will you recognise me when im lying on my back
Title: even the sun will die one day
Fandom: gossip girl
Characters: serena van der woodsen
Pairing: serena/nate, serena/dan, blair/dan
Warnings: none, written for the multifandom women comment fiction by fluffyfrolicker prompted by the lovely lesoleilluna with: 'you were carved from bone but your heart is just sand / and the wind is going to scatter it / and cover everything with love'
Summary: serena will dissolve into a million pieces of dust and glitter and particles that would just disinegrate
Serena Van der Woodsen liked to think of herself as a butterfly, liked to imagine that she was soft and pretty and not hardened by everything around her. Sometimes, she liked to think that she would disappear if the wind blew her too hard in one direction, that she would dissolve into a million pieces of dust and glitter and particles that would just disintegrate. She would become matter. And maybe that was the idea.
Mainly she thought about whether people would notice her absence, whether they would notice the chasm where she once laughed, where she once smiled, where she once lived. It would be different for the people in her life. For Blair, her longing would strike in a crisis and she would crumble. For her mother, it would be the lack of disruption. The calm in her life would make her anxious, overprotective of Eric and diligently stoic. For Nathaniel, it would be the inability to connect. Dan was remarkably selfish when faced with his own problems and as for Chuck, he was never reliable enough to be a good friend. Nate would find himself missing the ability to talk to someone without having to drown himself in a bottle or self-indulgent narcissism first. As for Dan, Serena felt it would be the most romantic kind of 'missing'. Dan would find himself without a leading lady, there would be no one to prop up his ego and remind him he was part of the world. Her world. He would be lonely boy once again.
(all it added up to was her desire to be needed and wanted and admired and kept like the prize that she was.)
She marries Dan because that is what she is supposed to do. Blair married Chuck and Serena married Dan. The perfectly typical ending to their story. She wonders if that in itself is a lesson, a reminder, that she was no different than she was at Constance. That she was still the same girl that wanted attention and infamy and a life that was her own and not her mother's or father's or brother's or adopted sisters. She marries Dan because what other choice did she have?
It had seemed picture perfect (perhaps) to begin with. He was her first love, her purest love and the least self-destructive of the lot. But was that it? Was that what was to be desired? A love that didn't make you want to commit suicide was surely not the most compelling or exciting. It simply was.
Later, when she thinks back, she wonders if it was simply convenient.
(or whether she really is her mother.)
Serena always saw herself as fragile. As the weak, poor damsel that needed to be saved. She liked it that way, liked to think she was unfortunate and worthy of a hero. She liked the pedestal she was put on, liked the cushion beneath her feet incase things got dirty on the ground and liked to know she was up a little higher than everyone else when the UES turned into a messy cage.
She saw glass rib cages and marble fingernails as her prizes, but her heart, always her heart was made of gold.
(they never told her that gold was weak and malleable and the softest metal out there.)
And so she shone, like a fucking star, but she never felt light or perfect. She just felt heavy. Like every maltreatment she'd experienced left tiny kinks in her skin that she could chart out when it was dark and drafty in the real world.
(she thinks of people that have wronged her: dan, blair, her father, her other father, blair, her mother, her brother, blair, her lovers, herself, herself, herself.)
She never finds the magic potion that turns her wooden bones to life. She marries the pauper that was meant for her best friend princess and watches the boy next door marry his work and his insecurities and his father's legacy of abandoning family and friends and making the wrong decisions. She watches her fingers trail over kitchen appliances she never uses and a house that is a house and not a home and a job that will never make her feel real.
Gilden, golden, starlit and perfect, gold dust scattering under her fingertips while she sees her life refracted within itself, like a diamond of infinite sides whose future is seen only in the mirrors of its past.
Serena, forever the golden girl, forever the precious stone, always cold lead (never pressed to hard) on the inside.
Dan does her one courtesy, one small defiant grace to her life long unlived, he writes on her tombstone:
'...an opal never opened, is not an opal at all, but an oyster.'
Fandom: gossip girl
Characters: serena van der woodsen
Pairing: serena/nate, serena/dan, blair/dan
Warnings: none, written for the multifandom women comment fiction by fluffyfrolicker prompted by the lovely lesoleilluna with: 'you were carved from bone but your heart is just sand / and the wind is going to scatter it / and cover everything with love'
Summary: serena will dissolve into a million pieces of dust and glitter and particles that would just disinegrate
Serena Van der Woodsen liked to think of herself as a butterfly, liked to imagine that she was soft and pretty and not hardened by everything around her. Sometimes, she liked to think that she would disappear if the wind blew her too hard in one direction, that she would dissolve into a million pieces of dust and glitter and particles that would just disintegrate. She would become matter. And maybe that was the idea.
Mainly she thought about whether people would notice her absence, whether they would notice the chasm where she once laughed, where she once smiled, where she once lived. It would be different for the people in her life. For Blair, her longing would strike in a crisis and she would crumble. For her mother, it would be the lack of disruption. The calm in her life would make her anxious, overprotective of Eric and diligently stoic. For Nathaniel, it would be the inability to connect. Dan was remarkably selfish when faced with his own problems and as for Chuck, he was never reliable enough to be a good friend. Nate would find himself missing the ability to talk to someone without having to drown himself in a bottle or self-indulgent narcissism first. As for Dan, Serena felt it would be the most romantic kind of 'missing'. Dan would find himself without a leading lady, there would be no one to prop up his ego and remind him he was part of the world. Her world. He would be lonely boy once again.
(all it added up to was her desire to be needed and wanted and admired and kept like the prize that she was.)
She marries Dan because that is what she is supposed to do. Blair married Chuck and Serena married Dan. The perfectly typical ending to their story. She wonders if that in itself is a lesson, a reminder, that she was no different than she was at Constance. That she was still the same girl that wanted attention and infamy and a life that was her own and not her mother's or father's or brother's or adopted sisters. She marries Dan because what other choice did she have?
It had seemed picture perfect (perhaps) to begin with. He was her first love, her purest love and the least self-destructive of the lot. But was that it? Was that what was to be desired? A love that didn't make you want to commit suicide was surely not the most compelling or exciting. It simply was.
Later, when she thinks back, she wonders if it was simply convenient.
(or whether she really is her mother.)
Serena always saw herself as fragile. As the weak, poor damsel that needed to be saved. She liked it that way, liked to think she was unfortunate and worthy of a hero. She liked the pedestal she was put on, liked the cushion beneath her feet incase things got dirty on the ground and liked to know she was up a little higher than everyone else when the UES turned into a messy cage.
She saw glass rib cages and marble fingernails as her prizes, but her heart, always her heart was made of gold.
(they never told her that gold was weak and malleable and the softest metal out there.)
And so she shone, like a fucking star, but she never felt light or perfect. She just felt heavy. Like every maltreatment she'd experienced left tiny kinks in her skin that she could chart out when it was dark and drafty in the real world.
(she thinks of people that have wronged her: dan, blair, her father, her other father, blair, her mother, her brother, blair, her lovers, herself, herself, herself.)
She never finds the magic potion that turns her wooden bones to life. She marries the pauper that was meant for her best friend princess and watches the boy next door marry his work and his insecurities and his father's legacy of abandoning family and friends and making the wrong decisions. She watches her fingers trail over kitchen appliances she never uses and a house that is a house and not a home and a job that will never make her feel real.
Gilden, golden, starlit and perfect, gold dust scattering under her fingertips while she sees her life refracted within itself, like a diamond of infinite sides whose future is seen only in the mirrors of its past.
Serena, forever the golden girl, forever the precious stone, always cold lead (never pressed to hard) on the inside.
Dan does her one courtesy, one small defiant grace to her life long unlived, he writes on her tombstone:
'...an opal never opened, is not an opal at all, but an oyster.'