#this is delirious ill benadryl head like a wind tunnel posting

[dragonseeds]

the thing about daemon and rhaenyra as doubles and mirrors, reflections of each other, is that it shatters when he crowns her. he can be her attack dog, her whip, her sword arm, but that sameness is gone. he lost viserys to the crown, to the role, and he crowned her anyway and it’s like. i keep thinking of that line from saint mungo that everyone quotes. i feel like something bad is going to happen to me. i feel like something bad has happened. it hasn't reached me yet but it's on its way. because trauma does this, creates a temporal distortion in your body and your mind. i think daemon’s going to be thriving for a minute—finally fulfilling his purpose—but some part of him is stuck in that moment where he crowned her because that’s when he lost her like he lost viserys and it’s going to come back for him. there’s too much history and wounded animal pain there. he’s always comparing her to viserys-as-king from that point on, consciously or not, and waiting for what happened before to happen again and it does because it was always going to. the hurt that allows them to understand each other in ways no one else can, allows them to find healing with each other, is what’s going to kill him. later after they take king’s landing and lose more children, if he sees her pushing him away in her grief, ignoring his advice and letting her advisors come between them—that’s the end but he’s back at the start, trapped in this circle/cycle, already dead but he’ll follow the pattern. it all comes back again. and he crowned her.