Elegy (we write 'The End' but they're just words on a piece of paper)
by Sandrine Shaw
Dan's fingers are restless on the keyboard of his laptop these days. The combination of a summer in Rome and the sting of heartbreak are perfect to make Dan's muse soar, it turns out. He spends five weeks locked up in a dingy hotel room with Georgina, writing and fucking and drinking so much wine that his head feels woozy and his tongue heavy.
He doesn't really give a fuck about the sights or the seminars he's supposed to attend, and he certainly doesn't care about what's going on back home. It's all about getting away, as far as possible, from New York and the people he foolishly used to call his friends.
All the disappointment, all the anger and the resentment echo from the pages of his manuscript, black on white on screen: a perfect mirror of the Upper East Side as he got to know it. The ignorant parents, the drugs, the arrogance, the nihilism, the depravity, the casual disregard for the feelings of others. Throwing someone - anyone: stranger, lover or best friend - under the bus for the chance to win some abstract sort of game.
Even now, halfway out of his mind with booze and anger, Dan is self-aware enough that he's doing the very same thing by writing this book. He just doesn't care anymore.
He doesn't take any calls from the people back home, except for the occasional check-in from Alexandra.
One day in July, there are seven missed calls from Rufus on his mobile that would have gone straight to voice-mail, except Dan's pretty sure that his mailbox has been full for the past three weeks already. He drowns out the sound of his phone by turning up the volume of the radio. Georgina laughs and starts dancing to the song, lasciviously moving in the doorway to the bathroom, mouthing the words at him before blowing him a kiss. Dan watches her without really seeing her at all.
The phone rings again.
It's Blair's name on the display, and Dan wants nothing more than to throw the thing out of the window and on the busy street outside, listen to the crunch as the screen cracks and watch it shatter into a hundred tiny pieces.
He tells himself he's not going to answer, but while his resolve is strong, his treacherous fingers have already hit the accept button. It's just curiosity for what Blair has to say, he tells himself, perfectly aware of how thin an excuse it is.
"What do you want, Blair?"
There is silence on the other end of the line. He briefly wonders if she had honestly expected a warmer welcome. Hello, how are you? Good to hear from you. Thanks for breaking up without bothering to even let me know.
"Dan, I- Thank God you're okay. We were all so worried." She talks too fast and her voice has that familiar edge he's learned to associate with nervousness. He resents the fact that he knows her that well, that even now he's still so attuned to her moods "You haven't been answering any calls and-"
Dan stops her before she can finish the thought. "If you just called to check in on me, you can tell everyone that I-"
Perhaps she can hear the impatience in his voice and realises that he's about to disconnect, because her voice turns shrill and panicked. "Don't hang up! That's not why I called. You have to come home."
A bitter laugh escapes Dan's throat. "I don't think so."
"You need to, Dan. You have to be here. It's Serena."
Of course. He hadn't really expected that his ill-timed one-night-stand with Serena would remain a secret for long. "Look, I don't know what she told you, but she basically tricked me into this and then she filmed it and I don't want to see her or talk to her now. Or ever again."
For a long moment, Blair says nothing. Dan wonders if maybe she hadn't known after all, if he just revealed the one thing he didn't want her to find out. Not that it matters anymore whether or not Dan slept with Serena, because Blair chose Chuck anyway.
When Blair speaks again, her voice is soft and brittle. "Dan, Serena is dead."
And just like that, Dan feels as if the rug has been pulled out from under him. All of his anger, his heartache and his plans for vengeance seem pale and petty in the light of Blair's news.
"Wait, what?"
On the other end of the line, he can hear Blair start to cry. "They found her yesterday. She overdosed in some dead-beat motel in Baja. What a stupid, awful way to go. God, Dan, you really have to come home. You should be with your family. They need you here. I need you here."
"I- Tell Rufus and Lily that I'll take the next plane home. I will text them the details," he says numbly. He feels numb, too. As if he's going through the motions in a bad dream, something he knows isn't real.
It would be nice to wake up, he thinks.
The funeral is on a Saturday.
It's a quiet, private affair. He thought it would be different. He expected hundreds of people arriving in black limousines, faking tears behind large sunglasses while the paps are snapping their pictures.
Instead, it's just them. Lily and Eric and Rufus and Jenny and him and Blair and Nate and Chuck, and even though the room is small, it seems to swallow them whole. Lily's eyes are red and her hair is a mess and she looks like she's already past her breaking point, clutching Eric's hand so hard that it must be hurting. Rufus sits alone and rigid at the other end of the room. Jenny looks uncomfortable and awkward, like she'd rather be anywhere but here. The old Jenny, the one who left in a whirlwind of betrayal and heartbreak, would probably have stood up and told them all, 'Look, I'm sorry this happened to Serena, but I don't really give a fuck and I'm not going to pretend that I do.' And of course it's a good thing that she grew up and learned some tact but part of Dan really wishes she would say the words when they're written all over her face and her posture.
Behind them, Nate is sitting like a buffer between Blair and Chuck. Dan doesn't have the story there, tells himself he doesn't care, but no one is really talking to anyone else and it feels deeply, profoundly wrong that each one of them is so completely alone with their pain when they should face this together.
Up front, the things the pastor is saying about Serena are not even remotely true, they make her out to be some kind of person she wasn't and probably didn't want to be either, and Dan tries to picture her reaction, if she were here with them. He imagines Serena sliding into the seat beside him, tossing her hair when she turns to him and rolling her eyes and trying not to laugh out loud.
'What is he even talking about?' she'd mouth to him, and he'd smile so hard that it would split his face.
But Serena is not here, and Dan realizes that he's crying.
He writes a letter.
I'm sorry, he writes. I'm sorry I couldn't be what you needed. I'm sorry I didn't answer the phone when you called me. I'm sorry I left. I'm sorry I didn't try harder to save you.
He's a writer and words are the only thing he has. But there are times when words don't change anything and then-
Then he has nothing.
Dan gets drunk, and then he gets drunker until the room spins and the memories blur and he can't remember what's life and what's fiction anymore. In the morning, he wakes up on the couch of Chuck's suite in the Empire, a crick in his neck and his mouth tasting stale and awful.
He wants to slip out of the room quietly and he would, if he could gather the strength to get up. Before he can, Chuck walks in and wordlessly hands him a glass of water and two pills that Dan hopes are aspirin rather than rat poison.
There's a bruise blooming on Chuck's face, the beginnings of what's going to be a spectacular black eye, and even though Dan can't remember anything that happened he thinks he should probably apologize. He doesn't really want to, though, and it seems like Chuck isn't expecting him to because when he starts talking, he rants about Bart and the stock market and all kinds of inane things that don't really matter at all, and Dan has never liked Chuck as much as he does right then.
In the middle of Chuck's monologue about his father's latest schemings, Monkey appears out of nowhere, jumps on Dan's legs and bites him in the ankle. Not hard enough to break the skin, but enough to hurt. Dan spills the remains of his water all over himself.
"Fuck, ow! Bad dog! Did you teach him to do that?"
"Would I do such a thing?" Chuck asks with a smirk that says yes, he totally would.
Dan gives up trying to wipe off his wet shirt and drops his head back on the cushions. "I hate you," he says, with feeling.
He doesn't need to look at Chuck; the amusement is plainly audible in his voice. "Of course you do, Humphrey."
He doesn't mean to seek out Blair. He's over Blair, he doesn't need the closure, he wouldn't even be in town now if it wasn't for-It has nothing to do with Blair.
But somehow, on a hot late summer morning, he goes for a walk and his feet take him towards the duck pond in Central Park. When he realizes where he's going, he tells himself that maybe she won't even be there. But as he approaches, he can make out her familiar figure standing at the water, broken bread in her hand. She doesn't turn her head towards him, but he's sure that she saw him arriving, and he sits down at one of the benches behind her while she continues feeding the ducks. Neither of them says anything.
Dan waits. It's too warm and the air is sticky, but some of the trees around him are already starting to change their color. Summer is on its way out. At the end of the week, he was supposed to return from Italy. If things had been different, they would now be in their hotel room in Rome, packing up all the things Blair bought in their time abroad. He would mock her about needing an extra suitcase, and then he'd kiss her and they'd make love on the squeaky bed on top of the scattered items of clothing.
He forces himself to stop playing what if because it's stupid and masochistic. Things are not different. Blair chose Chuck, and he went to Italy without her, and Serena is dead. This is his life, and no amount of what ifs is going to change it.
He stares at Blair's back for a long moment. Just as he decides that he doesn't have to do this to himself and is about to get up and leave, as if she was sensing his intentions, Blair finally spreads her last bread crumbs on the ground for the ducks to pick up and walks towards the bench. She sits down next to him wordlessly, without looking at him, and he knows at once that even though she should be apologizing and groveling at his feet for how she ended things between them, he'll have to be the one to speak because she won't say anything.
There's so much bitterness, so many accusations, so many things he wants to shoutat her because they had something good and she ruined it, but the funny thing is: now that he has the chance to say it all, he realizes it doesn't matter anymore. It's over and done with, and yelling at her won't change anything.
One thing he has to say, though, because it weighs on his conscience and he knows he can't move on if he keeps it a secret.
"I slept with Serena."
Blair doesn't say anything. He risks a sideway gaze at her, watching her teeth chew on her lower lip, and he wonders if she's furious with him. If this is the calm before the inevitable storm.
When she finally speaks, though, it's not to yell at him. "I know," she says quietly. "Serena called me. She called me just to tell me about it. I thought she was gloating, but... I think she was just trying to apologize, but I didn't want to hear it. I-I told her I hated her. I told her I hated her and that I wished she died alone in a ditch." She starts sobbing, her whole body shaking with it, and her words are barely understandable anymore. "Those were actually the last words I said to her. I didn't mean it, I was just so angry and it was just-I didn't mean it."
There's nothing he can say to that. He reaches out and pulls her towards him, letting her bury her face in his shoulder and cry into his t-shirt.
"The last thing I said to her was that I never wanted to see her again," he says. He wants to tell her that what happened is not her fault but he can't, because that would mean that he believes it's not his fault either.
Rufus takes his old band on tour again. Maybe he's going through a midlife crisis, or perhaps his career is really about to experience a second high. Privately, Dan thinks he just wants to get as far away from Lily and Bass and their nauseating revived romance and fake happiness as possible.
It means, at last, that Dan has the loft to himself again. Or he would, except Jenny has been staying in town after the funeral, and considering the amount of suitcases she's brought, it's not meant to be a short-term visit either.
She treats him like he's made from spun glass about to break until he's fed up and can't take it anymore, and he tells her where she can shove her newfound tact.
Rolling her eyes at him, she says, "Whatever. I was trying to be nice because I thought you were in mourning over your crazy, dead ex-girlfriend. Or heartbroken about your evil other ex-girlfriend who realized that devilish, handsome business tycoon trumps tragic, intellectual writer. Really, how did you not figure out that it would all end like this?"
Dan wants to tell her not to talk about Serena that way, and not to talk about Blair that way either, but he figures he brought this on himself and he'd rather have Jenny be like this - abrasive and jaded and throwing uncomfortable truths at him - than have her walk on eggshells for fear of upsetting him.
He smiles. "Good thing I have you around now so you can stop me from making mistakes like that again."
Jenny snorts. "Fuck, no. I'm not your minder. You're allowed to make all the mistakes you want to make, and I'm allowed to mock the shit out of you for them afterwards."
He flips her off and leaves, but the words stick in his mind for a while and as he's mulling them over he realizes that it's actually a healthy attitude.
Later, when Dan returns and walks into the room, Jenny and Chuck are sitting next to each other on the couch, heads bent over half a dozen print-outs that are spread all over the table and Jenny animatedly talks about business plans and investment and a fashion empire.
Chuck's hand is resting on her knee.
Dan fights the surge of protectiveness down. Jenny is not a naive little girl anymore. She's eighteen and perfectly capable of handling herself. She's perfectly capable of handling Chuck, too, without the help of her big brother.
He quietly slips past them into his room. Behind him, Jenny laughs at something Chuck is saying.
The new term starts, but Dan is too busy writing to attend any classes. Blair has quit university altogether now that she's stepping into Eleanor's shoes. Lily and Bass smile from a new home story feature in the latest issues of InStyle or Vanity Fair or allure every month. Nate is elsewhere, jetting around the world to hunt after Diana. Chuck is helping Jenny conquer the fashion world.
Gossip Girl hasn't mentioned any of them for the past two months. In fact, she hasn't written anything at all lately. The last entry on her blog is a simple, matter-of-fact obituary on Serena van der Woodsen. Unlike Gossip Girl's running commentary on Serena's life, there's no judgement and no scathing wit to the report of her death.
Perhaps Gossip Girl too has, at last, grown up and moved on.
"I don't think we should date."
Dan looks up at Blair and wonders if he somehow missed the first half of this conversation. He doesn't know how that happened, maybe he's had an accident he cannot remember and he's concussed, but that's the only explanation he can think about that makes more sense than 'I woke up in a parallel universe'.
Reaching for the remote, he presses pause and the fame freezes on a close-up of Audrey Hepburn's face. They're doing movie nights again because Blair is stressed from work and writing is turning Dan into a recluse, and the one time he convinced Jenny to watch a movie with him, she walked out after twenty minutes and told him that even doing accounting specs was less boring.
"What?" he asks unintelligently after what seems like an unacceptable long silence, because it's the only response that seems valid.
Blair rolls her eyes and snaps her fingers in front of his face. "Pay attention, Humphrey! I said we shouldn't date."
"I heard you, I just- You broke up with me to be with Chuck because he's your soulmate or something, never mind that he's out doing God knows what with my little sister, and you didn't even talk to me before you left me, so why would I want to go back to dating you?"
"Exactly. That's what I'm saying. I mean, let's face it, I'm not really over Chuck yet and I probably won't be for a while, and even though you haven't dated her in eons, you're in mourning about Serena. We'd be each other's rebound, and that's never a good idea."
She makes it sound like she's doing the reasonable thing by telling him they shouldn't be dating, which is actually true apart from the fact that no one ever suggested that they'd start dating (again) in the first place. So Blair saying 'I don't think we should date' is a little like someone telling him 'I don't think you should stick your finger into the power socket' - kind of obvious but not worth mentioning because really, he's not an idiot. But it's Blair, so he thinks he needs to spell that out for her because obviously she does think he's an idiot.
"Blair, we broke up. You left me. Whatever makes you think I even wanted to date you again? Now, or like - ever?"
At which Blair rolls her eyes at him againand gives him a look that's half pity and half... fond exasperation, if he had to put a name to it. Which he does, because he's a writer and he likes putting a name to things.
"Please!" she says. "If I asked, you'd agree faster than I can say 'Clair Carlyle'. And it would be exactly like the last time. I'd be in love with you, but not enough to stay, and it would break your fragile little heart all over again."
Her tone is firm and very matter-of-fact, and something about what she says is tugging at his heart and making him hurt in places he thought had stopped hurting months ago. It's nothing he cares to reexamine, though, so he just brushes her off with a sarcastic, "You're delusional."
"I'm right, and you know it."
She is, and he knows it. Doesn't mean he has to admit it. "Look, let's just agree that we're not dating, because this is the one thing we do seem to agree on."
"I knew you'd see it my way," Blair says, but the lightness in her tone falters. "Maybe it'll be different later. In a few months when-"
"Blair." She stops and looks at him. "Let's talk about later when-Let's talk about this later. When we're ready. I don't think we should be making any promises at this point."
Blair nods, and she looks so sad and dejected that Dan can't stop himself from leaning in and pressing his lips against hers. The kiss is chaste and simple, and it feels like comfort, like reassurance, like the one thing Dan just told her he wouldn't make.
But when he breaks away, there's a tentative smile on her lips, and that somehow makes it okay.
Blair reaches over his body to snatch the remote and the movie starts again.
Dan's second book is published in spring. It's not the follow-up novel to Inside the publisher was waiting for, nor is it the scathing tell-all book he started last summer, a manuscript that vanished forever in his computer's virtual recycle bin in the weeks after Serena's death.
A columnist from a famous lifestyle magazine calls Everyone's Girl "a heartbreaking tale of what happens when love just isn't enough". Dan thinks they're missing the point. It's the story of a girl. A girl with an insatiable hunger for life and freedom and fun. A girl trapped in her gilded cage, chained down by her past and by the people who loved her and thought they were trying to save her when all they did was clip her wings.
It's not a love story, not in the traditional sense. Perhaps there's the usual boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy loses girl element to the story, but that's hardly more than a footnote.
Mostly, it's a book about how you can't change into the person you're supposed to be if the people in your life won't stop seeing you as the person you once were. But Dan thinks that bit probably goes over everyone's heads and no one really gets it except for the people who knew Serena.
But that's okay. No one else matters, anyway.
End.