At the beach in every life-Prince Aegon II Targaryen x Princess Helaena Targaryen x Lady Daena Manderly (OC)
Author's note: Welp, I gave you too much happiness. Time for sadness, time for depression. They’re all dead (well, not all). Young love. Daena is team Black Aegon, Helaena team Green.
Friday of Valentines 2026!
Summary: Daena Manderly’s world is torn apart by war, betrayal, and loss. Haunted by memories of Aegon II, Helaena, and her lost loves, she navigates motherhood, grief, and trauma while fighting to protect her children. Forced into marriage, imprisoned, and faced with the ghosts of her past, Daena must find strength to survive—and perhaps, hope for a future she never thought possible.
Content/Trigger Warnings:
War violence and battles
Death of major characters
PTSD and trauma
Grief and mourning
Implied suicidal thoughts
Sexual content / smutty scenes
Forced marriage / coercion
Betrayal and emotional abuse
"At the beach in every life"-Gigi Perez
Memories are the worst kind of hauntings. Not the dreams—no, those are covered in smoke and blood, but they are dreams. They can be locked down, tucked away behind silk and crowns. But memories? They never leave. They may fade, but they never leave.
It’s one year since the Dance of the Dragons. Daena feels it in her bones. The ache of trauma and war still lingers; her body remembers every wound, every loss.
She hoped she made the right decisions. She hoped she honored her dead.
Every time she gazes out the windows and sees King’s Landing, she feels it inside her. Aegon’s laughter, Jaehaerys’ giggles, Helaena’s warm hand in hers.
They were young then. War whispered on the horizon—in hushed words, in whispered warnings, in Cole’s gowns, but it felt like they could not be touched. They were young, naïve, believing in safety that didn’t exist.
She watched it all unravel. Watched the way it took everything they held dear, piece by piece.
As the war came, Aegon became sharper, more distant. Helaena asked about rats, about survival. Daena tried to comfort them, even though she could not deny that, if it came to it, she would go with Rhaenyra.
Aegon didn’t want the crown—so why didn’t he fight? Dinner in the Red Keep became a battlefield of words and unsaid truths. Every glance was heavy, every gesture loaded with fear, desire, and the knowledge of what could be lost.
The night still burns in her mind—the last time they touched. Warm hands wrapped around each other, clinging. Aegon’s lips traced hers, searching, desperate, while Helaena pressed against them, soft and trembling, seeking the comfort that the world denied them. Three hearts tangled in sheets and shadows, gasps and whispers mixing with the wind outside, each touch a fleeting rebellion against the war that waited beyond the walls. Their bodies memorized each other in a haze of longing, guilt, and grief—the sweetness of stolen youth mingling with the bitter ache of loss already written in the stars. Every brush of skin, every shiver, every moan and quiet laugh became a secret world where they could still belong to each other, if only for a moment.
In the morning, trunks packed, dragons saddled, everything gone. Daena left for Dragonstone with her family, her heart broken, carrying memories that would not leave her.
Months passed.
The nights were the hardest. Sleepless nights as she adjusted to life with a newborn, a baby who had arrived before the war, a tiny life already entangled in the shadow of politics and blood.
Her belly had swelled with him once, but now he was here—loud, squealing, red with blonde hair, and her own blue eyes staring up at her.
The court whispered behind closed doors. A bastard child, they said, born of secrecy and scandal. Some looked with pity, others with thinly veiled contempt, but to Daena, he was everything. Her Gaemon. Her reason to breathe. Her tether to hope in a world that had taken so much already.
She was so young, barely older than Viserys had been when the court first expected him to understand his place. Yet here she was, a mother, fiercely protective, learning to carry love and fear in equal measure.
Her memories of her mother, of Aegon, and Helaena—painful, tingling, haunting her—mixed with the cries and laughter of her son. She swore she would give sweet Gaemon everything she could.
She couldn’t save the ones she loved, but she could protect the next generation.
The war darkened. The Greens attacked White Harbor, stealing her son. Her brother fell, dying, trying to protect him. Her world stopped.
Daena wrote to Aegon, hoping to reach him, hoping he would remember their love, hoping he would understand—her child was his, a living piece of their forbidden, stolen moments.
But Aegon betrayed her. She had gone to meet him, expecting him, but it was Aemond who greeted her instead. She fought. She bled. Every strike, every bruise, every scream was a reminder of what she could not save.
Even when dragged into the Black Cells, she stayed defiant. Judgment day promised nothing but torment. They dressed her in silks and arranged her hair too fine to be a consort—a mockery of beauty while they tried to strip her of agency, of soul, of choice.
In the bath, she saw Helaena—or thought she did—and Helaena asked Daena to watch over Jaehaera as if she were her own, a fragile tether to what had been lost. Two days before the marriage, a kiss pressed to her lips in the bath—was it a ghost, or memory made flesh?
She was forced to marry Aegon, a knife at her child’s throat, after the truth sank in—Helaena was dead, the warmth and laughter she had loved was gone…
Her soulmate, her other half, whose absence carved hollows in her chest where her heart used to be, was dead. And she would be queen.
Broken, she did not cry. Her grief was too deep, too raw for tears. And that was exactly what they wanted—her rage, a reaction they could mock or use.
Her body trembled from exhaustion and fury, but her face remained still—stone and fire. A heart hardened by loss, haunted by love, tethered to survival only by her children…and her rage.
Two moons later, Jacaerys arrived with Cregan. She walked through the Red Keep in nothing but her nightgown, carrying the weight of her children, her memories, her grief. Jacaerys would be king. And she—she was called Dowager Queen, a title heavy with loss, power, and the ghosts of all she had loved and lost.
She mourned.
She carried the past with her like a stone in her chest.
Every glance, every touch she had lost, every laugh and whispered promise, haunted her.
She thought of following Helaena’s steps when the pain became unbearable—but her children kept her tethered to life.
The war, the loss, the betrayal—it all shaped her, hardened her, and yet left her bleeding inside.
The ghosts of love, of grief, of her first loves, of her family—they never let her forget.
She makes the choice to marry Jacaerys.
To strengthen the house of the dragon.
The day of her coronation arrived.
She stood before the Iron Throne once more, a crown heavy on her head, the weight of grief and power interwoven in every thread of her silk. Aegon’s shadow lingered, but she was no longer the same girl who had trembled under threats and knives. She was queen again.
Her children clustered at her side—Gaemon, Jaehaera, a living reminder that even in a world of death and betrayal, life continued. For the first time in moons, she let herself imagine something new.
A flicker of hope, fragile but stubborn, stirred in her chest. Perhaps the ghosts would not be the only ones haunting her now. Perhaps, in this crown, she could find a life worth living.
And as the sun struck the Red Keep’s towers, casting long shadows across the hall, Daena allowed herself a small, steady breath. The past could stay in the bones. But the future—maybe the future could still be hers.
I just wanna say "I love you" one more time I love you, goodbye