"How was your day with Serena?" It was early Wednesday evening and Dan had been looking forward to returning to his luxurious home to peace and quiet; so as he stepped through the elevator doors and into the foyer, he hadn't expected to see his younger sister walking through from the living room where he could hear that she had just put on a CD, the beginning strains of music slowly starting, to the kitchen again where he could smell something cooking.

Despite the fact that twenty-seven year old Jenny Humphrey, who was making a name for herself in the fashion industry, had lived by herself in her own place back in Brooklyn for nearly six years now, she had been coming into Manhattan to Dan's place at least four times a week, sometimes every day, every week for the last seven years.

Dan grunted an incomprehensible response. He had just spent the entire day with his ex, who in the time they hadn't spoken to each other had changed to another woman completely – at least when she was around him.

"Do you have to play this crap?" Dan asked, following his sister into his state of the art kitchen, as the opening chords to the new album by rock band 45 started.

"It's not crap." Jenny protested, stirring at something within the large pot on the stove. From the smell, and the small peek that Dan had managed he surmised that she was making their father's infamous chilli.

"It's Julian fucking Prospere." Dan hissed between clenched teeth. Julian Prospere, who was known more to his legion of screaming teenaged fans as Flow, was the lead singer for the band that was blasting through his speakers at the moment, and was also the man that Serena had married a year after their divorce.

Dan fixed his sister, and eventually Jenny got the message. Dan's home, Dan's rules; she moved away from the stove reluctantly and headed back into the living room to find another CD they would both be in agreement on.

"So, how was your day with Serena?" Jenny repeated the question as she came to sit next to her brother on the kitchen bar stools. "You spend a whole day with her, locked in a stuffy office, talking about when you two were in love…"

Jenny had always idolised Serena van der Woodsen; from the day that she had first saw her as a first grader at Constance Billard School for Girl when Serena was in the fourth grade. The two girls had developed a tight friendship later on in high school when Dan and Serena first started dating, and it had continued well after the Humphrey/van der Woodsen divorce, with Serena being one of Jenny's most famous clients.

Dan knew that his younger sister, like her niece, still daydreamt about Dan and Serena falling in love again. "It's not going to happen.' He said shortly, just like he had said to her on many occasions.

The low guttural sound that came from the back of Serena's throat was so quiet that it was almost completely missed by the rest of the suited men and women in the pre-production meeting.

Dan looked up from where he had been mindlessly doodling on his almost blank sheet of paper to watch his ex run her manicured fingers through her long blonde hair, which she had left down for the meeting today.

"Something wrong Serena?" He asked, interrupting the discussion on shooting locations that the rest of the group seemed to be involved in.

Serena glared at him and it took all the strength she had to not respond with some smart remark, and completely ruin any prospect of a profession relationship with him, which she had apparently promised Emily she would do.

"Nothing's wrong Dan." She smiled back at him, with the sweet smile that was usually reserved for the other women on the number of Charity Boards she was on, and her mother's friends. Dan saw through it straight away.

It was early afternoon, and they had been in the current meeting concerning shooting locations for a couple of hours already.

Serena went back to picking at something invisible of her skirt; when she had told Dan the condition on her approval to this movie; that she be involved in the process she hadn't been talking about long, boring meetings.

And from the smart remarks and sly looks she had been getting from the brunette man opposite her, she had a growing feeling that Dan was well aware of that to, and that he was on a mission to annoy her as much as possible.

Several more minutes ticked by slowly, and as the voices of those around her slowly disappeared from her mind all she could hear was the ticking of the wall clock. Eventually, she glanced up to see how much longer was required of her and breathed a sigh of relief, she was saved.

"I'm so sorry Mr. Goldberg." Her van der Woodsen charm was back on as she politely interrupted the executive producer of the movie. "I have to go pick up my daughter."

"That's fine." He acknowledged her words, with only the briefest of glances her way. "Daniel here can fill you in on anything you miss."

Serena grabbed her handbag which had been sitting at her feet, "I'm sure he will." She muttered and the mischievous smile that emitted from his lips told her he probably would.

"Nichole called." Jenny's voice once again cut through his train of thought, as he recalled the day's meeting. His head shot up quickly at the mention of the name that Jenny shouldn't know about, that he had almost forgotten about.

"I almost forgot." She grabbed at the yellow post-it pad that was sitting next to his kitchen phone. "She wanted to let you know that she's back in the country, and that she wants to see you." Jenny glanced at her brother, the questioning look that only a younger sister could give, on her face.

"Who's Nichole and what happened to Maria?" Jenny asked with one raised eyebrow.

Dan shrugged his shoulders, he was not about to go into the details of his love life with his sister. It had been bad enough getting the sex talk from his father when he started dating Serena.

"Nichole is a friend. Maria and I ended." The tone of his voice suggested that there was going to be no more discussion on the topic, and Jenny knew her brother well enough to know when to not push it.

After the way things had ended with Serena, Dan had promised himself that he would never allow himself to fall into the sort of commitment with anyone ever again. So while Serena threw herself into two more failed marriages and a number of different 'flings', he avoided the marriages and kept to the flings; which he would point out he had the decency to keep away from his daughter

"How did you meeting go with daddy today?" Serena had escaped from the meeting to collect Emily from school and take her to her Tennis practice, and while Michael, Emily's coach, had kept her focused on her serving, Serena had managed to avoid the inevitable question. Once they were home from the tennis club though, and dinner had been served she could no longer avoid the question.

She took a large sip of her wine before answering her daughter, diplomatically. "It was a very boring meeting." At least it was truthful.

"But what about you and daddy?" Emily repeated. She didn't care about the details of the meeting; what she cared about was her parents spending time in the same room with each other, talking to each other, both of which were a foreign concept to the nine year old.

Serena had to take a longer pause, and another sip of wine before she could answer again. "Your father and I didn't get a chance to talk today; we had to pay attention to the meeting." Well, he had to pay attention to the meeting.

It was obvious that Emily wasn't happy with this answer, she had been picturing something close to Jenny's romantic image but she had to accept it and hope that sometime in the very near future that image would become a reality.

The movie was dropped from conversation for the rest of dinner, and while they ate their meal Serena listened as Emily went on about her day at school. From what Serena could gather from Emily's high speed conversation, her daughter was attracted to one of they boy's in her brother class. She didn't recognise the family name and she made a mental note to discreetly ask around later.

There were times when having the social connections she had weren't all that bad.

She hadn't made it past the dedication of A Life to Love since the day Dan had arrive to inform her of the decision to make the movie. Now that Emily was in bed though, and she was lying on the couch with a second glass of wine in her hand she decided to have another go at it.

She couldn't understand why she hadn't been able to read it since her divorce. She could still listen to the song Julian wrote about her whenever it appeared on the radio, she could still look at the photos that Aaron, an old photographer boyfriend who lasted for only a couple of months, had taken of her but she hadn't been able to read this story.

Opening it up to the first chapter, skipping straight past the dedication she began to read.

It was evident from the second that I arrive that I shouldn't be here, these weren't my friends; they weren't the people that talked to me, or even acknowledged me when we were at school.

From the second that I walked through the door though, alcohol was pushed my way and even though nobody pushed me out and told me I wasn't welcome, nobody bothered to talk to me either.

I had seen her before tonight, she went to my sister school; everybody knew who she was. Tonight, away from the constraints of a conservative school uniform she looked more like a goddess than ever. It didn't matter that the glass bottle of liquor she was holding was most definitely not her first for the evening, and far from being her last, she looked free.

"Hey." I looked around to try and find the person she was talking to, and who was rude enough to not reply. There was no one else. Apparently she was talking to me.

"Do you know where Blair went?" I pointed in the direction where I had just seen her best friend stalk off, pissed about something and she moved in that direction; attracting the glances of all the males in her immediate vicinity.

Nobody else talked to me that night, I left only twenty minutes later.

But one thing was for sure. I fell in love with Serena van der Woodsen that night.

The prologue was short, and Serena's own memories from that night were hazy; Dan had only hinted at it in the prologue but she had been completely wasted when she talked to him. She closed her navy blue eyes, and let her head sink into her soft pillow, before a quiet stream of tears coursed down her face.

How did she let her life turn into this? She had sworn to her mother as a teenager that she wouldn't become her. When she married Dan she pictured them together until their last days. What had happened to that?

Dan and Serena were sitting on the floor of the light pink nursery room, that as of that morning completely, one hundred percent ready for the birth of their first daughter who was due in only one week.

"Are you ready for this?" Dan asked caressing Serena's hand. "Another life, completely dependent on us?"

Serena looked terrified; for the majority of her life she had an absentee father, a mother who flitted in and out of her life as she pleased, and a string of step-fathers that she had lost track of by the time she reached seven.

Dan was no better, his mother had disappeared after having an affair with their next door neighbour.

"Promise me." Serena tried to conceal the terror that was slowly engulfing her mind. "That I never turn out like my mother."

Dan laughed, and leaned in for a tender reassuring kiss. "I will never let you turn into Lily. I know you'll do anything for this little girl." As he kept kissing her, he moved his hands to her swollen, rounded stomach which she thought resembled a very large beach ball. "We will always be there for our little girl."

Casey

[Edited: 30 April 2010]