The Hard Way (A Female Percy Jackson/ Young Justice Crossover)

26

AN: If I don't publish now, it might take me another half a year to make any progress on this story. Hope you like the chapter, sorry if its a bit of a mess. I've rewritten it a few times and Frankenstein-ed a few parts, but I hope you can forgive a depressed writer on her birthday.

Roy Harper was running for his life, knowing full well that he could neither outrun nor beat his pursuers. With no one to call for help and a distressingly light quiver, he was about as doomed as he could be. They would soon be right on his heels and ready to kill at first sight. But he had no exit strategy from here, and if two trains came by at once, he'd be dead anyway. Goddamnit, why had he chosen the tunnel?

After fleeing the Hall of Justice, he had taken to the subway. He even thought he got away at one point but he knew it wouldn't last, that he couldn't stop moving. Every bone in his body ached from sprinting so ferociously and his lungs burned... Worse yet, his adrenaline was quickly plummeting.

How long had he been running? He glanced down at his watch foolishly: Less than a half an hour.

Just as he was about to get moving again, he found himself looking back at a noise. An green accented arrow flew out of the darkness of the tunnels behind him. Flinching and pulling back just in time, it just barely sliced his cheekbone, narrowly missing just as close to his eye as it was to missing his face entirely.

Green Arrow was not the person to emerge from the shadows, it was Aquaman. The much stronger hero charged as Roy knocked his very last arrow and released without aim. It shot up as the man leveled him to the ground with a single punch to the face. By some miracle, the arrow exploded into a mass of thick smoke and granting him a unique opportunity to escape. He could see a train coming at them on one of the tracks. And there was only a second so he couldn't think before going for the first thing he saw. In the tiny moment he had for escape, he skidded across the gravel and tracks to the tiniest manhole cover which led to something under the track. The world rattled with the force of the oncoming machines, but he spared no hesitation in using his every bit of strength to haul the thing open. And it was only after dropping into it that he thought about how deep it could go.

It was only a moment before he landed roughly on the damp stone ground. Any aches or pains it brought were non existent according to the adrenaline his brain was pumping through his body. And he was thankful for it, because he still couldn't stop.

Clearly this tunnel was clearly not in use anymore, at least the lack of light and sound of rats made that seem sure. He wouldn't have to worry about the League chasing him down, which took the urgency from his situation, without erasing the looming threat of death because he couldn't be sure this tunnel had an exit. But it was his only possible way out, so he chose a direction and moved before anything worse could happen.

One might have asked what he had done to earn such treatment from The League, but he could hardly even wrap his head around it yet.

Long story short, he was a sleeper agent and most surprisingly of all, not a real person... He was a cloned replacement of the real Roy Harper and by some biotechnology he had given Vandal Savage complete mind control over the Justice League. He just didn't understand how he hadn't known—All this time, he was the mole.

———

Percy had declined Leo's request to move in together. It had been one of the first things he brought up, staying together and getting close again. She assumed it was because he was scared to live alone in a strange new place, but that wouldn't explain his sudden eagerness to her. So even though it made her feel like they were being a burden on her housemates she moved the pile of things from the center of the living room and set him up to sleep on the couch.