Chapter Text
Percy Baratheon awoke with his head full of another life. He remembers Percy Jackson, he remembers everything. It’s strange, he still remembers his new life, he remembers that Jon Arryn died. He remembers it like it was yesterday. Yet in the night between that day and today, his mind was flooded with old memories.
He goes to find Nico, his twin, the one he shared his past life with, even though he wasn’t his brother then. He’ll know what to do, he was a son of Hades.
He runs out of his room and shoots into Nico’s chambers, his brother was staring at the ceiling tears running down his face.
“Neeks!” He gasps when he sees his distraught brother. “Are you ok?”
“Will isn’t here. Bi isn’t here,” he says. Percy’s heart aches in sorrow. They were reincarnated together alone. Annabeth, Bianca, Will and everyone else weren’t with them.
“It’s not fair,” says Percy.
“It fucking isn’t.”
Percy sits next to Nico and hugs him, Nico cries into his shoulder.
After a while Nico says, “I’m so stupid, I’m crying when we should be thinking how to get back! We’ve had 12 years here!”
“How do we get back? We didn’t die how were we reincarnated?” Asks Percy. He remembers going to sleep with Annabeth next to him in New Rome, it didn’t make sense.
“Zeus and Hera are going to make us gods,” Nico says. Percy is shocked, he rejected godhood.
“I rejected it!”
“They don’t care about that! We are, well were, the most powerful demigods, now the wars are over Zeus wants us as gods, it’s decided,” says Nico. “Father told me this before sending us here, we weren’t supposed to remember our past lives, our fathers sent us here so we could live normal happy mortal lives as royalty in a sister world to earth. We’ll live long normal, mortal lives and when we die we will go back to earth and become gods.”
“Wow,” says Percy. “Why is this place so primitive compared to normal earth?”
“I don’t know, father just said this was Earth’s sister world, they also have power here and we’re known as the fourteen fires or volcanoes or something like that by some ancient civilisation here. The gods are not as involved in this world anymore so we’ll be hidden from Zeus here,” says Nico.
“Wow,” Percy paused before exclaiming, “Annabeth must have been worried sick! We’ve been gone for ten years!”
“We’ll go back to the point in time we came to this world from,” says Nico.
“How? I didn’t know the gods could manipulate time! I thought that was Kronos’ thing?”
“I don’t know, maybe it has to do with sister worlds? I was too shocked at the whole godhood and other worlds thing to ask father anything.”
“Valid,” snorts Percy.
“It feels weird to think of Hades as father now after so long.”
“It’s hardly like Robert ever acted like a father, he’s worse than the gods! At least they had their stupid laws as an excuse. What’s his?”
Nico laughs, “true! And he’s only interested in what we can do with our swords, look how he is to poor Myrcella!”
“It’s a relief he isn’t actually our father!”
“Technically he is because we aren’t exactly in our old bodies,” says Nico.
“Pshh, mother created us through asexual production via our dads,” jokes Percy.
“I wish it worked like that!” Nico laughs.
“Athena does it!” Protests Percy. “And we look exactly like mother and nothing like father so it’s obvious I’m right!”
Nico laughs, “I fucking hope you are!”
Percy pauses, he loves his mother, he still loves his other mother, she’s not here anymore. Percy supposes he has two mothers now. Cersei is as fiercely loving and protective as Sally. She’s also unlucky, married a whoring drunkard, like how Sally was tied to Smelly Gabe, Cersei was tied to Robert. He realises Nico views Cersei as their only mother, as he has no memories of his mother from the before.
~~
The two brothers make their way to the training yard.
“How will we explain our sudden increase in skill with our swords,” asks Percy quietly to Nico, careful to speak quietly enough for their bodyguard, the hound, not to hear.
“We won’t, we’ll gradually get better,” says Nico. “We were already good anyway.”
“We’ll just have a stage of rapid, but not too rapid, improvement then, it’s not like anyone is playing close attention to us,” says Percy. They have a weekly lesson with Ser Barristan but other than that nobody pays attention to them. The other kingsguard and the Hound aren’t interested watching the two princes spar in their private sparring area, the hound even stands guard at the entryway, not even watching them. Their father never watches them either, despite their immense skill for their age, nobody takes an interest.
Well, Ser Barristan does, he always sings their praises, he even compares them to Ser Arthur Dayne and other talented knights. Their mother is the only one they would have to worry about, she’s the one who takes the most interest in their sparring, thankfully she isn’t knowledgable about sword combat. Percy plans to teach her. She used to be, she told him stories of how she used to swap clothes with uncle Jaime and take his place to train with swords when she was really little. Percy hates that that was taken away from her, that she was forced away from the “masculine” art of sword fighting, it wasn’t fair.
Percy and Nico spar for the first time in their new bodies. Percy finds that even though he is held back by the size and strength of his younger fourteen year old body, the skills he remembered from all his years as a hero increased his fighting skills drastically.
After the fight Nico wonders, “do we still have our powers?”
“I don’t know. Shouldn’t you know? You’re the one whose dad gave you the full rundown on this whole thing.”
“Well yeah I don’t, though we are stronger and faster than normal mortals should be.”
“Yeah, though I don’t have my water powers.”
“Maybe we’re still stronger and faster than the average mortal, I mean, we obviously have ADHD and dyslexia still,” says Nico.
“Yeah we have the shitty parts but not the cool powers!” Jokes Percy. Growing up as a prince with ADHD and dyslexia was rough. Accommodation for disabilities didn’t exist. He remembers how Robert had the audacity to laugh and call him and Nico simple, he mocked their grandfather, laughing about how the great Lord Tywin Lannister had ended up with illiterate grandchildren.
His mother tired, she truly did, she was patient with them. She sat with them for hours and tried to make learning fun. It still didn’t fix them but it helped them a lot.
~~
The hardest part about keeping quiet with their new memories was their personality changes. Percy was still similar to how he normally was, Nico however was previously bubbly and excitable, and he had to act the same way as he did before. Percy didn’t worry as much, as he wasn’t the heir like Nico, he was second in line, and people paid less attention to him.
They attend Jon Arryn’s funeral. Percy remembers the old man, he’d always treated him and Nico with kindness. He remembers how he’d came to watch them in the training yard a few days before he died, how he’d talked with Ser Barristan about their progress with their training. That was their last time properly interacting with him. Percy’s heart aches with sadness, he was a kind man and it was sad to see him die.
Their father announces after the funeral that they are going to Winterfell. He’s going to ask his old friend from the rebellion, Ned Stark, to be his hand. Percy can tell his mother is displeased at this news by the expression on her face.
Myrcella on the other hand beams with excitement. She smiles at Percy, “I can’t wait! I wonder what the north will be like!”
“It will be interesting for sure!” Says Percy.
“It will be cold and dangerous,” Nico teases.
Percy smiles and wonders what the north will be like. He’s curious about the Stark family too. Even though he’s inclined to dislike them for being friends with Robert, he’s excited to experience more Westerosi culture, its boring being cooped up in kings landing, Percy is excited to see more of this new world.