Cross blinked as they watched Epic nervously mess with the zipper of his coat. "What's wrong?"

"Just... not looking forward to what could happen, if things go wrong." Epic sighed.

"You have a plan, right?"

"We do, but there's so many things that could go wrong..."

"You just need to hold Ink, in one place, long enough for your Error to copy the access Codes to the Doodlesphere. It's a simple plan. Nothing can go wrong with it." Cross told the adult. "And you shouldn't doubt yourself. You must've something special, if an adult version of me, chose you to be his Mate."

Epic blushed.

Cross smiled, Epic really had to be something special, if the Cross of this Multiverse, chose him to be his Mate...

It made Cross jealous...

Why couldn't they have something like this?

What did they do, that made everyone, apart from Fresh and Red, pick others over them?

It wasn't fair, they had done everything right, they did their rest to be someone desirable, someone that others would want, but in the end, it hadn't been enough, for them, and mostly anyone that knew them, they just hadn't been good enough...

"Are you okay kid?" Epic suddenly asked them, bringing them back to the here and now.

"No... I'm not okay." Cross eventually admitted. "I... What did the me of this Multiverse do right, to get a happy ending? What did I do wrong? Did I make a mistake, and screw up, my chances of getting the same ending?"

"You did nothing wrong kid." Epic eventually told him. "No one gets the exact same happy ending, the lead up to it is different, and the roles that others play in it, are different too... And your happy ending being different, or a work in progress, doesn't make it invalid."

"It doesn't?"

"No. It doesn't, and it never will. Happy endings are different for everyone, and if yours is not quite here yet, then, that's okay. There's nothing wrong with it, and it's okay to be upset that it's not here yet."

"It is?"

"Yeah, it is okay to be upset, because it's a sign of how much you have grown... Have you ever felt like this before?"

"No... Not really... This is new to me... It's a decent development..."

"Then that means that you are growing past, and healing from, what XGaster has done to you."

Cross gasped, and they looked at Epic. "I'm healing from what my Multiverse has done to me?"

"Yes, you may not see it now, but your healing journey has started kid." Epic smiled. "Just remember, that healing is a non-linear progress. You'll have relapses, and lose some of the progress that you have made, and there will be times when you jump ahead, and make a lot of progress, but in the end, you will find what you are looking for, I promise."