Okay, so I know that Octavian in this one shot is very different from the one in my MoA, but I just got this inspiration to write this this morning, so I just wrote this down on my Ipad. Sorry if there are grammar errors, I was in quite a hurry when I wrote this. So….. enjoy!
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Who you really are.
Everyone just looks and pinpoints when they see you walk into camp. They see your letter of recommendation, they see you placed into the first cohort, and they start to judge. You have to live up to their expectations, become their PERFECTPERFECT stereotype. You can't say no, or everyone will hate you. Hate you for not becoming their stereotype, hate you for not becoming who they want you to be. They'll ostracize you, hate you, leave you alone, and you know you CAN'T be alone, so you give in to the pressure and become who they want you to be.
You build a shell around yourself, one so thick no one could possibly penetrate through, and hide inside. You do what they want you to do. It's not you and very time a sneer, a snarl, a snide, a hurtful remark ,leaves your lips, what others don't know is that those tiny, tiny pointed glass shards with the jagged edges, they not only pierce others, but yourself at the same time. This isn't who you are, and you try to break out from this shell, to be who you TRULY are, but every time you try you fail, because you CAN'T, you simply can't .They don't understand you, understand that every time you taunt, you curse, it's in a desperate attempt to fill up that tiny gap in yourself, one that just keeps getting larger and larger, day by day.
Day by day it just snowballs ,and this problem just gets worse and worse, and one day you realise you've got your own little circle of power hungry snakes, all urging you to get MOREMOREMORE. You try to break out, try to walk in the light, but you CAN'T, just can't, or they'll see your weaknesses, and everything you've tried to built will all just come crashing down. You can't let this happen, you simply CAN'T, so you give in to the pressure, the tension. They urge you to be praetor, to knock that filthy son of a gorgon, Jason, from the disgraced fifth cohort, to become praetor in his place, because the fifth doesn't deserve it, they don't have the power ,the honor , that they are better, so you just agree with them, because you know that without them, you'll be nothing, NOTHING, and you just can't be that.
So now you're the augur, the one who tells the future, and you have enemies, you have friends. Day by day, people come, people curse. You just keep up the pretense, that proud, haughty aura, because you simply CAN'T let anyone know that beneath your shell, that thick, thick shell, is a teenage boy crying, crying for who he can't be, crying for who he is, crying for who he really is.
Tears. Tears cried every night, under the blankets, tears cried deep inside beyond the shell, tears cried behind that frightening mountain of gutted Teddy bears. They don't know that everyday, behind that mountain, is where you let the tears fall. They don't know, because they can't see past the gutted Teddy bears.