crossed over (alver x og cale)

Part 18

Cale wasn't a complete fool. He could manage very basic pattern recognition and even while full of all sorts of uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, most especially feelings for his current roommate, Cale had more or less figured out a method that might bring him home.

The trouble, as he would quite angrily like to express, is that he hated that method. It was the very definition of patronizing. Not to mention it was far easier said than done.

It wasn't so simple as wanting to go home. It wasn't even just the desire to have what he couldn't.

He didn't want to change. To believe that this was all achievable, from the very core of his being, to enter a new stage of his life and face all of the new and unique challenges that were sure to crush him beneath the enormity of their weight. To face all of the demons that his other self had defeated.

It wasn't that Cale liked living the way he had. It was just that his situation wasn't so simple as merely choosing to be better and then snapping his fingers. It wasn't even as simple as merely stopping all of his maladaptive behavior up until now.

Bridges that had been burnt needed to be rebuilt, brick by brick, broken pieces of broken hearts needed to be mended and cherished. So many mistakes needed to be amended for.

And aside from all of that hard work that would be trying even for a man at his best, Cale would need to fight an internal strife as well.

All of the horrible voices in his head that told him it was hopeless and he didn't belong. All of the urges to die and stop being a bother on the world. All of the swirling self hatred and self doubt, the trauma that he'd never fully dealt with and the fears that had gone unaddressed... he would need to face all of it and win.

He couldn't just decide to no longer feel sad or broken. If it was just that simple, he would have never fallen apart so thoroughly to begin with.

Cale needed to draw up all of his determination and strength and even then it might not be enough to win against those horrible feelings.

He didn't just need to want to change, he didn't just need to choose to change, he needed to be truly and sincerely willing to do so.

Willing to hear those horrible voices and to dismiss them as nothing more than insecurity. To ask himself why he felt insecure and solve the underlying problem that caused him to feel so wretched.

It wasn't an easy state of mind to attain. Especially when Cale was coming from the depths of despair that had brought him here.

That was just it.

It was such a stupid trigger and he hated that it made everything well and truly his fault.

He was the reason that everyone's lives had been so horribly disrupted. Again.

Despair had brought him here.

And when he could force his heart to feel hope, he felt just the flicker of a return.

"You wanted to talk?"

Cale looked up from where he'd been giving the floor a real stare-down that it wouldn't soon forget, scowling at the beautiful and foolish man who'd given him his heart and who he'd never see again if he succeeded.

"I think I know how to go home."

His voice was thick and miserable. He'd agonized for days and days as to whether to tell Alberu at all. Whether he ought to just disappear without a word and let the two who actually belonged together be happy while he fucked off to live in misery.