crossed over (alver x og cale)

Part 12

Cale had a decision to make.

He didn't like the decision, not one fucking bit, but after spending so much time in this shitty other world where he'd apparently achieved prosperity and happiness Cale had a really unfortunate amount of time to reflect upon, well, everything.

One of the sticky matters that was becoming unavoidable as time went on was his family.

Cale had been able to call off work and after he'd affirmed that Eric was the same jerk he knew, it was easy enough to talk to or avoid him at his leisure.

Alberu was a good roommate, if not a bit on the gloomy side on account of losing his fiance, and he gave Cale all of the room he needed to recover without allowing him any rope to hang himself with.

Sobriety was a nasty thing to experience when you'd focused on burying your feelings of inadequacy and loneliness inside of a bottle for several years now.

Family was a complicated subject for Cale.

They were the reason he drank for starters.

There was also no truly apt way of describing his feelings towards them. Cale loved his family with a protective passion that burned even in his worst hours. He also resented them, not a hateful emotion but rather a wretched one.

The part of his heart that cried out miserably for his mother.

His guilt for those feelings also drove him to drink.

Basically everything in regards to his family filled him with unsettled emotions that he had never been good at coping with. So instead of coping he focused on protecting them in his own unique way and drove his life to shit.

The idea that this Cale was on good terms with his family and attended weekly dinners with them was... unsettling. Cale had avoided it for as long as he could. But everytime Alberu sent along the message that he couldn't make it because of one reason or another, the guilt pierced his heart.

It wasn't just that he was avoiding the people he loved more than anyone else.

It was the knowledge that he was ruining something so precious for his other self.

To be clear, he held no great love for himself. And he especially resented the version of him who had achieved happiness where Cale had failed. He thought that the guy seemed like a really shitty bastard who just did whatever the fuck he wanted and he hated being compared to him at every fucking interval of every moment.

Seeing his happy face reflected in photographs and knowing that he couldn't compare.

Cale had rather masterfully developed an inferiority complex with himself. It was honestly an impressive feat.

But.

Despite Cale's every resentful feeling raging up inside of him without a single reprieve, Cale could empathize with the bastard like no one else.

The intolerable ache and agony of never having the family he truly wanted in his heart was probably the deepest scar upon Cale's miserable soul. Of all things, it was the one thing that Cale couldn't ruin for his other self.

Which is why he didn't want to meet them.

He'd ruin it. He wasn't his 'better' self. He was the garbage given human form who'd never figured out whatever epiphany his other self had in order to turn his life around.

The fear that they would revile him was paralyzing.

Even more pertinent, the fear that he could never have a family crushed his heart mercilessly.