When Iris apologized and agreed to keep moving, Cas didn’t say anything. He didn’t have the energy to tell her that there was no reason for her to be sorry. Despite the tough face he was trying to put on, he was just as distraught about what had just happened as she was, so he couldn’t blame her for having a panic attack. If anyone ever went through everything they’d experienced since they’d left Maisie’s apartment and came out on the other side perfectly fine, he would have thought they were a liar or a sociopath. He just couldn’t bring himself to argue with her about it when he was barely strong enough to make it to another hideout before he collapsed in on himself under the weight of the abject horror that still brewed underneath the surface of his calm exterior.

Walking close beside her, he dropped his gaze to the ground, mentally and physically exhausted from the attack. He wasn’t sure if Iris knew where she was going, but he didn’t bother to ask. It wasn’t like he could give her any suggestions, after all. He still barely knew which district they were in, so he didn’t have the foggiest idea where to search for more lodging. Content with trailing along in silence, he didn’t look up again until he heard her say that they might have to make use of the forest and the road. [color=#b97703]“Whatever works,”[/color] he muttered, inwardly surprised by how little he cared that the path the was suggesting was supposedly dangerous. It seemed like he’d reached his limit on how worried he could be for his own life at some point between the bloodbath in the plaza and the bombs that had just been dropped by the Aspirian military. Right now, he was morbidly numb to the fact that he was in danger practically all the time.

In addition to that, his excitement about returning to the capital had waned drastically since he’d seen the bombers in the air. It was hard for him to believe, but there was even a part of him that wasn’t sure if he wanted to go back at all. His father obviously didn’t care that he could have been killed. It explained why the soldiers had never found him in Regis’s basement too. Atlas wasn’t even looking for him to begin with; he was too caught up in his hatred of the Scourge to care that his son was missing. His throat tightened with the thought, and he swallowed dryly, fighting back against the dejection that welled up within him. What was the point in going home if “home” was a place that moved on with or without him? Now that he knew how little he meant to his own father, he even wondered if it would be better for him to be killed out in the middle of nowhere rather than go back to a life in which he was nothing more than a subject for the media to use to keep the high borns entertained.

Pained by his own thought, he took a shuddering breath and looked up as they approached the woods on the outskirts of Bel Bicis. After walking through the debris for a while, his lungs had started to burn from constantly inhaling dust and ash. He hoped the gritty clouds would settle soon, so he could breathe fresh air again. [color=#b97703]“Is this where we’re going to be staying for the rest of the day?”[/color] he asked and then coughed as speaking irritated his soot-coated throat. A few days ago, he would have assumed she was leading him to a shelter on the other side of the trees, but he’d been traveling with her long enough to realize that the forest probably [i]was [/i]their shelter for now.