[color=#b97703]“If you say so,”[/color] Cas shrugged, closing his eyes as he rested his head against Iris’s. Even after everything they had been through that day, taking the leap to be more than friends with her again still overshadowed all the rest. With her in his arms, it was easy for him to pretend like everything was just fine and that they hadn’t just fled from an imploding building. Of course, the trauma from the event hadn’t vanished, but he was enjoying the respite while it lasted. For the last week, he had been in a nearly constant state of stress, so it was nice to finally relax long enough to remember what it felt like to be at peace, even if it was temporary.

Taking her up on her offer to nap, he nodded faintly and let himself begin to drift off. The hard ground beneath them wasn’t as comfortable as a bed would have been, but Iris’s warmth made up the difference. In no time at all, he’d fallen into a light slumber with his arm resting limply over her body, his jaw hanging slack, and his chest rising and falling with slow, even breaths. He had hoped to wake up feeling well-rested, but apparently his brain had other ideas.

After about an hour of pleasant, fleeting dreams that didn’t last long enough for him to remember, his unprocessed grief over the war and his father caught up with him. He found himself back in the plaza in Bel Bicis, surrounded with exaggerated mounds of blood-covered bodies. Immediately, a sense of panic set in, and he ran, desperate to get away from the wreckage and corpses. But the plaza was never ending. The further he ran, the larger the piles of bodies became until he was completely surrounded. He could feel his sense of urgency swelling until he finally came to a halting stop, too overwhelmed to continue as he dropped to his knees among the ruins.

It was then that he felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning around, he saw his father standing behind him. The familiar face gave him a fleeting moment of relief before he watched in dismay as Atlas curled his lip with disgust and walked away, leaving him alone with no one but the pale, lifeless war victims around him for company. For a moment, he sat still, frozen with shock that his father would abandon him when he needed him most, but he didn’t have long to dwell on it when two of the corpses slowly crawled from one of the mounds and grabbed hold of his arms with clammy hands—the mother and daughter whose faces he would never forget. They grinned, showing bloodstained teeth, and began dragging him toward the other bodies. However, before he reached them, he awoke with a jolt.

Scrambling into a sitting position, Cas gasped for breath, trembling with residual fear from the vivid nightmare. It seemed like even though he had been relaxed when he’d fallen asleep, he wasn’t as recovered from the traumatic day as he’d thought. He dragged the back of his hand across his sweaty forehead as he tried to calm down again.