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The place they ended up was a lot nicer than Sam was expecting. Not that he had any real idea of what the Colonel's idea of a safehouse should look like, but this was ... not it. It was a four-story townhouse in the old quarter of the city, with steep steps leading up off a narrow street. Sam noticed, out of the corner of his eye, Bucky looking around as the Colonel unlocked the door—marking entrances and exits, gauging the potential of the narrow, cobbled street for fighting or defense.
The door opened into a small tiled foyer, its only furnishing a small table with ornately carved legs. Somehow it managed to be both fancy and austere at the same time. The Colonel tossed his gloves carelessly onto the table.
An arched doorway led into another room. From here, all Sam could see was an impression of a large dim space, and some kind of couch or divan with curved feet reflecting in a polished floor.
"If you'd like to take off your coats—" the Colonel began, turning back toward them, and Sam could see the brief pause, the abrupt stillness in his face, when he remembered the chains. "Ah," he said, almost to himself. "Stand still, please."
Nothing in his face changed. He moved toward Sam first, reaching into his pocket. Bucky jerked forward, an aborted move that was brought up short when the high-tech manacles clamped around his wrists and ankles detected the abrupt, fast movement and stopped him with such suddenness that he almost fell over.
There was a light blinking red on the cuffs. A shock would follow if he moved again. Sam hastily gestured shut up sit down at him in their private gesture language, noticing at the same time that the Colonel had moved almost as fast as Bucky, one hand frozen in his pocket and the other resting on the service weapon at his side.
There was a moment when they all three regarded each other. Then the Colonel said, "It's a key." He took it out and held it up. There was something in his voice that was like amusement but squeezed to absolute dryness. "I am going to take your chains off. As I said, hold still, if you don't mind."
He unlocked Sam's. Sam wasn't aware that he made a noise—he'd gotten very good at not reacting—but when the cuffs started to peel off his abraded wrists, he might have jerked a little. Colonel Zemo went briefly immobile, and Sam braced himself, aware of Bucky tensing too. Then the Colonel lifted away the cuffs with great care and laid them on the end table.
"That should be looked at," he said.
"Yeah," Sam said, looking steadily at him, trying to meet his eyes. He wanted to see if there was a person there, not just the cold dead eyes of a killer, but the Colonel did that thing he seemed to do, focused a little off to the side where Sam couldn't get a lock on him. "They should."
"There is a first-aid kit in the bathroom. I'll show you once you're settled." The Colonel turned to Bucky, who went absolute immobile, and inserted the double electronic key into his cuffs.
Sam couldn't get a read on this guy. Not at all. Stone-cold goddamn sociopath, like everyone said, except ... there were things that didn't quite fit. Like the way he was, right now, taking off Bucky's cuffs as carefully as he had removed Sam's. He laid them with great precision on the end table, and then, while Bucky rubbed his right wrist the way Sam was currently, very gingerly, doing to his own, Colonel Zemo went down on one knee to unlock Bucky's ankle restraints.
Bucky looked across the top of his head at Sam. Only a few feet separated them, but their eyes met, and words or even their very limited repertoire of gestures weren't needed to convey the question. The Colonel was occupied in his task, using both hands. Bucky made a very small movement with his metal hand, curling the fingers slightly.
Sam was sickened that he found himself considering it, a sickness he saw echoed in Bucky's gaze. For just a minute, he could almost picture it. Bucky could kill their new handler with a single blow. With Bucky out of the manacles, they would have a brief grace period, during which they might be able to dig out the trackers and run.
... no. He couldn't. He gave a slight headshake, disgusted that either of them had entertained the idea, and saw the flash of relief across Bucky's face as he opened his fingers. They were desperate, but not enough to kill a man in cold blood who hadn't done anything to them yet.
Not yet.
Sam refused to think of what it might take to bring them to that.
The Colonel straightened up in a quick, fluid motion, and the moment was gone. "There," he said, laying Bucky's ankle cuffs beside the others. Then, unexpectedly, he gave them a brief, slight smile. It was stilted and strange-looking. "A little better, yes?" He turned abruptly and went through the arched doorway into the next room before they could say anything.
Sam and Bucky traded a look. Bucky shrugged a little. Sam cast a glance at the chains, considered whether there was anything here he could pocket for a weapon—but, again, he wasn't quite desperate enough to take that risk yet.
They both followed the Colonel into what seemed to be some kind of living room. It was large, with a high ceiling and a grouping of furniture that Sam would guess was expensive, with embroidered covers and highly carved legs that rested delicately on the polished hardwood floor. The curtains were mostly drawn, allowing some golden early-evening light to shaft in. It was impersonal, nearly disused, and Sam would have thought they were in some sort of abandoned building if not for the way that the Colonel went straight to the open-plan kitchen adjacent to the living room.
"You won't be restrained in the house unless you try to escape," he said. He opened a cabinet and removed a decanter, which he poured into a glass. "Drink?"
"Uh ... no," Sam said, and found himself reflexively adding, "No thanks," because Darlene Wilson hadn't raised an impolite son, and there was just something about the Colonel's oddly stilted, polite manner that invited reciprocal politeness.
Bucky didn't say anything, didn't speak at all, in fact. His metal fist was curled a little. Sam found himself watching Bucky as much as he was watching the Colonel. Not knowing what was coming next was the worst for Bucky, and Sam was aware of it. On an abstract level, he understood the psychology behind it. Their fates were out of their hands; it was more damaging to wait for the blow to fall from a seemingly polite guard than to endure a known torture. But knowing the theory didn't quite cover the depths of how that feeling could crawl under the skin and burrow deep.
The Colonel gave a brisk little nod and set the decanter on the countertop rather than putting it back. He turned to face them, taking a deep drink from the glass. For all he'd said about taking off coats, he was still wearing his. Sam noticed that he was also still doing that thing where he looked not quite at them, but past them, though it was also pretty clear that he was taking in every move they made. His eyes roved quickly from place to place in a way that Sam recognized from—well, from Bucky, actually.
Bucky was checking for exits again. Sam could see why. There was something really off about this guy.
"There are very few rules," the Colonel said abruptly. He sipped his drink again, and it struck Sam how very bizarre this was. They were standing here in the near-dark with the curtains closed and no lights on. "Obviously, you may not leave this house except in my company. Your trackers will alert, and the consequences of that are, quite likely, out of my hands." He shrugged a little and sipped again. The drink was already nearly drained. "My bedroom is on the top floor. The door is shut. Don't go in. Beyond that, you have the run of the house. There are a number of unoccupied bedrooms in the house, which I do not use. You may pick any of them that you like." He reached for the decanter and topped off his glass.
It dawned on Sam slowly, in the midst of realizing that they were probably dealing with some kind of functional alcoholic who was in absolute control of both their fates (joy!), that this was a lot more than a SHIELD-assigned safehouse. This was the guy's actual house. Or ... possibly one of them, if Colonel Zemo was all that Sam had heard, a former Sokovian baron with all the resources of old-world nobility at his fingertips.
But basically ... they were in his house. This had started out weird and just kept being weirder.
"Have you eaten?" the Colonel asked abruptly, setting the decanter down on the countertop with a soft click.
The answer to that was definitely No, not for a while, but at this point, they were both used to being hungry. Sam knew that it weighed on Bucky more heavily than it did on him, and he was opening his mouth to say so when Bucky said tightly, "Actually, we want to see that first-aid kit. If it's no trouble," he added in a tone loaded with sarcasm.
"Yes, of course," Colonel Zemo said, as if it had been asked with total politeness. He slopped a little more of whatever he was drinking into his glass—a clear whiskey, vodka or something like it—and went briskly to the stairs.
These were hardwood, and, it turned out, went up the height of the townhouse. There was a landing after the first flight with a short hallway. "There are two bedrooms here," the Colonel said, leading them down the hall with a flare of his coat. "And a much nicer bathroom than the one on the ground floor, which is really just a water closet for functions and showering. All the rooms aside from those on the penthouse floor are, of course, open to you, but if you wish to reside on this floor, it's the one I would recommend."
He opened the door. He wasn't wrong; the bathroom was spacious, with a tall window for light and ventilation, a checkerboard tile floor, and a big white claw-foot tub. Colonel Zemo went promptly to a free-standing cabinet and began to rummage around in it, setting his glass on the edge of the sink, while Sam and Bucky traded vaguely baffled looks. None of this was really going the way they expected a handler tradeoff to go.
The Colonel turned around with a large white case. "You'll find a military quality of supplies here. Your record said that you were a pararescue, Sam, so I expect you know how to use these."
Sam firmly clamped his jaw shut, twitching with the urge to respond on a flare of You have no right. No right to pry into his past, no right to make assumptions about him, and above all, no right to call him Sam.
But they had made the decision not to kill the Colonel downstairs, and at this point, unless they wanted to throw themselves into a life-or-death fight, all they could do was be as polite as possible and take whatever he handed out.
So all Sam gave back was a tight, grim, "Thanks," as he took the case. Zemo didn't have to offer them even this much, after all, no matter that it was the human, compassionate thing to do. They had dealt with precious few people in the GRC's military wing who seemed to have that setting. In all likelihood, this was nothing but the desire to make sure that a useful tool wasn't rendered ineffective through infection.
"So," Bucky said with seeming casualness. His arms were crossed tightly across his chest. "Bedrooms."
"Yes, of course," Zemo said. He gestured out into the hallway. "Two on this floor, the Rose Room and Lilac Room. Above us is the Iris Room as well as a room that used to be—that I am given to understand was a nursery before being converted to a music room. And then my room is on the floor above that. That floor is off limits, but with the others, you may do as you wish, within reason."
"So what's within reason?" Bucky asked, with that dangerous edge in his voice that generally boded nothing good. "Turn the music room into a weapons room, say?"
"There is an armory in the basement, as well as a small training gym," Zemo said. "You have full access to that along with the rest, provided you don't abuse it. Weapons are to be carried in the field and not in the house."
Sam directed a cool look at the service weapon that was still holstered at Zemo's belt. He wasn't sure whether he expected any reaction to this, but he was completely floored by what did actually happen, which was that he got the first actual expression he had seen on Zemo's face. It was something like chagrin.
"My mistake," Zemo said. "Yes, this will be in the armory. Small weapons secreted about your person, I don't expect to be my problem unless you make it my problem, in which I will take actions to redress it. Don't bring it to my attention if you'd rather not have it redressed."
He picked up his glass and brushed past them out of the bathroom, turning back on the doorstep, while Sam was still staring at him. "You may eat or drink anything in the kitchen," he said. "Is there anything else you need?"
They both just stared at him for a moment, and then Bucky said, "Yeah, so, got a question. What's the rule on being locked up at night?"
Zemo's face was politely and perfectly blank. "Excuse me?"
"He's asking if we'll be shackled at night," Sam said quietly. "And where."
Zemo's face remained perfectly flat and blank, but Sam had a general impression of—something, it was hard to say, but there was a point at which it seemed to tip over from genuinely blank to a sort of studied blankness. "You won't be. Please choose a bedroom. I will see that there is a hot dinner shortly."
And with that, he left. Sam and Bucky looked at each other for a minute.
Then Sam said, "So which do you want, Buck, the Rose Room or the Lilac Room?"
"Fuck you, Wilson," Bucky said, and for a moment he sounded almost like himself, or at least what (if anything) Sam knew of who Bucky was when he wasn't being kicked around and turned into other people's gun for hire.
***
Sam took the Lilac Room, because he wanted to know exactly how ridiculous that was going to be.
Actually, it wasn't what he expected, all lavish and pale purple. In fact, it was a tastefully classy bedroom that looked like a high-end hotel. The bed had a duvet spread with triangles in white, black, and deep violet, and there was a large gilt-framed painting displaying a spray of flowers over the bed, probably the eponymous lilacs. There was a white-painted chest of drawers containing no ornaments except a white vase perched on one corner that had a spray of fake flowers, and a rug in front of it that was patterned in the same white-black-purple color scheme. One wall had a bookcase that contained books which were all in languages Sam couldn't read.
There was also a fireplace that looked actually functional, but they were in Europe, after all; it might have been the sole source of heating a couple hundred years ago, assuming the house was that old.
Everything had a fine layer of dust on it. The room smelled musty. Sam opened the window, which looked down onto the cobbled street below, where the streetlights were starting to come out as it got dark. Sitting on the bed, he opened the first-aid kit.
Holy crap, the Colonel wasn't kidding. Sam couldn't identify everything, because a lot of the labels were in Cyrillic, but from what he could decipher, the kit had the pharmaceutical basics of a small ER back in the states. Sam went for what he felt like dealing with, which was basic alcohol wipes, mild analgesics, and a quick course of illegal antibiotics. He could have shot himself up with morphine and military-grade uppers if he wanted to. Hell, Zemo had just handed Sam the means of quietly and quickly ending their new handler's life with a judiciously applied needle, if it came to that.
Either Zemo assumed that Sam didn't have the basic medical knowledge to load up a syringe with a lethal dose of morphine, or he thought they were too afraid to try it, or he simply didn't care. Sam didn't know which option worried him more.
He had left the door open, and while he was working on his wrists, Bucky tapped carefully on the door.
"Mind if I come into your—" Bucky glanced around. "—Lilac Room?"
"I dunno, how's your Rose Room?"
"Less rosy than expected," Bucky said, and Sam snorted a short laugh. "Use a hand there?"
Sam shrugged, but he had reached the point where he was having to do his right wrist with his off hand, and it was harder. So he sat back and held out his hand to let Bucky dab at his wrist with antiseptic.
"So what do you think?" Bucky asked quietly, with his head bent over Sam's wrist.
"Jury's still out," Sam said. "I don't think he's as bad as Halstead. Or at least not as obviously bad."
"He's fucking crazy, Sam," Bucky said without looking up. "Take it from me, I know crazy in the way only crazy can know crazy. He's bugfuck in the head."
"You know I don't like calling people—"
"Fine, Sam, he's grade-A mentally ill, is that better? Tell me you don't smell something off about that guy."
"We knew that we weren't going to get someone nice and normal," Sam said, exasperated. "Because you don't get people who aren't a little off working for the GRC and prepared to take on our kind of work-release prisoners."
"Wow, sane people don't want to be mission handlers for assassins? Funny, that."
Sam grimaced, but decided not to push an argument right now. The last thing he wanted was to get both of them worked up when they were tiptoeing on eggshells around an unknown handler who might be the sort of person who snapped at the drop of a hat and went ballistic on them.
Sam wasn't sure what read he had on Zemo's temper yet. It was just incredibly difficult to get a hold on the guy. Reflexively polite. Repressed. An ice-cold killer according to the scuttlebutt he'd heard, the kind of person who would pull out a gun and shoot you dead. And from what Sam had seen so far, he wasn't prepared to disbelieve it. Especially with the increasing sense he was getting of Zemo as a guy on edge, the sort of person who was perfectly in control in public and day-drinking his way around a mostly empty house.
Back in Sam's counseling days, which seemed a very long time ago to him now, that was the sort of person you kept a really close eye on. For two reasons: because they could be an incredible danger to themselves, or an incredible danger to others.
But that wasn't a Venn diagram with perfect overlap by any means.
"I don't know," Sam said. He flexed his hand now that Bucky had finished taping his wrist. "I'm willing to hold out judgment for a bit. You need anything taped up anywhere?"
"Oh, you know me, Sam," Bucky said in a tone that was a studied kind of light. "Everything fixes itself. You want to go down and see if there's actually anything to eat in this crypt?"
And Bucky was another of those that you had to keep an eye on, but in his case, he was definitely not a hurting-others type. Sam almost wished Bucky had been the other kind, because it would have made the things the GRC ordered him to do easier for him to take.
"Sure," Sam said. He got up and set the first-aid kit on the dresser next to the vase.
The convenient thing about being the GRC's prisoners was that you didn't have a whole lot of unpacking to do because you didn't have any luggage. Silver lining, right? Ha. Sam supposed they'd have to deal with problems like, oh, clean underwear eventually.
They walked downstairs into soft lamplight and incredibly appealing cooking smells.
"Ah, you're awake," the Colonel said, swiveling around to give them one of his weird off-kilter stares across the marble-topped kitchen island. "I thought you might have chosen to take a nap. Do either of you have any dietary needs?"
They both simply stared at him. He was no longer wearing the fur-collared military coat, instead standing in the kitchen in an also vaguely military-cut dark purple shirt with a slanting collar, holding a spatula.
"That would impair your effectiveness in the field," Zemo said shortly.
"I'm, uh ... not great with dairy, but it's not that bad either. I can eat cheese and yogurt," Sam said, feeling like an absolute fucking idiot. He turned to Bucky, who was wearing one of his typically less-inscrutable-than-he-realized looks, and the main component was bafflement.
"No," Bucky said slowly. "Not that I know of."
"Good, then. Please take a seat." Zemo used the spatula to gesture at the kitchen island. Slowly, anticipating a trap, they both did so. "You'll find a pad and paper," Zemo added, which they had just done. "Please make a shopping list."
"Of ...?" Sam said.
"Anything you need to equip yourselves. There are basic toiletries in the bathrooms, but you shouldn't hesitate to put down special preferences for anything of that sort." While he was speaking, Zemo flipped something at the stove. "You'll both need all the basic field gear, of course, and whatever changes of personal clothing would make you comfortable. Please specify sizes and brands, if desired."
Sam traded a look with Bucky. This just didn't get any less weird.
"Our last handler took us to a warehouse and gave us some stuff," Sam said slowly.
"Yes, well, I have standards," Zemo said, his voice clipped. He spun around with an abruptness that startled them both, in Bucky's case causing his hand to drop to where Sam knew he had managed to keep a small knife sewn into the lining of his jacket. Sam gave him a quelling look.
Zemo slammed a plate down on the countertop in front of them. There was a pile of steaming dumplings on it, which jumped a little at the sudden descent.
"And I will not," Zemo said, biting off each word tightly, "permit either of you to go into the field if you are not properly equipped. It reflects very badly on me. As does allowing you to remain unfed when it might impair your field fitness."
With abrupt field-neat precision, in quick angry snaps, he set a plate in front of each of them.
"It's an old Sokovian recipe," he added, turning back to the simmering pot of hot oil on the stove, and reached for the spatula with one hand and a glass of clear liquor with the other. "Refuse and you insult me."
Sam looked at Bucky. They shared a speaking look, and on Sam's end, it was mostly, Yes, you're right, we're in the hands of a not-that-I-like-saying-this-BUT-ALSO crazy person.
Then Sam pulled the pad of paper toward himself. From what he could tell, the rumors about scary, ice-cold-killer Colonel Zemo being rich weren't entirely wrong, so he might as well write down everything he could think of that they hadn't been able to have with their previous couple of handlers. If they were in the hands of a complete sociopath, they might as well take advantage of what aspects of the situation they could, and be a little more safe and comfortable.
"If you don't care for rakia, there are beers and sodas in the fridge," Zemo said without turning around.
Bucky, who had also been writing on his pad, got up and went to the fridge. He came back with two beers of some Eastern European brand that Sam didn't recognize, but when Bucky had cracked the caps off with his metal hand (show-off), they were dark, cold, and good.
"What do you think of the halušky?" Zemo asked, scooping out several more dumplings to deposit into a metal basket at his left hand.
Okay, that was probably the dumplings. Sam noticed that Bucky had already scooped a few onto his plate and was munching on them while adding things to his list. From what Sam could see with a few oblique glances, a good half of Bucky's list was knives.
"Well?" Sam mouthed.
Bucky shrugged.
"Helpful as always," Sam hissed, and reached for the serving plate.
The dumpling was stuffed with cheese and meat, and it made him aware how very hungry he was. He was gulping down his third or fourth when Zemo arrived back at the counter to add to the pile of dumplings on the plate and also set a china dish in front of them with some kind of pickled vegetable in it.
"Old family recipe," he said with no change of expression, and turned back to the stove to monitor another batch of dumplings.
"See?" Bucky mouthed. "See what I mean?"
Sam did see, but what also crossed his mind was that the guy was absolutely, mind-bogglingly lonely, as well as incredibly weird, and was now cooking his cultural favorites for a couple of people who he had just unlocked from chains a couple of hours earlier.
Sam turned back to his list. He had been sticking to the absolutely necessary basics (a good pair of boots, a change of pants) but now he added his favorite brands of razors and shaving foam. From the impression he'd gotten of Zemo so far, he thought the guy might actually enjoy the challenge.