Danny finds out he's a clone of one of the Gotham vigilantes, thanks to a random lore drop from his parents.
Problem is, he doesn't know which one, since his parents didn't remember or make a note of it, and the ectoplasm his DNA was dunked in upon half-dying makes any kind of blood work totally corrupted.
He's managed to narrow it down by excluding whichever vigilantes didn't appear until after his birth (creation? birth), but that still leaves too many to make much difference.
Still, he keeps a closer eye on news about Gotham's vigilantes, he's making comparisons, finding similarities, noting differences, between all of them and himself.
With his template being a vigilante but not knowing which, it's hard to attribute these observations to being a template thing, a vigilante thing, or a Danny thing.
He could spend all day analyzing masked faces for any shred of familiarity, but he's already having an identity crisis, and he has better ways to spend his time and bigger things to worry about. So the clone flavored crisis can sit in the back of his mind and wait its turn.
synopsis: summoned to the red keep to prove her family's loyalty a decade after the blackfyre rebellion, the lady of house peake only intends to survive court politics — becoming entangled with prince valarr targaryen was not part of the plan.
author’s note: two months!!!! after part six!!!! i return to you all with a new part. oh my god, i'm so sorry it took me so long. this is a lot of tension and yearning and then we'll dive back into action in the next part, teehee!! it's almost 1am and i stayed up to finish this so please forgive any typos! i have work in the morning! please enjoy!!
wordcount + tags: 4,558 + enemies to lovers, slowburn, forbidden romance, sparring as flirting, heavy tension, canon-typical misogyny/violence, pre-akotsk
part one || part two || part three || part four || part five || part six || part seven || part eight
Valarr Targaryen x F!Reader
The days following the intrusion and subsequent attack pass by painstakingly slowly, dragging into one another in a dull monotony of bandage redressings and ointment applications, your senses overwhelmed by the cloying scents of herbs and tinctures.
For the first few nights, you remain in the chambers adjoining the maester’s rooms – under the direct insistence of Queen Myriah. The command was given with warm maternal concern, though you are not blind to the practicality of it. The safest place for you now is to be close to healers and guards – somewhere you can be monitored.
You try not to dwell too much on the last part.
Your injuries are not grave, but they are enough to confine you to stillness and rest– which feels like an added punishment rather than an opportunity for respite.
Bruises spread slowly across your ribs and shoulder, ugly shades that mottle the skin around the cut on your arm. It’s hidden beneath tight linen wrappings, but the stark fabric remains an all-too-visible reminder of that night.
…Not that you need one.
Each breath brings a dull aching pain and reminds you of the feeling of the intruder’s weight pinning you against the wall, of his hand over your mouth, of the fear that had coursed through you.
However, almost worse than the pain, is the feeling of helplessness and entrapment that begins to settle in – every way you turn, someone is watching.
Guards outside the maester’s chambers go rigid whenever you emerge, gloved fists tightening around their sword hilts as if expecting you to bolt. Even courtiers who once ignored you in a proud display of loyalty to the crown now study you openly in the halls, their curiosity sharpened by suspicion.
It is a suspicion that you can, resentfully, understand.
The Blackfyre sympathizer who broke into your chambers had not merely tried to kill the young prince – he had known your name, and more than that, he had seemed almost relieved to see you.
Then, he had called you a traitor when you had defended Valarr, as if he had been expecting you to be an ally.
When you had defended Valarr. You replay the events in the throne room over and over in your mind – the intruder spitting venom at the Targaryens, all while Valarr stood rigid by your side after wrapping you in his cloak.
You think of the way his eyes had gone dark at the sight of your injuries, of the tremble in his hands before they were clasped behind his back.
You think of the fear that had torn through you the moment the intruder had revealed his true purpose, too quickly to deny, too instinctive to disguise – even now, the memory of the sensation leaves you unsettled.
You are not supposed to care what becomes of Targaryens – especially not this one, not after what his family did to yours.
But the lines you had drawn in the sand have become impossible to distinguish now, blurred and blended together until you no longer know where loyalty ends and something far more dangerous begins.
When they finally allow you to return to your own chambers, it should feel like regaining your freedom – instead, it feels like being escorted back into a cage.
Two guards are posted by your door at all hours now – Kingsguard stationed close enough that you hear the scrape of armor every time they shift their weight. Sturdy locks appear on the door, servants search your hearth before lighting it, and your movements through the Keep are even more supervised than before.
Only for your safety, they tell you. You resist the urge to scoff.
Through it all, you and Valarr simultaneously decide to reinstate your careful distance, the close encounters and almost-unveilings of emotion lingering all-too heavily in each interaction.
Sometimes you think the attack burned away the last scraps of restraint between you, but other times you believe it to have frightened you both back into silence.
You catch him watching you sometimes, across dining halls or stone corridors, his gaze catching on your injuries and growing darker, before he remembers himself and schools his expression smooth again.
Sleep becomes something brittle and shallow, fractured by dreams of steel flashing in darkness and banners of red and black, and you wake very easily now, at every shift of wind beyond the shutters, every footstep in the corridor outside your rooms.
Each time you are awoken and lie in the darkness, inevitably, your thoughts return to the intruder’s words. There’s a way into the prince’s chambers through here.
You had denied it immediately – these chambers had housed you for months, surely you would have noticed something like a door into the prince’s chambers.
…Wouldn’t you?
The thought roots itself beneath your skin and needles at you.
By the fourth night back in your chambers, it has become an unbearable itch, and you lie awake staring at the canopy overhead for what feels like an eternity before you give in.
Slowly, wincing faintly as your ribs protest, you push aside the blankets and rise from bed, crossing slowly toward the wall covered by enormous tapestries depicting Aegon’s Conquest.
Your fingers skim the fabric absently at first, tracing the woven reds and oranges of dragonfire and the pattern of Balerion’s great black wings, before flattening against the wall behind it. Stone. You move further along. Still stone. Further, and further, the same thing.
A humorless breath escapes you. Foolish. The intruder had been lying, fed wrong information, or perhaps merely hoping the sheer panic would–
Your hand sinks into the wall beneath tapestry, and you freeze.
Pulse leaping violently under your skin, you simply stare for one suspended moment, and then before caution can regain hold of you, you seize the tapestry and pull it sharply aside.
A narrow wooden door greets you from under the wall-hanging.
Your stomach twists hard enough to make you feel sick. He had been telling the truth. Cold apprehension slides down your spine as you stare at the latch, because if he was right, the door leads to–
You should fetch the guards immediately. You know that. Instead, against every smarter instinct you have, you reach for the handle and pull toward you.
Darkness waits beyond, another heavy tapestry hanging only feet away, warm light glowing faintly along its edge. This is madness. You pull the tapestry aside and feel your breath halt in your chest.
The prince’s chambers unfold before you in warm firelight – larger than your own, and far less carefully organized and controlled than you would think, based on Valarr’s… Well, everything.
Piles of books, scrolls, and papers lie strewn across available surfaces. A sword belt hangs across the back of the chair, multiple other blades lean against the stone hearth, and a silver helmet gleams where it sits atop a dresser.
However, you barely register any of that, because he is there.
Valarr faces away from you at the desk – one elbow braced against the arm of the chair, a book sitting open in front of him. His dark tunic hangs unlaced at the throat, exposing the elegant slope of his neck and collarbone, and his sleeves are rolled enough to reveal his forearms.
You find yourself suddenly embarrassingly warm at the stolen sight of him in a private moment, without any armour or pretense or prying eyes.
He looks startlingly gentle, and devastatingly tired, and for the briefest, suspended moment, you shamefully seize the chance to just… look at him.
The firelight gilds the silver streak of his hair in hues of gold, warming the dark strands that surround it, and though you can only see a fraction of his face, you can immediately tell his expression lacks the taught severity usually carved into it.
He leans back in his chair, exhaling a frustrated huff of air through his nose, and the movement pulls the edge of his tunic up slightly to reveal a pale band of skin at his abdomen–
Gods. Heat crawls traitorously up your throat, and you blink harshly, stepping backwards at the sudden realisation at how wrong this is, how perverse and strange of you, and of course, the motion causes your injured ribs to flare in pain.
A sharp hiss escapes you before you can stop it.
Valarr reacts instantly. His chair scrapes harshly against the stone floor as he surges to his feet, his hand reaching automatically for one of the daggers near the hearth as his gaze snaps toward the hidden doorway.
Toward you.
He freezes in place, shock stretching his eyes almost comically wide, and for one tension-fraught moment, neither of you move.
Then, before good sense can stop him, your name falls from his mouth – not Lady Peake, not my lady.
Your name.
You suck a gasp of air in through your teeth as the word lands between the two of you, earth-shattering in its mere utterance, devastatingly intimate.
Valarr seems to realise what he has done a moment after you do – color rises in his face, a rosy hue laid across his cheekbones, and his throat works as he tries to backtrack, to lessen the intensity of the moment.
Shock returns to his expression as the primary emotion, eyes darting to the tapestry moving gently behind you, then back to you, then back again. “You’re–”
“You–”
You both speak at the same time. Stunned silence spreads thickly across the room, the both of you simply staring at one another in disbelief.
“How–”
“There–”
Spoken at the same time again. Despite the absolute shock, your lips curl slightly at the corners. Valarr composes himself, eyebrow raised, and he gestures for you to continue.
You swallow thickly, gesturing vaguely behind you at the tapestry. “...There’s a door.”
Valarr’s brow furrows, mismatched eyes darting behind you once more, as if to see through the tapestry. “A… door?”
He moves now, skirting around you and leaving a noticeable distance between you as he makes his way over to the tapestry.
You nod, watching him go. “He was telling the truth, I suppose.”
Neither of you need to elaborate on who ‘he’ is. A somber mood drapes over the room, a seriousness you have been trying to escape ever since it happened. He pulls the fabric aside, frowning at the wooden door as it is revealed to him, running the tips of his fingers over the surface.
You narrow your as the nagging question in your mind finally bursts from your lips. “...Did you know about this?” The question comes out sharper than intended, but you can’t help the strange sense of betrayal that arises with it.
His head swivels around to face you, brow still furrowed yet eyes wide in consternation at the accusation you’ve leveled at him. “I– No.”
“Do you really expect me to believe that?” It’s an honest question, but your tone sounds sour, edged with something uncomfortably close to hurt.
Irritation flashes across his face then, answering your own as he turns to face you, dropping the tapestry back into place. “Do you imagine I spend my spare time searching for hidden doorways?”
You huff. “I imagine you know the walls of your own chambers.”
He frowns. “The door is also embedded in the walls of your own chambers, if I am not mistaken.”
“I didn’t grow up here,” you scowl at being caught out by his logic. “And you are the prince.”
“And you are eternally impossible. Are we done stating obvious irrelevant facts?” He steps closer to you, cocking his head.
You narrow your eyes in a huff, unable to find a worthy retort to throw back at him, and for a moment, silence settles briefly between you, broken only by the soft crackle of the fire.
Valarr’s mouth sets into a thin line, his gaze dropping away from your face and drifting down to the stark white of the bandage wrapped around your arm, then higher, to the bruising against your shoulder– and whatever irritation had hardened his features moments ago fades away.
You suddenly become acutely aware of your own appearance – your hair is undone, your nightgown thin and revealing, your bared skin a display of the attack in mottled bruising and wrapped linen, but most importantly, most terrifying of all, is the fact that you are standing alone in the prince’s private chambers in the middle of the night.
Gods. You have never truly been alone together before, not like this, not without imminent interruption looming over every glance shared between you, not without the echo of footsteps down the corridor.
No guards, no courtiers, no witnesses. Just him and you.
Your mouth goes dry, and you swallow thickly, scrambling for something light-hearted to interject into the tension-fraught moment, but Valarr’s quiet voice shatters the silence instead.
“You should not be out of bed.”
You blink at him incredulously. “You discover a hidden door to your chambers, and my bedtime is your very first concern?”
He watches you with a tired expression. “You’re injured, you should be resting.”
Irritation and embarrassment flares in your chest. “I’ve had lots of time to recover, I’m fine–”
“It was barely a week ago.” His eyes seem latched onto the bandage on your arm, something dark and stormy threatening to rise to the surface.
You swallow down the familiar wave of powerlessness rising bitterly in your throat, the reminder of your being caught off guard. “Yes, and I’ve had plenty of coddling from everyone else, I don’t need any more from you.”
“Coddling? You nearly died–” His jaw tightens as he cuts off his own retort, and he glances away, running a hand over his face.
You blink at the edge to his voice, the rawness in his tone, and worse than even the admission buried in his words is the look on his face when he says them – something dangerously akin to fear.
He speaks again, quieter this time. "Do you truly believe if I had known of a passage leading directly into your chambers, I would have said nothing?"
“I–” You pause, swallowing thickly, the realization almost frightening you. Because despite your ingrained distrust, despite your treatment in these halls, despite it all… “No.”
The set line of his mouth relaxes, relief pooling across his features at your answer. He glances at the tapestry again then drops his gaze to the floor, his furrowed brow telltale evidence of the barrage of thoughts warring in his mind.
“So,” he says finally, quietly, looking up at you through thick, dark lashes, and your heart stutters lightly in your chest as you notice a few strands of silver in the lashes of his right eye. He looks as though he wants to continue, but doesn’t know what to say.
“So.” You parrot, the intimate privacy afforded to the both of you in this moment suddenly feeling more like a blessing than a threat.
His throat works, his jaw clenches, and his gaze moves slowly across your face, catching on the bruise near your jaw, the healing cut at your arm, the exhaustion you know still lingers visibly across your features.
There is something frightening in the intensity of it, something stripped bare by the lateness of the hour and the hidden intimacy of this room between yours, and then he says your name again. Intentionally, thoughtfully, almost confidentially.
Your eyes widen, blinking at him, noticing the way he seems to be awaiting your reaction with baited breath, the firelight catching in his eyes as they search your face. Finally, finally, a small smile catches your lips.
“Valarr.” You respond with his name in kind, the combination of the both of your names said in the other’s voice nearly too intimate to bear. “I should–”
Muffled voices catch your ear from beyond the door to the corridor, and your heart drops sharply from your chest into the pit of your stomach. You recognize the voices of your maids, and know that any second now, Ellyn and Mara will enter your chambers, and you won’t be there.
Valarr catches on to your urgency immediately, and he turns to yank the tapestry aside, tugging the door open. “Go.” He urges, his hand settling on your lower back as he guides you back into your chambers.
In a whirlwind of movements, you hear the door close behind you just as you manage to pull the tapestry on your side back into place, smoothing down the fabric right as the door to your chambers creaks open.
You turn, holding your breath slightly to stifle your breathlessness, and smile nervously at your maids entering with a Kingsguard in tow.
“My lady,” Ellyn greets, curtsying, and Mara mirrors the action but not without narrowing her eyes at you first. “Are you prepared for your bath?”
Ellyn also seems to notice something is up, but thankfully does not mention anything while the guard still lingers behind her.
“Yes!” You blink, smiling. “I was just… Admiring the tapestry. The embroidery. Fine work, is it not?”
Mara’s face is scrunched now, befuddled by the mere notion of you admiring embroidery, but you barely notice her expression or Ellyn’s searching look, too focused on the tingling skin of your lower back where Valarr’s hand had rested.
On the other side of the door, the silence stretches unbearably.
Valarr does not move for a very long time after the tapestry falls still, straining his ears to catch glimpses of the voices on the other side, and then of the stillness that falls in your chambers as you move away from the wall.
His hand remains braced flat against the tapestry and hidden door beyond, fingers flat against the fabric as though to feel the lingering warmth of your presence through it. The room is deathly silent, save for the crackle of the hearth and the distant roar of the sea below the cliffs, but his pulse hammers loud enough in his ears to drown out both.
Gods. You were – are – right there.
The realization circles endlessly through his mind, each pass of it whittling into something more dangerous than the last. His jaw tightens violently as another thought chases close behind, one far uglier – that the intruder had been telling the truth.
Valarr shuts his eyes briefly, and immediately the image that has haunted him for days arrives unbidden and brutal – a cloaked figure, blade in hand, looming above you while you slept.
Only now, he knows it all happened only a doorway away from him.
The intruder could have reached you in moments – could have killed you before you even had the chance to fight back, could have cut through the tapestry and crossed into Valarr’s own chambers afterward with your blood still dark and wet on his hands.
The thought makes his stomach lurch violently.
He drags a hand down across his face, pacing across the room before turning sharply and pacing back again. Restless energy crackles painfully beneath his skin, refusing stillness.
This has gone too far.
That thought has haunted him for weeks now, growing more agonizing each time he caught himself searching for the colour of your hair in crowded halls before realizing what he was doing. Each time your laughter startled something helplessly warm awake beneath his ribs. Each time your sharp tongue met his instead of shrinking from it.
Yet tonight has stripped away every comforting lie he had tried to build around it, because when he saw you standing in that doorway – bruised, bandaged, but alive, and still berating him despite it all – relief had hit him so hard it nearly felled him where he stood.
Not the relief befitting a prince worried over a lady of the court, not even the relief for a companion, but something infinitely worse, something ruinous.
He stops abruptly beside his hearth, one hand curling against the stone mantle hard enough for the tendons in his wrist to pull sharply beneath the skin.
He can still see you in the throne room afterward, standing barefoot despite the pain written plainly on your face, your blood soaking steadily through the fabric of your nightgown while the courtiers had whispered around you like circling carrion birds, the intruder spitting insults at your feet.
He could have killed the man.
The realization strikes Valarr harder than any blade ever had, cold and immediate, and even now, remembering that night makes something hot and violent settle low in his chest.
He could have killed him. It is a fact he knows to be true.
Not honorably. Not as a prince dispensing justice. He could have crossed the hall, taken a sword from one of the Kingsguard, and slashed open the intruder’s throat with his own hands while the man still knelt there spitting filth at you. Traitor. Whore.
Valarr’s jaw clenches hard enough for dull pain to spark behind his teeth. He had wanted blood. The honesty of it unsettles him deeply, because it had not been concern for court optics or royal dignity or even the political threat of the attempted assassination itself – it had been the sight of you hurt.
He exhales sharply through his nose, glancing up at the door – his chambers feel altered now, charged with your absence in a way that makes him begin to understand the madness spoken of in his bloodline.
There is only a wall between you, a hidden door, and a few steps. The knowledge settles low and dangerous in his chest. He laughs once under his breath, humorless and tired.
This is truly madness. The sort of madness songs have been written about before kingdoms begin bleeding for it. You are the daughter of a house that raised banners for a Blackfyre king. A political hostage his family brought to court draped in the illusion of mercy.
And yet he–
Valarr’s eyes shutter briefly closed. He still cannot admit to himself what it is he most fears, the thing that causes warmth to flare in his chest whenever you come into view, that makes him turn to catch your scent as you pass him, that drove him to send a lord away from court for speaking ill of you and nearly spurred him into killing someone.
Whatever made him say your name with the same reverence reserved for the Seven Above.
He presses the heels of his hands briefly against his eyes, breathing hard once through his nose before forcing himself still.
This has gone too far. This cannot continue. The problem is that some reckless, selfish part of him no longer wants it to stop.
Because now he knows what fear tastes like when attached to you, knows how close he came to losing you before he ever truly understood what you had become to him. The truth of it settles slowly and horribly into place, leaving him standing motionless beside the dying fire.
At last, slowly, he crosses back toward the hidden passage and checks the latch, smoothing the tapestry back over it. Then again. Then he drags a chair in front of the tapestry anyway, leaning it against the door.
As though a thin piece of wood could possibly stop whatever this has become.
Sleep does not find him until nearly dawn, and even when it finally does, it comes tangled with dreams of your hair woven through his fingertips and your name lingering warm and ruinous against his tongue.
Morning comes too quickly.
You wake with the strange certainty that something has changed, though for several long moments, lying motionless beneath the covers, you cannot remember what.
The room is quiet save for the distant sounds of the Keep stirring awake beyond your windows, pale morning light stretching across the floor as you blink awake– then it returns all at once.
Heat rises traitorously beneath your skin before you can stop it. You press the heels of your palms against your eyes with something dangerously close to frustration.
You had stood so close that you could still remember the warmth radiating from him through the firelit room, could still picture the way his tunic had hung open at the throat, the momentary loss of composure in his expression when he realized what he had called you.
You sit upright with a quiet groan as your ribs protest the movement, immediately irritated by your own limitations. You swing your feet onto the floor and force your thoughts elsewhere, dressing more carefully than usual, determined to bury the memory beneath routine – which soon proves itself impossible.
By the time your maid had finished fastening the last hooks of your gown, your thoughts have circled back to the hidden passage half a dozen times.
Should you tell someone? Should he? Would they seal it? Would they ask how either of you discovered it? Your stomach twists, the implications seeming to multiply the longer you consider them.
A knock sounds against your chamber door before you have reached any conclusion. "My lady?"
One of the younger squires waits outside, bowing quickly as the Kingsguard stationed beside your door step aside to admit him.
"The King requests your presence in his solar."
Every muscle in your body seems to lock, and your mouth goes dry. You hear yourself answering automatically, though the words scarcely register in your own ears. "Of... of course."
The walk through the halls of the Keep feels impossibly long, each step echoing louder than the last as you follow the squire through winding corridors and familiar staircases, your thoughts racing far faster than your feet.
They know. The certainty settles with horrifying speed.
Someone must have discovered the passage after all. Perhaps a servant had seen the tapestry disturbed. Perhaps one of the guards had noticed. Perhaps Valarr had already reported it–
You replay every moment of the previous night with merciless precision. Did you leave the tapestry crooked? Did anyone see? Did Valarr–
No. No, he would never willingly place you under suspicion. Would he? The thought wounds more deeply than you expect.
By the time the squire stops before the carved oak doors of the King's solar, your pulse has climbed painfully into your throat, erratic under your skin as you tug at the collar of your dress, pulling it away from your neck.
He knocks once, and a voice bids you enter as the doors swing inward.
The familiar chamber lies bathed in morning light spilling through its tall windows, illuminating maps spread across the great table and banners stirring gently in the breeze.
King Daeron sits behind his desk, and Prince Baelor stands nearby with his hands clasped loosely behind his back, but you notice immediately that they are not alone.
A silver-haired man stands with his back to you before the hearth, and even before he turns, the memory arrives with startling clarity.
Smoke hanging beneath the rafters of Starpike, your father kneeling, the dragon banners replacing your own – and this man, standing in your family's hall, delivering the King's terms of your family’s surrender with all the warmth of drawn steel.
The squire announces your name, and Prince Maekar Targaryen turns to face you.
For one suspended heartbeat, you are no longer standing inside the King's solar – you are a frightened young girl again, face to face the prince who came to witness your house bend the knee.
From a TreyCay shipper to a TreyJade shipper: your work is just so lovely, expressive and thoughtful. I love how you draw Trey, he looks so sincere. Keep going!!
me adopting coelacanth as my spirit animal bcs i feel ancient
