Background: The Ramirez-Arellano family goes way back a long way. My Ancestors lived in Spain when it was a Roman province. My great-great-great something something grandfather was a conquistador. He came over to Puerto Rico with Ponce de Leon.
Bellona has always favored our clan. She was our patron goddess for generations. Long ago, she decreed we would play pivotal roles in many battles, but Hylla and I are the first actual children of Bellona in our family. She... she fell in love with my father, Julian. He was a soldier in Iraq. He was...
Jupiter, this is hard.
I never knew my father in his better days. Hylla said he used to be gentler when she was very small, before I was born. He was a good soldier - fearless, disciplined, cool under fire. He was handsome and could be very charming. Bellona blessed him, as she had with so many of my ancestors, but that wasn't enough for him. He wanted her for his wife.
My father dedicated himself completely to her. It's one thing to respect the power of war. It's another thing to fall in love with it. I don't know how he did it, but he managed to win Bellona's heart. My sister was born just before he went to Iraq for his last tour of duty. He was honorably discharged, came home a hero. If... if he'd been able to adjust to civilian life, things might have been different.
After he got back, he had one last encounter with the goddess... that's the, um, reason I was born. Bellona gave him a glimpse of the future. She explained why our family was so important to her. She said the legacy of Rome would never fail as long as one of our bloodline remained, fighting to defend our homeland. Those words... I think she meant them to be reassuring, but my father became fixated on them.
Part of the problem was PTSD. He couldn't stop thinking about the war. And then there was the constant pain- a roadside bomb left shrapnel in his shoulder and chest. But it was more than that. Over the years, as I was growing up, he... he changed.
He became paranoid. He thought Bellona's words were a warning that our bloodline would be exterminated and the legacy of Rome would fail. He saw enemies everywhere. He collected weapons. He turned our home into a fortress. At night, he would lock Hylla and me in our rooms. If we sneaked out, he would yell at us and throw furniture and... well, he terrified us. At times, he even thought WE were the enemies. He became convinced we were spying on him, trying to undermine him. Then the ghosts started appearing. I guess they'd always been there, but they picked up on my father's agitation and began to manifest. They whispered to him, feeding his suspicions. Finally one day... I can't tell you for sure when, I realised he had ceased to be my father. He had become of the ghosts or something-
He became impossible to live with. Hylla and I escape the house as often as we could, but eventually we'd come... back... and face his rage. We didn't know what else to do. He was our only family. The last time we returned, he - he was so angry he was literally glowing. He couldn't physically touch things anymore, but he could move them... like a poltergeist, I guess. He tore up the floor tiles. He ripped open the sofa. Finally he tossed a chair and it hit Hylla. She collapsed. She was only knocked unconscious, but I thought she was dead. She'd spent so many years protecting me... I just lost it. I grabbed the nearest weapon I could find -- a family heirloom, the Pirate Confresi's saber. I-- I didn't know it was Imperial gold. I ran at my father's spirit and...
I killed him. Maybe it wasn't him anymore, but it had been him. I dispatched his spirit, his being. The man who was really the only family we had. I- even if it wasn't really him, anymore, it still feels like I killed him. And according to Roman law, it still counts as patricide. And for that I should have faced trial in New Rome.. I would have lost my praetorship. Possibly more.
** note: parts of this are borrowed/adapted from Reyna's talk with Nico in Riordan's Blood of Olympus