cleveland, ohio

2016

Sitting on a bench outside of the rental agency, Helmut ran cold fingers through his hair, as he attempted to settle himself from the flight. The blood had pooled out of his hands and into his feet as his nerves started to kick in. He refused to shut his plan down, the rage inside him boiling at the edge of eruption. He was a calm and calculated man, but his emotions were pushing him past the point of no return.

He had lost everything: his home, his life, his family. Nothing made sense anymore and nothing would stand in his way. Helmut would destroy the Avengers, just like they had destroyed his world.

Twirling a string that dangled off his shirt, he let out a heavy sigh that filled the air with the grief he held inside. Every fabric of his being was being torn apart, but his composure remained still, as he had learned to do so easily during his time in EKO Scorpion. He had been taught to never let his enemy see his cards, and he would take that mentality with him to his next task. The first part of his calculated plan: find the dossier that would give him the fuel to drive a wedge in the Avengers. The next pieces would fall into place, but he would have to tread lightly if he wanted to succeed.

He had joined the EKO Scorpion team because of the Avengers, and the threats they posed upon the world as they appeared out of thin air in the early 2000s. With the chaos that Iron Man and the Hulk had brought upon the United States, Helmut had felt obligated to protect the home he had once loved because of the emerging powers. This was before they had assembled as a team, but the specifics did not matter: the supers were the reason he had felt such a strong civil duty to his people.

This decision had obliterated his life with Kalina, the one constant that he chose to walk away from, all because the Avengers became a reality. He had lost the other half of his soul due to his selfish bravado to protect Sokovia from the threats of the world. Look at Sokovia now, he thought to himself, desperate to push down the memories of his home. Up to a point, he had blamed himself for his past failures, and as much as he wanted to continue this self-loathing for causing Kalina so much pain, he now redirected his anger and shame at the Avengers.

Kalina, who had been his whole world was now a distant memory, he didn't even know where she was. Maybe she had been miles away from Sokovia, maybe she was a passerby on the street in the middle of the battle. All Helmut knew was that she was no longer his, and could not stomach his own inability to take care of her when he had the chance and the responsibility.

Since the battle of Novi Grad, Helmut had been consumed with anger and desperately sought retribution for the crimes against his country. Everything the Avengers stood for, peace, honor and protecting others, they had completely turned away from while they allowed Novi Grad to be destroyed in another one of their targeted efforts to save the world. He had lost Kalina, and then Sokovia, and finally he had lost his second chance at happiness, all at the hands of the Avengers.

It had taken Helmut two days to recover the bodies of his wife, son, and father, lying underneath the wreckage of the Zemo estate on the outskirts of the city. He had sworn they would be safe, but the blast of the city that was taken high in the sky had poured down terror upon the surrounding area, and the estate was not protected from its rage. The bodies of the wait staff were scattered among the rubble with the family and no one had survived the impact. The home was lost and Helmut had met his final catalyst.

He had cried out for his family, the overwhelming pain he felt deep in his chest had exploded, as he held his son in his arms, covered in dust, debris, and blood. His second chance at happiness, shattered at the whim of the Avengers yet again. Helmut cried for Heike and for his father. They died a death they didn't deserve and appeared to have suffered in the impact. He had never fallen in love with Heike, but he did grow to love and care for her, as a wife and as the mother to his son. She was a woman of honor who did not deserve such a cruel fate.

It was all gone, once more. His hatred consumed him as he stepped away from the estate in Novi Grad, and took in the desolation of his home. The city was in ruins and the country would fall apart shortly after. With no parliament, so many citizens lost in the battle, and the financial impact of the destruction having devastated the economy, Sokovia had soon been cannibalized by its surrounding neighbors within months. Nearly a year later it was no longer a country, but a chapter for the history books.

So he sat at the rental agency, waiting patiently but eager to check out a car from the facility. The first means to his end was a man named Vasily Karpov, who would pave the way for the rest of his psychological warfare against the Avengers. Helmut knew exactly how to find and coerce his targets, a skill he learned and polished in EKO Scorpion. He hated to cause undue harm to others and still lived by a code, but he was on a mission to destroy everything the team of heroes was, and would let no one stand in the way of his goal. They would pay for the damage they had done, not only to Sokovia, but to the rest of the world.

The Avengers, the supers, anyone with outstanding and unnatural abilities: they would all suffer, at the hands of Helmut Zemo.

-----

paris, france

Kalina rested her elbows on the desk in front of her, stretching her neck out as it tensed from staring at her computer for so long. Her office had become a home away from home as of late. She purposefully drove herself to work to the limit, striving to cope with the loss of her home and her friends by masking her anguish behind false positivity and overzealousness.

Her therapist could no longer provide comfort or consolation from rectifying her anxiety in their sessions, but no one could understand the amount of pain that came with losing your entire country. Her entire identity as a human being was gone in a day, in a battle that the nation didn't even ask for. Kalina had no one to confide in and no one that understood, so she buried her emotions deep under her skin and hid under the guise of a perfectly poised businesswoman.

She never got the closure she needed, and refused to try, but she was most certain that Anastasia and her family had become victims of the battle. Kalina wasn't quite sure how she had survived being trapped in the middle of the carnage. Her ankle had been shattered in the building collapse, and she had also suffered a broken collar bone and dislocated her shoulder. After reaching a Sokovian rescue point in the city, she was transported to a small hospital nearly two hours away, which had been quickly overwhelmed with injuries and casualties from the Novi Grad incident.

The hospitals in Sokovia became engulfed in patients and were quickly saturated, with many triaged injuries sent out of country to facilities nearby. Kalina found herself in a Romanian hospital before any of her wounds were able to be handled by a medical team. Others had it much worse, with the majority of Sokovian citizens kept in house suffering loss of life at the failure of their country's medical system.

Novi Grad had been the largest city and the main hub in Sokovia, and the city hospitals were destroyed in the impact, leaving rescue teams to rely on country village clinics and small medicine that could not provide life saving procedures. They were doomed before they were attacked, and this confirmed the over-reliance of the country on their capital city.

Kalina was fortunate enough to walk away from the tragedy with little to no residual damage, other than the inability to sit hunched over her desk for long periods of time. Her neck would tense from the trauma her muscles had suffered from the broken collar bone, and she was quick to get excruciating migraine headaches because of the tension. She kept her complaints to herself, being humbled by the air she inhaled every day, knowing she could have suffered the same fate as some of her people.

She sighed, drumming her foot on the ground anxiously, trying to physically shake away her trauma. It had been almost a year since the incident, and today was the day the United Nations would meet in Vienna to sign the Sokovia Accords. Kalina had kept to herself, sorely reminded of the tragedy, but grateful that the Avengers would finally be legally controlled. She couldn't help that she held some resentment for them. Their battle tore Sokovia apart, and they needed to be held accountable. Her heart ached with conflict, as she wanted to believe they would have been worse off had the bio-mechanical threat, Ultron, succeeded in his initial plans but there were so many what-ifs that she couldn't wrap her head around it and chose to cope by simply not trying to understand.

She chose to compartmentalize the feelings and stuff them down in her soul, just as she had done in the past. Kalina felt like a rock, cold and hard on the exterior, but even rocks can be chipped away at. It was only a matter of time before she was whittled down, revealing the sensitive core that was nestled in her heart.

Glued to her laptop all morning, she was streaming live feed of the Sokovia Accords signing from her office. It was not often Kalina became intrigued with politics and government, but this subject was very raw on her heart, and she wanted those responsible for the desolation of her people to be contained.

Watching the footage in the corner of her laptop screen as she typed a business document, the Wakandan King, T'Chaka, was delivering a powerful speech reprimanding the Avengers' actions in acknowledgement of their attempts to help. Kalina sympathized with the sentiment; the Avengers seemed to mean well, but the execution of their heroism left a trail of destruction and agony.

As King T'Chaka spoke with vibrancy, the video feed suddenly went black, and Kalina diverted her attention to the small rectangular box on her screen. Pursing her lips, she exited the video, and navigated to another website that was streaming the conference. Nothing but black and static. She sat back in her chair and thought quietly, the poor news coverage of such a historic event was disappointing, but she never really liked formalities anyway. So long as the documents were signed and the Avengers were restrained, she would find rest in the decision.

She returned her attention to the document she was tapping away at. Her fashion consulting business was situated in a tall Parisian building that had a modern feel and attracted only the most serious entrepreneurs. Sound of patters at her window provided a soothing white noise, as rain started to fall outside. She felt a peace come over her in the square room. Being alone finally complemented her and she had learned to find comfort in her own company. A small knock at the office door pulled Kalina out of her momentary trance.

"Ma'am, apologies for the disturbance." A petite young girl stood in her doorway, holding a tablet in her hand. Her quiet, gentle voice echoing off the walls was almost lost in the sound of the rain. "The security downstairs have informed us that they are no longer allowing clients into the building."

Kalina leaned forward onto her arms again looking at the girl, Madeline, her personal assistant. Her eyes urged the girl to continue to the why.

"Something about a bomb in Vienna, ma'am, all the major cities across Europe are going on lock down. Apologies, but that's all I know." The girl shifted awkwardly, unsure of how to answer the question. Kalina nodded in understanding, briefly thinking to the news feed that had cut out during the signing of the Accords.

Dismissing Madeline with a forced smile, she returned to her computer, hesitating to begin typing her work again. She eyed the browser still in her active applications, and opened the live feed she had been watching once more. She still peered into a black screen and the eerie sound of white noise coming through the speakers was slightly haunting.

The world was slowly evolving into something she had never seen before. Kalina didn't know if she was ready to face what would happen next.

-----

hydra siberian facility, russia

The frigid air of the Siberian landscape cut through Helmut like a knife. He hadn't missed the cold mountain wind during his time away from EKO Scorpion. The Armed Forces, unsurprisingly, had disbanded during the fall of Sokovia, which inherently ended Helmut's obligation to the service. Regardless, he felt a sense of pride and purpose, as he watched Iron Man and Captain America gaze upon what remained of the Winter Soldier project. The men had been put to rest peacefully in their cells with a bullet, and they existed no more.

"If it's any comfort, they died in their sleep." Helmut watched the men followed by Bucky Barnes. He nearly choked on his words, consumed by grief and overcome with loss. They were the ones at fault, these super beings, enhanced men and women. The world needed to be rid of the menaces. "Did you really think I wanted more of you?"

Helmut opened the window to the chamber revealing his face, causing the men to react with a physical response, making him chuckle. The Hydra facility was built to withstand immense power, and the fools thought they could so easily reach him behind the reinforced walls. He knew he couldn't take out the Avengers on his own, but that was never his intent.

"I've thought of nothing else for over a year." The Sokovian watched as Captain America approached him through the window in the wall. He wanted nothing more than to reach out and grab Steve Rogers by the throat, to make him suffer in his own hands for all the agony the Avengers had caused him, but that was not part of the plan. He maintained his composure and continued, cutting Steve with his glare. "There's a bit of green in the blue of your eyes... how nice to find a flaw."

He chuckled to himself and smiled. So the supers were not so perfect, and that pleased the EKO Scorpion commander. It reinforced his theory that the Avengers were as easily human as they were enhanced, and he felt even more confident in his plan, as if everything was developing like a flawless Polaroid picture.

"You're Sokovian. Is that what this is about?" Captain America's stern yet powerful demeanor was even more evident as he stood face to face with Helmut, separated by the thick wall.

"Sokovia was a failed state long before you blew it to hell." The words stung as they left Helmut's lips. Speaking the truth did not reduce the blow of how they felt to speak aloud. Struggling to hold back any emotion and refusing to present any weakness to the terrorists, the colonel felt the straining in his throat again as the acid boiled in his stomach. The pain was bubbling to the surface, and a storm of rage was billowing inside of him. "I'm here because I made a promise."

Steve looked to the ground slightly, understanding the pain in his voice. Despite being Captain America, he understood the sound of grief, and had known pain just the same. A wave of guilt swept over him as his eyes returned to meet Helmut's. "You lost someone."

The knife in Helmut's heart cut deeper, threatening to bleed out onto the floor in front of the Avenger. The loss of Kalina, the desolation of Sokovia, the death of his family, and the pain of his own self-hatred had finally surfaced, and the hollows of his eyes painted a dark storm of anguish as he faced the members of the team who stole it all from him. "I lost everyone."

The shock wave of his words resonated against the walls of the compound, sending shudders through Steve's spine. He inhaled slightly, taking in the impact of their actions, but still feeling justified in their efforts. They were meant to protect the people, and this man, Helmut Zemo, they had failed. They had failed so many, and the weight of their choices fell onto Captain America's shoulders in that moment.

A screen flashed next to Steve, with Russian Cyrillic typed into the video. Helmut swallowed any sadness or discomfort, and his body language was again replaced with anger. "An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again, but one which crumbles from within?"

Steve looked at Helmut with inquisition. "That's dead. Forever."

The other men moved toward the screen, unsure of what would play next. Bucky shifted uncomfortably as he realized the date of the documentation. He knew what was playing out before their eyes and Helmut's plan had finally started to make sense. As the video played, the final wedge between Captain America and Iron Man was driven in like a stake in the heart.

As the commotion between the Avengers began to erupt, Helmut smiled to himself, nodding in disturbed pleasure. Having watched all the things he had loved fall apart, it was sadistically satisfying to watch the two men begin to rip each other to pieces. His goal had been fulfilled, there was nothing more for him to do. The Avengers would take care of the rest, their bravado and sense of justice would be their undoing. Right and wrong was no longer black and white, but many shades of grey that would never be defined again among the group of supers.

Helmut stepped away, and let the internal struggle commence. A sense of longing hit him in the chest, having completed his mission, he now felt truly lost and alone. Everything in his life had been lost at the hands of another, and he had grown weary of the self-loathing he had felt all these years. There was nothing more to accomplish.

He sauntered outside into the bitterly cold mountain air, and sat down on the edge of a rock, snow covering the ground underneath him called his name in comfort, like a cold mistress kissing his body begging him to leave his life and come to her. He held the phone he had been carrying up to his ear to listen to the last voicemail Heike had left him, gritting his teeth in grief, reliving