Title: Atonement
Fandom: MCU
Character: Helmut Zemo
Rating: G (canon-typical violence)
Length: 886 words
Prompt: I swallowed the dice - I make my own luck now.

A/N: For tower party lightning round - minor characters. Zemo backstory. On AO3.

The day he made colonel, his wife left him. Brimming with pride, Zemo had burst into their flat, ready to give her the good news. Twenty successful missions in a year, far more than any other squad. His commander told him he had a true flair for this kind of work, hadn’t seen anything like it in all his years in intelligence. Given the speed at which he’d ascended the ranks, he’d make general in no time at all. Zemo’s chest swelled with a sense of patriotic mission.

She wasn’t home. A note on the kitchen table said she’d had enough, she’d gone to her mother’s, taking their young son with her.

Instantly he deflated. He set his jaw and crumpled the note into a tiny ball before throwing it in the corner. Poured himself a shot of slivovitz, wiped his mouth and got to work.

Over the next two months, there was a gradual thawing. She started to allow him regular visits with their son. She let Zemo take her out for dinner, let him hold her hand under the table and kiss her goodnight like they were teenagers again. Zemo promised to work fewer hours, go on fewer work trips. (A lie, but necessary.) Her stony face melted into smiles.

Finally, after much wooing and sweet talk, they’d moved back home. In the park, he played football with his son, watching him toddle around on his chubby little legs with a new-found appreciation. Later he sat with his wife on the couch watching TV, his arm wrapped around her, her head on his shoulder. The scent of her shampoo was intoxicating. Why had he never noticed it before?

In bed, her sighs and moans assured him things were going well.

Then came the Avengers.

Being the man he was, he was confident he could keep them safe. How naive he had been.

No one understood what they were dealing with. For years, there had been rumors about what was going on in the castle, stories about local youth kidnapped for nefarious experiments. Ever the rationalist, Zemo rejected the stories as urban myths, conspiracy theories fomented by the internet. If something like that was going on, he’d know about it.

Superheroes were something that happened somewhere else. Not in Zemo’s world of grit and necessity, as far as you could get from New York and the razzle-dazzle of Stark Tower. Until Tony Stark brought his hideous creation to Zemo’s doorstep.

It was worse than anyone could have imagined. His world shattered in a matter of days.

No one was safe after all. He tried to tell himself it wasn’t his fault. A mad scientist’s plaything run amuck, their city wrenched from the earth and thrown down like a child’s forgotten toy—who could have imagined or anticipated such things?

But he didn’t really believe it. He should have been able to protect them.

The wound of his family’s death refused to heal. He plunged himself into work, traveling as far as possible from Sokovia. Africa, Asia, the Middle East…there was plenty of work for a man with his skillset. Numb, he moved through the world blindly. It was easier that way.

One day his orders took him to a small village in Yemen. After firebombing the ragtag assemblage of dwellings, they moved in with guns drawn to clear out the remains. Mind blank, focused only on the mission, he skirted the dead bodies, alert for movement. In the corner of a burning home, a small child sat crying next to a dead woman. Zemo stopped short, arrested by the scene. The child was about the same age as his son; the same chubby face wet with tears, plump hands in fists. Zemo hesitated, swallowed bile, then moved on, directing the other men away.

The scab was ripped off and the wound bled anew. Tony Stark and the Avengers would pay, he vowed. It was only a matter of time.

Then he found out about the Romanoff disclosures. He’d saved enough to devote himself full-time to obsessively researching the SHIELD and HYDRA files released by Natasha Romanoff the year before. A cabin in the mountains served as his retreat. The Avengers and SHIELD were intimately entwined. The Avengers were initially a SHIELD initiative, Romanoff and Rogers were SHIELD agents. There was certain to be something he could use.

He ate little, slept even less.

Rubbing his eyes, he stared at the screen. He’d memorized every fact he could glean about Tony Stark, including the date of his parents’ death in a car accident: December 17, 1991. Here in front of him was the same date, in a list of the Winter Soldier’s missions. The Winter Soldier, HYDRA’s infamous assassin; also known as James Buchanan Barnes, former best friend of Steve Rogers.

Rogers…Barnes…Tony Stark’s parents, Howard and Maria…Tony Stark…

His mind lit up with excitement. There might be something here. The file contained no other information, only the date. But it was a thread and he was going to pull on it.

Vengeance was in his grasp. It wouldn’t heal the wound—that was impossible—but at least he could atone for the sin of failing to protect his family.