PROLOGUE:

Disclaimer: I hold no claim over any recognizable themes, characters, settings or products. All rights and ownership go towards the appropriate owners.

Warning/s: Eating disorders, substance abuse, attempted suicide, homosexual (not sure of this has to be a warning), swearing, suicidal thoughts/tendencies. If these offend or upset you in any way, please stop reading now.

A/N: This is a recreation of a story started by me several years ago that was truly awful, I recently found the passion to continue it and decided to just scrap it and start over. Please remember that it has been several years since I have watched Gossip Girl in its entirety so please forgive me if I get any details wrong. Also, this is unbeta'd.

New York City. A land of opportunity. A land of partying. A land of publicity. A land of exposure…both good and bad. They say that there is no such thing as bad publicity, but how can this be true when the things that children are uncovering in a world much too large and complicated for their inexperienced eyes and trusting souls?

The era of social media has led to the destruction of a generation's social affiliations. Their phone's being more important than the world beyond, preferring to skim through events on a web page instead of experiencing them. And forming opinions based on what they hear rather than what they know.

The creation of gossip based sites has steered the teenage population of New York City into a deep mistrust of each other and themselves. The most prominent of course being that of "Gossip Girl", run by an elusive mystery source who always speaks the truth, in one form or another.

However, the stories that are told are not always meant to be heard. Rumors that spread like wildfire can tarnish a reputation. Those who are spoken about often lose respect from even the well intentioned. Those who send gossip in are vindictively destroying someone else and can lose respect for themselves. And those who aren't talked about…are seen as insignificant.

And everything that comes of the widespread airing of dirty laundry is caused by one single contributing factor.

Human emotion.

Humans have a wide variety of emotions and as teenagers – or young adults as many wish to be called – we are at our most emotionally unbalanced, changes ricocheting through both mind and body as we mature, which leaves teenagers the most vulnerable to these kinds of social attacks. Long having passed the stage of their childish innocence that shielded them from much of the harsh reality, but not quite at a stage of maturity in which they can move past such events.

Nonetheless, everyone is different and they react to different situations in different ways. For example, a teenaged girl in a wealthy family, whose parents have been experiencing marital issues may start to become self-conscious once the pressure of her demanding lifestyle and well-meaning but wearisome mother smother her in their entirety. This could progress if said mother was a fashion designer and unconsciously attempted to force perfection onto her silently suffering daughter. Which could lead to a coping mechanism in way of an eating disorder.

Another example would be that of a young man disconnected from his father and having grown up without a mother directly in the public eye. He might have been given little to no boundaries which could have led to him being left bare to a world of addictions, being drug related, sexual or emotional. This might have led to him becoming overly attached to someone after being shown an ounce of true affection or pushing away those who meant anything to them.

And then sometimes, just sometimes, a person can come out of a situation seemingly unaffected, but that it is because some wounds are harder to see than others, instead of hiding behind guarded eyes or harsh words, they are hidden by long sleeves and pleading gazes. Because no one faces a battle and comes out without something being altered. Because that's what adolescence is. A battle. A singular battle in the midst of the war that makes up the rest of our lives.

Every scar fades with time, but scars on the body come from long periods of inner torment that builds in silence because nobody ever saw what should have been glaringly obvious. Self-inflicted wounds deriving from a fearful child tearing at themselves on the outside, trying to eradicate the monster on the inside. And as each scar fades, it leaves a mark on the soul and on the spirit, sullying the young and the restless.

But often, it is not those directly affected by a situation or by a particular torment that are most distraught because like death, heartbreak and depression do not happen to that particular person, they happen to everyone around them.

And this is why gossip is so destructive, because it can make an adolescent's fragile emotional state crumble along with their familiar ties. Severing any connection to a life outside that of their social circle.

Because this vicious cycle just serves to push them closer to an anchor, often being unhealthy vices such as drugs, self-harm, purging and even friendships. Needless to say, not everyone sinks to such a level, but sadly it is more often than not, everyone being dependent upon being popular, Gossip Girl only proving to feed their enslavement to the world of social miscommunication as they prove that the new up and coming scandalous addiction is more dangerous a corruption than many seen before.

Unfortunately, the concentration of gossiping networks in Manhattan's Upper East Side has led to a simple conclusion drawn by the majority of individuals. That "you're nobody until you're talked about".

And this generation of silent communication amateurs lie to themselves as they fall deeper into the deep abyss found under a search bar, slipping from reality and slowly becoming known as a lost generation, second only to the Indigenous children of Australia, stolen by white men with intentions portrayed in opposing lights, this horrendous disfigurement on human history being mirrored by the group currently being lured from certainty into a screen.

However, Manhattan teens are not alone in this endeavor, as those from all around the world are being sucked in, as seen in fifteen year old boy who joined the Upper East Side community with his two brothers after having spent his entire life in a small town situated in central Ireland. And he was deeper into his own withdrawal than many New York Native's, despite having never seen their main sin in the form of Gossip Girl.

His oldest brother, senior to him by twelve years had moved the three of them to Manhattan a year previous, chasing a job opportunity and wanting to escape the dark memories that engulfed the place of their mother's demise and father's estrangement. Connor, however had not attended St. Judes along with his counterpart Aidan due to a prolonged residential stay at the Ostroff Mental Health and Addictions Centre.

During his stay, Connor was approached and befriended by a boy of the same age, namely one Erik Van der Woodsen, who had been institutionalized after a failed suicide attempt. They grew very close and the friendship was only hindered by Erik's insistence on a similar friendship with Asher, a boy several years older than they themselves who it was rumored had been a substance abuser. Erik's persistence on the matter revealed a deeper interest in the older boy and it became known to Connor that he had to talk to Erik about the infatuation.

After an initial moment of terror on Erik's part of not being accepted by his newfound friend, Erik and Connor had many fights and disagreements on the matter, as Erik didn't see what there was to be concerned about, only happy that he had found the stability he had so desperately been craving having escaped an over-controlling paternal unit and a lonely and unreliable home space. The fights subsided after Connor saw Erik's utter disconnection to most things that didn't involve the brunette, but he continued to keep a watchful eye.

The attraction of a fling came to mean more to Erik than the words and respect of the boy who had gained the title of his best friend. No amount of conviction would make Erik see that Asher did not deserve him nor was any good for him at all.

Though, once Asher was dismissed from the Centre, Connor was quick to express his relief, expecting Erik's fixation to drift away, having come to his senses, but if anything, the fascination seemed to grow stronger and more obsessive in his absence. His heart yearning for the connection he had been ensnared into, the dysfunction he had experienced concerning love made him confused as to what he could conceive as adulation.

Nevertheless, at the end of the day, Erik's only form of companionship was to be found in Connor and their friendship only grew in strength and compatibility. Finding common interests and comfort in each other, something that was rare to find in a hospital setting. And whilst Connor still had a relationship with his family, albeit a strained one, Erik had no interest in the woman who had ignored him whilst he was in such a dark place and then "fixed" the issue by making sure that she did not have to deal with him and placed him in the clinic.

That said, Erik still did care about the woman, referring to Lilly affectionately when alone and sharing vague memories of happier moment of the two of them, but mostly refused to acknowledge or associate with her during rare visits, preferring to hide himself in a cocoon of video games and a human barrier in the form of Connor, becoming quiet and distant when she made an appearance, though they were few and far between, Connor was still finding that Erik was especially mute and sullen when his absent sister was mentioned.

Erik's release occurred six months before Connor's eventual one, leaving him to an era of feeling alone and abandoned, relapsing several times in that six month period. The fifteen year old boy lost much of his communication with Erik as the two were separated and he had little idea as to what was happening in his friend's life. And this meant that really, Connor's only real connection to the outside world was through his two brothers, Aidan and Al, which left him with a limited idea of freedom of independence. Causing his relapses to occur more frequently and more violently.

Six months and three days to the day of Erik's dismissal passed before Connor was deemed stable and for lack of a better word…sane.