There aren't many occasions in life when one can say that they are experiencing a moment unparalleled by others. But Dan feels that this is one of them. There isn't much thinking or pondering going on; things were happening fast and real, and it's as if there's someone else controlling him, someone telling him what to do.
Her hand and forehead are so clammy, and she winces with pain as the doctors get ready around her, and the only thing he finds himself good at doing is gripping her hand tightly and supporting her back as she starts pushing. He doesn't want to leave her side, miss the birth of what could well have been his only child, even if only for a few minutes, but at the same time he wants to run out of the room, forget the screams and the cries.
And then everything is interrupted by the loud cry of a baby, and it is the most beautiful sound he has ever heard. Serena collapses in the pillows, and he moves the damp hair from her forehead, pinning it behind her ears, so she could see what seems like a miracle happen.
'Congratulations, Serena, Dan. It's a girl.'
-xoxo-
He holds the baby in his arms for the first time, and although he could swear that he didn't know how to do it, everything just felt so... natural. The way her tiny spine curves against his arm, and her head fits perfectly in the crease of it. The first thing he thinks of doing is dropping his head and gently, delicately placing his lips over her forehead. She smells so perfect.
He slowly walks by Serena's bed, and places the newborn in her arms, tucking the pink blanket around her. The blonde looks up at him, eyes glossed over and lips shaking slightly in a beautiful smile, and it doesn't feel like he thinks about it at all before he holds her face in his hands and catches her bottom lip in between his, holding it for a moment longer, moving his mouth over her cheek, and nose, and eyelid. He feels her lean into his touch, and he pretends to live in another world, a different universe, under different circumstances. It is so much easier, so much better; he wished he could die pretending.
He leans his forehead against hers, and wipes tears off her cheeks as she looks down at the almost-asleep baby in her arms.
'Hey. Don't cry. We've done well. She is... perfect.'
And just like that, his world comes crashing down around him, destroying the walls he attempted to build. The fort he wanted to hide in. He tried to live a moment that he didn't deserve, the beginning of a life he wouldn't live, and pretence is always punished. And at that moment, he honestly feels his punishment covered every single mistake he had ever done in his life. Because he finds himself being escorted out of the room as a nurse walks in with Rick, Donna, and a thick brown envelope. And once the door shuts behind him, he becomes an empty man.
-xoxo-
He splashes his face with cold water and looks in a mirror in one of the toilets of the hospital. His reflection shows him the familiar face of a man he used to know, but there is a certain glint in his eyes that Dan cannot recognize. As he tries to make sense of the man he has become, he starts to understand that he was wrong in expecting people to know who he was, expecting her to believe the man he had become, if he doesn't know who that man is in the first place. And while he wants to declare working on himself as his priority, he decides working on them was more important.
He knows that somehow, someday, they would get over every challenge their destiny threw at them. This is just one of them.
He walks down the hospital corridors, and hovers outside her door. Her reason for needing him was gone; it was now his turn to step up his game and start being even close to worthy of her forgiveness and trust.
She is crying in her hands as he enters her room, and his rehearsed phrases and words of apology erase instantly from his brain, his mind solely focusing on the blonde with the broken heart. Sometimes he thinks how long it would be until it breaks beyond repair.
Dan presses her tightly against his chest, hiding his face in her hair, and she responds almost instantly, knotting her fingers with the shirt around his lower back. He is more than happy to just be there with her, be there for her, but he knows there are things to be discussed and concepts to be touched on, and he is a hundred percent certain that they won't end with a goodbye. He knows she needs time to adjust, to understand, to move on, and he wants to give her all the time she would ever imagine. But at the same time, there is something at the back of his mind, rushing him. She's slipping with every second. She was, indeed, slippery to hold on to, but he wouldn't allow himself to lose her again. Never again.
She brings him back to a harsh reality as she almost chokes on a sob, and he hands her a glass of water, his hands over hers as she lifts it to her lips. Her eyes are closed before him and the feeling of her hands in his is enough to give her a little comfort. A little confidence. To tell him...
'So she's really gone, huh?' he asks, rubbing his thumbs over her knuckles. As if it was 2007 again.
'Dan?' she whispers.
'Yeah.'
'I couldn't.' Her voice breaks at the end again, and his eyes shoot to hers so quickly, his brain precepts it only moments later.
'What?' He moves closer to her, grasping the tip of her chin, and angling her face gently further towards him.
'I didn't.'
At that single moment, he honestly believes the knowledge of words that he has as a writer is not enough to allow him to describe the surreal feeling. A strange experience. Happiness pained by anticipation. Love stained by pride. He hasn't been thinking about his actions for the past few hours, so he doesn't as he lets out a laugh of relief and wraps his fingers delicately around her face, the tips of them disappearing in a sea of sun and light.
'You kept her?' He feels the need to double check. Otherwise the fall to reality is close to resembling that of a mile long fall against the hardest concrete possible.
She nods, and his heart swells in an instant.
'Then why are you crying?' he asks with a tone of laughter in his voice, and his thumbs move across the apples of her cheeks, removing the hard proof.
'Because I wasn't strong enough to give up. On you and me. I was selfish enough to leave an expecting family without a child, and I feel... terrible.' She almost whimpered at the end, and a thumb lingers on her lips as he tries to stop her, but he knows she's not finished.
'I wanted to punish you, to hurt you, I wanted you to know what it felt like to lose the one you love and care most about. To know what it's like to have to live without them...'
'I learnt that the second I realised I lost you,' he whispers in the space between them, but she is still distant, and agitated, and he rummages his head to find something to say to show her... everything... he felt at that moment. To make her understand how all of it was based on her.
'I couldn't give our daughter up because she's half yours and half mine, and I had no idea I could love another human so deeply so quickly. I couldn't because I knew that the second she'd be gone, there'd be nothing to keep you beside me, and I know it's selfish and pathetic, but I'm not strong enough to deal with that again, even if I say I don't love you or need you, and you made me that way!' She gesticulates harshly around her as she speaks, so he captures both of her wrists in one hand, while his other one cups her cheeks, bringing her close to him as water streams between his knuckles.
'I'm sorry for hurting you, and causing you so much distress and misery, and I am prepared to work a lifetime to make it all up to you. But I promise you, Serena, baby or no baby, I would have stayed right here, by your side, trying my hardest to make you as happy as you deserve to be. I'm here, S. I'm right here. And I'm not going anywhere.'
She trembles underneath his touch, and a hand of hers breaks free from his grip moving slowly, uncertainly to the back of his head, knotting in his curls.
'I want to believe that. I need you to make me believe that.'
'I'm working on it.'
'Please don't make me regret this. Trusting you, allowing myself to feel... everything again. I don't want to ruin this again,' she whispers.
'We won't. I love you, Serena.'
His lips brush gently over hers, and he feels her tears sprawl against his cheeks, but he can also feel her respond to him; the familiar tension in her touch, and the light and feathery nature of her kiss.
He doesn't push for any more. All he needed to say was spoken through their faultless connection. She is exhausted, and he can see that, so he pushes her in her pillows, allowing his mouth to touch to her forehead.
'Dan?' she speaks, and he lowers to her level, grasping her gaze in his. 'Can I see her again?'
-xoxo-
He returns almost instantly, cradling a bundle of pink fleece and tiny fingers and toes in his arms, and she stretches her arms out, her eyes focusing on her perfect face as she holds her. She was so beautiful.
She couldn't have given her away. She was naive for ever thinking that she had to.
Dan holds a tiny hand in both of his, and the soft smell of freesias and vanilla, that specific baby smell, is the most enchanting he had ever encountered. He flicks her wristband with his fingers, and something catches his eye.
'Baby girl Humphrey?' he asks softly, guiltily. Nothing he had done in the past year would have been even close to worthy of everything he was getting.
'Once Rick and Donna left, the nurse needed a name... I wanted to choose one with you.'
He smiles and kisses the tiny hand. 'That's not what I meant. Are you sure you want her to be a Humphrey? Van der Woodsens get the better schools,' he jokes.
'She's ours. She's a Humphrey.'
He leans over and kisses her cheek languorously, and rests his cheek against hers, whispering 'I hope you'll become a Humphrey one day, too,' in her ear.
She smiles gently, and runs a hand through his hair.
'So do I.'
A/N: Okay, so I know this seems like it's happening a bit too fast, but I know that if I put the end of this story off a lot longer, then it'll become boring, badly written (as I'll be bored and suffering from writer's block), and I'll ruin it. So here we are. The chapter before last. Does this make up for all the crap from the other chapters, Chia? THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS READ AND REVIEWED THIS. You guys are what made me want to write more. Love you all!