I'm not dead! I'm so sorry it's been a while, but a whole lot of other shit got in the way, then my motivation seemed to completely evaporate. This is a tiny chapter I know, but I want you all to know I'm not abandoning this or any of my other stories. Thankyou for your patience, I'll update again within the fortnight.

Many loves to Chris and Chiara, who have been bugging me about this since April :p


The air in the room at the Palace feels heavy and humid, tension suspended by what Carter is expecting to hear and Serena knows she has to say. She treads softly, gazing around for her…boyfriend.

After this, can life please get simpler?

Serena hates this part. This role she's so familiar with. She hates being the one to wound, to scar, to heartbreak; it feels like hypocrisy and given how well acquainted she is with these things, it makes her hurt for him. But she can't live her life for another's happiness (like Nate once did) and she can't live a lie (as Blair is so fond of doing); she can't live a life of regrets (as everyone on the UES has before her).

He's here, to her slight surprise. His shirt is wrinkled where it's tucked into his suit pants and his shoulders are tight with something, maybe anger, maybe sadness, maybe resentment. Probably all three. Carter's facing away from her, looking at something in one hand and clutching a scotch in the other, and Serena swallows her reticence while coming to a quiet stop across the room.

"Carter?"

Her voice has a gravelly quality reflective of the twisted combination of guilt, hesitance and regret balled up within her. He says nothing, but he tenses ever so slightly at his name, and she hates how familiar these situations have become.

Hurt people hurt people.

Still no response, Serena takes a tiny step closer, "Carter, I-"

"It was never me, was it?"

His voice isn't angry, it isn't resentful or cold. It's…soft. Sad. Accepting. But that has always been his way. She's not sure what he means by it, though she has a good idea when he turns to face her, a photo in his hand.

A gold dress and a sweeping kiss.

"All that time in L.A, it was never me. You never wanted me."

Serena shakes her head, that isn't true; but it isn't false either. His grey eyes are misted with alcohol and what looks like defeat, and she sighs, "It's not that simple."

He smirks with an edge of bitterness, looking at the picture of her and Dan, "You always think that Serena, but the truth is, it is. It always was. You just didn't want to see it."

He finishes the scotch and drops the glass on the coffee table unceremoniously, the sharp sound making her startle. Carter picks up his wallet and regards Serena silently. She bites her lip, looking at her hands in front of her and feels condemnation more than anything; she's sorry this happened to him, sorry it happened to them all, but nothing she can say will make him believe it. She loves him in her own way, and the last thing she wants is for him to disappear from her life altogether. But she knows that pain. She remembers seeing Dan and Blair together, she remembers seeing the person you love with someone else. Serena won't ask Carter to stay, or to forgive her, or to listen. She won't ask him for anything.

"You won't believe me, but I swear I never wanted this to happen. I never thought this would happen."

Carter swallows very deliberately, and when he walks brusquely past her for the door she lets him go. He hesitates at the exit, turns back and tosses the photo to the ground between them, "You never do."

It's selfish, but when the door shuts behind him, Serena rubs the tears from her eyes because she loves him, in her own way.


Darting around the loft balancing piles of food containers and empty beer bottles (because he'd rather risk dropping it all than make unnecessary trips to the bin), Dan finds himself making periodic sweeps past the couch where Serena's scent had permeated the throw rug. Just to remind his brain that she was there, he isn't having a psychotic break.

He hopes. Olfactory hallucinations aren't a thing, right?

Carter's phone call earlier had rapidly sobered the mood between the two of them, and they had sat awkwardly on the couch staring at Serena's phone still half undressed. At any other given moment, it would have been funny.

At that given moment, it wasn't.

Dan had waited for Serena to say something, anything, subtly trying to pull his shirt back on without breaking the weird trance she was in. A tiny line between her delicately drawn brow, worrying at the fingernails of her right hand, she's thinking about something and her stoic silence made him a little afraid to ask.

But when she kissed him gently on the cheek and softly told him she'd be back that afternoon, he melts like he's 16 all over again and the world is perfect, save for the slightest, saddest little edge to her voice and slightest, tiniest shadow of heaviness in her face.

Almost perfect.

Dan's paranoid, neurotic nature would like nothing more than to pace and brood over why was she so miserable is she coming back to tell me she's leaving for Los Angeles what did last night mean but if he does that there's a disturbing likelihood he actually will have a psychotic break before Serena returns. So he busies himself cleaning, doing laundry and obsessively checking his phone for messages from Serena and/or Gossip Girl blasts.

No. Not messages from Serena. You have more dignity than that.

When it vibrates against the bench Dan narrowly misses standing on the pile of dirty washing only to be sent sprawling across the floor by the barstool in a hasty attempt to answer his phone. He clambers to table level and unlocks his phone, and when he reads Serena's message it really feels like he's 16 again.

So you'll pick me up at 8?

Dignity be damned.