and the wishing never ends (1/1)
TITLE: and the wishing never ends
RATING: G
CHARACTERS: Serena, (Dan)
DISCLAIMER: GG world is not mine. Written for challenge 005 at burnthe_city .
SUMMARY: It's tradition. She was five and she saw the stars and she made a wish. And nothing could rock her belief that it would come true.
and the wishing never ends
“I could use a dream or a genie or a wish,
To go back to a place much simpler than this”
-Airplanes, B.O.B ft. Hayley Williams
They’re standing in the same park where it all began except they’re older now, allowed to drink champagne without fear of getting caught, not scared of those three little words. Older, but not wiser.
People say that the further in love you fall, the further from reason you run.
Is it worth it?
I wish Daddy would come home.
She’s five and small and hiding from the nanny, though Eric knows where she is because she doesn’t want him to get scared. It’s the summer, her favourite season, and while summer reminds her of sand and the sea and the sunshine, all she remembers is that Daddy said that summer was like her hair.
She dresses up in yellow and tries to hide so she can escape, so she can find Daddy and tell him that it’s summer and remind him of what he said. So she can hear him call her his Summer Faerie.
Blair’s the Queen (or the Princess for now) but she thinks that a faerie is a lot more fun-a faerie is magical. Faeries can make wishes come true with their magic wands, after all.
By the time the nanny finds her it’s already dark, and both of them are frustrated though one tries hard not to show it and the other has no qualms. She looks out of the window.
Stars are magical, just like faeries (like her), and she stares at them, wishing that Daddy would come home.
She doesn’t realise she’s said it out loud, but she hears the nanny loud and clear.
‘There are no such thing as wishes, Miss van der Woodsen!’
It doesn’t stop her believing-no nanny would succeed.
A young Serena goes to bed and wakes up feeling older and clever and full of answers. She realises she needs a magic wand.
If only she could find one.
I wish I could rewind time.
It’s not that she sleeps with Nate that’s the problem, it’s the time. It’s that Nate is her best friend’s boyfriend and they had sex with her in the other room and it’s all so, so wrong.
It’s wrong that she refused to kiss a guy because she didn’t want to lose his taste. It’s wrong that she ignored him and told him to sniff a strip and just sat there and watched. It’s wrong that he died.
It’s all wrong and she doesn’t know how to fix it-she can’t use money (like Chuck) or her wits (like Blair) or even charm (like Nate). There’s nothing she can do.
She wishes she could rewind time, have another chance, stop herself from going into the bar and what happens next. Stop herself from kissing him (or did he kiss her?). Stop herself from taking it further than it should’ve gone.
Stop herself from running away.
She thinks that if she did rewind time, she wouldn’t do anything differently with him, and that scares her.
I wish life would be simpler.
A relationship with Dan seemed pretty simple, but now she’s arguing and he’s arguing and he’s not going to the ball. She feels like a princess without a prince.
Carter steps in without a word, the noble traveller, her partner in crime. Every time she looks at him, she sees years of mischief, of madness, of mistakes.
She sees leaving too. The two of them, walking the same paths but colliding rarely. She doesn’t trust his promise of not leaving.
When the prince arrives and he sweeps her off her feet, she feels like she’s finally gotten the fairytale ending she’s always wanted, the one only Blair is honest about dreaming of.
They’re perfect together.
It takes a while to return to reality and though she’s on a high, she thinks of the secrets she keeps and lets her mood darken.
No one’s life is more complicated than hers.
I wish someone would love me.
When she was a week from fourteen, she lost her virginity to a senior jock who told her how beautiful she was and how amazing she was and how much he loved her.
He never called. Not that she expected him to-Serena van der Woodsen doesn’t do love. Not at fourteen, when the only boy she had eyes for was taken. Not at sixteen, when the boy she's with is good and honest and as golden as her hair.
He’s nervous and stammers and she knows he means it when he says those three words.
I love you.
It’s a wonderful feeling, being loved (knowing that you’re loved, hearing it said out loud) and she relishes it, lets herself enjoy it for a few moments before she says it back.
I love you too.
She thinks that snapshot of her life is by far the brightest, when there was only sunshine and smiles, before it dawned on her that the girl he was in love with-the girl he said those words to-did it not exist. She would never reach his pedestal.
He didn’t love her.
She forgot to add ‘for me’ onto that wish, and yet she reminisces as if she had.
I wish life would turn out perfectly.
In the end, it did. Like the fates planned, the story ends where it begins. With two sets of best friends and a golden couple and those on the fringes pining to be them but never brave enough to say the words.
She marries her high-school sweetheart even though they have different ideals and different goals and different motivations, but she loves him as much as he loves her (as much as Chuck loves his wife) and that’s okay.
She abandons society until it moulds around her, accepting who she is and loving her for it. The photos in the magazines, the odd scandal...everything is perfect.
It’s cold and dark but though the bench and the basket and wine is newer, his smile hasn’t changed. Nor have his words. Not for years.
They sit as they did then, covered in blankets against the light October cold. She shivers and he puts his arm around her. Comforting, the scene as perfect as she had wished for.
She doesn’t mention she isn’t happy-that this isn’t her version of perfect-that the bench is slightly wet and the food is horrible and the wine isn’t a good year. Had it been perfect, that wouldn’t have mattered, but it does.
She stares at the stars, remembers being five and small and hiding, remembers gazing at stars, remembers a nanny that couldn’t break her spirit no matter what she said.
No, the only thing that could stop her believing was time, and it served its purpose.
After all, she never found her magic wand.
Three words, eight letters. Say it and I’m yours.
Blair and Chuck spent nearly two years revolving around it, neither able to speak the words.
Nate had said them to her before; seven-year-olds underneath the covers and cookies and secrets and tears and it’s okay, I love you, S.
They rolled off Dan’s tongue as if they were meant to be said. Yet she questions them: if they were so easy to say, do they mean anything?
High school love, meaning nothing, too naive, too innocent to survive. It proved her wrong.
The troubles fade away with time but the good moments-the golden-are still sharp in her mind.
He smells of old books and ink has marked the hand he takes hers with. Once, perhaps, this was enough
I love you.
Serena takes one last look at the stars and makes a wish she won’t admit to herself. Because even though the father she wanted never returned and she couldn’t rewind time and life still wasn’t simple and no one loved her for her and life didn’t end up perfectly, she’ll allow herself this one moment.
And then she turns her back on the stars.