Chapter 6

My mother was asking what an AU Fic is. I explained it to her and she suggested me to turn Serena into a Vampire, so that she and Dan can have their immortality. Guess she's seen too much Twilight ;)

They're silent for a moment, Dan blinking rapidly at the woman before him as she keeps her eyes firmly on him, unrelenting.

"Excuse me?" Dan splutters eventually, taking a step towards her. "You expect me to come with you?"

Serena rolls her eyes at him and takes a step away from him. "Come on, Dan. We're on a time limit here, for all I know they could be coming for you any second. You need to grab some clothes and anything else you're gonna want for about a week."

"A week?!" Dan cries, but Serena ignores the outburst and moves confidently through the loft towards his bedroom. Honestly, Dan doesn't even have the brain power to ask how the hell it is she knows where his bedroom is.

"Well, I'm assuming a week minimum, actually. It shouldn't take too long to get this guy, but I just need you to hide for a bit so that-"

Dan cuts off her ramblings by storming up behind her and swiftly grabbing her arm. It's the wrong move. One moment he's angry and has her arm in his grip, beginning to pull her around to demand an explanation, and the next thing he knows the world is swirling dangerously sickly around him and he's on his back, both arms pinned above his head and her knee pressed to his chest.

His eyes stray involuntarily to her heaving chest, but he drags them away quickly, meeting her furious gaze.

"Don't try and overpower me, Dan." She spits, unmoving.

Dan groans, head thumping back on the wooden floor as he uselessly wiggles his wrists. There's no point. Despite the reasonable weight and height differences between them, she's much more knowledge on self-defense and she's much more agile. No way that he can ever escape from her grip without permission.

"Dammit. I want an explanation from you." He growls at her, lifting his head slightly to try and regain some form of control in the situation.

"From me? Dan, I am trying to save your life, if you hadn't noticed. Why the hell do I owe you an explanation?"

Dan narrows his eyes at her, feeling disbelief bubble in his chest. "Are you serious? Last night you knocked me out and I swear to God you were going to kill me. So, you know, sorry for not being all too willing to leave my life to run away with you." Dan snaps, watching her eyes widen slightly. "How am I even supposed to trust you?"

Serena's jaw clenches. "I let you go, didn't I?"

"Only to come right back the next morning and pin me to the ground of my own home!"

At his words he feels Serena's death grip on his hands loosening, knee slipping from his chest as she sighs and sits beside him instead. He's still for a moment, watches her, until he decides to take her lead and sits up, rubbing his lower back as he does. She could have at least been careful with him when she'd pinned him to the ground.

"Dan, we can do this the easy or the hard way, but either way you're leaving with me." Serena says slowly, rubbing a hand across her eyes. "You may not like it, but you'll be grateful when I save your life."

He's silent for a while so she stares at him, wonders how it is she can try to sound truthful. She's not all too good at honesty anymore. But then again, she's been living this life for 6 years now. 6 years her life has been full of deceit and twisted lies. Somehow, in the midst of it all, she lost her grip on the truth.

"I don't know how to get you to trust me. I really don't." She confesses. "But you don't have the time to sit around and argue with me about it."

Dan nods slowly, glancing down at his hands that have landed in his lap. "Tell me something?"

"What?"

"Who...Who wants me dead?"

Serena swallows thickly, finds herself resisting the urge to smooth the lines of his frown away. Looks like she does have space left in her heart for some sentimentality.

If only a little.

"I don't know his real name. I just know his last name. Carmichael."

"And..He's the one who hired you? To kill me?" Dan implores, turning his wide brown eyes on her.

This time, she can't resist the urge. Her hand raises without warning the logical side of her brain and she finds herself running her thumb along one of his eyebrows, smiling slightly, doesn't understand why she feels warmth in her stomach from the feel of his skin or why she feels like she needs to help him so much. This is more than him being innocent, and this is more than her trying to resist a guilty conscience, but she still can't pin down what it is about him that makes her want to stop.

"Yeah, Dan." She murmurs. "He hired me."

Slowly, Dan takes a deep breath, hand raising to curl around her wrist. He tugs on her hand and pulls it into his lap, studying her hand, tracing her long, thin fingers with his own. She's content with it for a moment until she catches herself - why is she letting him do that? - and then immediately untangles her fingers from his grip.

Dan doesn't say a thing, but then shifts away from her and she feels her heart leap to her throat because she's certain she's got through to him about needing to leave. But he doesn't head towards his bedroom, instead moves back to his front door and opens it, staring at her purposefully.

"I can't come with you, Serena."

It's the first time he's used her name since she arrived and she feels butterflies in her stomach at the way it sounds on his tongue. Stupid, immature reaction.

Serena climbs to her feet, frowning. "Dan, I don't think you understand the danger you're in here."

"And I don't think you understand that I can't just disappear. I have a son."

"Oh, so you'd rather your son comes home to find you dead, huh? You'd rather him walk in here as it's happening, for him to die too?" Serena challenges, invading his personal space and refusing to break the eye contact.

Dan's eyes widen. "They won't touch him. I won't let that happen."

"You won't have a choice because you'll be dead, Dan. C'mon.." Serena's voice turns soft, pleading. "If you won't do it for yourself, at least do it for your son. Protect him, Dan."

"You've lost a parent, haven't you?"

The question is so sudden that she startles, taking a step backwards in shock as she stares at him with wide eyes. "That is...That is none of your business." She tries to sound strong, but she hears her voice trembling in her own ears.

At her reaction, Dan seems surprised, but then suddenly shoves away from the door and heads towards his bedroom. Serena hesitates for a moment but trails after him, unwilling to let him out of her sight.

He's not thinking as he grabs the rucksack from the top of his closet, trying to ignore the visions he sees in his mind of a crying Milo coming home to find he's gone. But it's better than the ones he sees where he comes home to find him dead, or the ones where he doesn't ever come back home at all. He screws his eyes shut tight against the visions as he grabs random shirts from his closet, chucking them into the rucksack without care.

"You gonna monitor my every move, Serena?" He hisses at her, watches her flinch at the question.

Though it's not her fault, really. At least, that's what the sane part of his mind is thinking, but he keeps pushing it back. If she had killed him that first night though, Milo wouldn't be in any form of danger. Though he is grateful for his life, he really is, and he's extremely overwhelmed that she's trying to help him. Not that he understands why she's doing this.

When he reaches for his phone on the bedside drawer, Serena grabs his wrist as quick as a flash. "Uh, Dan, you can't take your phone. They can track you that way. You can't contact anyone."

"If you want me to come with you, then I am taking my phone. I need to stay in touch with Milo."

"I- i'll get you a burner cell then. But you're not gonna be talking to him regularly, okay, Dan? We need to take as many precautions as we can. Minimalize risks." Serena says slowly, trying to calm him down.

Dan throws the phone back onto the bedside table with anger rumbling deep in his chest. Serena studies him, concerned, as he slumps down onto his bed in exhaustion, head falling into his hands.

Serena hovers, unsure what to do in this situation. So, calmly, she reaches for the shirts he'd haphazardly shoved into the rucksack, pulls them out and begins folding them correctly. No use in wasting space in the rucksack. Not that she supposes he'll need much. She likes to think of herself of modest, but she's fairly certain she'll be able to track down this mysterious Mr Carmichael and take him out inside a fortnight. She can't afford any more time than that; she only knows how to hide for so long when people are searching for her.

"My full name is Serena Celia van der Woodsen." She says softly as she finishes folding the last shirt, watching his head rise from his hands to stare at her as she tucks the last shirt into the rucksack.

"I didn't ask."

"I know." Serena murmurs. "But I suppose I owe you that at least. What with the amount of time we're going to be spending with eachother."

Dan sighs, heart heavy. "What am I supposed to tell my son?"

"Leave him a note." Serena tells him. "Don't try and code anything though, Dan, he needs to believe you're perfectly okay."

"Oh, hey Milo, don't worry about me. I've simply run off with an assassin in an attempt to save my life." Dan snaps bitterly.

"I'm not an assassin!" Serena cries suddenly, then sighs heavily over her own outburst. "I'm...Don't call me that. I'm not that cold. I'm just - I'm an enforcer."

"You kill people, don't you? People you're hired to kill? You're getting paid for it."

Why does it hurt so much in her heart to hear those words, to hear the sour note of his tone as he says them? She's been this way for 6 years now. She should be able to accept what she is. Except - Except assassin doesn't sound right in her mind. Assassin implies being distant from her targets. She never is. Though she's never been attached to any of them as she is to Dan, it's not as though she doesn't feel bitter remorse in her stomach when she feels their blood on her hands.

But she manages, because most of them deserve it. They deserve to be punished, and the law will never be able to catch up with them and this is the only way she knows how to be anything like what she used to be.

"Yeah." She whispers hollowly. "I kill."

Then she takes a deep breath and turns to him. "Hurry up and finish packing, Dan. I'll wait by the door."

Dan emerges ten minutes later, sighing when she searches the possessions in his bag just in case he's snuck something in there he shouldn't have. Serena raises her eyebrows at the wad of money he stashed in there but he refuses to dignify the look with an excuse. Of course he's bringing money with him.

She makes him write a note to Milo. His heart is in the very pits of his stomach as he does, hands trembling. He makes a lame excuse about an urgent meeting he needs to be at that his publisher forced him along to, claims it's to do with making the Inside Novels into a movie (yeah, he wishes) and not worry because he'll only be gone to LA for a week. He even manages to make a joke about looking after his own father who lives with the pair of them.

As Serena ushers him out of the door he finds himself frozen, staring longingly back at his home. His home with his father and his son. He'd do anything to stay.

"How am I supposed to just leave my son?" He asks Serena. "I'm the only person he's got."

Serena sighs, shutting the door behind her. "Everybody grows up eventually, Dan and they learn how to stop relying on other people. Besides, I'm sure he has a great Nanny and your father is still there as well."

"That doesn't have to happen. Growing up and being lonely are two completely different things. My father is off doing stuff with his band almost the whole day and the Nanny leaves at 7." Dan argues.

"It's for the best." She says cagily as she gives him a shove in the direction to the stairs and she's not quite sure what she's talking about anymore - Him leaving his son to save both of their lives or being alone.