Lance woke up from sleep sometime later; he didn't know when exactly, but he knew his sleep had been fitful. He'd stirred at every little sound, worried that it indicated another advent of enemies--but for now, they seemed to be safe.

He opened his eyes to see Sophie staring at him intently. She looked scared but was still trying her best not to show it. "Hey," she said softly.

"Hi." Lance nodded slowly. It had been a long time since he'd woken up next to someone else. Sophie was pretty cute by his standards—he'd noticed before while they'd been in here earlier. Her hair fell over her shoulders like black silk, and even though it seemed tangled in places, it somehow just worked with her face and made it look more than it already was. There were dark bags under her eyes, probably from everything that'd happened tonight, but she smiled despite it all, giving off a slightly wild aura as well as an impression that there was nothing that could get her down for very long.

"You okay?" he asked, sitting up and looking around.

Sophie shook her head, clearly indicating that no, she wasn't. she thought, then turned away from him as if to hide how she felt: she couldn't show him that part of herself right now, not after the things they had done together so far today.

Ah. He hadn't even realize he'd turned [Mindread] on.

"Not a bad one," Lance said out loud. "Sorry. I was listening in."

She sighed—or tried to, at least. "So you heard me talking using your ability to read minds? That's a littlecreepy."

Lance shrugged, taking a drink of water from his canteen—it had been getting low, but it still seemed like it would last them for a while longer. "Sorry," he said with a shrug. "I can stop."

Sophie thought, She took a sip from her own canteen. "It's just... it'll take some time to get used to. It's something new."

"That's pretty common these days though, isn't it?" Lance asked, pointedly looking at the bodies that still lined the place. "Lots of things to adapt to."

"Yep. Speaking of which." Sophie lifted her pants leg, revealing to Lance a leg with a notable lack of a bullet wound.

"It healed that fast?" Lance asked.

"It did," Sophie said. “Something to do with increasing my Health stat? You should try it.”

“I’ll think on it”, Lance said

The two stared at each other before turning away again as if embarrassed, but neither could look the other in the eyes after what they'd done. A few moments passed in silence. The night air was cool against their skin, and they sat there for a long moment without talking—but not because either of them didn't want to say anything. They were both trying to think up something to fill the awkwardness between them with words. It had been so easy earlier when he was fighting those bandits—they hadn't hesitated to attack others or even kill for survival. But now, they had time to process things. Now it made everything seem much more real than it had been just hours ago.