AN: So, um. This sort of happened like, tonight. I hadn't even considered doing a sequence on Octavian in SG, so I'm just as surprised as anyone who has bothered following this. Chronologically, this is first in the line up, though the very end takes place towards the end of the SG universe and starts setting up the overall plot (even though there are so fucking many POVs I have to go through before the plot can be fully exposed).
As always, dedicated to the fabulous Taffeh A. Llama, because jeez, she helped so much with this, just by being generally painful with me as I went through the three hour process of writing this.
Also, for those of you following my Jasercy fic Holy Ground, I swear that Chapter Six is chugging along. It will definitely be up this month sometime, but I'm running into some trouble in this current chapter. But I promise it's going to happen this month.
Warnings: Some major ones for this one, actually. This fic takes place in 2001, in the August/September area, which means, yes, 9/11 talk. I wouldn't suggest it for anyone who is particularly triggered by anything relating to 9/11. Also, there's bullying in this one, and mentions of self-harm.
Disclaimer: I do not own PJO or HOO. If I did, the fandom would adore Octavian, and let's face it-everyone would be gay.
Onwards and Enjoy!
~halestorm
When Octavian starts middle school, he's expecting to be an outcast, because he's always been the outcast. Sixth grade is no exception, but at least he's not alone.
Octavian's survival team on the Island of Misfit Toys includes Reyna, who transferred over this year from some posh girls-only elementary school, and Jason, a boy with a scar and tough attitude. They're not overtly friendly towards him, but they're nicer than any of the other kids at Lupa's Middle School, so Octavian clings to them.
The other kids think that Octavian is weird because he carries his stuffed bear, Mr. Pooh Bear, with him everywhere he goes. It's so raggedy from use that it's eyes are falling out, and the seams have burst several times. When Octavian was little and still thought his father loved him, he'd climbed up on his mother's lap and had her stitch a heart onto the teddy bear, since it didn't have one, but surely, Octavian had reasoned, it should, because his father had given it to him and his father loved him. When Octavian got older and his father stopped loving him and his mother, Octavian tore the heart off, but you could still see the stitches from where it used to be.
The other kids taunt Jason because his mom is a well-known actress—but not the good kind. The kind that's all over the tabloids, always drunk and high and in jail for something or other. Jason has anger issues, which Octavian knows because they were in the same group therapy session for a total of two weeks before Octavian joked that he kills squirrels in his spare time, and the adults took him seriously and moved him into his own private therapy session. (He explained that he was joking, but then they were too hung up on his morbid sense of humor to put him back in group therapy.)
Octavian isn't really sure why the other kids hate Reyna so much. She's pretty, by anyone's standards, but the others don't accept her. Personally, Octavian thinks she likes being an outcast—because it means she never has to let anyone close enough that they can hurt her. He's not sure why she let Jason in so easily, but if the starry look in her eyes when Jason's nice to her resembles the starry look in Octavian's eyes when he's around Reyna, it's no surprise that the two are friends.
Everybody has somebody, Octavian thinks when he sees them sitting together at lunch sometimes. He clutches Mr. Pooh Bear tighter to his chest, because Mr. Pooh Bear is the only person he has at this school.
Mr. Pooh Bear is the only person he has anywhere.
"Little Octavian," the older kids on the playground taunt. "No one's ever loved you. Not even that bear."
Octavian trembles, fists shaking as he holds Mr. Pooh Bear to his chest. He can't say anything to defend himself, because they're right. No one has ever loved him except his mother, and that's not a very mature thing to say on the playground.
"Are you gonna cry?" the oldest boy sneers. "Like the little baby you are?"
"Back off, asshole," Jason snaps, suddenly appearing next to Octavian. His arm drapes over Octavian's shoulders comfortingly, and then Reyna is on his other side, her hand sliding into his. Octavian doesn't know when Jason started cussing, but he does know that Jason has always acted older than the rest of them.
The other boys exchange smirks, and the oldest shoves Jason's chest, causing him to stumble backwards. "What're you gonna do about it, Grace? You gonna call your big sister to come back you up? Maybe she'll show us what she hides beneath her black sweaters all the time."
It's no secret that Thalia Grace developed faster than the other girl, but Octavian can feel Jason tensing up beside him.
"Don't talk about my sister that way," Jason growls, and then he's on the older boy, taking him down easily, moving too fast for the other boy to keep up—moving like lightning, almost. When he's done, the older boy is on the ground with a bloody nose and a black eye and possibly a broken wrist, and the teachers are pulling him away, admonishing him, wide-eyed and agape. But Jason meets Octavian's eye and grins, and Reyna gives him a thumbs up.
Octavian, Reyna, and Jason, along with the older boys, get detention for fighting, but it's worth it because Jason managed to do what the other kids couldn't. He stood up for himself and his friends.
And just like that, Octavian slowly stops noticing how pretty Reyna looks when she lets her hair out of its braids, and starts noticing the scars on Jason's knuckles and the way Jason's eyes match the color of the sky perfectly.
Octavian lives in a shabby apartment building in a bad part of town, because that's all his mom can afford working three part time jobs at various diners.
There are other kids in the apartment, but they're tougher and older—they're the type who smoke in public and don't bother hiding the scars they've cut into their own wrists.
One of the older boys, Apollo (his real name is Fred, but he demands that everyone call him Apollo), sometimes talks to Octavian. He says he can see the future, and makes the other kids at the apartments pay to have their futures told. He scares Octavian, because his predictions are almost always right.
In late August, as Octavian trudges up the steps to his apartment, Apollo stops him.
"Hey, kid!" Apollo calls, and Octavian turns slightly to acknowledge him, clutching at Mr. Pooh Bear's hand as the stuffed animal swings beside him. "You got a minute?"
Apollo actually looks serious for once, so Octavian descends the few steps he'd climbed and walks over to Apollo.
"Yeah?" he asks, trying to be tough, but he's twelve years old, four foot nine, and he weighs ninety pounds. Octavian couldn't hurt a fly, and everyone knows it.
"Look," Apollo says lowly, glancing around the apartment complex like he's nervous and pulling Octavian towards the wall, out of the open parking lot. "I know I talk a lot of shit about me being psychic, and I know you know that I'm not."
Octavian nods—he doesn't believe in psychics, even if Apollo has made some scarily accurate predictions in the last couple of years that Octavian's been living in this apartment complex.
"Yeah, but," Apollo continues, and reaches into his pocket and shakily pulls out a cigarette and lighter, and as he lights up, he gives Octavian a dark look. "I think I actually saw the future this morning."
Octavian scowls, drawing Mr. Pooh Bear up to his chest. "I have to make dinner, Fred," he snaps. "My mom is going to be home in half an hour, and then she has to leave again right after. If dinner isn't done by then, she won't get to eat tonight."
Apollo blows smoke in Octavian's face and raises his hands in surrender. "All right, all right. I'll make it quick. Look, kid, believe it or not, I'm pretty sure I saw the future in geometry this morning. And it looks like there's going to be an accident, sometime soon—a really, really big accident, really bad. It's going to crush the nation."
Apollo is shaking as he raises his cigarette to his mouth, and he looks scared. Real scared. Octavian has never seen Apollo look scared before.
"This accident is going to kill thousands of people," Apollo says, his bottom lip trembling, "and your mom is going to be one of them."
Octavian balls his hands into fists and looks up at Apollo. "You're not even psychic," Octavian snaps, and turns on his heels, running up the stairs to his apartment. Apollo calls after him, but Octavian doesn't look back.
Octavian gets spooked easily. He's been teased about it all his life. But he's never been scared like this. He's never been so scared that he can't even cry, that he moves on autopilot, making dinner and straightening up the meager furnishings of his apartment.
It's not until he crawls into bed late at night that he starts crying, as the shadows draw in, demons that Octavian can't fight off.
There are monsters under Octavian's bed, and Mr. Pooh Bear used to keep them away, but now Mr. Pooh Bear cowers with Octavian beneath the sheets, both of them too frightened to cry out for help or turn on the light.
(Once upon a time, the story always goes, before delving deep into the dark heart of the story, but Octavian's felt like this for so long, that it's not "once upon a time," it's a normal, every day occurrence.)
For science, Octavian has to put together a small habitat. Earth worms and dirt in a jar. Octavian hates this project, because worms make him think of gummy worms, and gummy worms make him think of days when they could afford gummy worms, and days when they could afford gummy worms were the days when his father was still around, and Octavian hates his father.
Octavian's logic is silly, because he wouldn't think of his father and immediately think of worms (usually Octavian thinks of snakes, which he supposes are kind of like worms).
At some point during the day, Jason was chasing Reyna around with one of the worms from his jar, and Octavian thinks that one day they're going to grow up and get married. He's happy for them, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't still hope that one day Jason will choose him as his lab partner instead of Reyna.
Octavian glances up at Mrs. Roy as she talks lazily about earth worm dissections and slides another worm into Octavian's jar. No one wanted to be Octavian's partner, so Octavian was teamed up with Mrs. Roy. Again.
Octavian isn't lonely, though. Because he has his mom at home and Mr. Pooh Bear in his backpack, and he'll be okay.
Mrs. Roy sends the jars home with the students and tells them to bring them back on Friday so she can see how they've done with them. Octavian drops his jar on the hard wooden floor of his apartment as he's getting ready for bed that night.
The jar shatters on the floor right in front of his bare feet. The worms and the dirt scatter over his feet and across the floor, and Octavian can only watch as blood starts bleeding up around the glass embedded into his skin.
No one is there to help Octavian clean up the mess or bandage his feet, and Octavian looks up at Mr. Pooh Bear, sitting innocent on his bed, just a few feet away.
"Help me!" Octavian screams, and his voice is raw even to his own ears as rage boils up inside of him.
Mr. Pooh Bear stares blankly back, blissfully unaware. (Sometimes Octavian wishes he'd left Mr. Pooh Bear's heart in tact, because maybe then, Mr. Pooh Bear would have enough compassion to want to help him.)
Octavian stares down at the broken pieces of glass in his bare feet and the scattered soil and the earth worms wiggling around helplessly and the blood, rolling off of the sides of his feet.
And just like that, it's too much.
Octavian doesn't even think about picking up the biggest glass piece and snatching up Mr. Pooh Bear, shredding into the stuffed animal. And when he's pulled all the stuffing out, he pushes the shard of glass into Mr. Pooh Bear's chest, and then pushes the stuffing back in around it.
Because a glass heart is better than no heart. Octavian knows because his own glass heart has already shattered into a million pieces, and even if it hurts, at least he feels something.
(It's not until Octavian is much older that he realizes how much better it is to feel nothing at all.)
Octavian stares down at the deep cut in Mr. Pooh Bear's stomach, the way the stuffing is pushing itself back out. Octavian remembers that he's bleeding, that there's still glass in his feet, but the way he feels inside overwhelms the physical pain.
"Who am I?" Octavian asks softly as he stares into the bear's black, button eyes. His fingers clutch onto the brown fur, and he can feel himself trembling. "Wh-who am I?"
I'm a monster, Octavian thinks, and clutches Mr. Pooh Bear to his chest as the throws up, and when he's done, when it's nothing more than dry heaves, he curls up on his bed and cries, not bother to clean the floor of his throw up or the earth worm project, or remove the glass from his feet.
He's so exhausted from trying to keep himself together that it's just easier to fall apart.
The following day finds mass panic at school, and Octavian hears panicked teaches having panicked phone calls, something about "the twin towers" ("Isn't that a book?" Octavian asks one of the teachers) and a very bad accident. Parents come to pick up their kids halfway through the day, but Octavian's mother never comes.
Later, they tell him that she was at a job interview, that she was going to make a better life for him. Octavian only clutches Mr. Pooh Bear to his chest and lets the tears run down his cheeks as his infected feet throb inside his sneakers.
Octavian doesn't fully understand what's going on, but he knows something very bad has happened. The social worker the school called is nice, but Octavian knows he won't know her for very long. He's only allowed to keep a few things from home, and he chooses Mr. Pooh Bear. Because Mr. Pooh Bear has never let him down.
They put him in a foster home while they try to reach his dad, and the woman there—Mrs. William? Mrs. Winston? Something with a W—stitches Mr. Pooh Bear back up for him. She thinks it's sweet that he still carries around a teddy bear, even though the other boys in the foster home tell him it's stupid.
Well, all of the boys except Leo.
Leo is tall and skinny, with too long limbs and a wide smile, and his eyes are too bright and too mischievous for an eleven year old boy in a foster home. But Leo is nice to Octavian, and he defends him from the other boys, even if it means that they both get ridiculed.
And when Leo stands up for him the first time, Octavian forgets all about Jason, and curly black hair and awkward, gangly limbs are it.
"I think I set my mom on fire," Leo confides once, gingerly brushing lint off of Mr. Pooh Bear as the two boys sit on the back porch. "I've always liked fire, you know, and she died in a fire. I think it was my fault."
Octavian stares at him. "Why are you telling me this?" he asks quietly.
Leo smiles up at him, all shy and soft, and Octavian has never given much thought to kissing, but just then, he wonders what it would be like to kiss Leo.
"Because I'm running away," Leo says, shrugging, "and I want you to come with me."
Octavian wonders if he looks as startled as he feels. "You…you want me to run away with you?"
"Of course, moron," Leo says, rolling his eyes affectionately. "You're the only person I've ever liked. Well, I liked this guy I used to go to school with—Percy, I think—when I was seven, but it wasn't the same. That was when my mom was still alive."
And Octavian almost says yes, but the only person who has ever truly loved him is his mother, and she's dead now. Leo is not someone who could ever love him. So Octavian takes Mr. Pooh Bear from Leo and runs inside the house, up the stairs to the bedroom he shares with the other boys.
By the time Octavian's father comes for him, just a few days later, Leo has already gone. But not before reminding Octavian that he's heartless. As if Octavian didn't already know that. (As if Octavian didn't know how much safer it was to live without a heart.)
The years Octavian lives with his father are weird, because his father left when Octavian was eight, but he tries really hard to make Octavian feel loved (he fails, and Octavian makes sure he knows it by rebelling as often as possible).
Octavian spends ages fifteen through eighteen in military camp, but he takes Mr. Pooh Bear with him for the whole trip, even though the other boys mock him for still sleeping with a bear. (That's fine by Octavian, because he scares the living shit out of all of them when he calmly takes his knife and rips open Mr. Pooh Bears chest, making eye contact with all of them, and tells them that he used to kill animals for fun, but now he just cuts open his bear.)
And when he finally gets out of military camp, his stepmom asks him what he wants to do with his life.
"Taxidermy," Octavian deadpans, and he's joking, but the shocked look on her face reminds him how much he relishes horrifying people, and so he goes into taxidermy just so that he can shock everyone he meets with what he does for a living.
When Octavian moves into his own apartment, he sticks Mr. Pooh Bear in a box and tapes it up and shoves it into the depths of his closet. He doesn't need to cut open Mr. Pooh bear every time he's upset now, just to avoid cutting his own wrists—now, he cuts open actual animals, and they're all just as dead as Octavian himself.
A pretty redheaded girl sweeps into Octavian's taxidermy office one day, plopping herself down on the seat across from Octavian and watching as he carefully stitches together a patchwork (so that it can never be broken) heart.
"Can I help you?" Octavian asks, and has to remind himself to use his client voice—not too rude or snappish, even though it's hard when he'd rather be alone.
"I just want to watch," the redhead says, shaking her head, and Octavian rolls his eyes. He can't really tell her to get out—even if her presence is exhausting, she's still a potential client, and Octavian can use all the clients he can get to support himself without his dad's money.
Octavian holds up the patchwork heart, looking at it under the light to confirm to himself that it's ready. Then, he starts to insert it into the head of the bear.
"Why are you putting a heart in the bear?" the redhead asks, cocking her head to the side.
"Everyone deserves a heart," Octavian mutters, screwing up his nose in concentration.
"Even the dead ones?"
"Especially the dead ones," Octavian snaps. He lays his hand over his chest for a brief second, hoping to feel the beat before he continues his work. He can't, like he can never feel it beat, and he sighs, stitching up the final seam on the bear. He pauses, looking up at the redhead sitting across from him. "Just because they're dead doesn't mean they don't deserve to feel something. Anything to remind them that they used to… I don't know. That they used to love, and that someone used to love them."
The redhead is quiet for a moment, but then she shakes her head. "You're a very sad man, Mr. Octavian," she says wistfully, and reaches out to lay her hand on Octavian's arm as he wonders how she knew his name, since it isn't on the store sign. "I know someone out there loves you, even if you don't."
She stands, walking around the table to kiss Octavian's cheek. "You made a fine auger," she whispers as she pulls away, smiling sadly. "Apollo will never tell you, but you did. You were wonderful."
And then she's gone, out the door just like that. Octavian stares after her, wondering what she meant.
Later that night, after he's returned home, he pulls open his closet and digs into the back, finding the box that contains Mr. Pooh Bear. When he gets the stuffed bear in his hand, he leaps to his feet and runs to the kitchen, and pulls the knife out of the drawer.
He cuts a shaky, uneven line down Mr. Pooh Bear's stomach and reaches in, wrapping his fingers around the glass heart.
And he remembers.