PERSEUS MEANS DESTROYER

Novocaine

Same old shit, runnin' my mouth until she busts my lip,

So many problems, you can take your pick, I know I'm never gonna change

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

The Percy in the Mirror blinked at him slowly.

He wondered if it was just him.

"So," Percy in the Mirror said. "Who are you, again?"

The words came across like the two of them were underwater (and maybe they were; Percy didn't know. He didn't know if he would be able to tell or not). A little fuzzy around the edges, and Percy thought he'd forgotten half of what Percy in the Mirror said already.

Which was hard to think, so he could just be Perseus for a bit.

"What," he asked, dumbly.

"Well, I mean... you're Percy," Perseus tipped one finger at him, and Percy's hands tightened around the sink he hadn't realised was there, and his feet failed to press into the floor that he hadn't realised was missing, so now he was clinging to this sink in the middle of... nothing. "Y' know, Halfblood and Jupiter's hero, Annabeth's boyfriend, Grover's best friend, the guy whose family seems to be being hunted by a government organisation that doesn't really follow governmental laws... and there's the whole problem with the Avengers not liking you and having to put up with Loki."

Perseus shrugged, and Percy found himself shrugging along with him.

"But I'm you too, right? I mean. I have to be; even if there are, statistically speaking, at least seven other people in the world who look like you, they can't have the same memories or hair and scars as you, yeah? So we're each other."

"No..." Percy said slowly, trying to think as Perseus stared him down with the same eyes Percy had, "no, you're me, we're both me. This is... this is a dream, isn't it?" The realisation hit him like a truck, and he wondered how it hadn't clicked before.

There was no way this wasn't a dream. And demigod dreams got weird, so this might be important anyway.

"A-and I don't have to put up with Loki, I don't mind talking to him sometimes—and it's not like we would've been doing this if I hadn't asked the gods for something to do."

Perseus' face stretched into a thin smile. "You're not wrong, but they would've gotten you to do something else altogether. And you'd be dead. No more Percy." Perseus mimed a mini-explosion with his hands, and Percy wondered when he'd started copying the reflection. "Poof. So, who are you going to be? Obedient little soldier, war-hardened veteran of the Camps... or...?"

"Or what?" Percy asked, sourly. "Or... pull a Luke fucking Castellan and try to overthrow a pantheon? Run away and hope no one finds me? What the fuck am I supposed to do, dumbass?"

Perseus shrugged. "You could, if you wanted to. And you know Annabeth would never actually leave. She hates the gods as much as us, if not more. Hell, if you told her one day 'hey Annabeth, I want to take over Olympus', I'd bet she'd already have half a plan for it. You could be a hero. Not to the gods, sure, but to the camps... and don't you think Micheal and Luke and Silena deserve it? Don't you think everyone who ever fell serving those self-centred assholes," Percy's grip tightened on the sink at the same time as his reflection's (and could he call Perseus a reflection when he was copying his actions, rather than the other way around? Maybe he was the reflection. Maybe he was just arguing with himself but still didn't know which side he was on), "deserves to see them fall? Wouldn't it be worth it? What was it that dear old Dad said? 'It would have been better if you'd never been born at all'? Isn't it sad that was the best possible outcome for you? For all of us? We all deserve justice for what they've done to us. And you know it. And you know that you're the only reason they haven't done it yet. We're their hero, they won't fight against us even if it costs them their lives, over and over and over. But if you make a stand against the gods, with a god and the mastermind behind Olympus at your side? Could they even think to say no? Would they bother trying to pretend that they're still the good little fighters we've all grown up to be?"