crossed over (alver x og cale)

Part 1

It hurts to be alive.

Some days that's really all the thought that coils around his exhausted existence.

It hurts being alive and it never really gets easier.

People make it easier but sometimes they make it harder. Happiness makes it easier but sometimes it makes it harder.

Ultimately the eternal state of being for any one individual is perpetual pain.

Like a toothache that won't fade and becomes nothing but the background pain in an otherwise painful existence.

Life is like that. There are present pains, background pains, and all sorts of nifty twists in between that firmly establish the agony of those who breathe to be the only real requirement for being 'alive'.

Cale was feeling just a bit negative.

In his defense, things haven't exactly been going right for a while now.

If he were to paint his life into broad strokes, there would be some meaninglessly dramatic statement like 'it all started when his mother died'.

Except it didn't start then.

That was far too convenient of a starting place for a life.

It all started when he was around five years old and the realities of his position in life were explained to him.

His loving parents, Deruth and Jour, had taken him aside after he threw a fit publicly and explained in the terms that a child could understand that he was the eldest son of the Henituse Territory's Count.

It wasn't a cruel lesson to teach, although some would argue that laying those sorts of responsibilities on any child was in itself cruel, it was merely a realistic lesson that any child of around his age and status might be taught. And his parents, for all their flaws, really were loving and kind people who only wanted the best for their son.

So Cale Henituse learned that he needed to think before he acted, especially when out in public, because his every action would have a reflection on the public's opinion of him and those around him.

He wasn't just anyone's son, if the butcher's son wept or threw a tantrum no one would lose faith in the butcher. Cale was a count's son. A nobleman.

The lesson was probably intended to urge the young boy to behave appropriately and embody the traits of a 'noble'. And in some ways it really did just that.

Perhaps it was the broad phrasing.

They did not tell him 'we will look bad if you do that' because they loved him and didn't want him to feel bad. They told him 'your actions will have a consequence on people's opinions'.

This gentle choice of phrasing had caused Cale's young mind to ruminate on the matter. Rather than merely accepting that 'acting poorly is bad' like so many other young children might have learned, Cale learned that he could manipulate public image.

He had to think about the psychology of the matter. What actions would elicit what consequences and so on and so forth. Of course, as a boy of merely five his phrasing was somewhat less eloquent.

"I know how to control people!" He'd declared triumphantly to his childhood friend, Eric.

Eric Wheelsman, being a skeptical child who had learned the appropriate lesson from his parents, had responded by pushing the brim of his glasses up. He'd seen someone else do it and he thought it made them look cool. He then confidently replied. "No, you can't." To Cale's absolutely ludicrous statement.