[color=#b97703]“Maybe someone forced him to step down,”[/color] Cas suggested uncertainly. He didn’t understand the reason for Regis’s disappearance either. Iris’s father had been the leader of the entire rebellion, so even if he’d been thinking about retiring at some point, it made no sense that he would have done so in the middle of the war. His work hadn’t been finished yet. It seemed far more likely that someone else was pulling the strings and that the last revolutionary leader had had no choice but to pass the torch to a successor. The only thing missing was a motive, and the only possible reason he could think of was that someone else with a lot of power in the Scourge had been furious with him for losing their captive and had taken away his authority as a punishment.

When Iris said that she would think of something, he fell quiet again. Inwardly, he doubted she was going to be able to get them out of this prison like she had when he’d been locked up at her father’s house. There were so many more barriers here in the forms of increased security, improved containment, and a lack of support from anyone on the outside. It was going to take nothing short of a miracle for them to get away from the rebels this time. He still tried to hold onto an ember of hope that, somehow, they were going to escape with their lives, but he was emotionally drained and physically exhausted. It was difficult to be optimistic when every part of him ached, and he was surrounded by cold, gray walls that were likely to be the last thing he ever saw before he died.

[color=#b97703]“You should rest too,”[/color] he advised her solemnly, shifting his weight on the metal bed to lay down. The hard slab wasn’t comfortable in the slightest, but he was too tired to care about the way it pressed into his side as he settled. The motion jarred his injured ribs as well, and he had to hold his breath for a few seconds until the pain ebbed away. The more wounds he took, the less sure he was about which ones he should prioritize taking care of. His arm threatened him with infection, but now so did the scrapes on his skin from being grated on the asphalt and the gash on the inside of his cheek. If his ribs were actually broken, they needed to be treated too.

[color=#b97703][i]Although, none of that matters if they’re just going to shoot me,[/i][/color] he thought with a grimace. There was no point in giving medical attention to a dead man, after all. His dull eyes wandered back to Iris. He didn’t have much of a chance of escaping, but she still did. She was a member of the rebellion—a traitorous one, but a member nonetheless—and he didn’t want her to lose her life with him. She didn’t deserve that after everything she had done to help him.

[color=#b97703]“Promise me something,”[/color] he said quietly, keeping his voice down both to prevent the closest guards from overhearing and because he was weary. [color=#b97703]“Promise me that you’ll do everything you can to keep [i]yourself[/i] alive, even if you have to leave me behind or go back to their side to do it… I don’t want you to be killed for my sake when they’re going to shoot me no matter what. You need to live, Iris.”[/color]