A/N:
~Based on the TV series-characters are not mine.
~This is my version of season 4 episode 9, 10, 11 and beyond, starting with Chuck's masked party, and Serena's big decision between Nate and Dan. Some things to know beforehand: Jenny does switch out Serena's SIM card like she does in the original, but instead, the only text she sends to Nate and Dan is, "I'll choose tonight at the party" and the text to Dean Luther by Juliet is done before the party instead of after. If you have no idea what I'm talking about; don't worry-all will be clear.
Chapter 1
"Serena!" Nate looks at her, taking in the sight as she walks towards him through the throng of people at the party. She's in a wonderfully lacy dress and mask, and Nate wants to kiss her, urgently. He revels in her golden halo and her smooth skin. She pulls him in, secretively, hands on his hips, urgent and digging. She leans, and they met in the middle, fitting to each other, familiar and calm.
His question is answered. She chooses him over Dan. He should be whooping, euphoric. But everything about the kiss, about Serena, is off. He closes his eyes for the brief kiss and thinks hard.
Her smell. There's only sickly perfume in the air. He inhales deep through his nose on instinct, causing "Serena" to flinch. There is no signature Serena smell; no smell that leaves him too short of breath to identify exactly what it is. All Nate knows is that the words "blonde", "Serena", "best friend", "lover", "clean", "sweet", "beautiful", and "too good" drift through his thoughts when he smells it.
But he feels nothing about the girl in front of him. He can't smell it. Can't feel it. And can't see it. Her hair color is off a shade, and this girl is definitely not Serena.
Before he can do anything, she's gone, leaving him with a bad taste on his lips. Something is utterly wrong.
Later, after downing some vodka, he sees another girl in that blue dress and mask pretending to be Serena. From this distance, he can tell her hair is a wig. She whirls around and lands a big kiss on Humphrey. Dan scrunches his face, confused, as she leaves abruptly. He squints his eyes in that signature Dan Humphrey way. Nate can't tell if Dan knows it's not Serena.
Nate clenches his fist. He could care less about Dan, but where's the real Serena? With the whispering and chaos of Blair in lingerie and Chuck discovered kissing her on the balcony, he sees no blue lace again. He spots his mom working the crowd and Blair walking towards her. It's a mess of everything, and finally, ten minutes later, he spots the real Serena, mask off, talking with a pissed-off Blair. Blair wouldn't mistake Serena any more than he would, as both Nate's and Blair's two whole lifetimes of friendship with the loveable girl are enough to tell a fake Serena from the real thing. He yells out "Serena"!, while trying to fight through the crowd to her, but she doesn't hear. She puts her mask back on and exits stage right before Nate reaches her.
Dan paces the empty ballroom, looking for a sign of Serena. He needs to know exactly what Serena meant with her kiss. She would want to talk about her choice, or just stay with him, now that she finally chose Dan over Nate, yet, she didn't. Something was wrong. Dan could only think of two options: either that was a mournful goodbye kiss or that wasn't Serena. It hadn't felt like a goodbye kiss, as tongues were involved. He recalls the deep kiss, and remembers the lips were slightly rough and dry, as opposed to Serena's usually smooth and soft lips, and- his imagination is running wild. A girl can have bad lip days too, right? He has no idea. He sighs in frustration, running his hands through his hair. He can't keep trying to figure out this puzzle. Nobody ever said love was easy nor straightforward; certainly, the greatest authors never did, but he's not sure love is ever supposed to unsolvable. He can't seem to find many great pointers of advice in Hemingway and Fitzgerald's books anyway, unless you count "marry the woman who nurses you during a world war" or "just don't be wealthy".
He catches a glimpse of Blair and Chuck talking and Nate walking out in the opposite direction, and realizes there are three childhood friends of Serena that come damn close to knowing every detail of the mystery that is Serena itself.
"Sir, the party is over. It's time to leave," a ruffled looking security man says to Dan.
Dan affirms the man's statement with a nod, looking at his watch. It's already 2 AM. "I'll be right out."
Well, it's always a pleasant surprise to be acknowledged as a guest to a party without a guest list to confirm his status or Serena by his side. He walks over to Blair, the safest choice, avoiding the urge to punch Chuck the Basstard and not knowing where Nate the Archrival had gone to.
"Have you seen Serena?" he asks. He groans internally as her face turns snide. She isn't a much better choice than Chuck or Nate.
"Why are you talking to me, Brooklyn? Go back to whatever garbage can you crawled out of."
Dan sighs. "Just tell me if you've seen her."
"Yes, Humphrey, I was just talking with her."
Dan lets out a breath. "She wasn't...different...from usual, right?"
Blair rolls her eyes, and pulls on her gloves, which don't look more substantial than the lingerie she's wearing. "Don't blame a tiff you had with Serena on a mood swing. And plus, I don't want to see the selfish bitch either right now. She just ruined my chances at becoming the new face of Anne Archibald's charity. " She cuts a haughty glance at him under an arched brow, then gives a pert "goodbye" and a demeaning smirk and goes on her way.
Dan shakes his head at the Waldorf. So "Not Serena" option is eliminated. His damn writer's imagination. That leaves the awful truth, as much as he wants to avoid it. He sits at a nearby bench to calm himself. Pick me, Serena. Pick me. He wants her so badly he thinks he could feel it in his bones. It starts as a heartburn, but spreads to his stomach, steadily burning. It will never be the same without you.
Nate sees a flash of blue lace in his peripheral vision as he walks out of the party, avoiding the large flow of exiting partygoers at the main doors by taking the side exit like Serena did. What he sees as he turns toward the blue fills him with confusion. It's Serena, wasted away like the old days, passed out in a cab after a hard night of partying. Or at least it seems so. It's a familiar sight-though what he thought was a long-gone one, but why else would she be sleeping, of all things? He inhales slowly and walks adagio slow toward the cab, unsure of what he would do or say, but not willing to let her go just like that, without answers for everything that happened that night and the choice she was supposed to make between him and Dan. A whirl of black captures his glance-it's a figure rounding the back of the cab to get in the other side of the car. A piece of blue fabric flows a few inches beyond the hooded coat, and then it hits him. It's fake Serena. Alarm bells go off, roaring with dark realization, along with the dissipation of any doubt of the imposter's intention: she's taking Serena. The figure looks at him, face hidden by the mask and the hood. She raises a hand and uses the universal gesture for "Come and get me". He runs forward, trying to catch her before she enters the cab, but she's standing too close to the open taxi door-she slips in and then-
Then they're gone, a roar in the still-bustling New York night. The omnipresent honking continues as the taxi whizzes away.
What is she doing save her save her
He hails a cab and goes chasing after without a second thought. Like always. But he will never leave her for dead. He would never leave her for anything, so long as she wants him. His hands clenches on the dull leather of the cab, and he wishes to a higher power that he can catch them in two cabs, racing each other in the night traffic, no more than a couple of miles from the Upper East Side, are both whisked into what seems like a whole other city: Queens.
Dan looks up at the starry winter sky, the deep, sharp, in-focus kind that only occurs after a big flurry of snow. Instead of admiring the crisp aesthetic of the night sky, his mind turns over and over again the dark silhouette of Serena, eyes furrowed and closed in the yellow taxi, taking off, and the image of a harried Nate throwing himself into a cab and tearing off like hell was burning at his heels. Whether it was a coincidence he was going towards the same direction as Serena, Dan doesn't know. All he knows is that they weren't leaving together in the same cab, which leaves him rubbing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose in confusion. A goodbye kiss for him would mean a hello kiss for Nate. Or it meant, yet again, she had not chosen either of them. Serena did simply look sad and tired with her eyes shut, while Nate looked preoccupied.
Dan isn't sure about anything, and he wishes Serena would explain her actions. He doesn't know how he expected she would make her choice evident, but he thought if anything, the winner and loser would be clear. There was something rotten and not quite right about tonight, but all Dan manages to do is pull out his cell phone and twiddle with it, unbending pride not allowing him to text either Serena or Nate.
Nate looks out his window, blond streaks of hair catching in the pale halo of the street lights. He cranes his neck trying to see as far forward as he can. He doubts the mystery girl wants to take Serena out for a tea party, even though he isn't sure of exactly what's going on between them. But if S is as wasted as her limp limbs suggested, she isn't safe from much of anyone. He knows the sheer amount of alcohol and drugs Serena's liver can handle from the old days. If she's passed out, it had to be a one hell of a mix of something. He doesn't want to think of the possibility of a roofie or some other date rape drug with the sole purpose of knocking her out. But it had been an innocent enough party-a high end guest list approved by Chuck himself. Shaking his head in confusion, he yells at the cabbie to punch it.
Instead the cabbie pulls over and replies, "They, uh, must've gotten out of the cab somewhere here, but a truck passed by and I didn't see that cab-"
"Goddammit, I told you to pay attention!" Nate shouts, panicked.
"Well, I was just thinking if I was gonna get in trouble for stalking someone..."
Blue sapphire eyes crackling, Nate throws a withering glance at the man. He throws a bill dug from his wallet at him.
"Go wild," he mutters as he steps out onto the cracked cement of the front of a dilapidated building. He realizes he only tossed the cabbie a five. Thankfully, the boorish man drives off, muttering, and Nate is left on Koch Avenue with a sickening clear thought in the middle of an unfamiliar borough in New York. His stomach sinks. She's gone.
A/N: Please review and tell me what you think! I love feedback.