"Anything can be stripped down that way," Steve countered steadily, his tone even as he cleanly sent the bag back. "Sure, you can reduce what matters, what everything is about to some bare bones survival instinct. Plenty do." It wasn't merely something in books he'd studied but something Steve had seen time and again. Men and women ground down by life, hard knocks scraping away every facet except what kept one breathing. Steve wasn't a man who did many things without a purpose, and understanding people, how they worked, while never an exact science was a worthwhile lifelong endeavor. It was impossible to fully be a person without wanting to know people, at least for him. "However, just because something can be reduced doesn't mean it should be. That in doing so a large part of the meaning of what that survival instinct gives is lost. No. Life comes down to what we make of it. What we let ourselves make of it, in the end. Some things we don't have control over - plenty of things we don't have control over. Our perspective however, when we're in our right minds, is something we can determine, and I think it'd be a damned shame to decide all there is, is to eat before eaten. Perhaps life is less messy when it's that simple and bare bones, but messy is where the meat of it all is." His tone had become more impassioned as he went and he took a deep breath, mitigating it with, "And if the portal sends innocuous, not eat or be eaten garden variety items, well all the better for it."
Steve didn't miss the rapid nature of Logan's punches, the silent tell of a nerve being exposed. He listened as Logan reiterated some of what Steve'd said, that sometimes there were times when you dropped the ball, and it was entirely on you. Steve knew that better than most, leading troops in war and the Avengers after, having the fate of the world in his hands and the hope of the people on his shoulders time and again. He lived daily with those balls in the air, a delicate balance that he was expected to keep up and one he did without complaint. That didn't mean he hadn't more than once fumbled and paid the price.
He could debate about the notion that everything broke in the end, that it was an inevitable part of life, which he didn't believe. Not always. Just because something something came to an end didn't mean it broke, and there were lives both of them had helped preserve that stood in testament to a bullet dodged rather than a surgical repair. A debate though wasn't what was needed now, and Steve listened rather than caring about who was right. Neither of them were, really. It was a sack of personal truths swinging between them, with the idea of an ultimate answer perpetually out of reach. Instead Steve listened, he heard the words of there being nobody there when the ball was dropped, of no relief coming, of a call not wanting to be made, but not that it hadn't been. He noted the switch between saying best calls and the singular the right call within a span of one sentence. He saw the closed eyes and looking down at hands, and Steve reached out to still the bag between them, looking at Logan without nothing but silent understanding. "Which call are we talking about now, Jim?"