#and also create a relationship for him that happened before TFAWS

[rax-writes]

Together, As It Should Be

Fandom:  MCU

Pairing:  Baron Helmut Zemo x Reader

Warnings:  Angst, descriptions of death / dead bodies, MCU-level violence

Notes:  Two Zemo fics in one day? Yes, because I do not trust Marvel, and I just know they’ll probably screw this man over sometime in the very near future, so I’m thoroughly basking in the episode 3 goodness. // Zemo and the reader would naturally be speaking Sokovian throughout basically the entire story, but I felt that it would be redundant and annoying to repeatedly state that. So, their dialogue is written in English, but just pretend it’s Sokovian. // I don’t ever write angst. I truly don’t know where this came from. But, uh... I’m sorry in advance.

Sokovia had always been a modest country; it was never any kind of world power, but it had a moderately successful economy, infrequent wars, and above all, good, kind-hearted citizens. You had been a member of the Sokovian military unit EKO Scorpion, to protect against threats to your dear country, alongside a man named Helmut Zemo.

He was always a very analytical, observant, and intelligent man. Alternatively, you were fearless and quick, capable of deadly aim and precision in both your bullets and your hits to enemies' pressure points. There were countless times where Zemo was still busy reading the room or identifying the enemy's weak points by the time you ended them before they even had the chance to raise their weapon. The two of you formed a friendship as you rose through the ranks of the Sokovian Armed Forces alongside one another, eventually reaching the top as the commander and second in command. You eventually got to know Zemo beyond his cold, calculating exterior, and grew familiar with his dry, quick-witted sense of humor, incredible poker and chess skills, and fondness for music. There wasn't a single criminal who could outsmart or outrun the two of you; the pair of you, and your unit, were unstoppable.

In time, you fell in love with the man – although you never would have admitted it, as he was engaged when you met him, and married by the time you realized your feelings. As much as you wished it were you that he came home to every night, his wife was always very sweet and hospitable toward you, so you could never possibly hold any disdain for her. When his son was born, you knew you needed to get over yourself, get over your feelings for a man you could never have, before it cost you your closest friendship. So, you kept that love for him silent, quiet and close to your heart but never anything beyond that. Zemo even named you his son's godmother, and you attended every birthday party, school play, and soccer tournament of Carl's. He constantly badgered his parents to go over to "Auntie's place," and it was one day when you were returning him to his parents that you saw Zemo's happy little home life begin to crumble.

When you pulled up to the ancient Zemo family mansion, Carl chattering happily in the backseat, you caught a glimpse through the window of Zemo and his wife having a heated argument in the living room, both of them speaking animatedly with their hands and looking angry.

Turning to face Carl after you put the car in park, you donned a smile and suggested, "How about a game of hide and seek outside before I give you back to your parents, yeah? It's a nice day out, I want to play with my best buddy before I leave."

"Yeah!" the boy exclaimed, practically tearing off the car door as he burst out, running off toward their massive car garage to hide as he hollered, "Count to seventy-four!"

You smiled to yourself before walking up to the front door of the mansion, where you could hear the not-so-happy couple yelling at one another. You knocked loudly with the ornate, golden lion's head door-knocker, and the yelling died down before Zemo swung the door open, looking frustrated and fatigued, but as his eyes landed on you, relief washed across his features.

"Where is Carl?"

"I, uh… saw you two arguing through the window, figured it was best he didn't see that. So, he's off playing hide and seek in the garage," you explained, and Helmut nodded solemnly, looking at the ground. "Everything alright?"

"No," he answered honestly, exhaling slowly as he leaned against the doorframe. He glanced behind him for a moment, before returning his attention to you. "Let's get Carl inside, then go to a bar. I'm in the mood to drink away my troubles."

An hour later, you were seated beside Zemo in a quiet little bar in Novi Grad, watching him curiously as he nursed a whiskey on the rocks. He looked pensive, eyes a thousand miles away as he stared down at the amber liquid.

"I'm very grateful that you had Carl today. That entire conversation went far worse than I could have ever expected," he admitted with a dry, humorless chuckle.

"Mind telling me what it was about?"

"She confessed that she's been having an affair with our neighbor for quite some time now, so in retaliation, I told her that I've been in love with someone else for the past five years."

You let out a low whistle. "Yes, that's pretty bad, old friend."

"Indeed," Helmut mused, taking a swig of his whiskey.

As much as you tried to fight it, the question came tumbling out of your mouth against your better judgment. "So, who's the other woman? Do I know her?"

Helmut glanced at you out of the corner of his eye, his gaze lingering for a moment, before taking another sip of his drink and setting it back down on the bar, returning his gaze to the movement of the liquor in the glass. "No, you wouldn't know her."

Ignoring the tightness that formed in your chest at the disappointment that he didn't mean you, you asked, "How'd the conversation end? You two going to patch things up?"

"No. Maybe. I don't know. When I brought up a divorce, she suggested couples' counseling."

"An affair goes a bit beyond couples' counseling, in my opinion."

"I am inclined to agree."

"And besides, if you get a divorce, you'd have the chance to be with this other woman, the one you love," you suggested. As much as it hurt that he's not only been married to someone else for the entirety of the time you've been in love with him, but he was also apparently in love with someone besides you or her – at the end of the day, you really just wanted to see him happy.

Once again, Helmut gave you that side-eyed, lingering look, before he sighed and said, "It's not that simple. Besides, I do love my wife. Yes, I love this other woman more, and in a perfect world, I would have married her instead. But I am a man of my word, and I vowed to be with my wife til death do us part."

"Yeah, and she also vowed to be loyal to you, to be with you and only you 'til death do you part.' So, she null and voided that agreement when she became the first to break it."

"You have a point," he mused, finishing his drink as he waved the bartender down for another.

"Look, Z, life is short. You know that. You know how quickly a man can lose his life, we've both seen that in the field. And whether you realize it or not, even if you do get the chance to grow old, you'll find that your life has been lived before you ever realized you were approaching the end. Do you really want to spend what little time you have here married to a woman who chose your fucking neighbor over you?"

Helmut sighed, running a hand through his hair as the bartender sat another drink in front of him, which he thanked her for. After taking another drink, he was silent for a few moments more, before conceding, "You are right as usual, old friend. I will speak with her tomorrow about a divorce. And who knows, I may work up the courage to tell this other woman of my feelings."

"That is a good plan."

Little did either of you know, the next day brought nothing but chaos, death, and destruction, as Ultron arrived and laid waste to your homeland. You were racing into action the second the fighting began, running through the streets to your nearby military base, when you got a call from Helmut.

"Where are you? Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, Z. Well, for now," you responded, before ducking behind a car to fire a few rounds at a few members of Ultron's fleet. Hearing the gunshots, his voice grew even more panicked.

"Get out of there immediately! Go to my father's home outside of the city, you'll be safe there."

"What kind of Scorpion would I be if I tucked tail and ran, instead of defending my country?"

"A live one!" Helmut bellowed, then groaned in exasperation. "Forget it, I know you're too stubborn to listen to me. Just get to the base and stay put until I get there. We'll fight together – as it should be."

After another few shots at those damn robots, you broke into a run toward the base, letting out a breathless laugh as his words reached your ears through the receiver. "Just like old times then, eh?"

Within twenty minutes of you reaching the military base, a handful of other members of your squad arrived, and finally, Zemo. The moment he burst through the doors, he frantically searched the room until he found you, his white button-up singed and tattered, hair a mess, and tie loose around his neck.

"Bit overdressed for battle, aren't you?" you teased as he ran to you, enveloping you in a bear hug.

"I was so worried that something would happen to you before I could get to you," he admitted in a whisper, face buried in your hair.

"You should know by now that I'm not an easy woman to kill," you replied, patting his back as you ignored the way your heart soared at the embrace. "Where is Carl? And your father? And the missus?"

"Safe, outside the city," Helmut answered, then held you out at arms length to glare at you. "Where I wish you would be."

"Not a chance," you retorted, smiling at him as you threw his military uniform against his chest, which he caught with ease. "Let's go show these robo-bastards who they're messing with."

After a straight hour of fighting for your lives, killing an endless slew of drones and saving more civilians than you could count, your beloved city began to take flight, tearing away from the Earth as it began to levitate. Unknowingly, you were standing at the edge, and Helmut suddenly fell from your line of sight, yelling your name as he fell off the side.

"Zemo!" you screamed so forcefully that it hurt your throat, as you dropped to your knees on the edge. He was dangling there, holding onto a metal pipe that had broken when the city left the ground. You laid on your stomach and extended your hand to him, which he grabbed immediately, and you used every ounce of strength you could muster to hold onto him. Motivated by sheer adrenaline and the inhuman strength associated with saving someone you love, you managed to drag him back up and onto solid ground, and he collapsed on top of you, both of you breathing heavily and wide-eyed.

Zemo gazed down at you, with such admiration and love in his eyes that the world around you grew quiet, despite the chaos of the battle still raging around you. Slowly, gently, he brushed a few strands of hair away from your face, before his fingers lingered on your cheek. Your breath caught in your throat, and your voice was scarcely a whisper when you spoke.

"Helmut?"

"There is something you must know," he said quickly. "My dearest friend, I –"

A sudden blast of blue energy hit the ground right next to your heads, and you looked to the side to see a handful of drones coming your way.

"Hold that thought," you quipped, before the both of you stood and leapt into action, resuming your fighting and navigation of civilians.

A short while later, you heard a few of the Avengers commanding everyone to vacate the floating hunk of Earth. You and Helmut exchanged a glance, before he walked over to them, and began speaking with a man holding a bow.

"Helmut Zemo, Commander of Sokovia's EKO Scorpion. What is going on?"

"Ultron is planning to drop the city at any moment, we need to get everyone out of here immediately."

"Dropping the city will decimate Sokovia," you noted, dumbfounded. "You're a motley crew of super-humans. Can't you find a way to just set it back down?"

"That's the goal, but we don't know for sure that we can," the Avenger explained. "We could use you guys' help getting everyone onto these helicarriers, so we can get them to safety."

"We're on it," you replied, being that Zemo was standing there in silence. As the Avenger walked off, he turned to you with fear in his brown eyes.

"Carl. My father. My wife. They aren't safe," Helmut whispered in disbelief.

You whipped out your phone and began trying to call his wife, but you had no service due to power lines being destroyed when the city took flight. He just stared at you, still shell-shocked, so you placed your hands on his shoulders and looked him in the eyes. "Z, there isn't much we can do for them right now besides try to help the Avengers. The less civilians they have to worry about, the more they can focus on Ultron and getting Novi Grad back on the ground."

Helmut nodded solemnly, and you turned to the nearby members of your unit. "Scorpions! Get as many people onto these Lifeboats as quickly and as safely as possible, and when you've found all the civilians you can, get your own asses on there as well. Understood?"

They all nodded and disbanded, sprinting in various directions to execute their mission. You grabbed Helmut's hand and echoed his words from earlier. "We will fight together. For Sokovia, and for your family." The fear in his eyes was replaced with determination then, and he gave you a curt nod as he squeezed your hand, before the pair of you ran off in search of civilians.

Within a half hour, neither of you could find any more people to evacuate. Both of you were struggling to breathe, from running and from the thin air caused by the high elevation of the city, so you headed for the last of the helicarriers, making you two of the very last to evacuate. Helmut hesitated before boarding.

"I want to help them fight Ultron. Once he is defeated, this will be over, and my family will be safe."

"No, Zemo," you said immediately, brows furrowing together with concern as you took his hand, half worried he'd bolt off. "The primary objective right now isn't Ultron, it's this floating hunk of rock. That is the threat to your family right now. And the quicker we get to the ground, the quicker we can find them and get them further from the impact radius."

Helmut nodded dejectedly before boarding the aircraft with you. As it flew away from the city, you drew in a shuddering gasp as you got a better look at what you'd just been standing on. The amount of land that had been ripped from the Earth was three times the size you'd expected, and although you didn't dare to express it… your hopes of ever seeing dear, sweet Carl again dropped each second you stared at the floating hunk of Novi Grad.

Before you could give it a second thought, the city exploded, sending hunk of rock and debris flying in all directions and rocking the Lifeboat. Both you and Zemo dropped to your knees to brace yourselves, and he shielded you with his body. You looked up the moment it felt safe enough to do so, and saw a barrage of chunks of Earth flying into the nearby body of water, and to the ground below. A few people screamed as they watched the debris collide with land, knowing that countless lives were being lost every millisecond, but Helmut was still and silent, his arm tightening around your shoulders and his jaw clenched. When silence befell the Lifeboat, you turned to him with your hands on his shoulders, his arm still around you.

"Z, there's still a chance they're okay. There's still a chance."

His eyes held a myriad of emotions when he met your gaze. Fear, anger, frustration, sadness, horror. They began to water, before he pulled you into a bone-crushing hug, burying his face in your neck as he held you like you were the only thing keeping him grounded.

It was three hours later before you and Zemo were able to even enter the remnants of Sokovia, forced to wait for the dust to settle fully so you could see. The pair of you spent that time in silence, your hand in his as he looked out over the lake. It took ages to reach his father's place, clambering under fallen buildings and over rubble, and when you finally reached it… it was gone. The entire area was completely obliterated, leaving nothing but crumpled homes, craters, and colossal boulders.

Two days. Two days of digging through the debris, consisting of cement, wood, rocks, trees. Two days spent in silence, aside from you occasionally prompting Helmut to rest, drink, or eat. Two days of aimlessly searching for his family's bodies, not even sure where best to look, as the entire area had been obliterated. Two days before you heard a gut-wrenching scream from a few yards away, where Helmut had been searching. Two days before you ran to him as fast as your legs would carry you, only to stop dead in your tracks as you saw your friend and your love cradling his son's small, bloody, lifeless body from where he'd found it in the wreckage, beside his father and his wife, both of whom were also crushed and bloodied but still partially underneath a few slabs of cement and some rocks.

You removed the debris as quickly as you could from their bodies, allowing Helmut the ability to grab them as well, holding the three of them in his arms as the most heartbreaking sobs you'd ever heard in your life escaped his body. You kneeled behind him, and he leaned against you as he held them, his body too weak from exertion and grief to hold himself up. You tore a piece of fabric from your shirt to use as a rag, and wet it with water from your canteen to clean Carl's sweet little face. He looked as he did when sleeping, aside from the dirt and dried blood at the corner of his mouth, and the way his arm twisted unnaturally. Next you tidied up his father's and his wife's faces, which obviously didn't fix anything, but… just because they were dead didn't mean they had to look dead. You wrapped your arms around Helmut's shoulders, resting your cheek on the top of his head as he mourned.

You left to retrieve some emergency responders, who helped you get them in black body bags as Helmut turned away, unable to watch. They were placed on gurneys to transport them to a funeral home in the bordering country of Slovakia, near one of Zemo's estates there. You stayed there with him, helping him however possible as he made funeral preparations for his loved ones. Each day, you left before sunrise to help in Sokovia, while he stayed at his home and processed his grief. All the while, he remained stoic and withdrawn, exchanging a handful of words with you at the most, but you did not push him.

A week after their bodies were found, the funeral was held, each buried in individual plots Helmut had purchased. It was just the two of you there, standing together in the graveyard, staring at the three spots of fresh dirt before you. The grounds keeper had long since left, and the sun was high in the sky, illuminating the world despite the melancholy atmosphere surrounding you. Truthfully, the graveyard he'd chosen was beautiful; tall stone monuments and elaborate headstones, even a few mausoleums. You were busy admiring it when he spoke.

"I'm leaving."

You turned to him with your brows furrowed in confusion. "Where are you going?"

"I have some business to attend to," Helmut replied vaguely. "I will be leaving you with a key to the mansion. You are welcome to stay in this one as long as you'd like, or in any of the others. Simply call Oeznik, he will arrange your transportation and access to the other estate of your choosing."

"Can't I just go with you? The two of us, together, as it should be – remember?"

"I'm afraid I must do this alone."

"Do what alone?" you asked worriedly, laying a hand on his arm. "Z, are you okay? I mean, I know that's a stupid question, but you're scaring me. Are you going to be okay?"

"I will be fine," Helmut assured you, but there was no sincerity in his words. They were empty, just like his eyes had been for the past week. He then walked away towards his car, being that you had chosen to ride separately, in case he wanted to be left alone at their graves.

You jogged over to him and closed the door of his car just as he opened it.

"Promise me that you won't do anything stupid, and that you'll stay safe."

Helmut sighed before looking you in the eyes. "You have my word."

You kept your hand on the car door for a few moments more, studying him, before releasing it and taking a step back when you determined that he wasn't lying. He stared at you for what seemed like an eternity, and unlike usual, you couldn't read him. He had always been a somewhat reserved man, never the type to wear his heart on his sleeve, but his eyes had always told you everything you needed to know. Until now. They were just so… empty.

"I love you."

The words caught you off-guard. You had been expecting a simple goodbye, not… this. All you could do was stare at him, dumbfounded.

"That's what I wanted to tell you on Novi Grad, after you saved me. I love you. I've loved you for five years – possibly longer, but it was then that I realized it," Zemo explained, taking one of your hands in both of his as he spoke. "You are the love of my life, but fate chose to torment me by giving me these feelings after I had already married another. Now, my heart… it feels like a forest that has burned, all of it reduced to dust, aside from the smallest tree that remains somewhere within the ash, the sole survivor. That is you. My oldest and dearest friend, the keeper of my heart, my angel, my purpose."

Before you could process his confession enough to form a coherent response, Zemo cupped your face between his palms and kissed you.

It was delicate, sweet, and cathartic – exactly what both of you needed, after the horrors you had recently experienced. Your hands gently gripped his forearms, needing something to touch to convince yourself that this was real. The moment you never even allowed yourself to dream of was happening. Zemo kissed you breathless, and when he broke the kiss to gaze down at you, he smiled for the first time in over a week, although it still held a sense of sadness.

"I love you, too," was all you could manage, still stupefied.

"I know." Zemo kissed your forehead before opening the car door again, and sliding into the driver's seat. You rested your palms on the rolled-down window, and he stated, "I will be back before you know it, as a better man, and we will continue where we left off. I promise you that, my love."

"Just remember your other promise, Z. Be careful," you cautioned, and he nodded, before bringing one of your hands up to his lips to place a kiss upon your knuckles.

After lovingly staring into one another's eyes for several moments, you leaned down into the car to kiss him quickly, then took a step back from the vehicle.

As he drove away, Zemo called out, "Until next time, my angel."

But the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach told you that there would be no next time.

And, in the end… you were right.