Chapter Text
Zemo had long since ceased to concern himself with the other prisoners. He never had.
The Raft was not meant for interaction. The design alone discouraged it - glass sealed cells, spaced like a hive, each one a sterile pane of reinforced glass and silence. The prison was built for isolation, and it performed its function cruelly well.
Still, he saw everything. The layout allowed for that much. Across the hexagonal chamber, he watched the guards drag in a new inmate. Broad shoulders, military movement about him, a face pulled taut with exhaustion and quiet violence.
James Buchanan Barnes.
Zemo sat forward, elbows on knees, hands flexing. Curious.
He hadn’t expected to come across Barnes again, much less in this place. His first instinct was to assume a political fallout - perhaps Barnes had said the wrong thing. Or missed one too many therapy sessions and spooked the Americans. Or maybe - how poetic - he’d killed someone during a mission with Captain America at his side. A moment of hesitation, muscle memory flaring too hot, too fast.
Zemo could imagine all of it. Pardon revoked. Imprisoned out of fear, not justice.
But then Barnes looked up. And Zemo revised his assumption immediately.
His gaze swept the chamber - but not with curiosity. It was a sweep of pattern. Threat assessment. And when their eyes met - no flicker. No pause.
Because that was not James “Bucky” Barnes behind the glass.
The man in that cell did not sit. He didn’t blink much, either. He paced - relentless, mechanical, like a wolf trained to wear a man’s skin. His movements were tight, precise, too fluid to be casual. And his eyes-
Zemo had known them to be wary before. Haunted. A doorway to the soul.
Now, they were empty.
Flat, bottomless, colder than death.
It was not the soldier’s expression that unnerved Zemo, but the lack of one entirely.
Zemo remembered his eyes the last time they’d met. Sad eyes. Haunted.
It had been at the Sokovia memorial. James had lifted a gun to his head, jaw clenched, chest heaving. Zemo had been ready - welcoming, even. There’d been peace in that stillness. He had accepted what was coming.
But James had stilled his hand.
Not out of mercy. Not out of fear.
It had been a choice. A conscious, agonising act of restraint. Almost taunting in its resolve.
So much emotion behind his eyes. The kind that clung to a man’s soul like ash. Zemo had seen the war in him then - seen the old instincts flare, the weight of blood on his hands, the ache of memory clawing at his ribs. And still, Barnes resisted. Stubborn as ever. Fighting tooth and nail to be a good man. A worthy man. Captain Rogers’ friend.
It had haunted Zemo, that moment.
Still did.
There was beauty in it. Tragic, fragile, infuriating beauty.
And now - nothing. A blank canvas. Dangerous.
He watched as the man - Asset - pivoted again and again, never deviating, never resting. A predator in glass. No confusion, no flickers of recognition. Just the hum of dormant violence curling through his limbs.
Bucky Barnes was no longer in that pretty little head. The lost boy from Brooklyn who had survived so much - only to be eaten alive by his own mind.
And for the first time in many, many months, Baron Zemo felt something unfamiliar settle in his chest.
Sorrow.
It took Zemo a few days, but he managed to bribe the story - along with a wrinkled, smuggled copy of a newspaper - from one of the Raft’s more corruptible guards.
The headline wasn’t subtle:
“ASSASSINATION IN BROAD DAYLIGHT - WINTER SOLDIER RETURNS”
The details were worse than he expected.
New York had come under assault. Not by an army or an alien force, but by something more insidious. A being that had apparently emerged from within a man - an alter ego of an enhanced individual. A soulless creature. A void of a man.
The entire city had shared their worst fears. Simultaneously. Reports called them hallucinations, mass hysteria, metaphysical echoes. No one knew the truth, but the terminology stuck.
The Void.
Shame rooms.
Whatever it was, it had dislodged something in James Barnes’ programming. Or his identity. Or maybe both.
James Barnes went into the void.
The Winter Soldier came out of it.
And the Winter Soldier had focused his precision on Bucky Barnes’ final objective - dismantling a woman named Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. Apparently, Barnes had intended to arrest her. Collect evidence. Bring her in.
But the Winter Soldier had chosen a more efficient solution.
She’d stood in front of cameras, flanked by her new "team" of anti-heroes - mismatched enhanced and non-enhanced assets plucked from the edge of moral ambiguity - and while the nation watched (“Ladies and Gentlemen, meet the New Avengers”), the Winter Soldier slipped a knife between her ribs.
Murdered her. On live television.
The broadcast captured that, and more.
Zemo read on. The aftermath was carnage.
Barnes’ new teammates - friends? - had tried to subdue him. The Winter Soldier reacted as expected.
Civilians: dead.
John Walker: beaten bloody.
Alexei Shostakov: dead.
And Yelena Belova - the man's daughter, apparently a Red Room graduate - had managed to lodge a tracker on Barnes just before he vanished into the subway tunnels.
What followed was a citywide manhunt. The Asset probably would have escaped but for the tracker lodged beneath his skin. He couldn't fade into the shadows like a ghost. The tracker broadcasted his location to his enemies.
Led by Sam Wilson and John Walker, they’d finally caught up to him, cornered him underground like an animal. The details provided to the media were sketchy but apparently involved water in the tunnels and a lot of electricity.
Zemo’s fingers tightened on the newspaper as he read the final line:
“The subject was moved to an undisclosed black site.”
So. That’s how James Buchanan Barnes had come to The Raft.
An enhanced anomaly - this Sentry - had cracked him open and from that fracture, the Winter Soldier had poured out, slick and merciless.
And in the space of one afternoon, the Winter Soldier had destroyed everything Barnes had clawed back.
His freedom.
His name.
His future.
Zemo let the paper slide to the floor.
The pacing across the hexagonal wing had long since stopped. The creature across from him was hauntingly still. Unlike a person. He could have been carved from stone. A rock statue, forged from war and winter and left to guard some ancient ruin. The kind of figure that didn’t rest but waited . And had been waiting.
Then - movement in the corner of his eye. Four guards approached the glass enclosure of Barnes’ cell. Zemo sat forward.
They were trying to mask their nerves, but he saw it anyway. He could see it in the set of their shoulders, the way fingers twitched near triggers. One barked a command: “Back up. Face the wall.” Barnes obeyed without hesitation.
Two guards were already in his cell when they paused. A brief moment of confusion.
Zemo almost laughed. They were trying to handcuff him.
But they had forgotten. Forgotten they’d taken the vibranium from him. They had taken the arm that was more of a weapon than prosthetic. Forgotten there was only one arm - and nothing to secure it too - with handcuffs at least. Only one hand.
They hesitated. Spoke quietly. Debated.
Eventually, a decision was made - one of the guards stepped forward, cuffed Barnes’ remaining wrist to his own. Another fixed leg shackles in place. Improvisation in a facility built on procedure.
Fools.
Barnes didn’t resist. But Zemo saw it - the tightness in his rippling muscles, the way his shoulders hovered too high, like something held back. His compliance was a performance. The calm before rupture.
Zemo leaned forward, breath held.
The moment Barnes cleared the threshold of the cell, he moved.
Fast didn’t cover it. He was a storm in human form - precise, brutal, merciless. One shoulder slammed into the nearest guard, sending him flying. The sickening crunch of impact followed as the body struck the wall. He didn’t get up.
Another received a headbutt that snapped his neck sideways. The tethered guard - poor man - was yanked into the air and thrown bodily at the fourth, cracking bone against armor. As the chain reached full extension, Barnes yanked the man back, redirecting him like a flail.
Three down.
The last, still attached, flailed - then crumpled when Barnes slammed an elbow into his nose. Blood and silence followed.
Barnes didn’t waste time. He knelt, fingers methodical as they rifled through pockets and belts. Cuffs came off. Shackles dropped. From the squad leader’s vest, he plucked a keycard.
Then - he looked up.
Zemo met his eyes.
Hunger. Direction.
Barnes crossed the room. Swift. Mechanical.
Zemo’s pulse spiked. Panic climbed his throat like a rising tide. There was no mistaking it now - the Winter Soldier’s focus had shifted. Zemo was the target.
Barnes tapped the keycard to the reader and the glass wall between them slid open with a hiss.
Zemo stepped back, heartbeat tripping. “J-James-”
The wolf didn’t stop.
Barnes grabbed him roughly by the arm, gripping his elbow tightly. They were close - impossibly close.
He was feral.
Hauntingly stunning.
There was no time to dwell on that fact as he felt himself being yanked - dragged along.
Ah, fuck.
Barnes stops at the guard station - empty. But he has pulled out a red folder - EMERGENCY PROCEDURES on the side.
With clipped movements, he flipped it open. Zemo peered over his shoulder just in time to glimpse a fire evacuation map - clean lines, exit routes, key locations. He couldn’t make out the details. Barnes already had what he needed.
Then that grip again - unrelenting - pulling Zemo toward the corridor. The keycard beeped against a scanner. A door clicked open.
They moved like a single shadow down the hall.
Midway through, Zemo caught it - a sign mounted above a reinforced door.
ARMOURY.
Zemo closes his eyes, terrified.
“Stay,” Barnes says, pushing him against the wall and taking off down the hallway, quickly out of sight.
Zemo exhales slowly. He is, unquestionably, so very fucked.
Exactly forty-five seconds later, Barnes is dragging an unconscious man behind him by the scruff of the neck.
Without a word, Barnes hefts the man upright, pries open one eyelid, and positions him in front of the biometric scanner. A soft beep confirms the match. Next, he grabs the man’s limp hand and presses a thumb to the fingerprint reader.
Green light. Access granted.
Barnes lets the man drop. He crumples to the floor, motionless.
Inside the room, on a steel table, lies a casing. Barnes strides forward. Nestled inside, sleek and lethal, is his vibranium arm.
Barnes attaches it quickly, rotating his arm in a quick flick, activating it. Flexing his fingers.
Then he approaches the weapon cache. Thinks better of it, and approaches the lockers.
Riot gear. Sheds his prison jumpsuit and dresses quickly.
Back to the weapons cache. He slings an AR-15 over his shoulder. Attached two holsters and hand guns to his side. An assortment of knives to his belt buckle.
All he would need to complete the look is the mask of the legend. Seems the Raft is all out of Winter Soldier masks.
Finally, someone has noticed what is going on. A siren blares. Red lights strobe against the corridor walls.
“They’ll be coming here,” Zemo murmurs. “To gear up.”
Barnes meets his eyes then nods. Hands him a gun.
Zemo is hesitant to take it. There is nothing Zemo can contribute here the Winter Soldier wont already have covered. And he'd rather be seen as hostage - which technically he is , he never asked to go along for this ride.
Barnes studies him as Zemo doesn’t take the weapon. His eyes seem to say “your funeral.” Barnes drags him out of the room.
Zemo pities the poor souls that clash against him.
Zemo has seen James fight and was always in awe of his fighting prowess. Elegant, calculated, dangerous.
But this?
This is different.
This is the Winter Soldier. A whole different beast.
Unleashed.
Unmatched.
Men fall like leaves in a gale, one by one. No wasted movement. No hesitation. Zemo is dragged behind him, a stunned spectator to the carnage. It’s not a fight - it’s a purge. He doesn’t keep track of how many men he sees die.
And then finally - wind.
Cold, real, bracing. Ocean air rushes over his skin.
A quinjet on the helipad.
Zemo barely had time to catch his breath before the Winter Soldier seized him by the arm and hauled him aboard. Soon, the doors slammed shut with a hydraulic hiss, sealing the quinjet from the wind outside. Barnes shoved Zemo forward, steering him toward the cockpit. There were two seats at the front - pilot and copilot - and Zemo was dropped roughly into the latter.
As he caught himself against the console, his gaze swept the cabin. A case rested near the rear hatch, its lid cracked open. Inside: Captain America’s suit. Sam’s suit.
Sam was here. That’s probably why they were moving him from his cell - Wilson was visiting. And this quinjet belonged to the U.S. government.
Zemo lowered himself fully into the seat, hands shaking slightly as he reached for the harness. The Soldier was already settling into the pilot’s chair beside him, movements swift and confident. Fingers tapped over the flight panel. Systems came online.
Zemo buckled in. The engines began to rumble beneath them.
“Soldier?” Zemo asks tentatively as the quinjet takes to the skies.
“Да, сэр?” the Soldier answers.
Zemo sighs. “English please,” Zemo asks but then pauses. “Why did you take me with you?”
“Orders,” Barnes answers without hesitation. Zemo’s eyes meet his.
“Whose?” Zemo frowns.
“Yours,” the Soldier answers, confused. Zemo’s blood runs cold.
“Secure extraction. Neutralise all hostiles. Ensure my escape from the facility,” the Soldier recites, word for word.
Zemo faintly recalls. That was exactly what Zemo had said to Barnes after getting his mission report for Stark in Berlin, in 2016. He took on the Avengers, and the Black Panther, and they later met in Siberia. It was the only explicit instruction Zemo ever gave the Winter Soldier under his control. Word for word. But orders that were now over 10 years old.
To escape in Berlin. But now the Soldier used it to escape the Raft. A different facility, but a facility they escaped none-the-less.
The Winter Soldier is activated - somehow - and under Zemo’s control.
Maybe.