Danny's Lonely

IsabelleB.

Summary: Serena doesn't come back to New York City after she and Dan break up in Season 1. Blair, somehow, finds herself trying to pick up the pieces with Dan.

Note: Inspired by the song "Mary's in India"

"Are you going to be okay?" Blair remembered asking her the summer before their senior year of high school. "Alone, all summer, without your best friend, who always gets you out of trouble?"

"Yeah. I'm –" Serena hesitated with the prettiest of smiles. "I'm looking forward to staying out of trouble for a while."

Blair pondered tautly, what her definition of a summer without trouble would look like - a villa in Europe with their old classmate Carter, a weekend at the Hampton beach house with Nate, an daring evening in the city with Georgina.

"- Have you talked to Dan?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "Not since the wedding. It's for the best. For him - for me. I'm fine."

Serena smiled at her again, and Blair remembered her stomach turning in knots.

That look –

She had seen that same smile from Serena before.

She couldn't quite place it at the time, but regardless of its good intention, she knew that smile wasn't right.

Blair tried to shake it off.

She couldn't possibly stay here. Not with Chuck waiting for her on the heliport -

When Blair thought back to that moment with Serena, she was bombarded with the deepest feeling of regret. She knew right then and there that she would never see Serena again.

She thought of a number of things she could have said to her.

I'll miss you because you are home.

I wish the best because you have always wished it for mine.

I love you and I can't imagine a day where l won't.

Instead, she said nothing.

Serena gave people the prettiest smile before she left them.

As the summer passed and the fall returned, Blair had an odd sense of déjà vu as she entered the St. Jude Constance courtyard. Here she was again, planning social events, winter's ball and her classmates' demises, as if the last year had been nothing more then some bizarre dream.

If she closed her eyes tight enough, Serena had not returned from boarding school, she and Nate had never broken up and Chuck Bass was still a smarmy soon-to-be mogul who hadn't taken her virginity. A second in her less than perfect day she liked think it all true. But when she reopened her eyes to stare at the letter in front her, she was painstakingly reminded that it wasn't.

As Blair set out to author a letter in response to Serena's departure, she pondered long and hard about what she wanted to say.

I miss you didn't work this time because she was tired of saying it –

I wish you the best didn't quite fit because she didn't feel it—

And I love you meant nothing because the person she wanted to say it to the most really wasn't there to hear it.

Instead, she erased everything she previously penned.

Instead, she settled on "You could have at least taken Humphrey with you."

And as the words were transposed onto paper, she couldn't help but think about the state of despair that was Dan Humphey.

Surely, he dressed badly before, but couldn't he at least iron his St. Jude uniform? And clearly, he had bad genes, but she couldn't understand why when there were bags under his eyes, he couldn't sacrifice a penny in the name of a facial. And maybe she didn't understand the economics of Brooklyn, but assuredly he could afford to at least eat a meal or two to avoid looking like a male skeleton.

Those hallow cheeks and deadpan eyes -

Dear Serena,

Lily said you would call but that was three weeks ago. She gave me some of your things – from what I can tell, they are short stories authored by Humphrey. I can't say that I'm sorry for prying but I can say that I'm sorry that I bothered to read them. Humphrey is indeed a sap.

I'm going to take all that junk back to Brooklyn. For all the trouble, you could have at least taken Humphrey with you.

Blair