Title: Unexpected [1/1]
Author: Diamondinsanity (lj) / Karmawiccan (ff)
Rating: PG-13
Character(s): Vanessa Abrams (and everyone she's ever been in a relationship with)
Pairings: All the standard cannon V pairings
Spoilers: All episodes aired, and that random little "Spotted" bloggy that the CW does every week.
Word Count: 1418
Summary: Nate's words still linger in her ears. When did she go from being herself to being a UES wannabe?
Genre: Character Study
Notes: I'm sick of all the Vanessa bashing, and just felt like writing a Pro-Vanessa fic. After all, she's an amazing character, too, okay, and she needs some loving!
When she was a little girl, dreaming of the big, bad world and how she was going to save it, she had very distinct ideas of what was going to happen. Dan was going to fall madly in love with her, and they were going to elope and join the Peace Corp. While they were saving lives, she would film everything, he would write thought provoking peaces that would make it into Times Magazine, and together they would raise awareness in America as to what was going on in the rest of the world. They would be madly in love, and would adopt a dozen children like Angelina Jolie. It would have been a perfect life.
Even after she'd returned to the city junior year, she thought that everything would return to the way it had been before she'd left. Dan would still be in love with her, and together they would expose the Upper East Side for what it really was, but things never work out the way that you plan them. The last thing that Vanessa had expected was to return and find out that Dan was in love with someone who represented everything that she despised, and even more so, she'd never expected to do the same exact thing.
Falling in love with Nate wasn't something she'd ever expected to do. In fact, she'd vehemently fought against it. She'd always made a point of standing out, and making sure that she never let herself fall victim to conformity. Loving Nate would be the same as conforming. It would make her into one of those girls that she loved teasing Jenny about. In fact, it would make her no better than the creature that Jenny herself had been turning into, and Vanessa didn't want to become that. And yet, loving Nate had been as easy as breathing. He really was too charming for his own good.
Whenever anyone would talk about Nate and the company he kept, Vanessa always overheard that he was only still friends with Chuck and Blair because they'd all grown up together. Even the first time she heard it, she knew it was complete and utter bullshit. You could tell a lot about a person by the company they kept, and Vanessa knew getting into their relationship that there was a reason why he'd been friends with Chuck and Blair. It took awhile, but by the beginning of senior year, she'd figured it all out. While Chuck and Blair were open about the fact they were manipulative, Nate was quiet and thoughtful. He always acted in his best interests, regardless of the effects it had on anyone else in his life.
She used to think that despite the length of her relationship with Nate, she hadn't fallen into any of the moral downfalls she'd tried so hard to avoid. Amidst it all, she'd tried her best to not lose herself in the glitz and the glamour of the Upper East Side. That was the main reason she'd insisted upon buying the tickets to the opera that one night. But now she knew that trying to maintain her true self wasn't as easy as she thought it was going to be. She'd lied, she'd blackmailed, she'd stolen, she'd slept around, and for what? None of it had been worth it in the end, but at the time she'd been desperate. She'd wanted that life, but above all else, she'd wanted Nate.
Nate's parting words still linger in her ears. Despite all that she did to prevent it, she'd started turning into some morphed version of Blair and Jenny. When did she go from being herself to being a UES wannabe? She'd really lost track of herself when she'd been trying so hard to keep Nate.
Sleeping with Chuck had been easy, painless, enjoyable. It was the sweetest form of revenge she could allow herself at the moment. Sleeping with the ex's best friend always seemed like the way to relieve pain on the UES, and he'd been only too willing to go along with it. She supposed he was forgetting his pain as well. It hadn't been like anything she'd expected. She'd anticipated rough, angry sex, and what she'd gotten instead was passion and romance. Chuck Bass wasn't like anything she'd expected, but then again he always did have a way of taking her by surprise.
She wasn't sure what was worse, though, being compared to Blair or being compared to Chuck. Blair she could handle. There was nothing wrong with being compared to a bitch; it was empowering, but being compared to Chuck by Chuck himself was something else entirely. She was nothing like Chuck Bass.
And these are the things she tells herself as she stares into the mirror in a sad attempt to figure out when everything changed. When did everything go from talking about the Peace Corp to realizing that Chuck had forgotten to put a condom on? She hated the way her life had moved from something she could plan out and control to something else entirely.
Her hand hovered over her stomach as she thought about how easy it could all be. If she really wanted to, she could just dismiss it, and wait for a missed period to appear. Blackmail wasn't hard; she'd done it before. All she really needed to do was threaten to leak to the press that the new head of Bass Industries had an illegitimate child so shortly into his takeover, and mention to Chuck that Dan had told her everything. Of course Dan had been drunk at the time and accidentally babbled out that Chuck's mom had died in childbirth, but Chuck didn't need to know that. She could use all of that against him and happily live off his payments to keep her quiet (or his legitimate child support payments, she never knew which way he'd go). She could film all the movies she wanted to and never have to work a boring 9-5 job again. It could all be so easy.
But Vanessa wasn't that girl. She wouldn't be that girl. She'd already turned into someone she didn't recognize, and she wasn't ready to do that again. She missed Vanessa Abrams and was more than willing to go back to the girl that she used to be.
So, she buys the morning after pill like a good girl, and goes to her doctor's a week later to make sure that she's STD and baby free. She does everything that a normal, non-UES girl would think of doing. She doesn't care what anyone thought when she went up to the pharmacy and boldly asked to purchase Plan B. It doesn't matter any more to her. She doesn't need to worry about expectations and what other people think because she's not one of them any more. She's normal.
When she was a little girl, she used to think that she could tame the big, bad world. She used to think that everything would work out perfectly the way that she'd planned out. The only problem was that she hadn't accounted for the big bad city to take everything away from her. She hadn't expected Dan to fall into that world; she hadn't expected herself to fall into that world. Above all things, she hadn't expected the doctor to tell her that the blood test came out positive. Plan B doesn't work when you're already pregnant.
She hadn't expected her life to turn out so unexpectedly. Everything was supposed to fall into place, but she doesn't mind it so much any more. Hadn't adventure been what she'd wanted in the first place? She doesn't care any more that Dan is practically already at Yale and that Nate is wrapped up in Blair or even that Chuck is wrapped up in learning the last minute things he needs to know before he takes over his company. Vanessa doesn't care because she doesn't need them; any of them. Sometimes, life veers off the path you think it's heading in and that's okay with her. She doesn't need a trip across Europe. A part of her is grateful to return to Vermont and move back in with her parents. It's the easiest way to return to the old her.
Sometimes you don't get that life that you imagined when you were little. Sometimes you get something better. Besides, Angie did have a couple of kids naturally. So, there's still hope for her yet.