The Past Is A Prologue

Rating: G

Pairing: Dan/Blair & Dan/Serena

Summary: Serena reacts to the news that Dan and Blair have run away together

Author's Note:

I was inspired by the beautiful G.G. voice over at the end of the episode and thought that Serena's reaction to what happened at the wedding will be interesting considering she confessed serious feelings to Dan and he turned around and chose Blair.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Serena really couldn't say what was happening or how hard it was to wrap her mind around everything that had transpired that day.

It started out with a simple search for a groomsman. The coordinator had wanted pictures of she and Dan dancing but the more and more she questioned the more she realized that no one had any idea where Dan was.

It created a little panic in her heart. She thought that maybe he had left, they had cut the cake and started the dancing and perhaps, she thought, he just couldn't take anymore of Blair's wedding to another man.

But she dismissed the idea that he had left because she had really wanted to talk to him about what she had told him earlier and she wanted to believe that he wanted to talk about it too.

Her heart would not let her believe he had left her…

Plus, he wouldn't leave until after Blair and Louis had departed on their honeymoon. Serena knew that Dan wouldn't leave Blair until after that moment; Dan would stay until the bitter end.

But then people soon discovered that Dan was not the only person missing from the reception.

So was the bride.

Then panic ensued.

Everyone started searching and calling and speculating what could have happened.

And Chuck would have taken the blame for it if he had not been standing in the ballroom with everyone else looking just as confused and conflicted.

It didn't take them long to find Blair's phone on one of the tables.

Nor did it take them very long to find who her last outgoing phone call had been to.

It did take them a little while to discover the honeymoon car was missing.

And for some odd reason, it took them a little while to put all of the pieces together.

They were standing in a circle.

Serena, Chuck, Nate, Lily, and Rufus all trying to figure out what was going on and she was holding Blair's phone in her hand staring done at Dan's name on the screen when Rufus spoke what everyone else didn't dare say.

"It's seems that they've run away together." Rufus smiled. "I guess my cuff links brought Dan luck after all."

Chuck and Nate peeled away from the group as Rufus and Lily huddled together quietly talking.

Serena couldn't move.

The words spilled over her again and again like waves assaulting the shore.

Dan and Blair were running away together?

She couldn't believe it. She didn't want to believe it. There was no way it was possible but at the same time she was just standing there with all of these images flashing through her mind reminding her of the past and revealing the present…

They were images of she and Dan from so long ago that made her heart hurt because she could remember the way he looked at her and how she had felt about him and the truth was that Dan had turned her world upside down.

Those images were replaced by newer ones that made her head hurt because in the moments when she's honest with herself she knows that Dan never looked at her the way he now looks at Blair and how he loves Blair is unlike anything she's ever known and the truth is that Dan has turned her world upside down again.

But this time it is because of the most unimaginable pain that he has inadvertently caused.

He chose Blair.

Serena had laid it on the line, taken Blair's advice, and made a grand gesture.

But it seemed that Dan had made a grand gesture of his own and now he was somewhere in the world with the woman he loved and it was time for Serena to face the cold, hard truth that had been staring her in the face for so long.

Dan wasn't hers anymore.

He was Blair's in every single way that counted.

Serena felt her pulse quicken and found her breathing was hard to control.

She didn't know how to kill a feeling but she knew that she had been holding on too long to a feeling that Dan had long ago let go of and it was time for her to realize that there was no going back.

The relationship that they had shared was in the past.

And Serena understood now that no matter how hard she tried to change it that that's where it was always going to be.

End.

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