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.

Cale frowned, ready to argue back and explain to Eric his findings in great detail when he stopped himself.

Every behavior, every word, elicited certain behaviors and words from the person or people around you. So, arguing with Eric when putting into consideration his stubborn personality and factual tendencies, would eventually result in the challenging demand to 'prove it'.

Cale immediately rescinded his argument, deciding that rather than telling Eric, he'd just have to show him. Therefore, he would need to learn how to manipulate Eric's thoughts and opinions.

It sounded a lot crueler than it was. Cale wasn't a boy who had any malice towards anyone around him and especially not towards his friend. As the ignorant child honed his skills at manipulation and public perception, he persuaded Eric to eat more vegetables and to invest more time into his studies.

He'd decided on those goals because his mother had assured him that those were the things a good child ought to do and Eric was a good child so how did it harm anyone?

Of course Cale had childishly failed to see the flaw in his plan. Once he'd explained what he'd done to Eric, the other boy simply hadn't believed him. Hadn't believed he did all those things on purpose to change Eric's behavior. Hadn't believed the forethought.

In fact, Eric could not be persuaded to believe anything but he'd been the one to choose his path through his own autonomy.

This was another valuable lesson for Cale, even if the results were frustrating and disappointing for him at the time, and that was once you've successfully manipulated another person they will be loath to accept any loss in autonomy. Especially when they have a significant amount of pride.

Cale's warped growth reached a sudden and twisted turn when, yes, his mother died.

And all his life played out with that pivotal moment as a motivator. He grew fiercely protective of family and taught his younger siblings the same lessons he'd been taught, although with less grace.

He taught them that the world was cruel and that in order to avoid becoming a target, they needed to be stronger and smarter than that cruelty.

That no one should ever let them doubt their right to exist.

It was a poor explanation and not as convincing as the manipulative child was capable of being. But Cale had become a person who disliked manipulating his loved ones, especially how it had gone with Eric, and he much preferred to simply sway public opinion.

The public weren't a person. They were an entity whose eyes always watched him and criticized him, waiting for his next mistake.

He gave the audience what they had been waiting for, more than they could have imagined.

It was a simple problem. How did you force a person to choose an orange over an apple? Poison the apple and they'll be left with no choice but to eat the orange.

The consequences of poisoning the apple meant that the apple was, well, poisoned.

And Cale, sprawled across the garbage in an alleyway, face red from too much alcohol and body wasted from another beating, stared up at the stars in the sky and felt rather negative about all of this.

He'd never learned how to be sincere, he'd only ever learned how to lie. And that poison slowly seeps into your very bones. Life was, in its own special way, constant pain. He couldn't conceive of how to change it either.

He wasn't planning to change it.

He merely wanted a momentary reprieve from the pain. Unfortunately all the vices that normally granted individuals that sort of reprieve were his current poison of choice so there was no help to be found there.

The sky looked infinite and limited in the crack that could be seen over the alleyway. A vast forever of stars that had no end and was so easily framed by the tops of buildings.

Cale wondered if in all that vastness there was a place with less pain.

He loved his family. He loved his life. He chose his path and he stuck to it without regret.

...but it hurt...

And sometimes the pain caused the mind to search for an escape. Some place, somehow, some possible way–

Cale wanted to find a way to make the pain stop and he just didn't know where to begin.

Perhaps some god heard his feeble and voiceless whimpers for reprieve and decided "ah, my poor son, what trials you have faced... perhaps I should make your life worse, just to get a laugh out of it" because when Cale closed his eyes something changed.

When he opened his eyes he was no longer in the dank and smelly alleyway. Although his body's condition hadn't changed at all.

Cale blinked open his eyes once and then twice and tried with all his might to understand what he was looking at and why he was looking at it.

The face in front of him scrunched up, the arm around his waist adjusted and Cale realized with growing panic that there was an arm around his waist. "...Cale...?" The unfamiliar man asked without opening his eyes. "...what's that smell?"

"Who the fuck are you?!" Cale yelped, wrenching himself out of the strangers arms and falling off the edge of the bed with an undignified thump. The stranger on the bed sounded equally surprised, sitting up and staring down at Cale with a strange expression.

Cale added to his growing list of questions that consumed his very being: why the hell is he naked and why does he look upset as he glared up at the stranger.

If there was a time to panic, it was definitely now.