Work Text:
Zemo is crouched low on a rooftop under cover of night, patiently watching the shadows that lick at the facade of the building across the road. He studies the places unkissed by the flicker of lamplight, where the darkness swallows all that is unfortunate enough to venture near. He has been observing this spot for hours tonight and many more across the weeks that he’s been stalking this prey. He had come into some information about the secret society that operates out of this unassuming place—the whispers of an organization known as HYDRA whose business is unsavoury and whose existence is spoken of in only the most hushed fragments of hearsay. It is said they’ve been experiencing a string of mysterious disappearances in their numbers, and the stories he’s heard bear a pattern all too familiar to him. He is unconcerned with this HYDRA society’s problems in keeping its members. He’s here to keep a promise.
Through his spyglass he views the men coming and going sporadically in groups and pairs, dressed sensibly against the autumn chill in dark frock coats and top hats. It’s mind numbing work, but he takes in every detail below him with undeviating devotion until at long last a man exits alone on unsteady legs and rounds the side of the building. Zemo perks up, focusing in on this poor, drunken fool who’s surely about to meet his fate. The man steps beyond reach of the feeble halo of light, and Zemo watches intently as he’s overtaken by a monstrous shadow that bears him to the ground in one fell swoop. The shape stills and Zemo knows the hapless fool is meeting his end.
Collapsing and pocketing the spyglass, Zemo tenses his muscles and readies himself for action. He intends to follow the beast as far as God wills tonight on its journey to its lair, though he knows it will likely take many nights of careful stalking, for these creatures are shifty and difficult to follow. He knows the rooftops of this city like the worn pages of an oft read book, has used the well-travelled routes between them to hunt many a creature to its final resting place. He keeps a steady eye on the hulking black shadow, and presses forth into a low dash the moment the shape blurs into movement. It appears to be heading west, perhaps making for the outskirts of the city along the river. Zemo crosses the rooftop on quick legs and leaps from the edge, aiming to hit the roof of the neighbouring building on a breakfall roll. He’s mid-air, long coat billowing out behind him, when he’s hit squarely in the chest with a massive force that knocks him back against the brick face of the roof to his rear, the impact punching the air out of him sharply.
A menacing shape looms over him, nightmarish in form, but humanoid and shrouded in a dark, tattered cloak. He’s heard folklore that claim these creatures have the means to shapeshift, taking the form of a flying bat to steal through unlatched bedroom windows of the unwitting. He’d dismissed these dramatic tales as fabrications, having witnessed no evidence of their truth in all his time hunting. But never has he seen a vampire travel with such speed, covering so great a distance from ground to air in the blink of an eye. He had not thought such a feat possible, and yet his eyes do not deceive him. There may yet be a glimmer of truth to these fantastic tales.
Zemo takes stock of the dull ache blooming along his flanks with each careful inhale—likely bruised ribs and nothing more. He gathers himself to spring to his feet from this supine position, knowing he will have but one chance to confront this creature. Never has he had the misfortune of meeting any of its ilk face-to-face in their waking hours, but his blade is silver-plated as a precaution against precisely this, and he has the grace of God on his side.
He coils his knees to his chest and throws himself up swiftly to bring his feet flat to the ground beneath him, twisting his body to draw the sword at his hip and slash at the vampire in one smooth arc of motion, hoping that any contact made with the silver to the creature’s flesh will burn it enough to buy some time—just one second will be enough to pull back and stab at the monster’s heart for a killing blow. As his blade slices through the air, he feels no resistance and knows the dark figure must have dodged in evasion, but the creature’s movement is so quick that it cannot be tracked by the naked eye, and as Zemo’s arm reaches the extension at the end of its arc, the weapon is knocked from his hand with such force that his shoulder is wrenched back sharply out of its socket. The sword clatters to the ground behind him, his left arm dropping heavily to his side as he bites down on a cry and grits his teeth in agonizing pain, taking a deep breath to steady himself.
The flutter of its cloak is the only evidence that the vampire has even moved to strike at him, returned as it is to its statue-still form. For a brief moment before the heavy fabric falls back into place, Zemo glimpses a grotesquely gnarled and withered arm held motionless at the creature’s side, marred with a blistered red scar at its biceps, as though long ago an attempt had been made to carve a mangled five-pointed star into the creature’s flesh and it has never healed in full. Ropey tendons twist and spread from this mark of disfigurement, and Zemo wonders if this mutilation is what caused the malformation of the limb.
Through its veil of long, ragged hair, Zemo glimpses a face pale as the moon that bathes this scene in sickly light, skin run through with hideous branching blue veins just beginning to gain a flush of warmth from the creature’s recent feeding. This vampire is faster and stronger than any he’s encountered, its countenance so unnaturally still, dressed in rags so tattered and filthy that they seem not of this century, nor even the last. This then is an old vampire, perhaps an ancient one, and powerful—turned so long ago that it has long forsaken any attempt to mimic human behaviour. Perhaps those Zemo has bested were its progeny; mere young whelps in comparison.
“I have killed many of your kin,” Zemo says, stalling for time to bring his breath under control and tamp down properly on the searing pain in his shoulder. The words seem not to register with the creature, and Zemo wonders if it’s possible that this beast is older than the Sokovian language itself. Or perhaps it is a visitor from a distant land.
“I have killed many of your kin,” he tries again, in the stilted Russian he’s learned while chasing old tales, many of which tell of the origin of these creatures in that country. Seeing a spark of understanding in the vampire’s eyes, he pushes on quickly. “Abominations in the eyes of God. Staked through the heart while they slept in their pitiable coffins. You would be unwise to test me.”
The creature parts its ashen lips, but no sound spills from the space between them. Its eyes take on a distant look, its mouth agape, as if seeking to recall the very mechanism of speech, and for the first time since Zemo’s laid eyes on its face, the creature blinks.
Zemo takes swift advantage of its moment of distraction; though his left arm now hangs uselessly at his side, he applies his weaker right hand with haste to draw the pistol at his hip. Before he’s able to cock and take aim, however, the monster’s already captured his wrist, squeezing till he grunts in pain and drops the weapon with a spasm of fingers. With its other hand, a clawed and wretched looking thing, it seizes Zemo by the throat and following its forward momentum, brings them both to the ground. The gnarled hand is stronger than its appearance would betray, its pressure a crushing force on his windpipe as he struggles urgently to draw breath, kicking out with his feet in sheer futility.
From this unnerving closeness, its eyes flash a striking blue—piercing and searching in a manner almost human. Beyond its dark and tangled veil of hair, the creature has the near appearance of a man, but could not be mistaken for one under any light of scrutiny—too inanimate are its muscles, too firm and pallid its flesh, as though its form’s been carved and coaxed from weathered stone by wicked hands.
“Those you have killed,” it croaks, voice rusty from disuse, “were not my kin. I, too, have been watching.”
It releases its merciless grip on Zemo’s neck, allowing him a desperate gasp of breath, and slowly lowers its ghastly face towards him. Zemo recoils at its advance, but has no means of escape, trapped as he is against hard brick at his back and even more unyielding, the monster at his front. The monster presses its cold face into the tender flesh beneath his lower jaw, probing along and halting at the pulse point there to inhale steadily over his carotid artery. Zemo’s heart picks up its drum at the tense proximity, and he means to struggle against his captor, but the creature’s strength is such that he can move neither limb nor body with it wrapped around him, holding him down with immense dead weight.
He feels the monster’s breath cool against his throat in a whispered warning before teeth are breaking skin. Long fangs sink and sink and sink deep into his neck, chased by a low growl that he feels more than hears in the rumble pressed into his breast, and Zemo has no chance to panic before he’s overtaken by pure ecstasy.
Warmth floods his body and a loud moan washes over him as if from a distance, the dip and swell of an endless note drawn from a sighing cello, but he cannot discern whether it is from his own lips that the melody pours or that of the creature that is on him, divine creature all around and within him, melding into him as he melts into oblivion, dissolving together into the ether, unmoored and untethered, here is euphoria given form, a safety and complacency that wraps around them windingly, heavily it binds, immobile and boneless, floating away from the void below towards a hazy glow above…
There is something wrong. Something itching at the back of his skull, like a tapping at a window in the dead of night, awakening him from a deep and dream-filled slumber. An image flashes in his addled mind. A woman cradling a dark haired babe. He struggles to grasp at them through the fog. Tries to shake his head to clear the fog. The baroness with his son in her arms. Beautiful Heike and joyous Carl. Cold and still and blue and lifeless. Brittle and abandoned husks, with harrowing puncture wounds at their throats. His Heike and Carl.
With a wet gasp, Zemo opens his eyes against the night sky and there is excruciating fire running all through his veins. He struggles to draw breath against the hulking mass crushing down on his breast; tries to swallow against the searing pain where the monster is latched greedily to his throat. Reaching outwards from his heart to every place that is touched by the long fingers of blood throbbing through his body, there is unbearable pain unlike any he has ever suffered. It is a torment so all-consuming, so beyond anything he’s known, that he’s certain it will drive him to the very brink of madness, and he clutches dearly onto his memories of his wife and son in a desperate attempt to hold onto his sanity.
The vampire is stroking over his cold cheek with its warm, gnarled hand. Zemo opens his mouth to form words, but nothing comes, and the vampire’s monstrous clawed fingers move to stroke over parted lips, where they grow moist from his breath. The creature’s other hand is still closed gently around his wrist, warm against his chill skin, thumb rubbing heatedly over his slowed and weakening pulse. It lifts his wrist to place his limp hand over his own breast, where he can feel his heartbeat gone sluggish and treacly. The creature’s voracious draught at his throat has slowed to a gentle suckle. There is a prickling of pins in his extremities before his limbs grow gradually numb, and with feverish relief Zemo acknowledges what’s to come.
Mind heavy with the haze of blood loss, he expends his final breaths to dream of his Heike and sweet Carl, mouthing a silent prayer to them against the wet caress of the creature’s fingers. He asks that they might forgive him his failure to avenge them—that he could not keep his vow to destroy every last one of these fiends that had stolen them from him. Fitting, perhaps, that he’s now to meet the very same end that they had. His only wish is to reunite with them in heaven, yet knows it’s not to be his fate. That which he’s had to undertake on this path of vengeance has led him to stray far from righteousness; when he faces judgment, it may well be found that he’s taken too much pleasure in what he’s done and paid too little consequence. Until now.
Zemo lets his eyes slip shut, awaiting the final dishonour and precious gift of death.
As if sensing his deliverance and unwilling to grant him even this shred of dignity, the vampire ceases its drinking—pulling back to lave at the wound with its velvet tongue, breath now hot against his cold skin. It lifts its head to gaze down at him and Zemo is struck by a remarkable sensation like the wind would be knocked out of him at the sight, were he not supine and bloodless and breathless already.
Shining before him is a heavenly angel of death, with a young man’s face flushed and glowing, bearing such tragic beauty unlike anything Zemo has ever seen or imagined. Michelangelo himself could not have sculpted a face so fine; Boticelli would have wept at the sight of such splendour. There is an unspeakable sadness and age in his clear blue eyes, a profound vulnerability that follows the soft bow of his lips.
The vampire parts those red and glistening lips. He licks along them searchingly, as though chasing something irresistible, and focuses his gaze keenly at Zemo.
“Whatever you hope to gain from me, you won’t find it.” His voice falls like warm merlot from a tipped over chalice; like the low, melodic sigh of a cello brushing against Zemo’s ear.
He leans down and presses warm lips to the lazy pulse at Zemo’s throat once more, in what might be mistaken for a kiss, then slowly drags them up his neck to whisper into the shell of his ear, “Don’t follow me again.”
And then he’s gone into the night—vanished in a swirl of tattered velvet, leaving only a whispered breeze on the wind and an echo of that exquisite voice, a largo playing over in his mind.
Zemo lies inert, drawing shallow, laboured breaths against cracked ribs, his every nerve raw and aching, and deeper still within his body he feels a new ache that he cannot quite identify but very much wants to chase. Finding himself unbalanced, vaguely disappointed, and yet strangely renewed, he watches the starless sky move above him.