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cap_ironman2008-10-01 01:01 am
seanchai.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2008-10-01 01:01 am
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Classic-verse 1.6 - To the Ends of the Earth 1/4
Title: Classic-verse 1.6 - To the Ends of the Earth 1/4
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seanchai and elspethdixon
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Hank/Jan. Eventually Steve/Tony.
Warnings: This fic is not quite so fluffy as the previous ones. No slash yet, although hints are starting to show through.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Author's Note: Much delayed, and un-beta'd due to real life insanity. Still this will be going up on our regular schedule of Wednesdays and Saturdays come hell or high water.
Summary: Steve finally comes face to face with Baron Zemo. Also, there are ants.
Classic-verse 1.6 - To the Ends of Earth
Amora was certain that she had never hated any place as much as she hated Midgard. It was ugly and dirty, like the dwelling places of giants and trolls, and not one of the individuals this mortal city teemed with had shown her the slightest fraction of the respect owed to Asgard's mightiest sorceress.
It had been a full month now, and she was no closer to locating and waking Loki or returning to Valhalla.
Even her plan to sway Thor to her side had failed. She had hoped to convince him of the value of her company once his mortal friends were dead, but they were all still irritatingly alive. Somehow, they had managed to break her spell's hold over him before he could so much as kill one of them.
They were the reason Thor wanted nothing to do with her. It was the only explanation that held any reason. If events were left to their natural course, Thor would of a certain find himself irresistibly drawn to Amora, the only other Asgardian on Midgard, the only one who of his own kind. But instead, he consorted with these Avengers, and hid himself in the form of a lowly human doctor.
Odin might have bound Thor to mortal form initially, but it was his choice to spend so much of his time that way.
She was beginning to suspect that not only did Thor have an unnatural liking for mortals, he even enjoyed playing at being one. The Avengers must have some strange hold over him, to seduce him away from his own people so thoroughly.
But like all forms of magical compulsion, it would vanish if she could but rid them both of those responsible for it.
Hence, her current journey to South America. Amora had learned through various sorcerous divinations of a mortal warlord of great age and cunning whose citadel was located deep within the jungles of the southern continent. The idea of a reputation for cunning and spite combined with age reminded her unpleasantly of Odin, grey-bearded deceiver that he was, but desperate circumstances called for desperate measures.
She, the Enchantress of Asgard, who had once commanded all of the magics of the Norns, was reduced to asking a mortal man for assistance.
Her magic had been too weakened to transport her to Vespugia instantly, so she had been forced to suffer the indignity of human air travel. The seat she had had reserved for herself may have been what mortals considered "first class," but it could in no way compete with the comforts of Asgard.
She was forced to switch to a smaller and even less pleasant flying conveyance in Brazil, and then had to spend several hours more in jolting, confining misery before the mortal machine finally landed in Zemo's citadel.
The Vespugian border guards at the airport were most happy to give her transport to Zemo's stronghold, and naturally, she had no problem gaining entrance. The guards at the door came to attention sharply when she approached, and it took little effort, even with her reduced powers, to induce them to escort her inside.
Heinrich von Zemo, El President of Vespugia and the twelfth Baron Zemo, might have been a fearsome warrior in previous days, but he was less than impressive now.
He was withered and stooped with age, his thinning hair pure white, and the hands that had once killed hundreds of men were shriveled into bony claws, joints thickened with age. But his eyes still held the malice and dark intelligence of the man he'd been.
As soon as she looked into their depths, Amora knew she had come to the right man. Evil men were as every bit as easy to manipulate as good men -- and the closer to either extreme they fell, the easier said manipulation was.
"Who are you?" he demanded. He spoke German, with a distinct Northern accent. When she didn't respond immediately, he repeated himself in Spanish. "Who are you, woman? How did you get in here?"
Amora drew herself up to her full height, tall enough to look him directly in the eye. "I am no mere woman," she proclaimed. "I have access to powers greater than any your mortal mind can conceive of. You may call me," she paused a fraction of a second to let the proper attitude of anticipation build, "the Enchantress."
"I do not care what you call yourself," he snapped. "How did you get past my guards?"
"Bending ignorant mortals to my will is as nothing to one as powerful as I." Amora smiled at him calmly. He was no doubt armed, but mortal weapons were of no concern to her.
Zemo's eyes narrowed. His right hand hovered near his belt; perhaps that was where his weapon was. "Has that arrogant schwienhund from Latveria sent you? He will get his next shipment of adamantium when I am prepared to send it to him, and not a day earlier."
Amora frowned, putting her hands on her hips. This was not proceeding quite in the fashion she had anticipated. "No mortal commands the Enchantress," she informed him. She let the faintest whisper of a spell color the air around them, such that he would see her with the admiration she was due. "It matters not where I come from. What matter is what I have come to offer you."
Zemo seated himself in the dark leather chair behind his desk, his hands folded in front of him, and regarded her with a slight smile on his ancient face. "Go on," he said. "I am... most interested in hearing what you have to offer."
***
Heinrich Zemo was still alive. He had never been captured, never been tried, never been brought to justice.
Steve could still remember the way his eyes had gleamed when he'd smugly informed them of his plans to blow up the Allied headquarters in England, still see him tapping his swagger stick against his thigh while he sneered at Steve and Bucky ("Is this the best America can do? Inexperienced youths and fools in flashy costumes?").
Bucky had grinned and said that Sergeant York was busy, so they'd had to come instead, and Steve's costume was pretty flashy, wasn't it?
It was the last joke he remembered Bucky making, and that was all down to Zemo.
Zemo hadn't succeeded in destroying the Allied command, but he'd managed to effectively destroy Steve's life. A vastly smaller victory than he'd planned, but for all the death Steve had seen during the war, Bucky's face staring down at him from that plane was the one that haunted him the most.
It wasn't the only one, though. Men under Zemo's command had captured a cell of French guerillas Steve had been working with and executed them all. Several of them had very obvious been tortured before they'd been lined up and shot. Jim Hammond, an android who'd operated under the code name "Human Torch," had been the one to find the bodies. He had stared at Steve over the corpse of a middle-aged man who was missing all of the fingers on his right hand and said, quietly, "If this is what men are capable of, I'm glad I'm not really human."
It wasn't the worst example of brutality Steve had seen, but the men who had been responsible for Buchenwald had been brought to justice. Zemo had been free all these years, untouched, almost certainly continuing to spread his evil wherever he went.
He had arranged the death of an innocent man over something as minor as a trade agreement. And he had tried to have Steve's teammates killed.
The Avengers were all Steve had. He had no family, now that Bucky was gone, and other than Nick and Dugan, all of his old friends were dead. Without Tony, Thor, Jan, Hank, and Jarvis, he would have been entirely alone. Without them, he would still have been in the ice.
Sometimes, when he woke in the middle of the night, Steve could still feel the cold weight of the ice around him. He wasn't looking forward to winter.
The dreams that were just about the ice were better than the others, though. In those dreams, it was just Steve, slowly being crushed by a vast, frozen weight. In the bad dreams, he saw Bucky die again and again. In the really bad ones, it wasn't just Bucky.
Steve sat on the edge of his bed, staring down at his bare feet. The Mansion was still and silent, except for the sound of his breathing; not surprising, considering that it was nearly three in the morning. He had given up on sleep an hour ago, after waking up from the latest one. This time, it had been the Ardennes, he and Bucky walking through ankle deep snow to identify the bodies of American troops. Steve had knelt by a man lying face down, and reached to turn him over. He had had to pull hard, the man's body coming free of the earth with a crackling sound, clothing frozen to the ground by his own blood.
When the corpse had finally come free and Steve had been able to roll him face up, he had found himself looking down at Hank Pym's face, his blond hair turned into stiff pink spikes by bloody ice.
Steve had looked up, away from Hank's body, to see Jan lying a few feet away, face up, her eyes frozen open.
Thor had been lying just beyond her, as cold and dead as she was. Next to him was Tony, his hair startlingly black against the snow and the bloodless blue-white of his skin.
From there, things had suddenly jumped, with the illogic of dreams, to the airplane again, and once again Bucky's face had stared down at him from the plane's wing for a brief moment before the fireball had turned everything into heat and light.
Steve twisted his left foot slightly, watching as his toes sunk into the deep pile of the carpet. The soldier with the frozen blood in his hair hadn't been Hank, none of the mutilated bodies he and Bucky had helped the Army photographers capture on film as evidence of German war crimes had been men he had really known. One or two faces had been vaguely familiar, but they had been a different unit from the one he had fought with, and he'd only known them in the most general of senses.
He’d had dreams before, but the sharp reality of the ones from the last few nights had been different. If Steve let himself think about it at all, he could still almost catch the peculiar scent of the dense pine forest almost covering the smell of blood, could almost taste the gunpowder hanging in the air.
The bed creaked quietly under him, and Steve ran a hand through his hair, before dropping it to rest lightly on his knee, letting out a slightly shaky sigh. He had been sitting here for an hour, and memory had finally started to lose some of its immediacy. It was finally starting to feel like something that had happened months ago, rather than something that was still happening now, something that could happen again. He could still remember exactly what the last words Bucky had said to him were, remember the exact expression on his face in those last seconds, but the feeling of ice crunching under his knees as he knelt by those bodies had faded.
Learning that Zemo was still out there had brought it all back.
Steve dropped his head into his hands again, and sighed. His hair was too long; he could feel it tangling around his fingers. His last haircut had been in France. Bucky would make fun of--
No. He wouldn't.
Zemo had killed him. Zemo, who had somehow survived all of these long years while nearly everyone else Steve had known grew old and died. Zemo, who had helped frame Tony and sent assassins after Steve and tried to kill Steve's team.
If those gunmen outside the SHIELD barbershop had been a little luckier, Steve would have lost the only people he had at Zemo’s hands all over again. The only friends he had.
It would take so little for tonight's dream to be real. The next group of hired killers Zemo sent might be better shots.
Steve took a deep breath and stood. None of this would be over until Zemo was dealt with. His team wouldn't be safe, and the nightmares weren't going to stop, until then.
He knew where Zemo was now, and he knew what he had to do. He'd been sitting here for an hour trying to summon up the resolve to go and do it.
Now, he just needed to be well on his way before anyone else woke up.
He had never done this kind of thing on his own before. He'd always had orders, an objective, someone to report to, whether it was to the Army or the other Avengers.
He couldn't involve the Avengers in this, though. Going into Vespugia was something he was going to have to do strictly under the radar. If he succeeded, he might very well end up in a South American prison, or even an American one, considering that he was going into a foreign country with the intention of deposing and possibly killing their leader.
He hesitated at the door, shield a heavy weight in his hand. This wasn't the first mission Steve had left on, or even the first one where the odds had been against his coming back, but it would be the first time he left without saying good-bye.
As he headed down the long hallway into the quinjet hanger, it occurred to him that he should have left a note, but it was too late now.
Steve had paid attention during Iron Man’s attempts to teach him how to fly the quinjet; and he was pretty sure that he could get it safely to South America. It wasn't that different from flying a regular plane, and he had done that before.
Steve swung his shield up onto his back, tightening the straps to hold it firmly in place, then entered the hanger and went to begin the preflight checklist.
He had just gotten ready to take off when he heard the sound of the door to the hanger being opened with such force that it rebounded off the wall.
Steve spun around to see Thor standing in the door, a tiny Jan perched on his shoulder. Iron Man and Hank -- in Giant-Man costume -- were just visible behind him.
"We are coming with you!" Thor boomed, his voice echoing off the hanger's vaulted ceiling. "An enemy of Captain America is an enemy of the Avengers!"
Steve stood there, frozen, with absolutely no idea what he was going to do now. He'd meant to sneak out, to be gone before the others woke up. They weren't supposed to be involved in this. It was his fight.
"How do you-" Steve started.
"Know you were sneaking out in the middle of the night?" Iron Man asked. "Mr. Stark’s got security cameras installed in the hanger. When they picked you up, they set off an alert in my armor."
Did the man never sleep? It was three a.m. Hank and Jan both had the slightly dazed look of people recently shaken awake, but Iron Man sounded as if he'd been up for hours.
He'd probably never gone to bed at all, if the number of times Steve had run into Iron Man or Tony sitting up in the library in the middle of the night were anything to go by.
"Why did you not tell us of your intentions?" Thor went on, blond brows drawn together in a frown. "No, it matters not," he went on, waving a dismissive hand, before Steve had a chance to think of an appropriate answer. "You are our brother in arms, and your battles are our battles.
"Iron Man woke the rest of us up and explained where you were going," Hank said, ducking around Thor and into the hanger. "Jan and I wanted to try and talk you out of it, but Goldilocks here was all in favor of smiting."
"He made some good points," Jan said. "El President's a dictator who seized control of Vespugia in a military coup. The only reason nobody in Vespugia has gotten rid of him is because he killed the last three sets of people who tried."
Hank turned to look at her, and she flutter over from Thor's shoulder to his, shrugging as she landed. "What? Did you think Vogue was the only thing I read?"
"And you?" Steve asked, turning to give Iron Man a pointed glare. Tony had told him about Zemo's continued survival and current location in confidence, the same way Steve had told him -- well, told Iron Man, but he was almost entirely certain now that the two were one and the same -- about Bucky's death and the nightmares.
Iron Man shrugged, the armor's joints making faint whirring noises as he did so. "He helped frame me for murder, and he's selling adamantium to Doctor Doom. I voted for taking him down. He should pay for what he's done."
"Verily." Thor nodded. "His crimes are legion. He has wrought great evil during the Second World War and in more recent days, and he slaughters the rain forest with as little care as he does men."
They couldn't come. He had to make them understand that. Steve opened his mouth to explain that Zemo had control of an entire country and probably a very large and well-armed military; that they would breaking numerous international laws; that he might not be coming back and he couldn't put rest of them at risk because of his own personal feuds.
Even if their support did ease something inside of him.
"This is my-" Steve began again. Thor's frown deepened, and Hank folded his arms and grew several feet taller. Iron Man was simply looking at him, no expression discernable through his metal faceplate. "I would be honored to have you all with me," he finished.
Jan smiled. "Good answer, sweetie."
"Great," Iron Man said. "Now get out of the way and let me finish pre-flighting the quinjet. You've had exactly three lessons on how to fly this thing; there's no way you're qualified to pilot it all the way to South America."
Steve's protests that he had already pre-flighted the aircraft went unheeded. Iron Man performed the entire checklist over again, in half the time it had taken Steve, and within five minutes, all of the Avengers were loaded into the quinjet, Iron Man at the controls and Steve in the co-pilot's seat, the Mansion slowly shrinking below them.
"So, Cap," Jan said, as they lights of Manhattan faded on the horizon behind them, "what's our plan once we've landed?"
"Actually," Steve said, "I, um, don't know."
"Well, we cross into Vespugia's airspace in six hours," Iron Man said. "So you'd better come up with something by then."
***
The climate in this land might leave something to be desired, but many of the creatures that were to be found here were beautiful indeed.
Amora raised her hand to eye-level, tilting it slightly so that the sunlight fell across her palm at just the right angle to best illuminate the tiny frog resting in the hollow of her gloved hand. It was a most delightful creature, delicate, even fragile, with huge, liquid black eyes. Its bright golden skin contrasted appealingly with the emerald green of her glove.
Her magic, though diminished, was still powerful enough to protect her from the venom in its skin, but she nevertheless preferred to keep her gloves on.
"Those are extremely poisonous, mein liebes Enchantress," Zemo said, indicating the frog with a nod of his head.
Amora smiled at him, slipping the animal into a small pouch attached to her belt. "I am quite aware of that." She stood, brushing away the tiny smear of dirt that the frog had left behind. "You device is most impressive," she lied, staring up the large metallic dish set into the side of mountain. It was a dozen feet across, its surface gleaming dully in the sunlight, and according to Zemo, its curved sides served to reflect and amplify the beam of energy it emitted. Compared to the workings of the dwarven smiths, Zemo's energy weapon, a device which he arrogantly referred to as "my death ray," was a child's toy. Its beam would barely have left a scorch mark on the walls of Asgard. However, it should prove most effective against Thor's mortal allies, and men, Amora had found, had a great liking for flattery. If spoken to honestly, they tended to grow angry and throw one out of Asgard.
The day of her vengeance against the Allfather would come eventually, however, and her impending victory over Thor and his companions would serve to speed its coming.
"The final components were received from America just this week," Zemo said. "Herr Hammer may have fled from the American authorities, but he is a man of his word. He sent me the final shipment of goods we had agreed upon before he went to ground, and my men have just finished installing the last of the necessary pieces. When the six other death rays that are distributed around my city are activated, Vespugia will be invincible against assault by air."
"And then you will be free to launch your attack on Carnelia without fear of American interference," Amora completed. She had heard this speech thrice already. Carnelia contained the remaining mineral and oil reserves Zemo required to carry out his planned conquest of the rest of Latin America, and its capitol, a large port city, would give him a base to stage an amphibious attack against the isle of Cuba -- something the land-locked nation of Vespugia lacked.
Cuba apparently contained a mighty fortress guarded by American men at arms, from which Zemo, with his death rays, could threaten the southern coast of the American principality of Florida. This tactic, he had told her, had previously been tried by a Slavic warlord without success, but Zemo's weapons were far superior, being defensive as well as offensive, and his success was assured.
Amora had agreed to use her powers to aid him in swaying national leaders to his side. After all, she had always found it amusing to have kings and noblemen at her beck and call, and she needs must find something to amuse herself with until her quest to discover Loki's prison and free him bore fruit. After Zemo had conquered all he intended to conquer, she could easily bend him to her will and rule through him.
She could always get rid of him when she tired of him. Then again, she might not even need to. He was old, after all, and mortals did not live very long.
Zemo had had two of his guards accompany them into the jungle. They were nearly identical, both with short, blond hair and dark glasses hiding their eyes, and the slightly taller of the two had been speaking to someone over a radio headset throughout the entirety of their quest to see the "death rays." Mortals, Amora had found, tended to carry around many small technological objects that made irritating noises.
"El Presidente," the taller of the guards was saying now, "an unidentified aircraft has just entered Vespugian airspace."
When she had first forged her alliance with Zemo, Amora had place a network of spells around the palace, to alert her if another Asgardian came within a hundred leagues of it. As the guard spoke, she felt the magical ties that held those spells in place snap.
"Thor approaches, Baron," she announced. "I can sense his presence."
"So my guards have just told me," Zemo said, his eyes narrowing. "An unknown aircraft has invaded my airspace. I think perhaps this would be an opportune time to test my new defense system, don't you?"
Amora frowned, and shook her head, her hair sliding over her shoulders like silk. "Thor's power is great. Your device may slay the humans, but it cannot kill him, and he will surely seek vengeance upon you for the attempt."
"Let him," Zemo said, smiling slightly. "If he tries to attack, he will find my army waiting for him."
The arrogance of mortals truly knew no end. "He is the mighty Thor," she informed him coolly. "Your army will be as nothing to him."
Zero's sparse, white eyebrows rose. "I had assumed that that was to be your part in our little alliance."
Amora felt her face heat, remembering the humiliation of her previous failure. "My powers have little effect on him, diminished as they are."
"No matter." Zemo gestured sharply, dismissing the subject. "The force of one death ray may not slay him, but six of them together may prove his match. You have but to distract him and any of the Avengers who survive long enough for me to return to the palace and activate them all. This one" he nodded at the structure that loomed above them, "I may arm manually from here, to destroy the aircraft, and hopefully, Captain America as well, but I have not the time to do the same with the others." He smiled again, the expression transforming his gaunt face into a net of wrinkles. "I had never expected fate to be kind enough to allow me to watch Captain America explode a second time."
Amora cared not for the man's petty feuds with other mortals, but fate had indeed been kind to her today. As it should, be to one who had been the favored pupil of the Norn Queens, who ruled men's fates the way the gods ruled men.
Within mere hours, she would find herself face to face with Thor yet again. And this time, the Avengers would not have the chance to come between them.
***
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three
Authors:
seanchai and elspethdixonRated: PG-13
Pairings: Hank/Jan. Eventually Steve/Tony.
Warnings: This fic is not quite so fluffy as the previous ones. No slash yet, although hints are starting to show through.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Author's Note: Much delayed, and un-beta'd due to real life insanity. Still this will be going up on our regular schedule of Wednesdays and Saturdays come hell or high water.
Summary: Steve finally comes face to face with Baron Zemo. Also, there are ants.
Amora was certain that she had never hated any place as much as she hated Midgard. It was ugly and dirty, like the dwelling places of giants and trolls, and not one of the individuals this mortal city teemed with had shown her the slightest fraction of the respect owed to Asgard's mightiest sorceress.
It had been a full month now, and she was no closer to locating and waking Loki or returning to Valhalla.
Even her plan to sway Thor to her side had failed. She had hoped to convince him of the value of her company once his mortal friends were dead, but they were all still irritatingly alive. Somehow, they had managed to break her spell's hold over him before he could so much as kill one of them.
They were the reason Thor wanted nothing to do with her. It was the only explanation that held any reason. If events were left to their natural course, Thor would of a certain find himself irresistibly drawn to Amora, the only other Asgardian on Midgard, the only one who of his own kind. But instead, he consorted with these Avengers, and hid himself in the form of a lowly human doctor.
Odin might have bound Thor to mortal form initially, but it was his choice to spend so much of his time that way.
She was beginning to suspect that not only did Thor have an unnatural liking for mortals, he even enjoyed playing at being one. The Avengers must have some strange hold over him, to seduce him away from his own people so thoroughly.
But like all forms of magical compulsion, it would vanish if she could but rid them both of those responsible for it.
Hence, her current journey to South America. Amora had learned through various sorcerous divinations of a mortal warlord of great age and cunning whose citadel was located deep within the jungles of the southern continent. The idea of a reputation for cunning and spite combined with age reminded her unpleasantly of Odin, grey-bearded deceiver that he was, but desperate circumstances called for desperate measures.
She, the Enchantress of Asgard, who had once commanded all of the magics of the Norns, was reduced to asking a mortal man for assistance.
Her magic had been too weakened to transport her to Vespugia instantly, so she had been forced to suffer the indignity of human air travel. The seat she had had reserved for herself may have been what mortals considered "first class," but it could in no way compete with the comforts of Asgard.
She was forced to switch to a smaller and even less pleasant flying conveyance in Brazil, and then had to spend several hours more in jolting, confining misery before the mortal machine finally landed in Zemo's citadel.
The Vespugian border guards at the airport were most happy to give her transport to Zemo's stronghold, and naturally, she had no problem gaining entrance. The guards at the door came to attention sharply when she approached, and it took little effort, even with her reduced powers, to induce them to escort her inside.
Heinrich von Zemo, El President of Vespugia and the twelfth Baron Zemo, might have been a fearsome warrior in previous days, but he was less than impressive now.
He was withered and stooped with age, his thinning hair pure white, and the hands that had once killed hundreds of men were shriveled into bony claws, joints thickened with age. But his eyes still held the malice and dark intelligence of the man he'd been.
As soon as she looked into their depths, Amora knew she had come to the right man. Evil men were as every bit as easy to manipulate as good men -- and the closer to either extreme they fell, the easier said manipulation was.
"Who are you?" he demanded. He spoke German, with a distinct Northern accent. When she didn't respond immediately, he repeated himself in Spanish. "Who are you, woman? How did you get in here?"
Amora drew herself up to her full height, tall enough to look him directly in the eye. "I am no mere woman," she proclaimed. "I have access to powers greater than any your mortal mind can conceive of. You may call me," she paused a fraction of a second to let the proper attitude of anticipation build, "the Enchantress."
"I do not care what you call yourself," he snapped. "How did you get past my guards?"
"Bending ignorant mortals to my will is as nothing to one as powerful as I." Amora smiled at him calmly. He was no doubt armed, but mortal weapons were of no concern to her.
Zemo's eyes narrowed. His right hand hovered near his belt; perhaps that was where his weapon was. "Has that arrogant schwienhund from Latveria sent you? He will get his next shipment of adamantium when I am prepared to send it to him, and not a day earlier."
Amora frowned, putting her hands on her hips. This was not proceeding quite in the fashion she had anticipated. "No mortal commands the Enchantress," she informed him. She let the faintest whisper of a spell color the air around them, such that he would see her with the admiration she was due. "It matters not where I come from. What matter is what I have come to offer you."
Zemo seated himself in the dark leather chair behind his desk, his hands folded in front of him, and regarded her with a slight smile on his ancient face. "Go on," he said. "I am... most interested in hearing what you have to offer."
Heinrich Zemo was still alive. He had never been captured, never been tried, never been brought to justice.
Steve could still remember the way his eyes had gleamed when he'd smugly informed them of his plans to blow up the Allied headquarters in England, still see him tapping his swagger stick against his thigh while he sneered at Steve and Bucky ("Is this the best America can do? Inexperienced youths and fools in flashy costumes?").
Bucky had grinned and said that Sergeant York was busy, so they'd had to come instead, and Steve's costume was pretty flashy, wasn't it?
It was the last joke he remembered Bucky making, and that was all down to Zemo.
Zemo hadn't succeeded in destroying the Allied command, but he'd managed to effectively destroy Steve's life. A vastly smaller victory than he'd planned, but for all the death Steve had seen during the war, Bucky's face staring down at him from that plane was the one that haunted him the most.
It wasn't the only one, though. Men under Zemo's command had captured a cell of French guerillas Steve had been working with and executed them all. Several of them had very obvious been tortured before they'd been lined up and shot. Jim Hammond, an android who'd operated under the code name "Human Torch," had been the one to find the bodies. He had stared at Steve over the corpse of a middle-aged man who was missing all of the fingers on his right hand and said, quietly, "If this is what men are capable of, I'm glad I'm not really human."
It wasn't the worst example of brutality Steve had seen, but the men who had been responsible for Buchenwald had been brought to justice. Zemo had been free all these years, untouched, almost certainly continuing to spread his evil wherever he went.
He had arranged the death of an innocent man over something as minor as a trade agreement. And he had tried to have Steve's teammates killed.
The Avengers were all Steve had. He had no family, now that Bucky was gone, and other than Nick and Dugan, all of his old friends were dead. Without Tony, Thor, Jan, Hank, and Jarvis, he would have been entirely alone. Without them, he would still have been in the ice.
Sometimes, when he woke in the middle of the night, Steve could still feel the cold weight of the ice around him. He wasn't looking forward to winter.
The dreams that were just about the ice were better than the others, though. In those dreams, it was just Steve, slowly being crushed by a vast, frozen weight. In the bad dreams, he saw Bucky die again and again. In the really bad ones, it wasn't just Bucky.
Steve sat on the edge of his bed, staring down at his bare feet. The Mansion was still and silent, except for the sound of his breathing; not surprising, considering that it was nearly three in the morning. He had given up on sleep an hour ago, after waking up from the latest one. This time, it had been the Ardennes, he and Bucky walking through ankle deep snow to identify the bodies of American troops. Steve had knelt by a man lying face down, and reached to turn him over. He had had to pull hard, the man's body coming free of the earth with a crackling sound, clothing frozen to the ground by his own blood.
When the corpse had finally come free and Steve had been able to roll him face up, he had found himself looking down at Hank Pym's face, his blond hair turned into stiff pink spikes by bloody ice.
Steve had looked up, away from Hank's body, to see Jan lying a few feet away, face up, her eyes frozen open.
Thor had been lying just beyond her, as cold and dead as she was. Next to him was Tony, his hair startlingly black against the snow and the bloodless blue-white of his skin.
From there, things had suddenly jumped, with the illogic of dreams, to the airplane again, and once again Bucky's face had stared down at him from the plane's wing for a brief moment before the fireball had turned everything into heat and light.
Steve twisted his left foot slightly, watching as his toes sunk into the deep pile of the carpet. The soldier with the frozen blood in his hair hadn't been Hank, none of the mutilated bodies he and Bucky had helped the Army photographers capture on film as evidence of German war crimes had been men he had really known. One or two faces had been vaguely familiar, but they had been a different unit from the one he had fought with, and he'd only known them in the most general of senses.
He’d had dreams before, but the sharp reality of the ones from the last few nights had been different. If Steve let himself think about it at all, he could still almost catch the peculiar scent of the dense pine forest almost covering the smell of blood, could almost taste the gunpowder hanging in the air.
The bed creaked quietly under him, and Steve ran a hand through his hair, before dropping it to rest lightly on his knee, letting out a slightly shaky sigh. He had been sitting here for an hour, and memory had finally started to lose some of its immediacy. It was finally starting to feel like something that had happened months ago, rather than something that was still happening now, something that could happen again. He could still remember exactly what the last words Bucky had said to him were, remember the exact expression on his face in those last seconds, but the feeling of ice crunching under his knees as he knelt by those bodies had faded.
Learning that Zemo was still out there had brought it all back.
Steve dropped his head into his hands again, and sighed. His hair was too long; he could feel it tangling around his fingers. His last haircut had been in France. Bucky would make fun of--
No. He wouldn't.
Zemo had killed him. Zemo, who had somehow survived all of these long years while nearly everyone else Steve had known grew old and died. Zemo, who had helped frame Tony and sent assassins after Steve and tried to kill Steve's team.
If those gunmen outside the SHIELD barbershop had been a little luckier, Steve would have lost the only people he had at Zemo’s hands all over again. The only friends he had.
It would take so little for tonight's dream to be real. The next group of hired killers Zemo sent might be better shots.
Steve took a deep breath and stood. None of this would be over until Zemo was dealt with. His team wouldn't be safe, and the nightmares weren't going to stop, until then.
He knew where Zemo was now, and he knew what he had to do. He'd been sitting here for an hour trying to summon up the resolve to go and do it.
Now, he just needed to be well on his way before anyone else woke up.
He had never done this kind of thing on his own before. He'd always had orders, an objective, someone to report to, whether it was to the Army or the other Avengers.
He couldn't involve the Avengers in this, though. Going into Vespugia was something he was going to have to do strictly under the radar. If he succeeded, he might very well end up in a South American prison, or even an American one, considering that he was going into a foreign country with the intention of deposing and possibly killing their leader.
He hesitated at the door, shield a heavy weight in his hand. This wasn't the first mission Steve had left on, or even the first one where the odds had been against his coming back, but it would be the first time he left without saying good-bye.
As he headed down the long hallway into the quinjet hanger, it occurred to him that he should have left a note, but it was too late now.
Steve had paid attention during Iron Man’s attempts to teach him how to fly the quinjet; and he was pretty sure that he could get it safely to South America. It wasn't that different from flying a regular plane, and he had done that before.
Steve swung his shield up onto his back, tightening the straps to hold it firmly in place, then entered the hanger and went to begin the preflight checklist.
He had just gotten ready to take off when he heard the sound of the door to the hanger being opened with such force that it rebounded off the wall.
Steve spun around to see Thor standing in the door, a tiny Jan perched on his shoulder. Iron Man and Hank -- in Giant-Man costume -- were just visible behind him.
"We are coming with you!" Thor boomed, his voice echoing off the hanger's vaulted ceiling. "An enemy of Captain America is an enemy of the Avengers!"
Steve stood there, frozen, with absolutely no idea what he was going to do now. He'd meant to sneak out, to be gone before the others woke up. They weren't supposed to be involved in this. It was his fight.
"How do you-" Steve started.
"Know you were sneaking out in the middle of the night?" Iron Man asked. "Mr. Stark’s got security cameras installed in the hanger. When they picked you up, they set off an alert in my armor."
Did the man never sleep? It was three a.m. Hank and Jan both had the slightly dazed look of people recently shaken awake, but Iron Man sounded as if he'd been up for hours.
He'd probably never gone to bed at all, if the number of times Steve had run into Iron Man or Tony sitting up in the library in the middle of the night were anything to go by.
"Why did you not tell us of your intentions?" Thor went on, blond brows drawn together in a frown. "No, it matters not," he went on, waving a dismissive hand, before Steve had a chance to think of an appropriate answer. "You are our brother in arms, and your battles are our battles.
"Iron Man woke the rest of us up and explained where you were going," Hank said, ducking around Thor and into the hanger. "Jan and I wanted to try and talk you out of it, but Goldilocks here was all in favor of smiting."
"He made some good points," Jan said. "El President's a dictator who seized control of Vespugia in a military coup. The only reason nobody in Vespugia has gotten rid of him is because he killed the last three sets of people who tried."
Hank turned to look at her, and she flutter over from Thor's shoulder to his, shrugging as she landed. "What? Did you think Vogue was the only thing I read?"
"And you?" Steve asked, turning to give Iron Man a pointed glare. Tony had told him about Zemo's continued survival and current location in confidence, the same way Steve had told him -- well, told Iron Man, but he was almost entirely certain now that the two were one and the same -- about Bucky's death and the nightmares.
Iron Man shrugged, the armor's joints making faint whirring noises as he did so. "He helped frame me for murder, and he's selling adamantium to Doctor Doom. I voted for taking him down. He should pay for what he's done."
"Verily." Thor nodded. "His crimes are legion. He has wrought great evil during the Second World War and in more recent days, and he slaughters the rain forest with as little care as he does men."
They couldn't come. He had to make them understand that. Steve opened his mouth to explain that Zemo had control of an entire country and probably a very large and well-armed military; that they would breaking numerous international laws; that he might not be coming back and he couldn't put rest of them at risk because of his own personal feuds.
Even if their support did ease something inside of him.
"This is my-" Steve began again. Thor's frown deepened, and Hank folded his arms and grew several feet taller. Iron Man was simply looking at him, no expression discernable through his metal faceplate. "I would be honored to have you all with me," he finished.
Jan smiled. "Good answer, sweetie."
"Great," Iron Man said. "Now get out of the way and let me finish pre-flighting the quinjet. You've had exactly three lessons on how to fly this thing; there's no way you're qualified to pilot it all the way to South America."
Steve's protests that he had already pre-flighted the aircraft went unheeded. Iron Man performed the entire checklist over again, in half the time it had taken Steve, and within five minutes, all of the Avengers were loaded into the quinjet, Iron Man at the controls and Steve in the co-pilot's seat, the Mansion slowly shrinking below them.
"So, Cap," Jan said, as they lights of Manhattan faded on the horizon behind them, "what's our plan once we've landed?"
"Actually," Steve said, "I, um, don't know."
"Well, we cross into Vespugia's airspace in six hours," Iron Man said. "So you'd better come up with something by then."
The climate in this land might leave something to be desired, but many of the creatures that were to be found here were beautiful indeed.
Amora raised her hand to eye-level, tilting it slightly so that the sunlight fell across her palm at just the right angle to best illuminate the tiny frog resting in the hollow of her gloved hand. It was a most delightful creature, delicate, even fragile, with huge, liquid black eyes. Its bright golden skin contrasted appealingly with the emerald green of her glove.
Her magic, though diminished, was still powerful enough to protect her from the venom in its skin, but she nevertheless preferred to keep her gloves on.
"Those are extremely poisonous, mein liebes Enchantress," Zemo said, indicating the frog with a nod of his head.
Amora smiled at him, slipping the animal into a small pouch attached to her belt. "I am quite aware of that." She stood, brushing away the tiny smear of dirt that the frog had left behind. "You device is most impressive," she lied, staring up the large metallic dish set into the side of mountain. It was a dozen feet across, its surface gleaming dully in the sunlight, and according to Zemo, its curved sides served to reflect and amplify the beam of energy it emitted. Compared to the workings of the dwarven smiths, Zemo's energy weapon, a device which he arrogantly referred to as "my death ray," was a child's toy. Its beam would barely have left a scorch mark on the walls of Asgard. However, it should prove most effective against Thor's mortal allies, and men, Amora had found, had a great liking for flattery. If spoken to honestly, they tended to grow angry and throw one out of Asgard.
The day of her vengeance against the Allfather would come eventually, however, and her impending victory over Thor and his companions would serve to speed its coming.
"The final components were received from America just this week," Zemo said. "Herr Hammer may have fled from the American authorities, but he is a man of his word. He sent me the final shipment of goods we had agreed upon before he went to ground, and my men have just finished installing the last of the necessary pieces. When the six other death rays that are distributed around my city are activated, Vespugia will be invincible against assault by air."
"And then you will be free to launch your attack on Carnelia without fear of American interference," Amora completed. She had heard this speech thrice already. Carnelia contained the remaining mineral and oil reserves Zemo required to carry out his planned conquest of the rest of Latin America, and its capitol, a large port city, would give him a base to stage an amphibious attack against the isle of Cuba -- something the land-locked nation of Vespugia lacked.
Cuba apparently contained a mighty fortress guarded by American men at arms, from which Zemo, with his death rays, could threaten the southern coast of the American principality of Florida. This tactic, he had told her, had previously been tried by a Slavic warlord without success, but Zemo's weapons were far superior, being defensive as well as offensive, and his success was assured.
Amora had agreed to use her powers to aid him in swaying national leaders to his side. After all, she had always found it amusing to have kings and noblemen at her beck and call, and she needs must find something to amuse herself with until her quest to discover Loki's prison and free him bore fruit. After Zemo had conquered all he intended to conquer, she could easily bend him to her will and rule through him.
She could always get rid of him when she tired of him. Then again, she might not even need to. He was old, after all, and mortals did not live very long.
Zemo had had two of his guards accompany them into the jungle. They were nearly identical, both with short, blond hair and dark glasses hiding their eyes, and the slightly taller of the two had been speaking to someone over a radio headset throughout the entirety of their quest to see the "death rays." Mortals, Amora had found, tended to carry around many small technological objects that made irritating noises.
"El Presidente," the taller of the guards was saying now, "an unidentified aircraft has just entered Vespugian airspace."
When she had first forged her alliance with Zemo, Amora had place a network of spells around the palace, to alert her if another Asgardian came within a hundred leagues of it. As the guard spoke, she felt the magical ties that held those spells in place snap.
"Thor approaches, Baron," she announced. "I can sense his presence."
"So my guards have just told me," Zemo said, his eyes narrowing. "An unknown aircraft has invaded my airspace. I think perhaps this would be an opportune time to test my new defense system, don't you?"
Amora frowned, and shook her head, her hair sliding over her shoulders like silk. "Thor's power is great. Your device may slay the humans, but it cannot kill him, and he will surely seek vengeance upon you for the attempt."
"Let him," Zemo said, smiling slightly. "If he tries to attack, he will find my army waiting for him."
The arrogance of mortals truly knew no end. "He is the mighty Thor," she informed him coolly. "Your army will be as nothing to him."
Zero's sparse, white eyebrows rose. "I had assumed that that was to be your part in our little alliance."
Amora felt her face heat, remembering the humiliation of her previous failure. "My powers have little effect on him, diminished as they are."
"No matter." Zemo gestured sharply, dismissing the subject. "The force of one death ray may not slay him, but six of them together may prove his match. You have but to distract him and any of the Avengers who survive long enough for me to return to the palace and activate them all. This one" he nodded at the structure that loomed above them, "I may arm manually from here, to destroy the aircraft, and hopefully, Captain America as well, but I have not the time to do the same with the others." He smiled again, the expression transforming his gaunt face into a net of wrinkles. "I had never expected fate to be kind enough to allow me to watch Captain America explode a second time."
Amora cared not for the man's petty feuds with other mortals, but fate had indeed been kind to her today. As it should, be to one who had been the favored pupil of the Norn Queens, who ruled men's fates the way the gods ruled men.
Within mere hours, she would find herself face to face with Thor yet again. And this time, the Avengers would not have the chance to come between them.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three
Re: re: To the Ends of The Earth
That charming little detail came from a book on WWII and censorship, from a group of censored photographs taken by Army photographers after the Battle of the Bulge (anything with severed limbs or otherwise visibly mutilated corpeses couldn't be published, nor could anything where a dead man's face was clearly visible).
I read the book on March 8th last year, for a paper on WWI and WWII propaganda. Given the date, the entire thing is burned into my brain (once I finished my paper, I made it to the local comicbook store just in time to pick up their last copy of Captain America #25, for which I was totally unspoiled, having spent the entire day in the university library, looking at pictures of dead soldiers and paper-writing and complete cut off from the internet and all other fans and news outlets). I almost started crying when I had to present my paper to the rest of my graduate seminar the next day, because I'd brought prints of covers from Golden Age Captain America comics as some of my visual aids.
Re: To the Ends of The Earth
It's probably easier for me, since I'm not much of a comic book fan, and am just starting. I read Marvel Zombies because Spiderman and X-Men was in it, and that's my first impression of a lot of characters! I really like Steve Rogers a lot once I've started reading the other comics (he's like a cross between Captain Kirk and Sailor Moon, if I can doodle, I would doodle that), but I started liking him after he was dead...and now that I've read the first volume of Marvel Adventures, I think I'm going to pick MA as 'my canon', because it's so much better. It's funny, the art is pretty, the women are realistically proportioned and will not end up int he fridge, MA canon!