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When they were children, Daemon thought about it a lot.
He doesn’t think about it now.
When his mother’s dragon was claimed by another, he didn’t think about it.
Meleys would not bend her neck to him. Only ten summers under his belt, Prince Baelon allowed his second son to approach the Red Queen in supplication. It had certainly felt like prayer. Daemon walked through the Dragonpit with his eyes cast downwards, his hands clasped behind him. Too often he had gotten in trouble for his hands doing something they shouldn’t, this would not be one of them. This time mattered.
He had never wanted anything like he wanted Meleys.
But Meleys did not submit to Daemon. His dreams of placing his hands upon the same saddle his mother had were scattered with a shower of sparks. She spit them at him, a threat and a promise all in one. Perhaps she did recognize him as belonging to Alyssa, as for all her clicking and hissing, she never doused him in true flame.
Even when he shouted at her. Even when he cried.
Viserys had offered to accompany him. Daemon hadn’t allowed it. When his older brother found him hours later, vacantly watching Meleys from a distance, slumped over in the pit, Daemon wondered why he was ever worried about Viserys seeing him fail.
But he didn’t think about it.
Only weeks later, they both watched their cousin descend into the Dragonpit. Rhaenys was a woman grown, 9 years older than Daemon and preparing for her imminent marriage to Corlys Velaryon. Her hair was the same blonde as the rest of their family, held back in a series of simple, beautiful braids. She wore the colors of their banners proudly, with swishing skirts and cinched waist and golden jewelry adorned her neck, wrists, and hair. She moved with certainty and grace, and she left the pit on dragonback.
Her hands, small and sure, overlapped the places where Daemon’s mother had touched. Her handprints seared into the leather, invisible but there nonetheless.
If Daemon had been more like Rhaenys, moved like her, looked like her, tied his hair like hers-
But he didn’t think about it.
When his brother sent him away to the Vale to wed a woman he couldn’t stand, he didn’t think about it.
Their wedding was lavish, a grand affair. The food was masterfully prepared, the performers the best in the realm, and the guests traveled from every edge of the Seven Kingdoms. Rhea Royce was dressed in finery, the picture of a beautiful bride.
Daemon couldn’t look at her.
Stocky, dark-haired, Rhea Royce, with ice in her eyes and frost in her words. He spent much of the evening watching Viserys, who was too enamored with his sweet lady wife and young daughter to watch Daemon back.
He didn’t think about Viserys’ wedding, about how he had felt numb as he watched his brother fulfill his duty to the realm, about how he had spent the following days in a drunken haze, boiling over with rage he couldn’t understand. Viserys was happy. Daemon was not.
He didn’t think about the day Rhaenyra was born, either. How happy Viserys had been, parading the girl through the keep, hollering and dancing like a man possessed. She was healthy and strong, the answer to Viserys’ prayers. He’d always wanted children, he would make a great father. Viserys was happy. Daemon was not.
They skipped the bedding ceremony. It was incredibly controversial, a topic of gossip amongst lords and ladies for months. Viserys was unhappy, and so was Daemon. The balance did not please him.
Daemon left Runestone as soon as possible to join his brother’s Small Council. Back with Viserys, as he was meant to be.
He didn’t think about it when they were young men indulging their vices in the street’s of King’s Landing, surrounded by women and drowning in wine.
He didn’t think about it when their father was arranging matches for Viserys, calling meetings with lords from every allied house with an eligible daughter.
He didn’t think about it when he was stepped over as heir.
He didn’t think about it when Viserys lamented his lack of sons.
He thought about it when they were children, though.
Daemon never met his mother, not enough to have known her. And yet.
He was surrounded by his mother in childhood. So loved was she by the staff who taught him his lessons and fed him his meals, so idolized was she by Viserys and Baelon, he heard tales of Alyssa Targaryen everywhere he went.
To say nothing of tales of King Jaehaerys and the Good Queen Alysanne, his grandparents who ruled the Seven Kingdoms.
Baelon and Alyssa were both full-blooded children of Jaehaerys and Alysanne. Daemon knew this well.
Jaehaerys and Alysanne were both full-blooded children of Aenys Targaryen and Alyssa Velaryon. Daemon knew this well.
He felt as though he couldn’t be blamed when he, as a young child, asked one of his tutors, “When are Viserys and I to be wed?”
“You are not!” A delighted tutor responded, charmed by the ignorance of youth. “If you had been born a daughter, perhaps that would be a match made by your sire and lady mother, but you were born a son, my Prince. When you are to be wed, it will be to a lady outside of this keep.”
Daemon didn’t understand. His mother married her brother. Alysanne married her brother. He could marry Viserys. He wouldn’t mind.
He loved Viserys.
It clung to him. Like sap on a tree, like curses to a jester, he was stuck.
He didn’t talk about it anymore, not after the first few times he tried. But he thought about it. He thought about it all the time.
When ladies would visit from the Reach or the Vale, and Daemon would watch their long sleeves brush the floor and their painted lips curve into gentle smiles, he imagined himself in their place.
When Viserys draped himself over a desk in the study and lamented potential arrangements discussed by their father, Daemon imagined a simpler world where there was an obvious conclusion, where they would never be separated.
When he passed a portrait of his parents as children, holding hands, and as adults, holding children, Daemon would replace their images with himself and Viserys, bundles in his arms and his brother grinning from ear to ear.
When Daemon claimed his own dragon, a spitfire with a penchant for adventure, he dreamt about flying with Viserys and Balerion, chasing each other through the sky, dancing the way Targaryen princes and princesses had for centuries.
But he doesn’t think about it anymore.
When Viserys is wed, Daemon does not watch Aemma hold his brother’s hands with dragonfire under his skin. He does not curse his own body, the gods who decided on his lot. He does not seethe and think to himself ‘ It should have been me. If only it could have been me.’
When Viserys and Aemma lose their first babes, he does not find a terrible sort of satisfaction in it. He mourns with his brother, the way he should, the way he wants to. He does not think ‘Ours would have lived’ .
Because he loves his brother. Even when Viserys sends him away, Daemon loves his brother. Even when it makes no sense, Daemon loves his brother. Even when he shouldn’t, Daemon loves his brother.
He cuts off his hair.
He fights.
He fucks.
He fights too much.
He probably fucks too much, too.
He kills his wife and imagines the ice she spat melting over his skin.
He makes himself valuable to Viserys in whatever way he can, bleeding and scrapping and pulling himself through hell for an approving glance.
He doesn’t think about long, draping sleeves. He doesn’t wonder how it feels to grow life within oneself, a beating heart alongside his own, proof of a bond that could not be denied or cast aside. He doesn’t imagine a world where Meleys saw him not only as Alyssa’s, but as Alyssa, a worthy replacement.
If he had been born a daughter, instead of a second son.
If he had been born Viserys’ from his first breath.
But he wasn’t, and he isn’t.
But she could be his. The spitting image of what he could have been. A piece of his brother he could keep.
He stares up at Viserys. Blood pools on his tongue, the sharp tang of it an old friend. Viserys bares his teeth, unbloodied, untouched, above Daemon as always. He thinks about those teeth tearing him open, breaking his skin, his blood in Viserys' mouth. It would be right. It would be just. It will never happen.
Viserys is unhappy. Maybe Daemon doesn’t have to be.
“When I offered up my crown, you said I could have anything.”
There was so much he couldn’t ask for.
Daemon’s lips crack. He smiles anyway.
“I want Rhaenyra.”