At the easy use of his first name - a name he had not given Castiel - his suspicions of HYDRA involvement grew. He was known to this Castiel.
But then the rest came to light. James wavered between outright rejection and the very real consideration that the ... creature ... in front of him was exactly what he said. The City, James had begun to learn, was far stranger than any other place he'd been.
Castiel was offering assistance. Typically, HYDRA moved directly to the mission and accomplished it as quickly and efficiently as could be managed - at least, those were his working orders. Offering your mission assistance was unheard of.
James didn't know what to think. Then, as he considered exactly what drove him out here, he imagined that it couldn't get any worse for Ariel, no matter what happened in the next few minutes.
"Can you help me?" James asked. He was not talking about the jump down; that much was easy. It was... all the rest. The fractures in his mind. The inability to recall what he'd been before HYDRA hollowed him out completely. The way his thoughts - even now - were dipping into Russian.