As Iris revealed a rag and a bottle of some kind of liquid Cas couldn’t make out in the dark, he stared up at her in surprise. Briefly, he felt a familiar surge of fondness for her, appreciative of the effort, but the emotion was quickly squashed by the reminder that she wasn’t the person he’d thought she was in the capital. She was probably still just trying to trick him into trusting her again, and he wasn’t going to fall for that again. He had to remember that he had no friends in this place. The only one he could truly rely on was himself until he managed to get back to the capital or the soldiers found him first.

Regardless, he wasn’t going to pass up medicine if she was offering it. Once she’d set the bottle down, he picked it up and opened the top, bringing it to his nose to sniff the contents before he touched the liquid to any part of his body. To his further bemusement, it smelled like vodka. [color=#b97703][i]Now I know why she said I could drink it,[/i][/color] he mused, setting it down again to get the rag. As tempting as the offer was to drink away his problems right now, he wasn’t going to do it. For one thing, he was so severely dehydrated that he would give himself the mother of all hangovers and waste the little amount of water he had drunk. For another, he needed to keep his wits about him at all times, so he could run. The cons vastly outweighed the pros, so he poured the liquor onto the cloth and pressed it against his headwound, sucking in a breath as the cut stung sharply in response.

In the next moment, he flinched again but for an entirely different reason. After he’d spent so much time in total darkness, the light that filtered through the window that Iris had uncovered was blinding. He squeezed his eyes shut for a few seconds before he risked opening them again, his eyelids fluttering while his vision adjusted. As it did, he realized a few different things about his cell. The first of which was that he wasn’t in a prison, but in what appeared to be a makeshift dungeon in someone’s house. The second thing he noticed was that he was probably in a basement, as was evident by the fact that the window was situated at the top of the wall, as if the rest of the room was underground.

Taking in the small space, he turned his head to the side, already analyzing it as fast as he could while he had the chance. The sight gave him hope that he would be able to escape. He’d thought he was in a secure location, probably surrounded by guards or even other prisoners of war. Instead, he was in a pieced-together cell that didn’t look nearly as secure as he’d pictured it in his head. The grainy shapes that he’d seen in the dark were just boxes for storage and an empty chair, any of which he could prop underneath the window to crawl up and out of the room. His heartbeat quickened as he strung the idea together in his mind’s eye.

Iris’s voice grounded him, and he glanced at her, wondering what she had been about to say. [color=#b97703]“Why do you care if I eat?”[/color] he asked. The question was less hostile this time and more genuinely curious instead. [color=#b97703]“Regis already told me you’re all planning to kill me in three days… or so.”[/color] He furrowed his brows, remembering that he didn’t actually know how much time he had left before the rebels would take his life. [color=#b97703]“It’s not like I’ll starve to death that fast, so why bother giving me even a couple slices of bread?”[/color]