Moving was unpleasant, so Cas laid on his side with his eyes closed as he slowly woke up. He hoped they could stop by a pharmacy to get more painkillers soon. Even if the detour delayed his return to the capital, he felt like the tradeoff was worth it as long as he could dull the soreness in his whole body. At this rate, he doubted he would be able to move very quickly anyway. Yesterday, he’d kept up with Iris fairly well because he’d still had enough adrenaline left to push through the discomfort, but after a night had passed, he didn’t want to do anything other than curl up and sleep for a month. Every time he shifted his arms or his legs, his bruised muscles burned in protest. The worst of it emanated from his abdomen, where Regis had punched and kicked him so much that it was even painful to draw breath.

With no distractions to keep his mind off the aching, he wallowed in it for a while until the sound of a door opening drew his attention. Lifting his head, he blinked against the soft light—confirmation that it was indeed morning—and stared bemusedly as Iris stepped into the bomb shelter. He hadn’t heard her get up, so he’d assumed she was still sleeping nearby. Tediously, he managed to get one arm underneath his side to push himself into a sitting position on the bed. As he did, he took a look around the room while the door was still open, curious to see the place they had just spent the night since it was been too dark to examine yesterday.

The bunker was expectedly filthy for a place that hadn’t been needed since the last major war decades ago. No surprises there. He glanced down at the mattress he was seated on, which was just as dusty. There was even a thin layer of dirt covering his clothes after he’d slept on it, but he had been grubby before he’d laid down, so he couldn’t bring himself to care. What he was more interested in was checking over his injuries. He unzipped his hoodie and shrugged it off his shoulders to get a better look at the bruises covering his upper body. He had some on his arms, mostly around his shoulders, and he could feel a few on his legs, though he didn’t take his jeans off to look at them while Iris was in the room. Taking a steeling breath, he lifted the hem of his shirt and then blanched as his gaze fell on his stomach. His skin was mottled with dark shades of purple, blue and green, courtesy of Regis’s boots and fists.

[color=#b97703][i]Well, now I know why it hurts so bad,[/i][/color] he shuddered, letting the fabric fall back down over his torso. As Iris approached him, he looked up at her and then down at the bottle in her hand. [color=#b97703]“Thanks,”[/color] he said as he took it, lacking the hostility that had tinted his voice before. Because he had survived the night, he felt convinced that he could trust her. It still hurt that she had taken advantage of his trust in the capital, but at the very least, he believed she wouldn’t lead him to his death. He just wished he could get rid of the pit that formed in his stomach whenever he looked at her face. Whether he liked it or not, he’d developed a crush on her in the capital, and he couldn’t erase the memory of kissing her before she’d betrayed him. There were so many feelings tangled up in everything that had happened that he had a hard time figuring out how to look at her now.

Taking the cap off the bottle, he lifted it to his lips to drink some, doing his best to ignore the foul taste. Purified water was something he would never take for granted again when he got home. [color=#b97703]“I can wait until later,”[/color] he assured her when she said she couldn’t get food right away. [color=#b97703]“I’m not even hungry yet.”[/color] For the first time in half a week, he hadn’t woken up famished, so he had no qualms with waiting a little longer for his next meal.

Unable to stomach any more of the bottled water for now, he put the lid back on and let his eyes wander over the room again. He wasn’t sure what to say to Iris now that the conversation had lulled, so he was trying to distract himself from the awkwardness. However, as he did, he noticed something that made him furrow his brows confusedly. [color=#b97703]“Where did you sleep last night?”[/color] he asked, glancing up at her with a frown. He hadn’t realized it last night, but there was only one bed in the shelter.