SHIELD Helicarrier, Somewhere Over the Atlantic Ocean, November 23d, 1963
Failure
He was a failure
Bruno Horgan sat alone in the sparse cell, staring out at nothing. Not like there was anything else to occupy himself here, wherever here was. The last thing he'd remembered was trying to tear off that gunk the Spider-Brat from New York had clogged up his melting device with, then something hit him, and after that, it all just went black. The next thing he knew, he woke up restrained in a metal chair with an angry man with an eyepatch staring at him from across a table in a dimly lit room. And everything went downhill from there.
And here he was, the great Bruno Horgan who was so sure he was the future of weapons development, stuck in a cell god knows where, dressed in a prison jumpsuit, and left with nothing but his thoughts, and his regrets. And the knowledge that whatever was coming next, he was going to pay dearly for it all.
He was a failure. He realized that now. For so long, he'd blamed everyone and everything he could think of rather than look at himself for it, his greatest creation, the Melting Ray, was the result of a failure for God's sake! Just a failed invention that happened to have an unintended positive effect, one that he hadn't even managed to make any real use of. Now that it was all over, when he could just sit and look back on what had led him here, he didn't understand how he could ever have done what he did. His ray could affect iron on a molecular level, and the best he could think to do with it was strap it to his chest and try to get revenge on someone who had absolutely nothing to do with his misery! He remembered hating Stark for succeeding so effortlessly where he struggled to gain the smallest victory, and he'd convinced himself that Stark was somehow to blame for it all. And after a while, he didn't want to win anymore, he just wanted Stark to lose....
He hated himself for being so small, for letting Zemo get under his skin with his promises of revenge, for not putting his petty, idiotic grudges past him like any sane person would have done, hated himself for doing all these horrible things to completely innocent people because a goddamn Nazi told him to, just on the off-chance that the man hadn't been lying when he promised him the world in return.
Most of all, he hated knowing that if given the chance to do things differently, he'd do the same things all over again....
...
"If you're here to gloat, just get it over with, then crawl back to whatever pit that spawned you, dear ancestor!"
Professor Nathan Garret continued staring up at the grey metal ceiling from his cot, doing his best to ignore the glowing figure that had appeared in his cell. Sir Percy frowned, looking in disappointment at his misbegotten descendant.
"Truly, do you even know refuse to acknowledge the darkness within yourself? Now, when your sins have led you within a hairs breadth of the headmans axe?"
Garret closed his eyes, refusing to look at him "I've done more in less than a year to make a name for myself as The Black Knight than you did in your entire life, people fear the title, rather than see it as an obscure historical ancedote!"
"You see this as an accomplishment, do you?!" Percy's voice took on a stern tone, despite not rising "A thief, a murderer, an assassin who see the lives of others as annoyances that are to be swept aside for his own petty goals! You have not learned a thing since we first spoke in that ancient tomb, you are nothing but a sadistic, spiteful child, stomping his feet for being denied something that was never his. You shame our family!"
"You have no right to judge me, you damned specter!" Garret snarled, sitting upright on his cot as he glared at the spectral figure "YOU rejected me, said I wasn't worthy of your stupid sword, so I went out and made my own way! I made weapons your primitive, savage mind couldn't even comprehend! Weapons and armor that could have crushed that pig sty of a kingdom you swore yourself to! You are NOTHING!! I am the real Black Knight, I turned the name into something that will be remembered for all time! The world will never forgot what I've done, it's my legacy that will last, not yours!"
"You truly do not see that you've done anything wrong, do you?"
Garret scoffed "Wrong is just a word the weak use to comfort themselves. No one denies me. Not you, not anyone."
"Then my words are wasted on you. I hope what remains of our family can still be salvaged from what you've turned us into. May your own cruel actions one day be made clear to you, but I doubt it..."
The figure faded into nothing, leaving Nathan Garret alone in his cell...
....
Lee Harvey Oswald shivered, drawing his arms and legs closer around himself, curling himself into a ball on his bare cot in the strange cell he'd found himself. He still couldn't quite make heads of tails of what had happened.
To think, just days earlier, it had all made complete sense. All his misery, all his rage, had been focused into a single point of clarity. His anger given a target. It wasn't even about Kennedy himself, not really, just everything he represented. Everything Oswald had spent most of his adult life lashing out at. It had made such sense then. Kennedy had to die, and then...
Then...
Well, there had never really been an "afterwards" in his mind, just watching the President die, and then... the world would somehow be a better place. Everything would finally fit. HE would finally fit. But here and now, lying in this cell, he couldn't quite recall...
It didn't matter. He'd failed. That mutie, the one with the flag mask from New York. Somehow, he'd KNOWN. Oswald didn't know how, he'd been so careful... but there he had been, Oswald hadn't even heard him walk in. After that, everything was a blur. He remembered screaming, from outside the depository. And a noise, a loud grinding, like the earth itself was being torn apart. And screams. And finally, silence.
Eventually, the police came for him. He'd tried to defend himself, saying he had no idea who these strange costumed people outside were, he didn't have anything to do with them. But no one seemed inclined to listen, and eventually, the men in the blue jumpsuits had come and took him here. And then he was alone.
And Lee Harvey Oswald was left with nothing but thoughts of what might have been.
.....
"Hope yer enjoying the accomodations, Lu. Got 'em made special, just fer you..."
The Radioactive Man looked up, meeting the gaze of the eye-patch man staring at him through the reinforced glass of the door to his lead-lined cell. The metal room was completely bare, with the exception of a simple toilet in one corner, lacking even a bad, or even a light fixture, lit only by the glow from his skin. "I have lived in worse places, Mr. Fury"
"That's SERGEANT Fury to you, Lu! You know, yer a lucky man."
"And how exactly am I lucky, MR. Fury?"
Fury sneered at him through the glass, chewing on his cigar "Because, lucky you, the only damned reason I haven't just taken ya out back and put a bullet in the back of yer head like the mad dog ya are, apparently there's a bit of a tug o' war about who gets the honor! Yer a bit of egg on the face of the Communist Party back home, ya know..."
"Yes, they made that quite clear when I returned home last time. Do you know what it is to be discarded like a piece of trash, Fury? To be seen as an... embarassment, despite a lifetime of devotion? One failure, and I was to be treated as a pariah, do you know what that is like?!"
"Oh boo-hoo, everyone has a sob story" Fury said, rolling his single eye "Ya tried to kill the fuckin' PRESIDENT, Lu! What exactly did you think would happen?!"
Lu sneered back "Had I succeeded, I would have been a hero."
"Well, the Reds are going to have to find another hero, because we ain't takin' the risk of them just sticking ya in some hole somewhere, just in case ya turn out to be useful again. I'd make the next few days count if I were you..."
The hatch on the door slammed shut, leaving Chen Lu in the silent, green glow of his skin. He stared up at the ceiling.
"Thor. If you truly are a god, and if you can hear me, know this. I don't know how, and I don't know when, but somehow, someway, I will find a way to reach beyond my own death. And I will have my revenge. I swear it on my soul..."
.....
"You sure you want to do this, Cap? I don't think it's going to do any good..."
Steve glanced over at Dugan, concern written over the larger mans face, and nodded. "I know, Dugan. I know it's probably pointless, but I have to do this. If I don't get this said, it never will be."
Dugan shook his head, unlocking the door "You're a better man than me, Cap. If I'd have had my way, I would just have shot the bastard and been done with it." He pushed the door open, and Steve stepped inside the cell.
Zemo looked up from the bench he was sitting on, his arms and legs locked in shackles chained to the wall behind him. He was dressed in a prison jumpsuit, along with his familiar hood still stuck on his head. The clash between his normally regal appearance and this was striking.
"Kapitän. I was wondering if you'd come to gloat. It brings me joy to see that I was right." Zemos tone was flat, devoid of emotion. Steve shook his head.
"I'm not here to gloat, Zemo. I don't take any joy in this, I never have, even if you refuse to understand that."
"Pah, spare me your platitudes, Kapitän. I will face my executioner at the hands of the Untermensch you fought for so fiercly soon enough, I don't need to suffer even further before that. After all, isn't that one of your precious liberties?" His voice dripped with venom.
"That's not why I'm..." Steve sighed "I just needed to know. Why?"
Zemo actually seemed stunned for a moment "Why?"
"Why...this? Why all of it?! Why did you do ANY of this?!"
"Kapitän, I-"
"You were FREE!!" Steve cut him off "You were free, everyone thought you died in the war, you could have gone anywhere, BEEN anyone! I'm sure even removing the hood would be possible if you put your mind to it, so why?! It doesn't make any sense! It made no sense to me 20 years ago, and it still doesn't!! So WHY?!"
"Because I am Zemo" Zemo said coldly, rising as far as his restraints allowed him "I am Baron Heinrich Zemo, 12th of His Name, and I will never pretend otherwise. I fought for The Fuhrer, I served the great Third Reich, and I will never. Ever. hide from that. And that is something you will never understand. You will never understand the Iron Will that was the Thousand Year Empire. To truly reach out and grasp your own destiny and wipe away the chaff that crawl across the face of the world. To shape mankind into something truly great! To shed our weakness and become something more!"
Steve didn't answer. He'd heard it all a hundred times before. But he still had to ask. "When would it have been enough, Zemo? In God's name, when would it have been enough?"
Zemo stared at him with dead eyes "In some distant, nameless future, when our children walked innocent and ignorant of the horrors of the past across the blessed Earth, unknowing of what it took to build everything they had known, ignorant of the mountains of bones and oceans of blood beneath their feet. That's when it would have been enough. And there are no horrors too great for that future to come to pass...."
They stood in silence for a moment. Finally, Steve left, leaving Zemo alone with his sins.