if these wings could fly
A/N: Hi, hello, hola, here have an update and a lovely Tuesday ;) Xx
"No, Georgina." Dan grits out.
"Oh c'mon, Humphrey. Think of the sales, the publicity-"
"I've already had enough publicity when it comes to Serena. Enough to last a lifetime." Dan says morosely, mind flitting back to the paparazzi that had hounded him during the trial. Had said such horrible things about Serena. Things he won't forget.
The paparazzi still linger. Sometimes. The always will do, due to his fame. But even now, almost two years later, the occasional reporter will approach him. For an exclusive interview. Or a statement. Something to clear what really happened. Tell the world all. And all he wants to do is remove that from his life, and the only way of doing so is with this book. Inside. Well, a series. He already sees the veins of the life she was supposed to have stretching before him, unraveling him and the only way he will survive is by using his words, their blood, to pump life through what was forgotten. What had never happened. But should have.
"Honestly, after the stunt you've pulled, you can't be surprised they're trying to do this to you." Georgina, his publicist, says as she places her purse on the kitchen counter. "You're lucky they're going to publish that book, anyway."
He laughs at that one. "Yeah, right. Georgina, they've practically bent over backwards to make sure they could get this. The money..." He shakes his head with a sigh.
Georgina pouts. "Okay, okay, so you've still got a thing for the chick. But, Dany, it's a brilliant idea. With the release party on the same day, you could get it all out of your system, there's always a blonde willing-"
"No!" He cries, spinning to look at her with wide eyes. "Dammit Georgina, I said no!"
He refuses to be stuck in a room. Dressed up. With people he doesn't know. Stuffy businessmen, and glamorous businesswomen. On the second anniversary of Serena's sentence. Surrounded by blonde women who only want him to sign their chests, who flutter their eyelashes, trying to make him fall in bed with them like he would've done before Serena. But it would be betraying her.
As the release date for Inside approaches, he finds his thoughts steadfastly focused on her. Especially after they'd forced him to place a heated scene into the book, claiming it would be perfect for the characters, it would be the Dan Humphrey they used to know before all of this happened. And he couldn't stop thinking about her skin. So soft and lovely and interrupted with scars. The way it tasted against his tongue. The smooth, warm curves of her, how there was still more of her to map. Every map starts out empty, after all.
And then these thoughts bring him to her smile. A little cracked around the edges. Her eyes. Just a little too haunted. How in that one night with her he could feel. Everything.
And it had all ben taken away from him.
"Sorry. I'm sorry, Georgina. I shouldn't have yelled." He says, breaking himself from his stupor. Georgina's still eyeing him warily. "Did the publishing company send you?"
Georgina shrugs. "You weren't answering their calls. It's not like I enjoy doing their work for them."
He pinches the bridge of his nose. Breathes in and out and then in again. One for luck. "Okay. Okay, I'll call her and sort things out. But it's not being released that day. You hear me?"
Georgina grabs her purse, rolling her eyes. "Fine."
She stops before she reaches the door. Turns to him. "They say they need the dedication by tomorrow morning at the latest."
He nods. "Got it."
She hesitates again. Genuine concern fills her eyes. "Are you okay, Dan?"
His heart constricts for a moment. Knowing all these people that he's known for such a long time care about him. And all he ever does is wallow. Never living. Just existing through the words on the printed page.
"Yeah." He says. "Yeah, I'm fine."
It may just be the biggest lie he's ever told.
He comes up with the dedication at 3am the next day. Looking at a photo of a fresh-faced Serena van der Woodsen, recently gaduated from High School, that her mother had given him. He can't stop thinking about how wonderful she could've been. Her eyes. Haunted but not with the ghosts that seep blood onto her hands now. Recovering. Not falling.
Extraordinary.
To the extraordinary SvdW. We're connected, we always will be.
All the beautiful prose. Poetry. All of it on this planet. None of it could ever explain that tight feeling in his chest when she smiled at him. Like maybe. Just maybe. Everything could be alright. Until it wasn't.
It's not her fault.
It's not her fault that she was placed in solitary.
"Serena?"
She doesn't look up at Doctor Grey. Continues to stare at that dark stain on the carpet, wondering how it got there. Was it another patient? Did they knock something over? Was it an accident? Was it on purpose? How violent was it? Was there blood?
How can she stop herself from seeing blood, all the time?
"I don't want to talk about it." Serena mutters disdainfully.
Grey's quiet for a moment, and finally she lifts her gaze, over to the window. Stares at the others in the garden. She loved having that privilege. She had been able to wear her own clothes. Only had hourly checks. Her medication had been reduced, she'd been less fuzzy in her mind, less nauseous. And she could roam the gardens and feel the sun on her face and pretend that Dan was there. With her. All it took was to close her eyes. Imagine his phantom hand in hers. Like two normal individuals, stuck still while the Earth keeps spinning.
Now that she's been in solitary, those privileges have been revoked. Half-hour checks, her medication being considered changed, having to walk around the gardens in a group with a nurse. She's not been moved back to maximum security, but deep down in her heart, she is absolutely terrified that they'll move her back there.
"Serena, I think it would be in your interest to talk about the incident."
"In almost two years there have only ever been two incidents. One on my second day of being here. And this recent one wasn't caused by me-"
"Then who was it caused by, Serena?"
Damn. He has her there. She chuckles, simultaneously outraged but completely tired of it. This place. Grey. Missing Dan. Every day.
"Carly Reed. She started it."
Her lips quirk. She sounds like a kid in middle school.
How her heart aches to be there again. She would make so many different choices. Stupid, meaningless ones. Like not letting that boy feel under her top just because her friends told her she should. Revising for that calculus test instead of cramming that morning, resulting in a C-. But the bigger things too. Telling her Dad she loved him more often than she ever did, instead of brushing him off and acting the teenager facade. Preventing herself from getting too involved in her Dad's case, from allowing it to be so destructive that she loses her job and becomes- this.
And Dan.
Well, she'd never have ruined him at all.
"How did she cause the incident, Serena?"
Serena huffs, finally turning to Grey. "It was over medication. She found out that I was being given sleeping pills and she had been rejected them when she'd asked for the. That was it."
Grey nods slowly. Silence.
She rolls her eyes. "We were at the nurse's station, collecting our medication. So that's when she noticed and she tried to grab for them. I made her back off."
Grey checks one of the pieces of paper he has jumbled between various forms. Her record. Huh. As though her record could be any more tainted than it has been by the fraud, the murders. This is nothing. This is not a relapse. She will not go back to that. She must get better. At least, that's what she thought she had to do. Now she's not so sure. She doesn't know the outside world, and most of her doesn't want to get to know it.
Here... It's not the best. The windows have to be opened by a nurse and they open so minutely that only her fingers wedged between the frame and the windowpane can feel any breeze. And the food makes her stomach feel empty, no matter how much she eats. And most nights the only thing preventing herself from ripping apart the bedsheets and making herself a noose is the thought of being caught and being placed on suicide watch. All privileges revoked. And she spends most of her time tucked up in her room with a journal so that she can avoid the others, the ones that yell, the ones that throw fits and can't control their minds.
But. She always has a bed. And routine. And the nurses may be could- she misses Nurse Connelly, had been sad to say goodbye when she'd left maximum security- but they care for her, they give her the medication she needs and make sure she's occupied and some try to make small talk with her. And Doctor Grey listens to any thing she says. Pries her emotions open gently, until they're all flooding out and it's like being relieved of the weight of the world, like Atlas.
It's the closest to home she's had since she was 19.
"According to my records, Serena, Carly wound up with a hairline fracture and a broken arm. That's a big leap from making her, as you said, back off. The nurses that tried to stop you also received a bloody nose and the other fractured ribs."
She swallows nervously. Closes her eyes. "I don't want to talk about it."
"Serena, I thought that you'd learned that repressing your emotions only worsen the situation."
She pries one eye open nervously. Stares into his honest eyes. "Will you move me back to maximum security? Put me back in isolation?"
He doesn't ever answer questions, Grey, so she's not surprised by his response. "Do you feel I ought to recommend you're placed back there?"
She shudders. Feels the cold, the dread, sep down her spine slowly until her spine is encased with ice. Never. Never does she want to go back there.
"I stopped myself, and that's what matters. Isn't it?"
"Stopped yourself from what, Serena?"
"From- From my old habits. God, it was just... I never enjoyed it. I didn't. Killing. Not like... Not how Sociopaths are supposed to. Not like that category they've put me in. But after a while, it didn't matter that much. After a while, it was just a job, and I convinced myself that they deserved it. And for a moment, my mind, with Carly- I was convinced she deserved it. But once that nurse started bleeding... I stopped."
She confesses it all in a whisper. Because if she says these words, that makes them true.
"You're right. You did stop. And that does matter." Grey sets a pen down on his paper. "But do you believe you'd still be capable of that level of violence, Serena? Murder?"
The tears scratch away at her eyes until she has no choice but to let them fall. Damn it. Damn it all, this stupid life, this hospital, Grey. Herself. She wants any life but this one. To be anyone but herself.
"I never thought I could do it in the first place. Until I did. And then it stopped mattering. And then it was nothing."
She thinks. Maybe.
It still is.
He and Lily sit in his car like they always do when Lily visits Serena. Only, this time, Lily is holding a book. Inside.
It's been two and a half years since she had been taken away from him and every day Dan feels his heart numb just a little bit more. Dull in colour, through his blood, spreading it through his veins until he is grey on the inside. Hope lacking.
"Please, Dan." Lily says into the silence of the car. "It would benefit her. So much. She talks about you every time I visit her."
He looks over at the woman, greying, hands still shaking because of the alcohol. Dan understands why Serena was always so tired of the woman's alcoholism now. It hurts to watch. To watch her destroy herself and make empty promises that she'll get better.
It must be a van der Woodsen thing.
"She'll know I've been meeting up with you regularly. And, while I promised her I'd watch out for you... I think that would kill her."
"She would be grateful."
"She'd figure it out. That I bring you here each time. Being so close to her, just outside the damn hospital, kills me as it is. It would destroy her, ma'am."
Lily is silent, staring at the book she holds in her hands.
"So why am I giving her this book? How will that make anything better for her? There's nothing personal about this. Your names aren't even the same in here."
"It has... Everything."
Lily sighs. "Just sign the damn book. Please. If you ever loved her."
No. No. He will not play up to that.
"I'm doing this because I love her. Because those words in that book... They're all I have for her. I was never enough. And I have nothing left to say."
Lily breathes quietly in the silence, but it fills up all the room. "I thought that you would wait forever for my daughter, Dan."
"It's a finite world we live in, Lily." He says. Stares straight ahead at the plain, unassuming building. "Nothing lasts forever."
But. Always.
Always exists.
She cannot believe her eyes when her mother passes her the book.
"This is an advanced copy. It's being released next week."
She holds it in her hands, feels the weight of it, the glossy cover of the hardback. But it doesn't feel real. When does she wake up from this dream?
"Dan gave this to you?" His name cracks into two on her tongue.
Her mother nods hesitantly. "Yes. Yes, he gave it to me."
She blinks back the tears rapidly, feeling her heart burst inside her chest. Into stares. Constellations. Infinite.
"He lookin' out for you, Mom?"
"Well, I... I'd say he's looking out for the both of us."
"Yeah." She agrees, cradling her book to her chest. Precious. Hope. Light. "Yeah, that's Dan."
Her mother smiles. "Check the dedication, honey."
Her numb, shaking fingers pry the book open slowly, as she holds her breath. Her mother hovers over her, waiting for the worst. A terrible reaction. Disappointment, maybe. Guilt. Maybe all of those things she feels every day. Hanging over her like an oppressive weight. But not now. Now she's free. this. It's more. Than she could ever explain. It's fractured her. Rendered her. Speechless. Nervous. Like a teenager on her first date.
The words appear and they will never leave her.
To the extraordinary SvdW. We're connected, we always will be.
A sob escapes her, but when her mother attempts to hold her in her arms, she steps away from her embrace. Constellations dusting across her insides, setting everything from dark to light. Like a switch that she had never figured out how to switch on.
She smiles brightly it's a wonder her face doesn't split in two.
"If you see him again. Dan. Tell him... Tell him I said thank you."
Lily watches her carefully. "Just thank you?"
Her teardrops land on the words. "For everything. Always."
His heart is pounding when Lily appears from the doors, clambering back into the car. He doesn't move. Doesn't speak. Doesn't even dare to breathe.
"She said thank you. For everything. Always."
What he wouldn't do to hear those words in person. To feel them wrap around his heart with the lilt of her voice, probably tight with tears she'd pretend don't exist. To see her smile. Those eyes as she looks at him. Just one more time.
Oh, what he wouldn't do.
TBC