Steve being the toughest son of a bitch to ever get knocked down, spit blood, and get back up full of defiance, snark, and fuck-you is very much bulletproof for me and as such is my preferred flavor of trash, so this is a bit of a departure from my usual. But with the extreme and prolonged nature of the things I put him through in this one, and the trauma of that kind of solitary confinement in particular (and the documented and heart-wrenching effects that frequently has on a person), he had to crack a little here. It seemed overly unrealistic and insensitive to depict otherwise. But, well, turns out there's still farther down to go in this one. Bear with me here. There's a scene coming up that I'm, uh, very curious to see how it goes over, but it might actually be even heavier than the assault scenes.

Thank you for the comments. They're so excellent and motivating, and I appreciate them a lot.