"Gee, thanks." Because brought straight to the actual devil's palace sounded like more of a problem than a solution. On the other hand, he wasn't on the street, it was less hot, and mr 'wings made of fire' lived here, so he wasn't actually being entirely sarcastic about the thanks, at least.
Probably.
Yet.
"I don't know that I can explain what I was doing in a way that will make sense to you." He'll give it a shot? "I had a group who'd infiltrated an organization I worked with hunting me down. They thought I was cornered. I didn't share their assessment, and jumped through a," glass, "wall. Then fell. Do you bring home a lot of mortals?"
"...The broad strokes are very familiar." It's a worn, frayed bitterness - it's been centuries since Avalir was betrayed from within, after all - but he's seen it play out over and over since. People turn on each other so easily.
"I don't make a habit of it, no. Have you always been able to survive jumping out of buildings?"
People turn on each other all the time. The scale of that betrayal is variable.
He's noticing that this is definitely a back and forth, question for question thing. "Not always. I signed up to be a test subject in a military project a long time ago. I'm still mortal, but a lot more durable than most." Mortal meaning to die. "Why me, then?"
Of course. Of course he signed up to be a guinea pig for a grander cause.
Quietly, still focused on his armour and not the man across from him, "You don't belong here."
No one belongs here, not really, but he hasn't been able to do much about that. It would be - nice, if he could just -
"Physical danger isn't what you need to worry about the most. Devils want your soul, above anything else. Don't talk to any of them if you can avoid it."
Belatedly, halfway through tugging his chest piece over his head, "Does your world have mages?"
He waits for Zerxus to finish removing the chest-plate, then looks him very pointedly over and lifts both his eyebrows. 'Are you shitting me right now' could not be more clear if the words had been spoken - or written across his forehead in a bold font.
Then he keeps talking to a devil, because what else is he going to do?
"You know, I tend to operate on the principal that I should be worrying about my soul more than my physical state, anyway/ Some funny habit I picked up, somewhere. Might be the being able to fall twenty stories and walk away. Might have to add the ability to throw a car in to get the full reasoning." It's a drawl, but it is a really weary and wry one. It is also absolutely not a thing that happened with the serum. It's just Steve.
He looks back at the shield he left on an armchair briefly, then back. "I don't know if we have mages. Probably, by at least if the definition stretches as far as the god one does." Meaning... kind of? Close? Close enough? "So, do you have a plan or are you leaving me to find one?" He is... intentionally sticking to one question at a time and avoiding rhetorical ones since he found the rhythm of this thing. Even deliberately altering how he'd ask that last one to do it.
Edited (fixing my icon, ignore) 2024-10-19 04:22 (UTC)
Zerxus very pointedly pretends that he does not notice. He is dealing with this armour, you know, it's very complicated and heavy.
"If more people had that priority, we'd be less crowded." It's wry, but there's...a much deeper, darker well of weariness in there. A devil probably shouldn't sound that damned sad about how many souls were snared by hell's flames. "Right now, I'm trying to learn enough to make a decent report and buy us some time. We won't solve this in a day."
He almost doesn't want to, but he isn't thinking about that.
"Whoever did this was very skilled in some kind of magic - but a lot of that's going to depend on if it came from my side or yours. Or both, working together, after some earlier contact. Do you know if that's happened, communication between your plane - or realm, or world, I don't know - and another place?"
"I'd like to be surprised that hell comes with paperwork, but I'm pretty convinced it wouldn't really be hell if it didn't."
Look.
Just... look.
Keep dealing with your armor. And keep keeping it off the floor. The more serious question isn't one he even has a hard time answering. Because those theories he had? There's one at the top. "Yeah. There is. Chaos trickster 'God'." The lack of being impressed or considering Loki a god is audible. "Showed up, tried to take over the world with an army no one knows the origin of. We got his portal closed, dealt with them and sent him home to jail in a muzzle. And kept his shit."
That gets a snort of laughter even as he fumbles with various clasps; they may be immune to rust and all but impervious to damage but they are NOT immune to blood drying in the crevices. "You would be right."
That revelation actually stills his progress entirely, though, and Zerxus does look up, eyes gleaming with vicious approval. "Well done. Let's hope he's involved - Asmodeus will be more interesting in punishing him than you."
With a wry nod at a desk with stacks of that paperwork, "Trickery is one of his domains, and so is Order."
Different reality or not, this god will stick in his craw.
Steve is at least acclimating to both the heat and the scent of blood in the air. Not unaware or immune but enough to have it move to the back of his mind and not be a distraction. He'll take it.
"Trickery and Order with paperwork." He doesn't roll his eyes so much as pinch the bridge of his nose. "Sounds like the guy I worked for." Meaning Fury, at least Fury right now and some of his more recent bullshit.
As for the rest of that... Steve shrugs. "I'd probably he rather not be." That it not be Loki. He is tactically smart enough to spell out why, but... He'd really rather not have there be a step in there that involves opening earth up to this.
"I wouldn't compare him to a mortal to his face." Judging by the smirk, though, Zerxus himself wholly approves. (The blood in his head pulses, pain blooming behind his eyes; he does not visibly react.)
"It would mean he got out of his cage, but that was probably inevitable." His fingertips alight as he looks down again, and he just seers the blood away. Sorry, Steve, that's a fresh new wave of carnage in your nostrils. "When you say home - he can't be the only god who wants to make trouble."
The smell of burning blood is... really, really not great. It mingles in with the scent already in the air to something thick enough (at least to Steve) to feel like it's coating the back of his throat. It's something he can taste, and results in a slow rolling wave of nausea.
He doesn't quite manage to stop the teeth bared grimace that comes with it. Dismisses it and fixes his expression back to merely uncomfortable pretty quickly, though. More worried about the blood being there to start with.
"Unfortunately for you, I'm gonna stick with your first advice which was to worry about my soul instead of my safety." Brace yourself now, is the warning behind what mostly sounds like (gentle) snark. "He's probably not the only one. He's just the only one who'd have a personal problem with me. Though I guess whoever and wherever his army came from would apply there, too."
The truly ridiculous thing here is that Zerxus didn't even consider what an assault burning blood tends to be on mortal senses.
There are so many things that he's forgotten.
"Shit, hold on - " He waves a hand towards one of those goblets and it immediately fills with clear, cool water. "And no, I'm sure he isn't." Gentle snark right back at you, sir, even if there's still a wry note of apology in there. (That's as explicit as he'll get. Devils don't apologise out loud, not sincerely.)
"You've lasted - how long, exactly, with that attitude?" Durability only counts for so much, especially when you're going around fighting gods.
Moral enhanced senses. How much the enhanced has any relevance when it's burning blood, with the scent of both blood and ash already in the air, even Steve couldn't know. There's a point it'd be a problem, anyway.
He eyes the goblet with some suspicion but ultimately isn't the cautious sort. Besides, Zerxus has consistently tried to be helpful. "I'd like to say just shy of a hundred years, but I think I'm too honest to pretend that I had an attitude or anybody was around to object to it when I was in the middle of a block of ice."
He actually shrugs at the end of his statement and drinks his water, though the shrug's slight. The shrug isn't apologetic.
Zerxus honestly expected to have to vow that it really is Just Water, and between that and the casual reference to exactly where Steve was for a century he's just...staring, aghast, for a full few seconds.
There is not a single reason asking for verbal confirmation that the water is water would make sense. If Zerxus had ill intentions, he'd lie and claim it was. If it was just water, all asking would do would establish Steve as actively mistrusting him.
Besides, it's Steve.
He makes a low, indecisive noise in response to the question that echos in the goblet. Sets it back down on the table when he's drained it. "You know, you're the first person to ask that." He's touched - however weird that is. "I never thawed out enough to fully wake up, but it wasn't a controlled environment or static temperature, so I was up and down. Why?"
Yeah. Or he could just drink the damn water and save the delay.
"Mortal minds probably aren't meant to survive a lot of shit they do."
Steve steps in when Zerxus gets rougher with his armor, bats his hand out of the way and starts helping. If the gauntlets didn't bite, this probably isn't going to.
"They weren't being selfish or lacking compassion." He's very firm on that, in spite of being touched that Zerxus thought to ask. Don't insult his friends "They made assumptions. They weren't even bad assumptions given they found me inside ice and out. Besides, we all had bigger problems."
Fury. Fury should have known. Or at least thought about it. Then again, for all Steve knew, he had and did and was just leaving it alone.
He got very still, for a second. Most people don't just step into his space so comfortably, and the one person who does -
Well, even if Asmodeus is in a gentler sort of mood, he can discard the armour with a snap of his fingers. It's been a very, very long time since anyone has helped him out of it like this.
Strange, how easily his fingers fall to it when he lets them.
"...I'll accept that for some of them. Even most of them. But someone should have realised, and asked - even if there wasn't time then, they could have told you that there would be later." That's what a responsible leader does for their people.
Steve's been looking at that armor long enough that he's not fumbling around with it, though there are points where he's forcing latches past dried blood, that breaks and turns into dust and gets all over his fingers.
If he has so much as a split second of hesitation as a result of that, it doesn't show. In truth, there's no problem. Not the first time he's stepped in to pull gear off someone who's too (overwhelmed, shocky, traumatized, unconscious, dead) to do it themselves.
"Yeah, probably." Because what Zerxus is saying is true. "I'm still not complaining. Most of those people who didn't ask were my team, and the guy who should have is a decent guy and a hell of a spy, but not any kind of lead. His organization was compromised from go. He's out, now, and the whole thing's going to come down even without me." SHIELD anyway. Hydra, and what Hydra is trying to do with those carriers and files? ...He gets grim and tense at that. Closest he's come to a reaction to being here.
Between the two of them it doesn't take long before the armour loosens and shifts, but he doesn't immediately start pulling it off; instead he reaches up, and his hands hover just above Steve's. They radiate warmth in a way a human's absolutely wouldn't, but it isn't painful.
"There's no need to count yourself out just yet."
Giving comfort came so easily to him, once, even bitterly isolated and drowning in loneliness. Now, well - knowing what to say is one thing, but it comes out rough and awkward.
Steve doesn't understand why Zerxus made it that far toward physical contact, then stopped and hovered. The only way he can read that is wanting it, but not thinking it will be accepted.
As a result, he flips his hands over and wraps both hands around Zerxus' forearms and gives them a gentle squeeze. He's definitely not as warm as Zerxus. Just bog standard human in a too warm room. There's a lot of emotional warmth, at least, for the brief period it's there before he lets his hands fall.
"No. I think I do need to count myself out." There is a very slight smile with that. "Otherwise, I'm just giving someone a handle to grab. Consequences of me not being there are bad. Consequences of me getting desperate are worse. I'm okay." He isn't okay, but he isn't frantic or panicked, just resolute and... sad.
Something as simple, as basic, as casual physical affection should not completely short-circuit a man. Certainly not a whole-ass devil knight.
There's a lot going on, in his immediate reaction. He's frozen squarely between the impulse to pull away and the urge to lean in, and words die in his throat in a strangled sound that's - yearning-indignant-stunned. Even once Steve pulls back, Zerxus barely registers what he's saying at first.
Finally, if a bit roughly, "Hope and desperation are two different things."
What was that noise? Steve tilts his head and does something with his eyebrows that isn't exactly raising them but manages to be a mildly concerned question. Reaches back out to test the theory and squeezes Zerxus' hand. He keeps it this time.
Well, not entirely to test a theory. That would be cold and calculated; it is natural behavior for Steve. He's also still just trying to be reassuring.
"I know. I'm not real wired to surrender, anyway, but I need to get my head around the fact that I can and will sacrifice a few million people to save a few billion. Otherwise, I'm going to end up on the wrong side of that line." He is quiet and heartbroken in a way that shows, but he is somehow still steady.
Now. "I'm probably going to need clothes and practicals at some point or I'm going to end up naked and sleeping on your floor."
You've got to move forward. Even in someone else's hell.
Edited (oops, I did it - there was an extra word, shhhh) 2024-10-24 20:36 (UTC)
It's a little more subtle this time, if only because he isn't caught so unaware, but there's a sharp inhale that betrays him immediately: this is a profoundly touch-starved devil. Which apparently can happen.
He's already struggling to choose what he should do - jerk his hand away because that's definitely safer for both of them, or keep it right where it godsdamn is thank you - while he tries to focus more on Steve's words than the gentle squeeze of his hand. That means there's no shuttering his expression, hearing that heartbreak; there's no hiding just how viscerally he empathises with it.
Every decision allowed to him in the Calamity was, if not false outright, calculated. He knows that they were meant to haunt him, and that doesn't mean anything.
And while he's still grappling with all that this Captain goes and puts the image of him naked on the palace floor in his head.
"...You - that - th - "
His head hurts less, suddenly, which would be more of a relief if he couldn't hear Asmodeus cackling madly in the depths of it.
Steve watches all those reactions, and inclines his head very slightly. Does not immediately let go of Zerxus' hand, but does loosen his grip -- and not because Steve's stupid enough to read that as pain.
Neither is the empathy. Empathy more than the intense response to basic physical contact and affection make Steve wince, albeit faintly. Zerxus has been consistently more kind to him than fits his appearance or location (in the devil's house). Raw empathy and pain, here, in this discussion with all the rest of what's been said?
Steve's not stupid.
"What did you think you were getting in exchange?"
He's not judging. He's not condemning. He's not even pitying. He's just... sorry.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Probably.
Yet.
"I don't know that I can explain what I was doing in a way that will make sense to you." He'll give it a shot? "I had a group who'd infiltrated an organization I worked with hunting me down. They thought I was cornered. I didn't share their assessment, and jumped through a," glass, "wall. Then fell. Do you bring home a lot of mortals?"
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"I don't make a habit of it, no. Have you always been able to survive jumping out of buildings?"
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He's noticing that this is definitely a back and forth, question for question thing. "Not always. I signed up to be a test subject in a military project a long time ago. I'm still mortal, but a lot more durable than most." Mortal meaning to die. "Why me, then?"
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Quietly, still focused on his armour and not the man across from him, "You don't belong here."
No one belongs here, not really, but he hasn't been able to do much about that. It would be - nice, if he could just -
"Physical danger isn't what you need to worry about the most. Devils want your soul, above anything else. Don't talk to any of them if you can avoid it."
Belatedly, halfway through tugging his chest piece over his head, "Does your world have mages?"
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Then he keeps talking to a devil, because what else is he going to do?
"You know, I tend to operate on the principal that I should be worrying about my soul more than my physical state, anyway/ Some funny habit I picked up, somewhere. Might be the being able to fall twenty stories and walk away. Might have to add the ability to throw a car in to get the full reasoning." It's a drawl, but it is a really weary and wry one. It is also absolutely not a thing that happened with the serum. It's just Steve.
He looks back at the shield he left on an armchair briefly, then back. "I don't know if we have mages. Probably, by at least if the definition stretches as far as the god one does." Meaning... kind of? Close? Close enough? "So, do you have a plan or are you leaving me to find one?" He is... intentionally sticking to one question at a time and avoiding rhetorical ones since he found the rhythm of this thing. Even deliberately altering how he'd ask that last one to do it.
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"If more people had that priority, we'd be less crowded." It's wry, but there's...a much deeper, darker well of weariness in there. A devil probably shouldn't sound that damned sad about how many souls were snared by hell's flames. "Right now, I'm trying to learn enough to make a decent report and buy us some time. We won't solve this in a day."
He almost doesn't want to, but he isn't thinking about that.
"Whoever did this was very skilled in some kind of magic - but a lot of that's going to depend on if it came from my side or yours. Or both, working together, after some earlier contact. Do you know if that's happened, communication between your plane - or realm, or world, I don't know - and another place?"
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Look.
Just... look.
Keep dealing with your armor. And keep keeping it off the floor. The more serious question isn't one he even has a hard time answering. Because those theories he had? There's one at the top. "Yeah. There is. Chaos trickster 'God'." The lack of being impressed or considering Loki a god is audible. "Showed up, tried to take over the world with an army no one knows the origin of. We got his portal closed, dealt with them and sent him home to jail in a muzzle. And kept his shit."
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That revelation actually stills his progress entirely, though, and Zerxus does look up, eyes gleaming with vicious approval. "Well done. Let's hope he's involved - Asmodeus will be more interesting in punishing him than you."
With a wry nod at a desk with stacks of that paperwork, "Trickery is one of his domains, and so is Order."
Different reality or not, this god will stick in his craw.
Presumptuous of you.
Yes, but I'm right.
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"Trickery and Order with paperwork." He doesn't roll his eyes so much as pinch the bridge of his nose. "Sounds like the guy I worked for." Meaning Fury, at least Fury right now and some of his more recent bullshit.
As for the rest of that... Steve shrugs. "I'd probably he rather not be." That it not be Loki. He is tactically smart enough to spell out why, but... He'd really rather not have there be a step in there that involves opening earth up to this.
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"It would mean he got out of his cage, but that was probably inevitable." His fingertips alight as he looks down again, and he just seers the blood away. Sorry, Steve, that's a fresh new wave of carnage in your nostrils. "When you say home - he can't be the only god who wants to make trouble."
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He doesn't quite manage to stop the teeth bared grimace that comes with it. Dismisses it and fixes his expression back to merely uncomfortable pretty quickly, though. More worried about the blood being there to start with.
"Unfortunately for you, I'm gonna stick with your first advice which was to worry about my soul instead of my safety." Brace yourself now, is the warning behind what mostly sounds like (gentle) snark. "He's probably not the only one. He's just the only one who'd have a personal problem with me. Though I guess whoever and wherever his army came from would apply there, too."
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There are so many things that he's forgotten.
"Shit, hold on - " He waves a hand towards one of those goblets and it immediately fills with clear, cool water. "And no, I'm sure he isn't." Gentle snark right back at you, sir, even if there's still a wry note of apology in there. (That's as explicit as he'll get. Devils don't apologise out loud, not sincerely.)
"You've lasted - how long, exactly, with that attitude?" Durability only counts for so much, especially when you're going around fighting gods.
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He eyes the goblet with some suspicion but ultimately isn't the cautious sort. Besides, Zerxus has consistently tried to be helpful. "I'd like to say just shy of a hundred years, but I think I'm too honest to pretend that I had an attitude or anybody was around to object to it when I was in the middle of a block of ice."
He actually shrugs at the end of his statement and drinks his water, though the shrug's slight. The shrug isn't apologetic.
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"...Were you conscious for any of that?"
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Besides, it's Steve.
He makes a low, indecisive noise in response to the question that echos in the goblet. Sets it back down on the table when he's drained it. "You know, you're the first person to ask that." He's touched - however weird that is. "I never thawed out enough to fully wake up, but it wasn't a controlled environment or static temperature, so I was up and down. Why?"
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"That isn't - the sort of thing a mortal mind is meant to withstand. No one has asked - "
He will straight up rip this armour if he isn't careful.
"Well. I'm glad people are just as selfish over there."
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"Mortal minds probably aren't meant to survive a lot of shit they do."
Steve steps in when Zerxus gets rougher with his armor, bats his hand out of the way and starts helping. If the gauntlets didn't bite, this probably isn't going to.
"They weren't being selfish or lacking compassion." He's very firm on that, in spite of being touched that Zerxus thought to ask. Don't insult his friends "They made assumptions. They weren't even bad assumptions given they found me inside ice and out. Besides, we all had bigger problems."
Fury. Fury should have known. Or at least thought about it. Then again, for all Steve knew, he had and did and was just leaving it alone.
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Well, even if Asmodeus is in a gentler sort of mood, he can discard the armour with a snap of his fingers. It's been a very, very long time since anyone has helped him out of it like this.
Strange, how easily his fingers fall to it when he lets them.
"...I'll accept that for some of them. Even most of them. But someone should have realised, and asked - even if there wasn't time then, they could have told you that there would be later." That's what a responsible leader does for their people.
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If he has so much as a split second of hesitation as a result of that, it doesn't show. In truth, there's no problem. Not the first time he's stepped in to pull gear off someone who's too (overwhelmed, shocky, traumatized, unconscious, dead) to do it themselves.
"Yeah, probably." Because what Zerxus is saying is true. "I'm still not complaining. Most of those people who didn't ask were my team, and the guy who should have is a decent guy and a hell of a spy, but not any kind of lead. His organization was compromised from go. He's out, now, and the whole thing's going to come down even without me." SHIELD anyway. Hydra, and what Hydra is trying to do with those carriers and files? ...He gets grim and tense at that. Closest he's come to a reaction to being here.
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"There's no need to count yourself out just yet."
Giving comfort came so easily to him, once, even bitterly isolated and drowning in loneliness. Now, well - knowing what to say is one thing, but it comes out rough and awkward.
His head is still pounding.
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As a result, he flips his hands over and wraps both hands around Zerxus' forearms and gives them a gentle squeeze. He's definitely not as warm as Zerxus. Just bog standard human in a too warm room. There's a lot of emotional warmth, at least, for the brief period it's there before he lets his hands fall.
"No. I think I do need to count myself out." There is a very slight smile with that. "Otherwise, I'm just giving someone a handle to grab. Consequences of me not being there are bad. Consequences of me getting desperate are worse. I'm okay." He isn't okay, but he isn't frantic or panicked, just resolute and... sad.
He is not awkward giving comfort.
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There's a lot going on, in his immediate reaction. He's frozen squarely between the impulse to pull away and the urge to lean in, and words die in his throat in a strangled sound that's - yearning-indignant-stunned. Even once Steve pulls back, Zerxus barely registers what he's saying at first.
Finally, if a bit roughly, "Hope and desperation are two different things."
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Well, not entirely to test a theory. That would be cold and calculated; it is natural behavior for Steve. He's also still just trying to be reassuring.
"I know. I'm not real wired to surrender, anyway, but I need to get my head around the fact that I can and will sacrifice a few million people to save a few billion. Otherwise, I'm going to end up on the wrong side of that line." He is quiet and heartbroken in a way that shows, but he is somehow still steady.
Now. "I'm probably going to need clothes and practicals at some point or I'm going to end up naked and sleeping on your floor."
You've got to move forward. Even in someone else's hell.
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He's already struggling to choose what he should do - jerk his hand away because that's definitely safer for both of them, or keep it right where it godsdamn is thank you - while he tries to focus more on Steve's words than the gentle squeeze of his hand. That means there's no shuttering his expression, hearing that heartbreak; there's no hiding just how viscerally he empathises with it.
Every decision allowed to him in the Calamity was, if not false outright, calculated. He knows that they were meant to haunt him, and that doesn't mean anything.
And while he's still grappling with all that this Captain goes and puts the image of him naked on the palace floor in his head.
"...You - that - th - "
His head hurts less, suddenly, which would be more of a relief if he couldn't hear Asmodeus cackling madly in the depths of it.
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Neither is the empathy. Empathy more than the intense response to basic physical contact and affection make Steve wince, albeit faintly. Zerxus has been consistently more kind to him than fits his appearance or location (in the devil's house). Raw empathy and pain, here, in this discussion with all the rest of what's been said?
Steve's not stupid.
"What did you think you were getting in exchange?"
He's not judging. He's not condemning. He's not even pitying. He's just... sorry.
He'll sprawl around naked, later.
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