries to choke back the part of him that hopes it’ll set off another dream. The moon is slight, but it’s still there. It’s still enough to catch Zemo’s profile and throw a ghost over him. It’s barely noticeable, but Bucky is watching him hungrily for the tiniest sign of his double sight. The stab of loss is much stronger and he hides the startled gasp of pain by clearing his throat roughly. He’s never had Zemo, how could he have lost him? He’s never had anything enough to feel this depth of absence.
Anticipation builds as he stands next to his bed, staring at the innocent sheets. He shouldn’t be so focused on returning to a made up world. He shouldn’t want to go back and have more intricate dreams of that young Zemo. Bucky doesn’t know where they’re coming from, and he can’t possibly predict where they’ll go. Maybe he won’t even have any more of them. Maybe it was just one, strange night.
***
The injuries are still aching when the soldier is sent back out. His failure had shocked his handlers, and then incensed them. Sending him out while still healing is stupid, but his handlers aren’t chosen for their thinking skills. The soldier hadn’t been wiped - they hadn’t wanted to risk losing important information about the mission just from one failure, even if the soldier was unable to tell them what exactly caused him to fail.
He stands in the shadows again, watching that one window, the curtains moving in the slight breeze. An incomprehensible swirl of emotions keeps the soldier from dropping into his usual mission ready state. He doesn’t know how to have emotions, let alone this mess of interest and confusion and want. The soldier wants.
He chooses a different route in, moving through the silent house like the ghost he’s called. He pauses outside the target’s bedroom door before opening it silently. He steps in, unheard, and lets his metal hand just barely scrape along the wood. The sound is tiny in the room, but the sheets move and Zemo’s out of them, crouched in the stronger moonlight and knife glittering in his hand.
The soldier stands in the doorway, watching him. His target is nearly naked, his skin reflecting the moon and cutting his muscles deeper into shadows. He’s just as silent as the soldier, only his steady, even breathing in the space between them. The soldier should be attacking. He should have his knife out. His target should have been dead before he knew the soldier was here. He shouldn’t even be alive right now.
Zemo moves first and the soldier reacts, smoothly drawing his knife and slipping under Zemo’s first attack. He knows that wasn’t as deadly as it could have been - Zemo couldn’t have touched him regardless, but it’d been nearly lazy in its opening. It’d been an invitation. The soldier picks it up with a thrill he doesn’t understand.
The fight speeds up, their knives silver in the moonlight when they move through the pools among the shadows, sweat glistening on Zemo’s bare skin. They’re silent, Zemo’s breath far more labored than the soldier’s, though his is starting to catch oddly the longer they twist around each other. Zemo smiles, wide and delighted. The soldier wants.
He steps in close, twists his wrist and forces Zemo’s hand to open, kicking his knife away. A second later he has his metal hand wrapped around Zemo’s throat, feeling his pulse racing under the plates. Zemo goes still, eyes darker as they watch the soldier’s masked face. He could end this now, he could squeeze and break Zemo’s neck, could choke him out and Zemo wouldn’t be able to do anything at all. He can see that Zemo knows it. He can see that Zemo likes it. He can smell that Zemo likes it.
The soldier’s fingers loosen in his confusion. Zemo tips his head back slightly, baring more pale skin to the soldier. The soldier’s hand tightens again without thought, more possessive than before. He can’t stop looking at the way the silver collars Zemo’s throat, the way Zemo’s pulse races faster than before when the soldier squeezes enough to choke his breath off before relaxing his fingers again.
He doesn’t do anything when Zemo’s hands come up and work his buckles loose, pushing his leather jacket open. His fingers trail down the soldier’s chest and belly until he’s undoing the soldier’s belt. The soldier’s breath catches in uncertain anticipation. Zemo’s smile sharpens and he strokes the soldier’s skin, just under his waistband. The soldier doesn’t know what to do with such a soft touch, let alone one so laden with intent.
Zemo takes a step back. The soldier follows him, hand still around his throat, but he’s the one caught now. He’d been caught before he stepped into this room, the fascination only increasing and the way Zemo looks at him irresistible. The soldier doesn’t understand, but he follows Zemo across the room.
He follows Zemo as Zemo crawls backwards onto his bed, never looking away from the soldier’s half-covered face. Zemo spreads his legs, naked, arching under him in an invitation the soldier doesn’t understand but wants so badly to take. His hand shifts up Zemo’s neck, his thumb pushing into the soft spot under Zemo’s chin and tilting his head back.
Zemo’s breath catches. The soldier shivers. He’s not as startled this time when Zemo draws him out of his leather and he’s hard, the tip of his cock leaking constantly. Zemo circles the head with his thumb, rubbing the pearly fluid around until the soldier’s hand is trembling against the bed.
He draws the soldier closer, guiding him between his legs until the soldier’s cock is pressing against his ass. The soldier hesitates, but Zemo rocks against him and the soldier’s tenuous control breaks. He shoves into Zemo with a sharp snap of his hips, fully seating himself inside that tight heat in seconds. Zemo chokes and then moans, legs dropping open as the soldier settles more firmly between his thighs.
The pleasure of Zemo around him wipes the soldier more surely than the chair, erasing him down to just bare need and carnal intent and the need to make Zemo writhe under him. Zemo grabs his arms and wraps his legs around the soldier’s waist to pull himself closer. The soldier groans rough and deep in his chest.
He loses himself in Zemo’s sounds, in the racing of his pulse under the soldier’s metal hand over his throat. He loses himself in the way Zemo bites his lip as he comes, eyes fluttering shut and chest heaving. The soldier finishes inside him, the tightness and the warmth too much to resist.
He’s breathing harder than he ever has behind his mask, as though Zemo’s entirely stolen his ability to function. The soldier hovers over him, enthralled and uncertain. Zemo watches him, dark eyes bright with curiosity. The soldier hesitates longer. He doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t want to take his hand away from that pale throat.
It takes more effort than it should to uncurl his fingers from Zemo’s soft skin and sit back. Zemo stays flat under him as the soldier redoes his numerous buckles, never moving but never looking away from the soldier’s face. His eyes follow the soldier as he stands and stops by the window. The soldier looks back, tries to commit the way Zemo’s stretched out like a marble in the moonlight, carved and beautiful and lethal. Tries to commit him to a memory fragmented by electricity and sure to be erased in a few hours.
***
His face is wet with tears when he wakes, the grief seizing his chest up until Bucky’s not sure he can breathe. The soldier had missed Zemo before he’d even left. He’d known he wouldn’t be able to keep Zemo, had known he was walking straight back into punishment for failures, and was likely never going to remember him. Bucky’s breath catches again on a nearly silent sob.
He hasn’t felt this kind of overwhelming pain, ever. He hadn’t expected this when he’d gone to sleep last night. He hadn’t known what to expect, but it hadn’t been that depth of connection. It hadn’t been Zemo’s hand clinging to his arm, head tilted back in ecstasy as the soldier held them together. It hadn’t been all consuming want.
Bucky’s rattled and he’s not sure he can hide it this time. Seeing Zemo in person only shakes him worse. The baron is as neat as ever, as smooth as ever, and his eyes feel like they see straight through Bucky.
“Difficult night?” he asks.
Bucky nods, not trusting his voice. The overlay is worse this morning, the ghost of his night Zemo nearly shining through this Zemo. He’s not real, he never was real, Bucky has absolutely no way of knowing what Zemo looked like young. He has no way of knowing what Zemo looks like naked and spread out under him, eyes hungry and hands tight on him.
“Is something bothering you?” Zemo asks.
Bucky jolts out of his reverie, too late to realize he’d just been staring at Zemo silently. He clears his throat.
“Slept funny,” he says. “Strange dreams.”
Zemo nods and turns away, back to his tea. Bucky’s never felt heartbreak before, but he thinks this might be it. His body yearns to be close to Zemo. He wants to touch him and feel him again. He wants Zemo to look at him with that open desire. He wants the impossible. He wants a fantasy that should stay in the dark of the night.
He tears his eyes away from Zemo finally, staring at the counter instead. Bucky has no idea what prompted these dreams, but he still, guiltily, weakly, wants more. The yearning is worse with every day that passes and the ghost of his Zemo walks inside this Zemo. His nights remain empty of dreams, empty of touch.
***
The soldier’s drawn to this house like a lodestone. He stands outside it, unsure what’s brought him here, but knowing he has to be here. He’d escaped his handlers, this drive to follow the pull inside him too great. He knows he’s been wiped recently, but it hadn’t entirely taken. It couldn’t have, not if the soldier is following some deeper need than obeying orders and completing his mission.
He scales the brick wall to a window, pushing it open and dropping in soundlessly. The room wavers and he waits for it to settle. It’s happened to him before, when the wipe doesn’t quite take right and he’s left with something like déjà vu. There’s a rustle and a man sits up in the bed, watching the soldier.
The room snaps into focus and the soldier straightens abruptly. He’s come back to Zemo. They’d tried to erase him from the soldier, but it hadn’t taken, not entirely. Zemo slides out of bed and stands in the moonlight, bare and defenseless as the soldier approaches. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he was here last, the soldier’s sense of time completely obliterated.
He stops in front of Zemo, looming over him. He hesitates and then raises his hand, touching Zemo’s cheek softly. His metal fingers shine against Zemo’s pale skin, and Zemo turns into it and brushes his lips across his palm. The soldier’s breath catches behind his mask. His chest cracks open and bleeds for this, the thing he hadn’t known he’d been missing but had been drawn back to all the same.
Zemo reaches up and slips the buckles loose on the soldier’s mask. The soldier stays still. He can’t take it off himself, it’s conditioned out of him, but he can let Zemo lift it away from his face for the first time. He can let Zemo toss it aside and push onto his toes to kiss him softly. The soldier makes a broken noise in his chest and Zemo cups his face to deepen it.
The soldier shrugs out of his gear, dropping it into a messy pile as Zemo pulls him backwards, never breaking away. There’s so much softness in the way Zemo leans into him, the soldier wonders what else he’s forgotten about this man that touches him like he’s precious. He lets Zemo push him onto the bed, straddling the soldier’s hips and painted in silver.
He’s beautiful. The soldier doesn’t know what else to think as Zemo takes him inside with a soft sigh. He rests his mismatched hands on Zemo’s hips, rocking up into him gently and watching Zemo arching over him. The moonlight catches on something around Zemo’s neck, a delicate silver chain with a pendant the soldier can’t make out. It settles something warm in him, like the soldier should know what it is, or what it means, but all he can manage is to hold Zemo tighter.
The soldier doesn’t know how to speak anymore, but Zemo doesn’t seem to mind when he lies next to him on the bed, hand resting on the soldier’s metal arm. He watches the soldier with dark eyes, so deep the soldier could fall in and never come out. Maybe he did fall in, and that’s why he came back without knowing why. He’d fallen in before, he’s been lost in those eyes this whole time.
The soldier has to leave. He can’t let his handlers track him here. He pushes himself up and Zemo’s hand falls to his, just barely tightening around the soldier’s fingers.
“Stay,” he says.
It’s the first time he’s spoken. The soldier wants to stay more than anything in the world.
He pauses halfway across the lawn, looking back at the window. Zemo’s framed in it, watching him. The soldier turns away.
***
Bucky holds his head in his hands. These aren’t dreams, they’re memories, they have to be. The depth of emotion is too raw, too much to be anything but real. Zemo had touched him, the soldier, with something like love. The soldier had more, for a split moment in time, than Bucky’s ever had as himself.
He doesn’t know why Zemo’s never mentioned this before. That’s the only thing that keeps him uncertain. Surely he would have mentioned at some point, any point, that he’d encountered the soldier before. The soldier is unmistakable, that silver arm one of a kind. Zemo had never once let on that he’d known Bucky even briefly, not in Berlin, not here, not ever.
He slips into a strange sort of depression, the loss so immediate with the newness of the fragmented memories. It’s like he was just there yesterday, in that younger Zemo’s arms. It’s like he’d lost him just yesterday, the grief raw and howling. His body yearns and reaches for Zemo even as Bucky stays still.
“James,” Zemo says, sitting down in front of Bucky one afternoon. “There’s something wrong with you.”
“No,” Bucky says instinctively.
“Yes,” Zemo counters.
“Why do I remember you?” Bucky asks.
Zemo freezes.
“I’ve seen you young,” Bucky says. “You took my mask off.”
Zemo’s barely breathing, completely still in front of Bucky. His eyes are wide and full of something Bucky can’t read before they shutter abruptly and Zemo shakes it off. His usual smooth mask drops into place, but Bucky’d seen the panic.
“Maybe you saw a photo of me,” Zemo says. He’s trying to keep his voice steady, but Bucky’s listening and there’s a quaver in it. “Maybe we crossed paths at some point on a mission.”
“You held me,” Bucky says.
“No,” Zemo says. “No.”
He stands and vanishes into the house. Bucky watches him go. Those were memories, he’s absolutely sure of it now. He understands even less.
Bucky lets Zemo avoid him the rest of that mission, watching him return to the Raft with a steadily growing sense of loss. He supposes he’d lost Zemo years ago, and it’s too late now. It might be fresh to Bucky, but it’s been decades for Zemo. Bucky doesn’t even know what truly happened. He only has fragments, the sharpest, deepest memories that made it past the electricity and ice.
He stays in that memory haze, wanting what he doesn’t have for weeks after the mission. He’s even less sure what to do with himself in this new world when he’s more focused than ever on the past. He can’t even wish it hadn’t come back to him, not when he has all the soft warmth from those few nights to balance the bleak void in his chest.
Zemo’s mask is flawless when he steps into the room, toweling his hair dry. Bucky’d been nervous, scared, excited, a complete mess when he’d been told he was working with Zemo again. He hadn’t known what to expect, but he supposes all that time in the Raft would have let Zemo patch himself together.
He smiles at Bucky, impersonal and smooth. His robe is loosely tied, a wide v of chest bared to the room. Silver winks in and out of the fabric and dark hair. Bucky stands suddenly and Zemo flinches back as he approaches.
Bucky catches the silver necklace in a finger.
“I gave you this,” he says.
Zemo’s heart is racing, pounding hard enough Bucky can almost feel it without touching him. Bucky meets his eyes and waits. There’s too many thoughts whirling behind Zemo’s dark eyes, too many emotions and he doesn’t know what Zemo will do.
“Yes,” Zemo says finally.
“You’re still wearing it,” Bucky says, his throat tightening with hope and sadness mixed together.
“I’ve never taken it off,” Zemo says.
A sob catches in Bucky’s chest and his hand trembles.
“I didn’t know what happened to you,” Zemo says. “I suppose they erased me from your memory.”
“They tried,” Bucky says hoarsely. “They did, until I saw you in the moonlight. I thought they were dreams.”
“You remember,” Zemo says, the emotional storm in his eyes tilting towards hope. “You remember?”
“Not everything,” Bucky says. “Only a few times. I think they took some.”
“I-” Zemo’s voice catches and he swallows. “I thought you might have died when you stopped coming after months.”
“Months?” Bucky says. “Months?”
Zemo looks at him with pain written across his face.
“Months,” he says. “You don’t remember.”
“I only remember three nights,” Bucky says.
“I searched for you,” Zemo says abruptly. “You were gone.”
“They probably froze me,” Bucky says.
Zemo nods tightly. His throat works. Bucky can’t let go of the necklace. He can’t step back. He can’t move forward.
“Berlin?” Bucky asks, almost not wanting to know the answer.
Zemo looks away for a brief moment, regret dimming his eyes when he looks back.
“I was too consumed by revenge to stop, and you didn’t recognize me,” he says, mouth twisting in self-recrimination. “You didn’t know me. I thought you never should.”
“After?” Bucky asks.
“You didn’t remember,” Zemo says again. “I didn’t think you should after what I did.”
“You were never going to tell me,” Bucky says.
“No,” Zemo says. “It would have been pointless. It would have poisoned the memories. You wouldn’t have believed me, and I already lost enough.”
Bucky has to admit he’s right. He barely believed the memories were real when he dreamed them in the night. If Zemo had said anything about this, Bucky would have instantly chalked it up to another bizarre manipulation.
“And now?” Bucky asks.
“Nothing’s changed,” Zemo says harshly. “You might remember, but that was decades ago.”
“It’s like it happened yesterday for me,” Bucky says quietly. “It’s like I lost you yesterday.”
“I’ve done terrible things,” Zemo says. “I’m not who I was back then.”
“I know,” Bucky says. “Are you saying no because you don’t want this, or because you think you don’t deserve it?”
Zemo’s jaw tightens. He looks away.
“Time could never take you out of me,” he says finally. “Nothing’s changed.”
It’s soft this time. It’s a confession, not a rejection. Bucky steps closer. Zemo leans into his palm when Bucky cups his face, turning to brush his lips across the black metal. Bucky’s as raw and as open as Zemo is when he looks back up. He’ll never get all of their time together back, but no one will take Zemo out of him again. No one can keep Bucky from him. Zemo sighs and relaxes into Bucky’s chest after years of absence. Bucky holds him close, breathing in his scent and that lonely void inside him closing over one breath at a time.