Chapter Text
In the Forest of Glass
They walked slowly. There was no wind, but the trees chimed softly around them, as if the forest were listening, and dreaming, and remembering.
With every step Bucky took, the trees leaned just slightly towards him, their branches rearranging like compass needles following a magnet. Towards the tower. Towards the heart.
Zemo followed close, silent but steady.
He watched Bucky. Not the path, not the sky, not the glowing trail of frost blooming briefly beneath Bucky’s feet. Just him. Every small hesitation. Every choice of direction. As though he couldn’t believe someone would do this for him. As though a part of him still expected to be left behind.
“You didn’t want to be found, Hel,” Bucky murmured, brushing his fingers over a leaf like cut crystal. “You didn’t expect anyone to come looking.”
Zemo’s voice was quiet, but sharp-edged. “I didn’t think it would matter if I was forgotten.”
Bucky stopped walking. Turned to face him. “You weren’t ever forgotten,” he said.
Zemo looked at him, and there was a flicker, like the first crack in an iced-over lake. A splinter of something warm and terrifying: hope.
They walked on.
And now the trees grew stranger. Some were hollow and echoed with old music. Some held fragments of dreams. Zemo’s dreams, caught in the branches like old ribbons: velvet halls, smoke curling in crystal glasses, a boy’s voice reciting poetry to a mirror. A golden gun with no bullets. A ballroom where everyone was dancing but no one ever touched.
Bucky saw it all. He didn’t speak. He just took Zemo’s hand.
At last, they reached the clearing.
The tower was impossibly tall. Crystal clear and transparent. Its walls shimmered like tears, and inside, faint and pulsing, was a single glowing heart, suspended in the air. It beat soundlessly, a rhythm of longing and regret.
But the tower had no door, and no windows.
Zemo stared up at it. “Of course I would do that,” he muttered. “I hid my heart and locked it away. No entrances. No risks.”
Bucky let go of his hand. He walked slowly up to the tower. He placed his palm against the cool surface. And spoke one word: “Yours.”
The tower hummed. Then, it opened. Glass melted like candle wax, curling back into petals. The glow flared, flooding the clearing.
Zemo stumbled, suddenly unsteady.
Bucky caught him. “You okay?”
“It’s loud,” Zemo said, his hand clutching his chest. “Very loud, James. I’d forgotten what it sounded like.”
The heart floated down into Zemo’s hands. For a moment, he just held it, trembling. Then slowly, solemnly, he pressed it back into himself.
He gasped sharply. His knees buckled. Bucky’s arms were already around him.
Zemo leaned into the warmth, his face pressed to Bucky’s shoulder, his heart beating too fast, too real.
“You’re not glass,” Bucky murmured. “You never were.”
Zemo laughed, shakily. “No, James. Just afraid of shattering.”
And the forest began to bloom around them. A warm wind stirred, and for the first time, the trees sang.
Glass leaves unfurled into real leaves, soft and velvet green. Crystalline branches softened into bark and moss. Wildflowers pushed up through the frost. What once shimmered sharp, now rang with birdsong and the scent of summer rain on warm earth. Trees breathed again. Shadows deepened into mystery, not menace.
Above, the sky purpled into twilight, scattered with the first stars.
Zemo tilted his head back, watching it all with a kind of stunned reverence. His expression was unguarded, soft. The weight of his heart, newly returned, had reshaped him in subtle, radiant ways. There was still elegance in him, yes, but it was no longer brittle. No longer a shield.
Bucky watched him watching the world. “You look different,” he said, and there was a small smile behind it.
Zemo glanced over. “And you, James. You look exactly the same.”
“Charming?”
“Trouble.”
They both laughed.
The path led them to a clearing, now lush and moon-dappled, a soft knoll of grass ringed in night-blooming flowers. Fireflies hummed lazily through the air, and the forest seemed to hold its breath around them, as if to listen.
They sat on the grass.
Zemo stretched out like a cat, his coat folded beneath him, one arm propped behind his head. Bucky sat cross-legged beside him, fingers absently plucking stems of clover, weaving them into a loose crown he wouldn’t admit he was making for Zemo until much later.
“Does it hurt?” Bucky asked softly. “Having your heart again?”
Zemo considered. “It aches. But not in a way I want to stop.”
A silence draped over them, companionable and full.
Then, somewhere above, the moon rose. Not the sharp, silent observer of other nights. Tonight, it glowed full and soft, like a kiss, like forgiveness. The moonlight spilled across the clearing, silvering skin, catching in eyelashes, brushing the world with a quiet kind of magic.
Zemo rolled onto his side, and rested his head on Bucky’s knee. “You know, James,” he murmured, his voice like warm wine, “I’m beginning to think I didn’t hide my heart very well at all.”
“Oh no,” Bucky agreed, fingers brushing through Zemo’s hair. “You left clues everywhere.”
Zemo smiled. “And you followed them.”
Bucky smiled back, his gaze turning skyward. “Always.”
The night breathed in. The forest exhaled. The moon tilted its face toward them like a blessing.
And somewhere between the crickets and distant owl-song, something ancient and tender and whole began to bloom.
They walked out of the forest hand in hand, the Baron and the Soldier, no longer hiding anything at all.
***