uncrossed (alver x og cale)

Part 3

One of the problems with wanting to die was definitely the recovery period.

When the most comforting thought a person could possess was the knowledge that life is ultimately transient and, even better, potentially quite a bit shorter than the average lifespan, there was a certain gap that remained afterwards.

What else could a person find comfort in aside from mortality?

Cale had never actively used his desire to die as a particular comfort but the passive use of it never became more obvious than when he had begun denying himself that method of coping.

There was something distinctly daunting about knowing that your life will be longer than you planned it to be. There was suddenly so much time to use and no idea what to do with it.

It left him unnerved.

Faintly in the back of his heart, he still found it in him to crave death, but that wish was hampered by the knowledge that death wouldn't actually do anything to solve the deeper issues he was struggling with.

Ultimately it wasn't a desire to die but deep seeded insecurity that had grown into a toxic disease.

It had been so much easier to genuinely crave death when he still believed his family would be happier if he died.

Above any of his more personal desires, Cale never wanted his family to suffer. Now he had to find a way of satisfying his desire to make them happy without sacrificing his own happiness to do it.

Life was seriously a lot harder than advertised. Cale wanted a damn refund.

Not for the first time, he wished that the stupid bastard was nearby to appreciate his bleak humor. Alver had a way of making a cynical piece of shit feel funny.

The sheer pointlessness of the desire caused Cale to let out a worn out sigh.

He was nearly done with his travels back to the capital. Days like these, he thought about how useful things like teleportation magic were. He'd traveled all the way back to the Henituse territory, met with his family and found more reasons to be disheartened, before getting back onto a carriage heading to the capital to respond to the royal summons.

He felt a bit guilty over how relieved he was to leave.

It wasn't that he hadn't missed his family and it wasn't that he didn't like seeing them, it was just a lot all at once and he still hadn't learned how to cope without the crutch of suicidal ideations.

Still, he had an idea of how he wanted to change and that allowed for a certain amount of distraction.

He'd made good use of his trip at least.

Whenever he found himself spiraling into a toxic litany of thoughts, he started writing letters. He started with a letter to himself, his other self, because writing a letter that could never be read brought a certain sense of comfort to him.

Slowly he started writing letters to his family. To people he knew. To people he cared about. Some were even addressed towards Alver, although which Alver tended to change quite frequently.

He had no intention to send a single one of them and he'd already burnt a few as tinder for campfires, especially the ones written for people from another world. They helped him to sort out his thoughts and his intentions.

To figure out what it was he really wanted to say.

The first steps of learning exactly how to become selfish was to identify a sense of self and the letters were helping him to formulate an image.