Happy Father's day. I like getting into the backstory I've made for Octavian's father, but I expect to make a more detailed account later.

He was three years old and well acquainted with Bandaids. The pale, technical, and emotionless bandages covered his knees from falling and scraping them, and his face for less playful reasons.

Still, for all of it he did not run from his father, who worked from home when he worked. He had come to expect that Bandaids were normal. He had no standards to say otherwise, there were no other little kids around for him to play with, so he didn't see that they were usually unharmed. Pain was natural and consistent and he didn't much mind it. At sickness he would cry and then daddy might get upset because he wasn't supposed to cry, but at pain he would simply request a Bandaid. Steve would usually be too upset by what he'd done to administer the Bandaids. Steve had seen his mother and his dear sweet sister be hurt for being ungrateful and discontent, had often got the brunt of his father's abuse as he was a particularly nervous boy and was punished for his panic attacks. If Victoria anchored him to reality then Octavian disillusioned him once more. From his son he expected, maybe even needed happiness.

Octavian wanted to be happy for daddy and when he wasn't mommy or Tessa would put Bandaids on him. If Victoria and Steve were unlikely to notice then Tessa would use the colorful Bandaids she used on her own three year old daughter. Victoria was never too keen on the housekeeper parenting her son though, so more often he had the normal bland stuff. Octavian didn't mind. He was so little that he never learned that it wasn't normal. Little Inez didn't accompany Tessa to work, so he didn't learn from her that good daddies didn't hurt their kids.

Only later, at camp, when he became ostracized and treated like a freak did he realize that his upbringing was abnormal. He saw legacies in New Rome with their parents being loved and protected and he grew bitter about the treatment he'd gotten. When he hurt he could have any color Bandaid he wanted, but the tan bandages were as comfortingly familiar as pain was. His normal. Aspirin joined the ranks of skin colored Bandaids and he thought of little other than himself. And he thought little of himself.

Then Rachel became the Bandaids on his heart. Bright, colorful, unfamiliar Bandaids. Bringing healing for once instead of more pain. Rachel fixed him, and somehow she loved him. One day she said she needed him. One day she said I do. He didn't hurt anymore. She made him feel safe.

And now...

"Daddy I have a boo boo!" The wail came up from little Brenden, his and Rachel's adopted son. Immediately alert Octavian ran and picked up the crying little boy, kissing his tears away and putting a disney themed Bandaid on it.

"All better?"

"Yeah!"

"Good. Let's play buddy." And he chased the giggling young boy through their house. Their home.