( Magic grows until it overtakes. Serena and Blair are witches, born from rival families )
my blood is radioactive
( a/n: this can be a standalone or a prolouge — it just depends on my time, but it was written as a prolouge and i intend to have this be a WIP and multi-chaptered )
Her lips are bruised, her skin torn. There is a cut above her eyebrow, marring her skin. It'll scar, another one to add to the list of many, but those are usually hidden; they're in her stomach lining and in her mind, a few scattered across her arm that she covers up with make-up. Her hands are curled into fists, red nail polish peeking out and Serena is looking at her like she's a stranger to her, like they haven't spent the past four months caught up in each other.
Blair touches the cut, wincing as it stings. It's a blemish, a flaw, something else to hate. Serena looks at her like she's a stranger and her stomach twists and flips and the anger she's tried so hard to push away builds up and up. If anyone was to betray anyone, it would be Blair betraying Serena, wouldn't it? She's the cruel and twisted one, pouring yogurt on girls-it's fitting that she would be the betrayer, she's the one cloaked in darkness but Serena is the girl who runs, runs until the problem is out of sight and everyone she loves is left to pick up the crumbling pieces she leaves behind. Blair loves and loves until she gives herself up, until she's given someone everything and Serena is distant, forever falling in love but never giving herself.
Blair tries not to get involved, to make less bonds and strings to other people but she's got her heart on her sleeve. Serena, on the other hand, gives pieces of herself to everyone; something for them here, something for them there. She is the girl who floats in and out of lives with a loud tinkling laugh and a swoosh of a skirt, giggling like she's magical; made of magic, she is, Blair thinks as she watches Serena pull herself up off of the ground. Serena loves for a second and then leaves. Blair is careful with who she loves but she never stops loving them.
It was a mistake to get involved, she knew that from the first moment she saw Serena; golden hair hanging loose, uniform crinkled and crumpled, wide-blue eyes that sung lost girl, lost girl, save me. Blair knew from the moment she learned Serena's last name, learned who her family was; rivals to the Waldorf's, powerful witches that were caught on the opposite side of the magical war that took place a century ago. For a hundred years the van der Woodsen's and Waldorf's had loathed each other, loathed the power the other family carried.
But, Blair has never been able to tame her heart or control it. She falls until she can't stop herself, falls without noticing, not until she's lying on the ground struggling to breathe. Struggling to survive. So she fell. Followed Serena around, taunting her with the cruel words only a teenage girl can muster, the scars adolescence leaves dished out by Constance's Queen. Magic hurts for a moment but Blair's words scar for an eternity. But, Serena was indifferent, brushing each harsh word off like they were only words and not a sword stabbing through her skin; other girls cower in fear, run for their lives, cry in the school bathrooms, gasping for air. But Serena laughs and keeps on walking, parties at the same clubs, in the same spaces, kisses her boyfriend underneath the fluorescent strobe lights and doesn't blink an eye when Blair threatens to destroy her.
Serena was indifferent and casual, no display of a negative emotion until Blair summoned the winds and storms to knock Serena down; pushing her to the ground in a fatal swoop of anger, dangerous magics conjured up to ruin the girl who her family pit against her, to ruin the girl who won't take the bait of her pushing and instead takes to making out with her (ex)-boyfriend. It's not until flashes of greys and blacks are gushing towards her that her eyes turn angry and her body language stiff, blocking off the attacks with swoops of yellow.
Blair tumbles to the ground, lower lip wobbling - don't cry, don't cry, don't cry - but all she sees is Serena, rolling her eyes, laughing off her remarks, retorting with witty words of her own, kissing Nate. Her and Nate play in her mind, the way Serena had touched him, the way their lips had locked and the flash of jealousy that had gone through Blair's heart when she had wondered what it was like for Nate. Was Serena a good kisser? How did it feel when she touched you? Her stomach tingling as she yearned to know.
Serena pauses, her face softening as she takes in the appearance of Blair, knocked to the ground; some form of success radiates within Serena before she quickly pulls Blair up to her feet. "We don't have to be like our families." It's said because Serena hates her family, her reluctant and distant yet still overbearing mother who disapproves of everything she does, who jets off from country to country with her newest arm-candy, leaving Serena and Eric to raise themselves. Her father who left her when she was young, bidding goodbye and never returning again. If she gives into the pettiness of their rivalry she becomes them, she becomes her worst fear, worst nightmare.
Blair hesitates before she takes Serena's hand, her own family nightmares playing on a loop in her mind. Eleanor's frown as she seizes up her daughters figure, switching pastries to fruits and yogurts. Leaving for Paris and Milan and London, models walking in and out of their penthouse day in and day out, her mother fawning over slim, beautiful girls while forgetting about her daughter. Her father leaving, jetting off to Paris with Roman, leaving her behind to deal with the lack of love from her mother. Leaving her behind her for his boyfriend. She doesn't want to give in to their bitterness and hate, maybe befriending the wrong girl, their rival will will them to pay attention to Blair.
After that, any bad blood between them has vanished. Serena borrows clothes from Blair and Blair maps out Serena's bedroom in her mind, knowing it as well as she knows the back of her hand. They giggle and laugh together, arms linked as they walk through shops, gossiping about Is and Kati and the guy Penelope hooked up with over the weekend, trading lipstick tips and kissing techniques and throwing back shots together in the pale moonlight, laughing loudly and brightly as they stumble out of clubs, drunkenly dancing on tabletops and taking midnight swims at Serena's grandmothers Hamptons house. It's the friendship Blair has read about, eagerly flipping pages in the dark, but has never had with any of the girls who sit below her on the steps.
It's the type of friendship that she read about in romance novels, where it wasn't two girls who were friends but a boy and girl dying for each other, giving up pieces of themselves to share; epic, grand romances and easy, simple loves. It was what she saw on the screen in old Hollywood films, the same type of love between the two main stars displayed between her and Serena. It's the running in the night she saw on indie films, two love-interests laughing like this was the only time they had left. It was the tightening in her chest when she watched those movies with Serena, fingers trembling as she touched her arm, her hand. Being with Serena was like being on fire. Everything was dangerous. Everything was precious. Everything felt like it would burn to the ground in one wrong move. It was the most comfortable Blair has ever felt with anyone.
Blair doesn't know how they ended up here— Serena turning on her, eyes black and cold and lifeless. Blair bruised and broken and betrayed. "We were built to be rivals." Serena tells her, the voice sounds like Serena but the words aren't her; they're the family hatred they were breed into, the family pettiness they rejected. Blair can feel her heart breaking, like in cartoons when they show that love-heart and it's pounding until it shatters. Blair can feel that happening inside of her chest; her breathing haggard.
"Serena," Blair says, eyes wide as she watches her get up, brushing off the dirt off of her jeans. This is the girl who she kissed last night, her lips tasting warm and like Summer, giggling against each others skin. Serena nibbling on her ear, telling her she was beautiful, the most beautiful girl she's ever seen. How could this be her? How could this be the same girl? "This isn't you. It can't be you."
And Serena looks at her, a girl so different from the girl she knows, and Blair has made up her mind: this is not Serena and she's not going to wait around for her to show.