crossed over (alver x og cale)

Part 8

Cale really liked the smell of burning bastards in the morning.

In actuality, he found the scent of a wild out of control fire to be repulsive, but he had a special love for this burning building.

It was the one full of people who had tried, and failed, to cause his younger siblings fatal injuries.

Cale reflected that it was true what they said. Under the right circumstances, anyone could become a killer.

His correct circumstances were choosing between his siblings, even weird fantasy versions of them, and his morals.

Morals be damned, his siblings were always the priority.

He didn't even feel bad about it.

Probably in the future it would really hit him that he'd burned several people alive and he'd be forced to reflect on what a monster that made him and feel the horrible dreadful guilt of having committed such a heinous crime.

Cale was like that, he did things and felt guilty later.

He had a good feeling that it would be a long time later though. Because Lily was barely breathing when they found her and Basen was still shivering in his arms.

The bastards could burn.

Cale's week had gone badly.

He'd made a lot of very good plans for the future. He'd put all of his ducks neatly in a row and he was this close to persuading his father to go along with his aggressive plans to eradicate the bastards who dared to target their family.

But then the bastards struck first.

In one night, the Henituse family had descended into chaos.

On the eve before Deruth was to give his answer to Cale, Lily and Basen Henituse went missing.

From what Cale could gather, the pair had ditched their escort for a private conversation and wound up kidnapped then. Basen was mostly unscathed because Lily had fought nearly until her last breath to protect her weaker elder brother.

It could really make a guy homicidal to see something like that.

Cale had been able to find where they were being kept and a lot of ridiculous shenanigans later, he was now staring at the burning building while he hugged his distraught brother. Lily was laying down nearby while the healers fussed over her and Cale could hear his father barking orders to handle this and that.

Cale's week had just gone so fucking badly and now his plans for the future were burning up with the corpses of those bastards.

It was lucky that Ron was so reliable, he reflected and glanced down at Lily's battered body with a vile feeling filling up his chest. If they had arrived even a moment later, who was to say if either of his siblings would have survived.

She would be okay. The healers had promised that but they required space to work their magic and Cale just wanted to scream at them all to stop fucking around with magic tricks and call a fucking doctor.

His modern sensibilities weren't coping with the world of fantasy very well.

"...hyung-nim?"

Cale looked down at his trembling brother who had finally calmed down enough to look at him.

"It's okay." He said gruffly, patting Basen's head gently. "I took care of it."

His words weren't that much of a comfort. Cale knew that they didn't have the trust yet to support such a statement. But Basen's trembling decreased and his body slumped against Cale, trusting Cale to carry his weight.