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Sam was dead asleep, coming off a very long day of too many damn things. It took him a while to realize that the low burr of the phone vibrating on his nightstand was actually happening and not part of his dream. Blearily he fumbled for it and squinted at the too-bright screen in the dark bedroom. It came up UNLISTED, which could mean any number of things, but probably a Captain America situation.
He groaned, rubbed his eyes with his thumb, and thought about just not answering it. But it wasn't in him. He couldn't imagine this was anything other than important. Letting out a long sigh, he said, "Yeah."
"Captain Wilson?"
He didn't know the voice, but he knew the type. Male, eager, young, almost certainly military or military-adjacent. "Yeah," he said, and sat up a little more, trying to get his brain online. "This is Wilson."
"Sir, I'm Lt. Benson, communications liaison for the Raft. You're aware of a prisoner named Helmut Zemo?"
That cleared the sleep cobwebs out of his mind, and then some. Now he was awake. "What'd he do? Did he escape?"
"No," the eager young voice said, and hesitated over the next part.
"He's dead," Sam said. He had a strange, tangled mix of emotions about that, but it was the only other reason he could think of why they would contact him. Although ... even that seemed tenuous. Calling him on his personal phone in the middle of the night? Surely Ross would consider it worth dropping him an email a few days later at most.
"Not ... exactly."
"Spit out out, soldier," Sam snapped.
"Sorry, sir. Right. It says here that you're listed as his emergency medical contact. Is that right?"
He was Zemo's what? "I'm sorry?" Sam said blankly.
There was the sound of papers shuffling on the other end of the line. "You're down as his emergency medical contact. He's authorized you to make medical decisions on his behalf, and we do need that. Sorry, it sounds like it's the middle of the night where you are." Belated, as if Benson was just now thinking of that.
"DC," Sam said, still feeling stunned. "Uh, look ... what's the situation?"
It made a horrible kind of sense. Who else was Zemo going to put down, if they put a form in front of him and told him to write the name of someone who might halfway care if something happened to him? Probably not Bucky. And there was no one left in the world who loved him. Just a couple of people he'd spent a few days with, half a year ago.
"—found in his cell after a suicide attempt," Benson was saying.
Sam's brain staticked again. "I'm sorry, did I hear you right? He tried to kill himself?"
His first wild thought was That's nuts, Zemo is the most—
The most fucking what? The most determined, was what he was thinking; it seemed impossible that Zemo would give in enough to just kill himself on the Raft. But he'd already tried it, hadn't he? T'Challa had stopped him once, and Bucky had told Sam just enough of what had happened at the Sokovian memorial to know that, while Zemo's mental health was less of a disaster than it had been right after his family's deaths, it was still a Jenga tower built on sand. Zemo was fine, more or less, right up until he didn't have a purpose to drive him, and then he very much wasn't.
Zemo was both a contrary, stubborn bastard and an absolute emotional wreck, and even from as little as a few days in Madripoor and Riga, Sam knew that much.
"He's in the infirmary," Benson said. "Right now his condition is unstable, and we needed to contact a medical proxy to—er, to authorize—"
"Yes, do whatever you need to do," Sam said, thinking at the same time that Zemo probably wouldn't want that, but fuck what Zemo wanted; he'd put Sam's name on the form, and he was going to have to deal with Sam's conscience. "I want to be there."
"Uh, I don't think that's—"
"You called me about this," Sam said, swinging his legs out of bed. "I want a helo ready to pick me up in half an hour. Or a SHIELD quinjet, if one's handy. They're faster."
"I don't think I can—"
"Then put me through to whoever can. Oh, you know what?" Sam fumbled for his pants in the dark. "I have Secretary Ross's private line. I'll just call him. He's not asleep, is it? Probably dealing with the situation right now?"
"Um, hang on, let me talk to someone."
Sam was on hold for a few minutes, which was long enough to get dressed and splash some water on his face in the bathroom. He was just debating eating something when the hold ended. This time it was a different voice, older and gruffer, telling him there would be a flight for him at SHIELD HQ in fifteen minutes and he'd better be there.
Good thing traffic was light in DC at 2 a.m. He still broke a few speed limits getting there.
***
Quinjets were damn fast. He never really got over just how fast. It was not much more than an hour later when they were cutting their engine speed and descending to the Raft's upper seadoors.
Sam wished he'd taken time for a granola bar and a cup of coffee. His body was starting to make it very clear that it didn't appreciate being wrenched out of bed on just a couple hours' sleep. He felt cold and gritty-eyed, and the world was starting to take on a certain surreal quality, not helped by the chill blue-white lights and institutional corridors of the Raft.
He was never going to be okay with this place—not with its existence, and not with being here, his whole body reading "threat" into the situation and tensing up. He recognized it as a trauma response while also being all too aware of how much the knowledge didn't help. The echoing of voices and slamming doors along corridors made him steel himself not to flinch, but with sleep deprivation and general stress stealing his defenses, he caught himself jumping anyway.
And then they reached the medical wing and he steeled himself for a totally different reason.
Medical proxy or not, they hadn't given him much idea of what to expect. The one piece of actual information he had—and twisting that out of the Raft's close-kept hands had been hard enough—was that Zemo had overdosed on some kind of medication; he just didn't know the how and the why, or what Zemo's current condition was, or frankly anything else.
So he was as prepared as he could get for walking into an unpleasant medical scene, but in fact, the infirmary was nearly deserted and quiet. There was no privacy here, just a row of cots with restraints and not even a pretense of privacy curtains. The one nearest the door was occupied by someone definitely not Zemo, a big guy who seemed to be asleep. And the other occupant was at the far end.
Sam approached cautiously, all too aware of his armed escort trailing behind him.
Zemo was, at least, not covered in medical equipment; there was an IV in his arm, and that was it. His hands were strapped down, and he was covered with a thin, scratchy-looking sheet. His head was turned to the side on a flat and, from the look of it, well-used pillow.
The overhead lights were pitilessly bright. Lights-out was more of a suggestion than an idea in the Raft; Sam remembered that with grim loathing. Apparently nobody here thought that sick people ought to be treated differently.
There was no visitor's chair because, of course, no visitors. Sam sat on the neighboring cot instead. The thin mattress was just as lumpy and uncomfortable as it looked.
Zemo hadn't stirred at his approach, and Sam wasn't entirely sure Zemo was awake. He sat for a moment and looked at him. Zemo was wearing a set of short-sleeved scrubs in the Raft's particular shade of awful generic gray-blue, leaving his arms pale and bare. There were visible bruises around his wrists where it looked like he might have struggled with the restraints. Probably in the past as well; those bruises were layered, some old and brown, others with fresh purple edges.
Sam felt ill.
Zemo deserved something other than getting off without consequences. He'd killed people. He had let his obsession with vengeance crash into and wreck a lot of lives, including Sam's.
But he didn't deserve this.
"Hey," Sam said. "Zemo."
There was a long pause with no response. Asleep or sedated, Sam was thinking, when Zemo turned his head slowly and Sam could finally get a look at his face.
He was shockingly pale, almost translucent. His eyes looked sunken, buried in shadows so deep that they seemed like bruises, dark smudges under the skin. He had a couple days' growth of beard, and his hair was overlong and badly pillow-mussed.
Impossibly, he smiled a little with chapped, cracked lips.
"Not a face I expected to see here." His voice was a dry whisper.
"Yeah, well, you made me your medical contact, so I don't know why this comes as a big shock."
The change on Zemo's face was startling, a rapid flash of emotions pushing back some of the languid exhaustion. "You're here," he said slowly.
He'd thought Sam was ... what? A hallucination? A dream?
"Yeah, I'm here," Sam said.
He slid off the bed and came closer, and then, for reasons he couldn't really name, laid a hand on Zemo's pale forearm, above the bruises and restraints. Zemo's skin was cold to the touch, his arm prickled with gooseflesh.
Zemo's gaze tracked slowly from the hand on his arm, up to Sam's face. There was a lagginess to his usual quick, bright intelligence that Sam wasn't sure how to credit—whether it was drugs, or exhaustion, or just having given up. Still, there was a kind of muddled focus in his eyes that Sam was pretty sure hadn't been there a minute ago.
"You made me your medical proxy," Sam said. "So they called me."
Zemo blinked slowly. His eyelashes looked dark against the pallor of his skin, especially under the bright lights. "I did," he said. "They did." He seemed to come back from somewhere inside his head. "You were ... where?"
"DC," Sam said. "In bed. Up until about a couple hours ago. It's just lucky for you and them that my social life has been such shit lately that I was in bed alone."
He gave Zemo's arm a little squeeze to suggest it was a joke. Zemo continued to stare at him from dazed, half-lidded eyes.
"And you're here," he said, finally.
"Got me a SHIELD quinjet and everything. How you doing?"
Zemo looked at him for a moment longer, lying back against the pillow and relaxing somehow, as if something in him had settled with the knowledge that it was really Sam, that there was someone else in this godforsaken place who gave a shit if he lived or died.
And Sam did. He still wasn't sure how much or why. All he knew was that this was wrong, it was absolute crap, everything about this situation was fucked up and wrong.
"Oh," Zemo said with some pallid shadow of his careless baronial insouciance. "I had my stomach pumped. It's about as much fun as it sounds."
His body convulsed in an abrupt, dry retch, not that it came to anything, just a sort of dry gagging. He looked like he could use a drink of water, but there wasn't any sign of anything like that around.
There were, Sam realized, stains on the pillow beside his face. Nobody in this place gave a shit if he asphyxiated. Nobody cared about making him comfortable.
Sam's sudden loathing of the Raft and everything about it was beyond all reason.
He took hold of the restraint on Zemo's left arm, the arm he had been holding without really thinking about it. Zemo twisted his head to the side, watching with a kind of mild curiosity as Sam unbuckled the strap.
"Hey—" one of the guards began.
"You," Sam said, pointing at him. "What's your name? Dryden?" He read off the asshole's name tag. "And Grady." That was asshole #2. "You can shut up. I'm his medical proxy, right? Well, I'm calling in a transfer. The medical care he's getting here is absolute shit, and if it keeps going like this, you people are going to kill him. I'm transferring him to a hospital on the mainland."
He had no idea what he was doing. He was running on pure adrenaline, fury, and a bone-deep conviction that there had to be something better than this bright, cold, empty room where they strapped Zemo to a bed and then walked away without giving a shit. Zemo really did need medical care, and this was driven home when Sam had gotten both sets of restraints off and was trying to help him sit up. He was incredibly weak, cold to the touch, and shivering, though it was hard to say how much of that last was just because they'd left him inadequately covered.
"Anyone check you for hyponatremia, that you know of?" Sam asked.
"What's that?" Zemo asked hoarsely, gripping a fistful of Sam's sleeve to steady himself
"Low sodium in the blood. It's a common complication of gastric lavage or induced vomiting."
Zemo shook his head a little, holding onto Sam's arm like it was the only stable thing in a spinning world. For him, right now, it probably was.
The IV bag on its stand was empty, so Sam carefully detached the catheter from Zemo's arm and pressed a thumb to the site for a moment to stop any bleeding. There was a faint bruise around the insertion site, because it looked like they'd been just about as careful with that as with everything else.
"Wanna get out of here?" Sam asked.
Zemo's only answer was a shaky laugh, and he swung his legs off the bed. The scrubs included loose pants, but his feet were bare. He didn't seem to care; he slid off the bed onto the cold concrete floor, and used Sam to prop him up, clinging to Sam's sleeve with both hands. It was obvious that he could barely stand up. Sam's second thoughts developed third and fourth thoughts. There was every possibility that Zemo was going to go into cardiac arrest or have a seizure or God knew what before Sam even got him to the quinjet.
This was insane.
And Zemo was already taking a few shaky steps, practically towing Sam along despite being kitten-weak and leaning on Sam like a human crutch. His bare toes looked blue.
"So how about we try to find some shoes rather than walking barefoot all the way to the quinjet," Sam said.
"I'm fine," Zemo said between his teeth.
It was clear that he didn't plan to stay here a minute longer than he had to, and Sam didn't blame him.
***
Thaddeus Ross met them at the landing pad. He looked hastily dressed, tousled, and absolutely furious. Sam hadn't previously realized that he actually slept on the Raft. Maybe he had a quinjet of his own.
"You cannot just walk out of here with a prisoner, Wilson! That's not how prison works."
"I'm his medical proxy, also a licensed medical professional, and I'm transferring him for medical care elsewhere," Sam said, for the umpteenth time, having had this argument with every guard between the infirmary and here. By now he had a trailing comet tail of anxious guards, like really terrible ducklings, who were convinced he was doing something illegal but hadn't yet come up with a justification that could override Sam's sheer determination to leave. It appeared that no one was willing to actually clock Captain America over the head and disappear him in superhero Gitmo. Sam wondered if that would be different if they knew he was here with no authorization from any agency, and no one but the quinjet pilot knowing where he'd gone. He decided they weren't going to find out.
Ross's mustache quivered as if taking on its own life of indignant fury. "Hand over the prisoner or I will have you apprehended along with him."
"Medical fucking proxy. I've seen ample evidence this patient is receiving inadequate care here, jeopardizing his health." Sam was vaguely aware of Zemo taking on a shaky and slightly delirious combat stance, while barely able to stay upright and still using a fist knotted in Sam's sleeve for support. Yeah, that was helpful. "You got paperwork for this? Hand him over into my custody, do what you goddamn need to do, but I am walking out of here with him tonight."
He was expecting Ross to challenge him on it, and genuinely wasn't sure how to respond, because Ross was going to have a better working knowledge of the legal ins and outs of the situation than the guards or, almost certainly, Sam. But apparently Ross didn't want to get into it in the middle of the night either, because after a long, intense stare-down, it was Ross who broke and turned to bark out orders to the guard next to him.
They insisted on putting Zemo in hand-and-foot restraints, which Sam put up with as the lesser of two evils, the greater by far being leaving him here. He scribbled his signature in twenty places on the papers that Ross shoved in front of him. His tired brain slid off the legalese. He had a feeling he might be signing up for a lot more than he wanted to.
"You'll check in daily," Ross said, seeming almost cheerful. "When the prisoner's condition is stable enough for incarceration, you'll bring him back. If any of these conditions isn't met, he'll be considered an escapee and you an accomplice, and you'll both be dealt with accordingly."
"Whatever the fuck," Sam said, and he helped a stumbling, wobbling Zemo toward the quinjet. It seemed that whatever adrenaline rush had powered Zemo so far was wearing off, or else the drag of the ankle chains was that one last thing he couldn't struggle through. Sam helped him up the ramp and eased him down onto one of the quinjet's padded seats in back.
At least it was more comfortable than a helicopter flight, and a lot smoother.
***
He didn't wait any longer than immediately post-takeoff to remove the chains.
"Thank you, Sam," Zemo said with the dim, dazed politeness that never quite seemed to leave him. He ran a hand over each wrist in a slow, shaky pattern.
He was still barefoot and bare-armed, and occasional bouts of shivering wracked him. Sam looked around for blankets, found none, and took off his own jacket and wrapped it around Zemo's shoulders.
Then he made a call.
***
When they touched down on the waterfront in Brooklyn, it was still dark, with just a thin sliver of gray light tinting the horizon.
Sam gave Zemo a hand down the ramp, and found Bucky waiting for him with a vehicle.
It was a butcher's delivery truck.
"What," Sam said.
"I don't have a car, okay? I borrowed this from a neighbor. He was literally the only person up at four in the morning—what the hell, Sam—and I promised to make up for it by doing all his deliveries today."
The quinjet took off, circling above them in the sky. Sam wondered what kind of debts he had run up tonight—with SHIELD, with Wakanda, with everyone Zemo had wronged—and then decided not to dwell on it.
The truck had no rear seats and a single bench seat in front. Sam sandwiched Zemo between the two of them. It was a tight fit for three grown men.
"Hello, James," Zemo said.
"Uh, hi," Bucky said. He looked over the top of Zemo's head at Sam, and his entire face semaphored What the fuck have you gotten me into.
Zemo couldn't have looked more like an escaped mental patient if he had tried, between the scrubs, the still-bare feet, the scruff and pallor, and Sam's jacket still wrapping him up. There was no center seat belt for him. He leaned on Sam's shoulder for the drive; Sam could feel him shivering a little. When Bucky pulled to a stop, the sun was just creasing the edge of the world in a sliver of pink and gold.
"Here," Bucky said, handing Sam a set of keys. "Make yourself at home. Jesus Christ. I'm going to go deliver a quarter ton of refrigerated meat, because I guess that's my life now."
Sam guided Zemo up the steep stairs to Bucky's walk-up. It was a studio apartment with a couch and no other visible sleeping arrangements. Sam settled Zemo on the couch and wrapped him in blankets.
"I'm gonna get you something to drink, okay? I'm still worried about your electrolytes. Don't pass out or I'll have to wake you up."
Bucky's kitchen—or more accurately, the kitchenette corner in the studio—was woefully inadequately stocked, but Sam was able to make a basic rehydration formula from salt, sugar, and water. He brought a large glass of it over to Zemo.
"This is gonna taste vile and might make you feel sick, but you need to get at least some of it into you, if possible. Start with small sips and go from there."
Zemo did that, and Sam got about half of the glass into him and then helped him lie down on the couch, covering him with just about every blanket he could find. Zemo was still way too cold.
"I don't understand why you're doing this," Zemo said from under a pile of blankets.
"You're the one who made me your medical proxy. You get what you get."
He texted Ross with a terse message that they were on the mainland and Zemo was being tended medically, not that he wanted to give the guy an inch, but he might as well buy them a little time; he'd done a check-in, so another wasn't due until tomorrow. Then he sat down with his back against the wall and rested his head on his arms and just was quiet for a while.
On the couch, Zemo's breathing went from shallow and hitching, to slow and even.
Sam was half drifting himself when the door opened and Bucky came in, carrying a cardboard tray and a paper bag.
"You didn't lock it," Bucky said.
Sam raised his head. "I have your keys. How were you supposed to get in?"
"You still lock it!" Bucky said, demonstrating by doing so. "This is the city, not Bumfuck, Louisiana."
"I'm going to tell Sarah you said that. City people, I swear to God." In truth he had forgotten. There were too many things to keep track of right now; he had mainly been focused on Zemo and the entire horde of worries that went along with that, ranging from Zemo's health to whether he had just painted a Wakandan target on his back, and possibly Bucky's.
"Give me my keys, which you obviously cannot be trusted with."
Sam reached up with the keys, but Bucky sat down beside him instead, back against the wall, and set the coffee tray between them. There were three cups.
They both had kept their voices down despite the bantering-arguing tone. Zemo hadn't stirred, though for all Sam knew he was awake and listening to every word.
"So you promised me an explanation," Bucky said. He picked up his coffee. "I got you black, and him a green tea, if he wants it. Choices at Flatbush Starbucks are limited."
There were sugar packets in a well of the coffee tray. Sam added two to his coffee. He didn't usually take it sweet, but his body and mind were both crashing, and crashing hard.
The paper bag turned out to be full to the brim with pastries. Bucky bit into a croissant. Sam took a Danish.
"So explanations."
And Sam told him. He spoke quietly, and filled in everything from the phone call to the flight out.
Bucky tipped his head back against the wall. "Ah."
"I couldn't leave him there, Buck. You didn't see that place, but ..."
"I know," Bucky said. It came out on a sigh. "You know, I've told you about what happened at the Sokovian monument."
"Yeah."
"So here we are," Bucky said, and they both looked at the blanket-wrapped bundle on the couch.
"You don't have to be. You didn't sign a shitload of paperwork making you responsible for him. I needed somewhere to go that was closer than DC, but we can be out of your hair by tonight."
"And then what?" Bucky asked quietly. "Do I have to remind you that you didn't run out on me in a situation very similar to this, except with less paperwork?"
"We had a common goal then."
"Oh yeah," Bucky said, dry as dust. "That's totally why you didn't just run off, leave me alone with the terrorist I just broke out of prison, and team up with Walker."
Sam smiled a little and reached for another pastry. As the sugar and caffeine hit his system, he was starting to feel a little more human. "Sorry to get you into this. Sorry to get me into this, for that matter. I don't even have an overnight bag."
"Don't even think about using my toothbrush, Wilson. I have a line and that's where it is."
***
Sam called Torres, who had a spare key, to throw some of his things into a duffel and bring him up the wingpack and shield. He was missing two meetings with Senators in DC; oh no, how would he cope. He also ignored several other texts. Captain America had earned a damn vacation, even if "terrorist suicide watch" wasn't exactly how he would have chosen to spend it.
"You could just drive down," Bucky said. Zemo was still, to all appearances, completely out on the couch. Sam had checked to make sure he was still breathing and then left him alone. "I can keep an eye on Sleeping Terrorist Beauty here. Or take him along."
"I think it's probably better if we keep him and us away from DC for now. Although," Sam added, looking around, "I think a hotel is going to be necessary, or at least somewhere that has beds. Do we need to have the furniture talk again?"
"I have furniture," Bucky said defensively.
He had left his old apartment, spent a couple of weeks crashing at Sarah's place and then at Sam's, but ended up moving back to New York anyway; he seemed to like it there. It was a new neighborhood and a fresh start, and as far as Sam could tell—they called and texted almost daily, and saw each other often on SHIELD and Captain America outings—Bucky was doing a lot better. Less staring, more smiling. But he hadn't actually seen Bucky's new place yet.
"You have a couch and a chair."
"Which is furniture, plural! I'm out a lot," Bucky said. "Speaking of which, I have a meeting tonight. Took a page from your book, started up a support group for veterans in the neighborhood." He looked a little embarrassed, not quite meeting Sam's eyes.
"You mentioned that earlier, and I'm glad. Good for you, Buck."
Sam had reached the point where he was too tired to sleep, and Bucky didn't seem to have anywhere else to be until the meeting—Out a lot, my ass, Sam thought, but didn't call him on it—so they ordered in and watched a movie, sprawled on a blanket on the floor like kids at a sleepover.
Zemo woke up in the middle of the credits, going from asleep to sitting up in a sudden convulsive movement.
"Hey, welcome back." Sam muted it. "You need a shower? Food?"
"Shower," Zemo said quietly after a moment. He plucked at his scrubs. "I can call Oeznik. He can have some of my things brought."
"And in the meantime, you can wear some of mine," Bucky said. Sam and Zemo both looked at him. "What? You look like shit and smell like a Dumpster, and you're on the couch where I sleep." He got up, rummaged in the closet, and pulled out jeans, a pullover, and a handful of socks, along with a towel. Most of this had been wadded up on the floor of the closet. He shoved the bundle at Zemo. "Here. It's clean. What, Sam."
"If I'd known you were raised in a barn, I'd have made more attempt to train you."
Bucky flipped him off. "You can use my shampoo," he said to Zemo, "but if you use my toothbrush, I'll murder you."
Zemo nodded after a moment. He still looked like he was trying to make sense out of all of this, then gave up. He went into the bathroom and closed the door.
Bucky swiped the blankets to the end of the couch and sat on it, somewhat defiantly. "Dibs on the last piece of pizza, if you don't want it."
Sam handed him the box. The shower started up. Sam realized that he was listening for ... he didn't know what. The thump of Zemo falling down. An ominous silence meaning he'd decided to try again.
But this wasn't prison, and Sam wasn't going to be keeping tabs on him 24/7. At some point he was going to have to accept that Zemo's choices were his own. At least out of prison, he had a few more reasons to make better ones.
"On second thought," Sam said, and swiped the box back. "I'll take that after all."
***
When Zemo emerged half an hour later, he looked a lot more like himself, or at least like the "himself" Sam had gotten to know, to an extent, in Madripoor and Riga. Part of it was just that he was dressed now; it was a little strange to see him in Bucky's jeans and wool socks and dark pullover with the sleeves rolled up slightly, but it was better than the raw vulnerability of the scrubs, the bare feet, the bruises. He had shaved, and washed and smoothed down his hair to something more like its normal neat waves, though it was still a little too long, curling around his ears.
"You used my razor," Bucky said.
"I left your toothbrush alone as requested. You didn't say anything about the razor." Zemo ran his fingers through his hair with a hand that still shook slightly. A flash of lurid restraint bruises showed under the rolled-up cuff.
Sam cleared his throat. "There's food, though I wouldn't suggest starting out with pizza. Anyway, Bucky ate it all. We also got soup from a deli down the street. Want to try that?"
"That is very kind of you. Thank you." Zemo moved the pile of blankets to make himself a space on the couch. He was still moving slowly and carefully, very controlled. "May I borrow a phone? I'd like to call Oeznik and have my things brought."
Sam handed over his phone and went to get the soup out of Bucky's kitchen and heat it up.
"We're going to need somewhere else to stay," he said over his shoulder. "Bucky's a little light on guest accommodations. While Oeznik's packing your purple shirts, think he could arrange a hotel?"
"I think it is entirely possible," Zemo said. He was texting with jerky little motions and frequent pauses. Coordination was still something he clearly struggled with. Hypoglycemic as hell, Sam thought, and electrolytes all over the place; he hoped it wasn't worse than that.
"You'll need a room that'll accommodate at least two people," Sam said. "Not sharing a bed."
Zemo gave a faint trace of a smile and didn't look up from his phone.
"I know what you're thinking," Bucky said abruptly. "You're gonna run. Don't. You know how far he put his ass on the line to get you out of there? Know what'll happen to him if you up and vanish? You might land him right back in that shithole he just got you out of, and Zemo, if that happens, I will hunt you down."
"Let's save the threats for later," Sam said. He came over with a bowl of soup, a spoon, and a garlic twist from the pizza order, which was apparently the closest that Bucky's apartment had to bread or crackers. "Zemo, I plan on staying with you for the next couple of days not because I think you're a flight risk, although you very much are, but because you literally almost died and I think it's a good idea to have you under observation in case some health effect we didn't anticipate takes you down. Along those lines, I'd like to check your pulse."
"Seriously?" Zemo said, but he held out his arm and let Sam press two fingertips to his wrist. "This is not to say that I don't ... appreciate it." He didn't meet Sam's eyes or look in Bucky's direction. "But what were the terms of my release—exactly?"
Right, he'd been pretty out of it on the Raft. "It's a medical transfer, not a release," Sam said. He felt Zemo's arm tense up in his grasp. "It lasts exactly as long as I can convince Ross that you're too sick to go back to prison. And then—"
"And then I go back," Zemo said, his voice quiet.
"No, and then I come up with a pretext to keep you out. Any brainstorming along those lines is welcome, by the way. Anyone feel free to chime in anytime. You helped us out before, and I think there's a decent chance we might be able to sell the Wakandans on the idea of giving you a chance to help out some more, especially after we tip them off to some of the ways the Raft treats its prisoners. They're big on the whole idea of rehabilitative justice, the Wakandans are."
"Idle promises with no substance behind them." Zemo retrieved his arm. "You don't know. You're asking me to stake my future on trusting you."
That hung in the air for a moment. Then Sam said, "Not exactly. It kinda loops around to what Bucky was saying earlier, though maybe without the threats. When I signed all that paperwork on the Raft, I put us in this together. You sink, so do I."
"You can give me back to them with absolutely no repercussions."
"And you can run, and completely fuck me over. So we've either got mutually assured destruction where neither of us trusts the other an inch and we both screw each other over the first chance we get—or we can accept that for the time being it's a we instead of a you, and figure out a way out of this that works for both of us."
"All three of us," Bucky said. He sounded exasperated. "You were talking about we and not you, Sam, and you know it's been we ever since the Flag-Smashers. Don't be a martyr."
Zemo was staring at them as if he'd never seen them before. "All of this based on a few days working together in Madripoor and Riga?"
"I know, funny world, isn't it?" Sam said. "Also, look who's talking. Eat your soup."
There was a pause, and then Zemo meekly took the bowl and dipped the spoon in.
He seemed to enjoy it.