Cas flinched when Iris touched the towel to his open wound. The alcohol stung, but he knew it was necessary to keep the area clean—he understood at least that much about taking care of cuts—so he bit his lip and soldiered through the pain without complaint. All the while, he pondered over her decision to treat him in the first place. Maybe she really was trying to help. If she had been about to lead him to the rebels who were going to kill him, there was no need for her to stop and tend to the injuries of a soon-to-be corpse. It would have been a waste of resources. However, he couldn’t rule out the possibility that she was still putting on an act to convince him to trust her, so he didn’t let his guard all the way down.

Once she finished tying off her makeshift bandages, he looked down at his arm to inspect her work. With no prior experience dealing with stab wounds, he didn’t really know what he was looking for, but it seemed like she’d done a good job. The cloth was tightly bound around his bicep, but not so much so that he was losing feeling in his fingers. Hopefully it would be enough to get his arm to stop bleeding so profusely, so he wouldn’t pass out from blood loss. If she really was helping him escape, he was going to need the strength to make it back to the capital without keeling over. He was already short on the energy he would have gotten from sufficient food and water, so bleeding out would probably worsen his odds of getting away quite a bit.

At Iris’s instruction to put on the hoodie she’d given him, Cas nodded and slid the warm fabric over his shoulders. Moving his left arm was painful, and he noticed that it seemed to briefly increase his bleeding again. Once the jacket was on, he made a mental note to avoid trying to move it again if he was able, so he could give himself a chance to start healing from the damage Regis had done.

Ready to go, he stood up from the floor to follow her and then faltered, leaning his good hand against the wall. The motion had made him woozy, and in retrospect, he realized he should have gotten up a little more slowly. Between the lack of food and water, the beating he’d taken from Iris’s father, and the blood loss, he was in pretty bad shape. Nevertheless, he walked carefully after her once he’d given himself a moment to recover from the dizzy spell, pulling his hood over his head somewhat awkwardly with only his right hand.

[color=#b97703]“‘Quick’ may be an issue,”[/color] he admitted with a sigh. Shuffling up the stairs, he felt like an old man. Everything hurt, and he had the urge to grunt and groan every time he ascended a step. He’d never been this sore in his life, and he longed to lay down in his warm bed at home with something warm to drink and a tablet in his lap to watch the current season of basketball until he got better. Some strong painkillers sounded heavenly too, preferably the kind that would make him a little loopy, so he could forget about everything he’d had to endure in Regis’s basement.

Fantasizing about the capital, he was jarred from his thoughts by the sight of the run-down street Iris was leading him toward. [color=#b97703][i]Where the hell are we?[/i][/color] He thought, looking over the worn asphalt and the pockmarked buildings with distaste. [color=#b97703][i]This entire area is filthy… If I get back, I’ll have to let the city planners know they missed a spot in their restoration project.[/i][/color] It was surprisingly to him that the unrestored area was so vast. He knew there were a few places in Aspiria that still looking like this, but he’d thought they were small enough that one could still see the accomplished skyscrapers and impressive, modern architecture on the skyline. Wherever they were, there was nothing to see but old, dingy buildings for miles.

[color=#b97703]“Which district is this?”[/color] he asked, too curious to keep his questions to himself. Noticing the way Iris held her head down, he mimicked the posture and lowered his own. As he did, he noticed in the daylight that both of his hands were covered with drying blood. His left had a few thin trickles that had rolled down from his upper arm, but his right was veritably covered since he’d tried to use it to apply pressure to his stab wound. With a grimace, he shoved both into his hoodie’s pockets. [color=#b97703]“I hope you didn’t want this back,”[/color] he warned her, thinking about how bloodstained the inside of the jacket probably was since it was laying on top of his soaked shirt and left arm. [color=#b97703]“I don’t think it’ll be salvageable after this.”[/color]