y’know what? i like you. *gives you more overly detailed zemo hcs* :)
as much as i loved this one fic i read where zemo had an affair with a reader who was a part of his EKO Scorpion team, i feel like zemo is very loyal to his lover(s) whomever they may be. it's the one part of his life (besides his love for his country before it was destroyed) that he would ultimately lay everything down for.
speaking of country, this man absolutely loved sokovia, though probably would admit in his youth he took some of the more culturally rich parts of his heritage for granted, especially since he was from royalty. i like to think if he got close to someone, he'd be happy to show them little things from his country that he misses, whether it's music or traditional dances or meals or even memories/history of events that happened there (basically like wanda and vision making paprikash in cw).
and speaking of WANDA, if these two ever met...my god. it would be an emotional rollercoaster for the both of them. of course wanda probably knows zemo is a bad guy who literally took down the avengers single handedly, but then she finds out they’re both from sokovia and start building an odd yet genuine connection. they speak fluent sokovian to each other and talk about their pasts, their families and how they lost them, and they mourn together silently for their home. wanda is entirely aware of him being a villian, and certainly reminds him of that (maybe even blaming him for the blip since he tore the avengers apart right before their encounter with thanos), but she might also do little things for him as a fellow sokovian, like leave him tupperwares of paprikash or other traditional sokovian dishes. he tells her about the memorial that was built, and wanda makes an effort to leave two bouquets of flowers there when she can - one for her brother, and one for zemo’s family.
when zemo found his family dead under the rubble of his father’s home, i picture that his son was holding a broken iron man figure in his hand. the haunting memory of finding it is something that really solidified zemo’s hatred for the avengers, and towards the beginning of his revenge crusade he frequently had nightmares about it.
taking a slightly different turn, since we never really got confirmation of what happened to zemo during the events of the blip i can really see it going either way, but let's play with some ideas:
option 1: he got snapped. dusted. knocked out of existence. this one i always had the idea that he was still in his prison cell during the events of the snap. he’d suddenly notice that he’s totally alone in the room, then slowly look down to see his hand dissolving into the wind. he’s hit by a lot of different emotions all at once, but his conclusion is clear - he’s finally getting what he wanted. he’s going to rejoin his family in the afterlife somehow. he gets disintegrated with a small smile on his face, one last tear streaming down his cheek as he feels like he’s finally going home...and then, of course, 5 years later, he suddenly wakes back up in his cell completely reformed. i would assume he’d at first chalk it all up to a bad dream, still locked away in his cell like nothing happened, until some prison guards join him in his confusion, and other people find them and try to bring them up to speed. he hears bits and pieces and is confused by a lot of it, but since he’s a smart man i think it’s safe to assume he can put things together even if he can’t seem to believe it at first (the only reason i’d be more inclined to believe he was dusted was the throw away line he mentioned to sam and bucky about surrounding countries taking the ruins of sokovia, but that also could have happened shortly after cw, so i’m not sure).
option 2: he wasn’t dusted, and remained alive in the 5 years after the blip. now this one is super interesting to me, bc we know that at some point zemo goes from being held in the american government’s custody to a high tech german prison, but we don’t really get a timeline for this.
on one hand, if he was already placed in the german prison and was in his new cell when everyone was dusted, he could have either a) been released by a fellow prisoner/guard if someone was feeling nice enough, or b) be kept there by an insistent guard who is just trying to do his job and has no clue what’s going on. i just think it’d be really funny for some rookie guard to be the sole keeper of zemo in his cell during the blip, zemo even somewhat admiring such dedication at what seemed like the end of the world.
on the other, maybe he was possibly being transported during the blip, where zemo suddenly found the guards meant to prevent him from escaping dissolving before his very eyes. not being one to look an oddly shaped horse in the mouth, he takes the chance to run, relying on his wits and criminal connections to help himself survive. at some point when everyone comes back and a ton people remember who zemo is, he eventually gets caught and turned back in to the german prison so the events of fatws still line up.
okay, lemme finish out with some rapid fire hcs:
zemo is 100% classically trained to play the violin. he just SCREAMS violin player to me.
his favorite flowers are deep red roses and wisterias, and his former wife’s favorite was lily of the valley.
i sent this hc to someone else, but zemo is so infatuated with the color purple. you can absolutely fucking BET his original royal estate was covered head to toe in purple and gold.
zemo sleeps like a body in a coffin, and it probably freaked sam and bucky out the first time they found themselves in his apartment in latvia.
speaking of sleep, he can probably comfortably sleep anywhere and microsleeps a lot, a trick he picked up during his EKO Scorpion training.
while he may enjoy the occasional espresso every now and again, i just don’t see zemo as a coffee/caffeine person, which is why he prefers tea. i’m also pretty sure if you gave this man a single drop of mango loco monster he would join his ancestors in the astral plane.
i feel like we caught a small glimpse of it in fatws, but zemo is SUPER good with kids. he can take a fussy baby from sobbing to silent in .2 seconds with his sokovian cooing, i just feel it in my bones. he just has a calming aura around children. he probably also has that paternal instinct to perk up and look around when he hears a baby crying.
zemo’s main love languages are gifts and acts of service :)