A/N: This fic is one of those pieces you pour a lot of love into. So let me know what you think of it, okay? I write because I really do love it, but the feedback makes it that much more worthwhile. One small note about the plotline: I know that in 1x07, Carter tells Cece that he and Serena attended the same school, just a couple years apart, but that didn't work for this, so I've changed history a little bit. It also gets a little bit AU once it hits the actual point that the show starts.

Inkdrops

there's no combination

of words I could put on

the back of a postcard

…but I can try for your heart

-- Jack Johnson, Better Together

[&]

I am tired, Beloved

of chafing my heart against

the want of you;

of squeezing it into little inkdrops,

And posting it.

-- Amy Lowell, "The Letter"

The first time they meet is at a garden party in the Hamptons in late July. She remembers the details of that day strikingly, as if they've been scorched into her memory by the sun. She is four years old and her hair is braided with white ribbon intricately woven in; meant to match her flouncy white dress, which has dirt on its hem. Her baby hairs are sticking to her forehead, glued there by perspiration from the running around she's done as she plays with Natie. She lost her white sandals with the delicate straps a couple hours ago.

She's running away when she finds him, avoiding her nanny, who's got two-year-old Erik – purely Serena's complimentary sibling with his quiet, obedient nature – on one hip as she chases after Serena, trying to get her to change into a new, pristine dress and a pair of shoes. She tells Nate not to give her away and rushes off across the lawn, weaving her way through the sea of legs, giggling lightly to herself. She likes the feeling of being independent and free, the way the brief bursts of wind tickle her skin.

When she sees him, she stops short, so abruptly that someone almost trips over her, a couple drops of her martini slipping out of the glass and falling onto the lawn. The woman laughs knowingly and steps around Serena, telling her date quietly that she is most certainly Lily Rhodes' little girl, the resemblance is striking. Her date mutters that she's a beautiful little girl and she'll definitely be a heartbreaker when she's older, and the woman rolls her eyes, smiles fondly at his naïveté, and tosses around words like handful, difficult, and stubborn instead. Serena ignores them, all her attention focused on the boy who stands about fifteen feet in front of her. He's older, but she's tall enough for her age that she can add a year or two and a sweet smile and no one would ever grow suspicious of the lie. He's dark-haired, a fierce contrast to her blonde locks, but his blue eyes glint in the sun just like hers do. He's doing this thing with his lips that her mother calls a smirk and tells her not to do (smile, Serena; doesn't everyone always say how pretty you look when you smile?) and it makes her little lips, chapped by the sun, curl up in the same way.

She's inexplicably drawn to him. It's not like a moth and a flame, because she is not helpless, she refuses to be, and he might be a challenge but he certainly isn't a danger. He's just got something. Serena has it, too. She's always recognized it within herself but she's never bothered to explain it, not even to make it more understandable to her own mind – she's four, after all, too young and too determinedly carefree to bother. She is not Blair. But she's got that something as well, or at least something-in-the-making. Never before has she been able to spot it in someone else, never before has it been visible to her. His head turns in her direction, his striking, light-coloured eyes meeting her gaze, wrinkles appearing around the edges as his smirk is directly solely toward hers. It is that something, that palpable kinship, that defines their attraction to one another, even at such a young age. It's platonic, because they're just children, especially Serena, but at its deepest level it is much more. She plants her bare feet in the grass and walks bravely toward him. He stays solitary, waiting for her with a patience it's clear he normally wouldn't possess, a kind of patience that she, too, is not familiar with.

It's that something. No moths and flames; they're a caterpillar and a butterfly.

[&]

She stays up in her bedroom, walls painted pink and bed draped in silky fabrics (decorated by her grandmother and mother, who hardly know her at all), until midnight. She's always been a night owl; it drives her nannies crazy. She practically emanates light, so she finds a strange comfort in the dark. She could soak up sunshine all day, but she likes the night for providing her a place to stow her secrets.

She waits until the numbers on her digital clock – they glow in eerie pink – to change to precisely 00:00, military time. It makes her shiver, nothing o'clock. She pads down the hallways in her bare feet, never one to wear shoes when she doesn't have to, in her pale pink nightgown. He's staying there with his parents, old friends of her family. She knows where his room is, right next to the one his mother and father are occupying, but that is the extent of the information she's gathered on this boy. Her nanny found her before she could even open her mouth to say anything to him.

Pushing the door open, she tiptoes into the room, closing the door behind her with the softest of clicks. She walks all the way over to his bed, staying on the plush carpet to avoid any noise. He snores lightly and it makes her giggle softly as she pokes his arm. His eyes flicker open and widen, but he doesn't sit up or gasp or yell at her right away. He regards her with something almost like admiration; she looks mildly ethereal in her light cotton nightgown, her hair glowing in the moonlight that comes in his window. She breaks the silence by saying hi, and he grins lazily as he pushes himself into a sitting position, his hair tousled from sleep, and asks her what she's doing there.

Serena scrambles up onto the bed and sits at the opposite end on top of the covers, facing him. She sits crossed-legged, the skirt of her nightgown draped over her knees in a show of second-thought modesty. They talk quietly for a long time, her voice high and light, his lower and grounding, fitting together perfectly. He tells her that he thinks her name sounds like a princess or a mermaid or something else out of a fairytale and she wrinkles her nose because she's not into that whole Prince Charming thing. Princes are pretty and kind and heroic but entirely uninteresting. His name, however, is not the name of a prince, nor is it the name of the stable boy. It fits somewhere in between, like the devious, foreign duke at court. Carter Baizen. His last name tastes exotic and tangy-sweet on her tongue, almost desirable, like maybe one day she'd like to claim it as her own.

After they get past the essential information – names and ages and how she's got Erik and he's got a sister away at school and she wants a pony and he wants a dog – she asks him how long he's staying and he says he's leaving tomorrow. She frowns, surprised at the strength of her sadness and blissfully unaware that this will be a recurring theme in their relationship, watching each other disappear.

It is four a.m. by the time their conversation winds down, and she is only beginning to see the ways in which she craves him in her world. He looks at her more fondly and thoroughly than anyone else does, not even her mother, especially not her mother. He is older but he doesn't treat her like a baby and he doesn't insist on perfection and scripts like Blair wants for their lives. She does not have to share him with anyone, it's the beauty of that something they both possess; they will understand few people more than they understand each other in their lifetimes.

And for that reason, she decides to forgive him for leaving, because if she could, she'd get out of there, too. She asks him where he's going and he says Scotland and it makes her eyes get wide. Pleased that he's impressed her, he tells her about all the other places he's gone and the adventures he's encountered in his eight short years of life, and she hangs onto his every word. She wants that. She aches for it. It sounds mildly lonely and strangely independent, to be travelling so much only in the care of his parents, with no mothers to forget you or baby brothers to play with, no Blairs to boss you around and no Nates to laugh with, no nannies to feed you or chase you to bed. But still, it somehow sounds a little bit better than what she has.

Wishing to live vicariously through him, to allow her something-in-the-making to blossom and grow until it matches his, she lifts her chin and orders him to send her postcards from everywhere he goes. Real postcards, not with the stupid, predictable safety of the typical love-you-miss-you-here's-where-I-am that she gets from her relatives and her parents. She wants to know the real things, the kind of things she wishes she could live for herself.

He promises and she makes him pinkie swear, their smallest fingers locking together firmly. She leans down to kiss her thumb to make it official and he mimics her without hesitating, but when she lifts her head again he stuns her by leaning far across the small space that divides them and pressing his lips firmly against hers for a couple seconds.

She stares at him when he pulls away, unsure of how to react as she drags the back of her hand across her mouth. Part of her is grossed out because boys and cooties and yuck, but another part of her liked it because she likes him. He just shrugs and smirks and tells her that now it's really official, it's absolute.

He watches her go as the sun rises, slipping off of his bed and tiptoeing back down the halls. She's so exhausted from a night spent wide awake that she sleeps most of the next day away, and no one really notices because no one really cares, and when she wakes up she hears noise outside, so she bolts up and runs out, her heart pounding.

Serena! Her mother, who has appeared sometime in the past twelve hours, a new boyfriend in tow, is appalled to see her daughter running out onto the driveway in the late afternoon wearing only her nightgown, her hair mussed-up from tangling against her pillow all night. Serena ignores her, hurrying down to the end of the driveway, cutting her toe on a sharp rock. She stops short then, watching as a sleek black car pulls away. Her chest aches and it spreads down into her stomach and up into her throat until her eyes are stinging. Postcards! she yells out, a desperate reminder, even though what she really wants to say is take me with you.

Just when she thinks she might actually cry, his head pokes out on of the back windows. He shoots her a smirk as she shields her eyes from the sun, blinking quietly. Postcards, he calls back firmly, an official promise, reminding her that it's absolute, and the ache doesn't quite let up but she does manage to smile.

She turns back to her family when the car finally disappears, casting the road on last longing look. She frowns at her mother's latest Eastern European suitor and eyes her little brother sadly; she wants him to grow up and feel lost and left behind with her so that she's not so alone, but at the same time she doesn't want him to ever grow up because she doesn't want him to ever feel that way. She figures Erik needs her, Erik wants her, soon Erik will be old enough to care about her. She can't leave. So in the meantime, she may as well put on some shoes.

[&]

He's true to his word. When she's back in the city, running around Central Park with Blair and Nate and Chuck, she tells them about him. Nate looks like he might know who she's talking about, but he'd rather play soccer, so they kick a ball back and forth while Blair questions her warily and Chuck answers everything for her, since he's well-acquainted with Carter.

Her first postcard comes from Scotland and it arrives in mid-October when leaves are peppered over the ground, crunching under her feet as she walks over to Blair's house with it tucked into the pocket of her autumn coat. On the front is a picture of some old castle with lots of history sitting in a lot of weathered grass, and his message on the back is worded simply (they're just kids, after all) but it tells her real things, the kind she wants to read.

Dear Serena van der Woodsen,

I'm in Scotland. People have a really crazy way of talking and some of the food is kind of weird – but at least there aren't any snails like the Basses always have. It's raining a lot. It makes the whole world feel kind of heavy and sad. But like a mystery, too, and I like that. I think you would too. I kissed the Blarney Stone. You have to lie down and sort of turn upside down to do it. Kissing you was a lot easier. And you tasted way better! I'm out of room. Here's your postcard.

I'll send you another one. Promise.

Carter Baizen

Blair finds it when they're in the middle of their umpteenth game of wedding, during which Serena holds Blair's train and Chuck mopes in the corner and Blair beams and tells Nate what to say. Her eyes flick over it disdainfully – Blair, of course, was an avid reader when Serena was still making her way through three-latter words – before they widen; she's appalled because she's Blair and they're four and Serena already kissed a boy?

Nate frowns quietly and Chuck expresses his disapproval more vocally as he gets to his feet. At first Blair thinks he's siding with her, but it turns out he's just mad because stupid Carter Baizen kissed a girl first. Serena points out that Carter is four years older than any of them, but that thing is happening where the distinction kicks in and she sort of floats out of their real-world conversations, because she's got that something that sets her apart, that gives her more without her really ever wanting for anything. None of them really acknowledge her in that moment. So Chuck growls about something and strides across the room purposefully and holds Blair's face steady while he kisses her right on the lips. Serena giggles lightly while Blair squeals and pulls away and hides behind Nate, still in her specially-tailored wedding dress costume.

As the boys bicker, Blair's high-pitched arguments slipping in between their words, Serena sits down on the floor in her usual maid of honour dress and reads the postcard again. She pretty much has it memorized, so she sets it down in her lap and recites the words over in her head, trying to hear his voice saying them as she picks up Blair's discarded veil and toys with it contemplatively.

[&]

Serena likes school because she likes discovery. She likes colouring and reading and praise for solving math problems and the way all the other girls admire her hair, flocking to her automatically like they expect her to tell them what to do. Serena dislikes school because she's always had difficulty playing by the rules. She wishes the other girls could make up their own minds, hates having to ask permission to walk down the hallway to the library or the bathroom, doesn't like the stern tone of her teacher's voice.

Blair works hard and wears clothes that always coordinate with her uniform skirt and raises her hand to answer every question. The other girls start to notice her after a while because this is the place where Blair thrives. Serena thrives, too, but so much so that school feels like a cage. Slowly, their lives fall into place. Serena is queen, but in a figurehead sort of way, with Blair operating everything smoothly behind the scenes. She keeps Blair close, because she loves Blair best, and it's not fair that the other girls don't.

She kind of wishes she could talk to someone about it. Her mother is constantly off somewhere; occasionally she comes home to whisk Serena and Erik away for a week, but then they're safely planted back in Manhattan again and Serena still has yet to have a real conversation with her mother. The nanny is there to take care of her basic needs and is always busy with her brother anyway. Nate likes to play sports and Chuck does whatever Chuck does and Blair wants to be perfect and Serena feels stifled. Her something-in-the-making is being pushed back down, being unmade, and it's uncomfortable.

She wants to talk to him. She's five years old and she already has problems that are bigger than herself and she needs a little help. But the thing is, she doesn't have a phone number or an e-mail address to track him down in his nomadic lifestyle. She can't write back because he'll have moved on by the time snail mail reaches him, and she has nowhere to send it to anyway.

Finally, she tries to explain to Blair one day, because Blair's her best friend and she'll at least try to understand. But Blair just brushes her doll's hair, slowly and methodically, and says that waiting around for postcards from a gentleman sounds incredibly romantic and everybody at school loves Serena, so what's the problem?

Serena sulks in her misery that Blair can't comprehend because she's whining about everything that Blair secretly craves, and the brunette abandons her doll and reaches out to brush Serena's hair instead in a gesture of comfort. She whispers thanks to her best friend and resigns herself to life as she's always known she'd have to live it.

[&]

The postcards come more often than she ever could have hoped during her first few years of school. They become a regular part of her life, and she feels a little extra burst of energy every time she comes home to see one sitting on the dining table, waiting for her. It makes her blush a little bit because postcards are exposed mail that anyone – that mailman, the doorman, the maid, the nanny, her mother – can read, but she realizes after a while that no one cares enough to snoop into a little girl's mail. And one day, if they do, she won't really care.

She's a little bit of an exhibitionist, deep down, but it'll take a while to grow into and when he discovers it it'll be something he loves. The thrill of getting caught is incomparable. It's a part of that something they've got, and as she gets older she starts struggling to define it. It's a little extra spark of life, something that pulls people toward her but also causes her restlessness and compels her to run away.

The early ones come from Belgium, then a small coastal island it takes her a while to find on the globe her father left behind, then Ectot L'Aubert, a small French village while he easily skips over school, being taught by the tutor who's traveling with his family, before he finally reports that he's settled in at a boarding school in York in the winter after she turns seven.

Dear Serena van der Woodsen,

I'm going to Aysgarth now. My dad said it's got a really good reputation. There are no girls and it rains quite a lot. I'm taking a lot of classes – I feel like all I do is schoolwork and sports. You're probably doing a lot of the same at Constance. I'm learning Latin, which is really hard, and Greek, which is kind of fun. I want to go there one day, to Greece. I've met some cool guys here, but I miss you. Are you bored? Is Lily marrying that Klaus guy? My mother told me she might when she called. Do you miss me, too? I don't know why I ask. It's not like you can respond. But here's your postcard.

I'll send you another one. Promise.

Carter Baizen

It isn't even a real postcard; it's a picture of him playing soccer (football, he'd call it now) in a misty rain, the message scribbled on the back in bright blue ballpoint pen, her address crammed on one side and a stamp in the corner. She loves the picture. His eyes are shining and he looks kind of adorable. And she loves what he wrote – it makes her giggle to think of him holed up there with no other girls, but it also kind of makes her feel warm and safe, like she's the only girl in his world. She wants to respond to him so badly, to tell him that she wants to go to Greece, too, and that Lily is marrying that Klaus guy and Serena and her little brother are basically living at the Archibalds as a result.

And that yes. Yes, she misses him. Even though she's only meant him once, he's become one of the biggest constants in her life, and there isn't a single day that doesn't feel empty without him.

[&]

Over the next year he writes her often; a steady pattern appears as she arrives home every couple weeks to find another message from him. She's touched: he's no longer travelling so he's not really obliged by the promise he made her to keep her updated on his life, but he does so anyway, which is more than she can say for almost anyone else. It occurs to her that he is stationary: she could sit down at the computer, type in the name of his school, and find a mailing address. But somehow, writing back seems like it would violate their relationship somehow. He is the one out in the world, reporting back to her. Sometime in the future they'll reverse those roles, but for now she lets things stay as they are. He is honest with her, honest like he probably is with almost no one else, and she knows that part of that is because he's safe in knowing that she can't respond. So she leaves it alone and misses him as she has since she was four.

Most of the 'postcards' are actually pictures, and she loves to see his face. Her collection of postcards is growing quickly, and one day when she arrives home to see that her mother is actually there and lazily flipping through the mail, she decides she needs to invest in privacy. She likes the little thrill she gets at the idea of some post office worker reading Carter's message to her without knowing whom either of them are, but she hates the idea of Lily invading her privacy. She's never had input or insight into her mother's life. Her mother will never have input or insight into hers.

She tells Blair they have to go shopping, which the brunette agrees to readily. They go to Bergdorf's and even though she's eight years old, Serena buys the prettiest, sexiest, most stunning and expensive Jimmy Choos she can find in an eight, because that's her age. The plan was never to wear them. Blair isn't exactly frugal with her money so she doesn't care when Serena slaps her mother's credit card down on the counter, knowing the saleswoman won't protest when she sees the van der Woodsen name. But Blair is baffled as to why Serena would buy such pricey, beautiful shoes if she never really means to wear them.

It's because she wants the box, as she explains when they're back in her bedroom with the door closed and she's tossing the shoes into the closet as if they're the ratty flip-flops that she prefers to wear, the ones that cost twenty bucks. The box is beautiful, lined with silky pale blue material that she loves. It's a special box, with both monetary and emotional value, since she really paid for the box, not the shoes. She opens the drawer of her bedside table and pulls out a handful of postcards and four-by-six photographs. Blair's jaw drops as she climbs up onto the bed, eager to see these secret things, hands outstretched.

He's sent you all these things? He keeps sending you things? She marvels over them, eyes flitting over the words, the images, and then back up to Serena's face. This is the stuff of Blair's idyllic, romantic daydreams.

She shrugs, though she knows how lucky she is. He's her kindred spirit or her soul mate or something like that. He just happens to be older and worldlier and painfully far away. He promised, she says by way of explanation, as if that is enough, and it is.

Blair's eyes linger on the pictures and she comments that he's growing up really well, laughing as she looks at the photograph on the back of which he'd jokingly written that he was a total stud. Serena feels her defences rising in a way they very rarely do around Blair and gently but firmly tugs the glossy photo from her friend's hand. Serena understands Carter so very well, but Blair is this perfect princess, and they'll never quite be able to trust each other with their boys. Blair has already taken Natie, made him all hers, and though neither of them will realize it for quite some time, Chuck is already hers in a way, too. She won't share Carter. She won't lose him, so she resolves that from that day on she'll be the only one who looks in her shoebox.

She comes home on the last day of school to find an actual postcard, one with a picture of Big Ben on it and Carter's familiar scribble-y scrawl on the back, and she hurries off to read it in the comfort of her room. He says he loves London and he thinks she would do and she should come over the Atlantic for the summer, they'd find each other somehow. Her heart rate picks up; her ninth birthday is in two weeks and Lily's been so constantly absent in her life as of late that she knows she's owed a gift that's good and guilty. She's sure she has some relative of some sort living in England. She bolts out of her room, full of life and hope and excitement, but the penthouse is strangely empty. She finds Eric in the kitchen, staring sadly into a bowl of ice cream. She sits down next to him and he tells her that their mother has left for the Alps with Klaus and she'll be back on July fourteenth – Serena's spirits lift for a moment – to finish off the wedding plans.

Ten minutes later after the nanny has bustled in and out, Serena's staring morosely into her own bowl of ice cream, a tear trickling down her cheek as she thinks of everything she's missing out on, of who she could be with, and wondering what kind of present she gets if her mother forgets her birthday altogether.

[&]

A package is sent up to her room in the earliest hours of Bastille Day, packed full of photographs and confetti. She giggles sleepily and brushes the colourful papers off her lap and slowly sorts through the pictures. It's Carter, Carter, Carter at every famous London location she could ever think of and then some. There's a postcard purchased at the V&A, the back of which informs her that he figured she couldn't make it so he thought he'd bring London to her. And happy birthday, almost at double-digits, and spend it well, and do something crazy, and he wishes he could give her a birthday kiss because she could have only gotten more beautiful over the years – isn't it strange, how long it's been since we've seen each other, but I still feel like I know you…

She flips through the pictures methodically, delight bubbling up within her. He's scrawled something silly on the back of each and sometimes he's making faces or laughing with friends who he names for her and offers anecdotes about. The last picture confuses her for a moment – it's a photograph of a necklace with a diamond heart dangling off of it.

Did you look in the very, very bottom of the package? It should keep you company until I see you again. Here's the last of your birthday postcards.

I'll send you another one. Promise.

Carter Baizen

In the bottom of the package is the necklace, sparkling so brilliantly on its chain that it takes her breath away. It's that perfect, near-impossible balance of understated extravagance, the kind she likes. It was undoubtedly expensive. She loves it, but she's not sure if she can wear it, so she settles it into her shoebox and flips through the pictures a few more times before stowing them away. She greets the world on her birthday with a smirk-like smile on her lips.

The next year, when she's ten years old and she and her friends are entering fifth grade, Blair decides she's Nate's girlfriend and diligently sews her heart onto his sleeve, so Serena starts wearing Carter's heart around her neck, settled in the dip of her collarbone like it belongs there.

[&]

It's when she hits puberty that she really starts noticing boys. Or maybe not exactly that, because she's always noticed Nate and always thought of Carter and dimly noticed Chuck. What really happens is that she starts noticing the way boys – and men – notice her. She's used to getting compliments for her hair and her eyes and her general personality, but eyes stop focusing on her face and start lingering on her breasts and her legs. It startles her just the slightest bit at first, but she settles into acceptance of it easily. She's accustomed to admiration, and she basks in it, plays it up, appreciates the feeling of being loved, even if it's from afar and it's in all the wrong ways. She's perfected the art of harmless flirtation and it won't be long until she's got the meaningless hook-up down to a science. Blair disapproves and Chuck praises her for it and Nate frowns but says nothing.

By the time she's twelve high school juniors on the lacrosse team are hitting on her and she's wearing short skirts and saying she's fourteen and flashing them her most winning smile. Chuck is doing crazy things and Blair's all wrapped up in Nate and Erik's struggling to find his way while their mother is married or away or whatever. She lets herself get caught up in it, in boys and kisses and rough hands sneaking under her skirt or up her shirt, and she gets a little lost. She is so full of something, a lust for adventure and life and joy, but it also makes her sort of flighty. She wants to see the world and make it her own, but no one sees that in her, no one's aware of all the potential in herself and what she wants to do. They see her legs and her lips and that's where they stop caring.

She starts drinking. Georgina Sparks spots her moment of weakness, realizes that Blair is occupied with Nate and consequently not looking out for Serena, and swoops in. She finds herself whisked into bars and clubs and there are more boys and men who look at her that way. She starts doing drugs. Admittedly, she's beginning to spiral a bit out of control. Sometimes when she stumbles home to an apartment occupied only by the staff and never her family, she finds a postcard on the table and her heart sinks for a moment, wondering what he'd think of her now, if he'd find her enticing or disappointing. She slips the postcards or photographs into her shoebox at the back of her closet, swallows some Aspirin, and collapses on her bed.

The only thing that really hasn't changed in her life is that she still misses him.

[&]

The next time she sees him, nine years after their first meeting, she just happens to be wearing her favourite soft brown boots with her uniform skirt and the necklace he gave her resting on her neck, and she's having one of those days where she just knows she looks good, even though she never puts much effort into her appearance. She looks the way she wants him to see her after all these years of knowing him only through his words and still, captured moments of his life.

He's standing in front of her apartment building, leans back against the brick wall, blazer unbuttoned and hands in his pockets. The moment he sees her he straightens up, cocking his head slightly to the side as he smirks at her, taking in her appearance. She starts to rush over to him and he holds up a card that he purchased at Grand Central, which makes her giggle.

Here's your postcard, he says, a knowing glint in his eyes. Barely a second later she throws her arms around him, holding on tight. He laughs so genuinely that it warms her whole body as he wraps his arms around her waist and hugs her back just as fiercely. She doesn't need a postcard, not with him there.

When they pull away they don't fully let go of each other and the words overlap as they try to catch up; she's surprised at how breathless she sounds when she asks him what happened to Aysgarth. He chuckles that he got kicked out and she shakes her head because of course he did, but before she can say that out loud he interrupts her, still smirking but with serious blue eyes to say, You grew up so good.

The first couple days he's around she feels giddy, almost like she's four years old again. She skips off school and they walk through Central Park with lattes warming their free hands, the ones that aren't safely within one another's. Since she's been learning so much about his world, she decides to take him on a tour of the favourite parts of hers. They grab cabs and walk around the city until she's got blisters on her feet but she doesn't care. She crashes at his hotel suite two nights in a row; she always drifts off on the bed and he settles the blankets overtop of her and sleeps on the couch. Dimly and sleepily she thinks that it's funny, him giving her space like that, because she was the one who invaded his room and crawled up onto his bed on that first night they met. He should know, by now, that she doesn't put boundaries between them. But it's been a while, and they're older and it's different, so she teases him quietly for being such a gentleman and falls asleep smiling.

She can't avoid home and school and her friends forever, but when she falls back into her life she pulls him with her, and he adapts seamlessly. She doesn't know what he does while she's sitting through English Lit and Algebra classes, but he always finds her after school, and the evenings and the nights are theirs. Blair is still sort of wary of him and clearly doesn't appreciate his presence in Serena's life all that much, but Nate totally looks up to him (it's Carter who gives him his first joint) and Chuck does the same, though he'd never admit it to anyone. Blair and Nate are still tied up with one another, so a lot of nights it's Serena and Chuck under Carter's wing, sometimes with Georgina in tow. They go out, and she feels the way he changes her, the way he orders the right drinks for her so she won't get totally wasted in the next hour, shakes his head at the people who offer her cocaine. He teaches her the real way to party, and though she's too young to understand it, he's also trying to keep her safe.

Georgina usually bails, drunk and high, with some guy or another, so it's just Serena, Chuck, and Carter in the older boy's suite late at night. Carter tells them stories from his travels and Serena jumps in with the details she knows from his postcards and Chuck senses that he's the third wheel and decides he needs to get a suite of his own, so he wanders off to have a drunken conversation with the concierge. Serena giggles as she watches him go, studying Carter in her peripheral vision. She knows that his time there is transitory, one of many stops on the never-ending journey that is his life, and she can't help the way she's already counting down to the day he disappears again.

When do you leave? she asks. His eyebrows lift and he looks at her carefully, telling her that he doesn't know when, but chances are he won't be around much longer than the rest of the month. She nods, sighs, resigns herself to it. And then, because she's already sitting very close to him, she lifts her chin, since that's all she has to do to press her lips against his.

It is, for obvious reasons, a much different kiss than the one they shared as kids was, but it reinforces how very much she's wanted to kiss him again since that day, and the way he pulls her close seems to signify the same. He was the very first person she ever kissed and she finds herself wishing he'd be the last, too. She sighs, breaking away from him only for oxygen, and rests her forehead wearily against his. He whispers her name and she shakes her head, determinedly getting to get feet and walking toward the door, mumbling something about the homework even thought they both know she's way too tired and drunk and emotionally confused to tackle it right now.

He lets her go without a word, because he understands that sometimes he needs to be the one watching her leave instead.

[&]

Before he leaves, when she senses that it will probably be soon, she starts talking about going somewhere together. Not right away. Not for months, maybe not for years, but someday. They sit on her bed, her bedroom door closed, the old globe of her father's sitting between them. She spins it and he stops it with his finger and they'd both lean in, noses brushing, to read the destination chance has chosen for them. They do it over and over, debating the pros and cons of each place, laughing lightly over their words.

They are interrupted by her mother bursting into the room, Lily's expression changing to one of mild shock when she spots Carter sitting close to her daughter. She comments about having not known he was in town, asks him politely to leave, and tells Serena to start packing, they're going to Paris in the morning.

After Lily leaves, she and Carter exchange a surprised look. So far it is the rule that he leaves and she stays behind and waits, so it is strange to find their dynamic reversed. She reveals to him that Lily is dragging them off because she is seeing Sarkozy, which makes him laugh uproariously until he realizes that she's telling the truth, and then he just grabs her hand and gives it a squeeze. He quietly asks if he should go, and let her pack, but she shakes her head, pulling him toward the door by his linked hands, checking the hallway for Lily. She wants to spend her last night here with him.

Back at his suite, they talk about everything and nothing, like they always do. She trusts him with all her secrets, both the important and the trivial ones, and she wants to know all of his. She lights candles instead of flicking switches as it gets dark, their time together coming to a close. He sits on the bed, watching her contemplatively, and finally tells her to be careful whenever she's not with him. As she settles back in next to him, he says, slowly but certainly, that he wishes she could see herself through his eyes. That she is so insanely beautiful in more than one way and yet she doesn't seem to understand the jaw-dropping, drool-inducing effect she has on most of the population. And that beneath all that beauty there is so much more to her. She screams of confidence but there is something preciously vulnerable there, too; he wants to sit back and watch her wreak havoc on the world but he also wants to protect her from doing so. She's still so young and impish and stubborn, but she sort of has an old soul, and a very good heart. He says he wishes she could see the ways she's changed since she was four years old…and the ways she hasn't.

Serena tells him she can feel that. Because the ways she has and haven't changed are similar to the ways they have and haven't changed; they are irrevocably tied to one another, and a lot of the time it seems like they are bound to absolutely no one else. She bites her lower lip shyly and asks if he really thinks she's all that beautiful. She is, he tells her. So beautiful he wishes she could stay there with him, wishes she wouldn't leave.

She nods, her fingers tracing the pattern on the bedspread, her thigh pressing against his. I always thought it would be you, she tells him, because that's how the pattern dictates it goes. A strange, exhilarating combination of restlessness and yearning builds up within her. She will miss him, so very much, but she finds herself treasuring the moment, finding something monumental in it.

Their third kiss is one that meets in the middle, both of them leaning in. It's not a promise or a reintroduction, it's passion and maybe something a little deeper. She loves the way he tastes and smells, the same way the sound of his name used to flood her senses, tangy and sweet and intoxicating and something that she wants. His hand cups her face as they switch positions slowly, his body pinning hers to the bed. She's used to this by now, being trapped between a mattress and a boy, but this feels different, warm and secure. It's not messy, with Carter. He touches rather than gropes her, kisses her sweetly instead of just sticking his tongue down her throat. She enjoys it, craves it; it's not toleration. It makes her feel shivery and beautiful and confident enough to tug at his belt buckle, the muted sound of clinking metal permeating the air, which was only occupied until that point by the sound of their heavy breathing.

His eyes are cloudy and dark and she's pretty sure she's got her own starry-eyed gaze going on, but she's so focused on him that she doesn't care. She knows boys, she knows how to make them want her, and she knows that he does. She wraps one of her long legs lightly around on of his, skirt slipping up further on her thighs, her ankle resting delicately just below the back of his knees. He groans as her actions push their bodies closer together, burying his face in her neck and tucking down the sleeve of her shirt and the strap of her bra so that he can kiss her bare shoulder. She smirks slightly, triumphantly, closing her eyes and enjoying the feeling. When he lifts his head again he shakes it, negatively, from side to side. She knows what his inner battle is; the fact that he is older and protective of her fighting with that attraction he's had for her since the first time they ever looked at one another. Fighting, and losing. She can see it in his eyes – there's more than just lust there. He can't resist kissing her again, whispering her name regretfully as he does, and she pulls away from him, their eyes locking. Her eyes flit down to his lips and then back up again, her leg tightening around his.

I always thought it would be you, she repeats, her words holding even more meaning of a much different sort the second time around. She tilts her head slightly, reading all the emotions flashing through his eyes, and then his hand is slipping up her skirt and his tongue is slipping into her mouth and that's that, as they both knew it would be; it's inevitable.

[&]

Her mother's phone call is what wakes them up in the morning, and she untangles her limbs from his and hastily pulls back on her clothes, accepting the sweater her offers her and slipping it on over her head. It's two blocks back to her house and he walks her there; when they get downstairs there's a breathless man waiting with coffee for them. They hold hands and drink their lattes and don't talk. When they get close, he tells her that he'll probably leave too; with her gone there's nothing left for him in the city. She stops short in front of her building, clings to his hand and turns to face him. He plucks the empty coffee cup from her hand and throws them both in a nearby garbage can. She says she wants him to stay, so that she can send him a postcard.

He chuckles low in his throat and looks at her in a way she'll never forget. He wraps his arms around her waist, tugging her close, and hers slip effortlessly around his neck. He agrees to stay for another week so that she can write him and she nods, satisfied. Quietly he asks if she's okay and she promises that she is, and he lifts one hand to tenderly tuck her disastrous hair out of her face and kisses her full on the lips. He kisses her nose, too, to make her smile and says bye, beautiful.

In the doorway of her building she turns back to him, clutching his much-too-big sweater around her body, and says, I'll send you a postcard. Promise. He nods and calls back quietly that he knows she will.

She wears his sweater to Eurodisney and gets Erik to take her picture. She scribbles a message on the back, telling him about the funny conversation the people in front of her in a line were having and joking about how smitten Sarkozy is with her mother and saying she misses him, and sends it off to his suite in Manhattan, knowing that he'll be gone shortly after he gets it.

[&]

Without Carter, she fills her world with Georgina and Chuck, and occasionally Blair and Nate when they're not too busy being couple-y and cute. Chuck has his own suite at the Palace now and they all make good use of it. Serena feels flighty and rebellious, much older than she is and yet still childishly stubborn. She gives up on vodka-mixed-with-whatever and starts ordering cosmos and martinis instead. When investment bankers wink at her across the bar and insist on paying for her drink, she starts accepting and winking back.

She just lets go. Georgina and Chuck love it, love the way she blows off schoolwork and drinks and does crazy things and makes out with investment bankers and college students and the bartender that one time, leaning right across the bar for everyone to see. Chuck is constantly coming up with new dares for her and she for him, and it's one big game. His favourite and oft-used ides are to challenge her to kiss Georgina or to sleep with him. Most times she'll do the first, never is she drunk enough to succumb to the latter. Georgina is sheer craziness, but Chuck takes care of her in his Chuck-like way, offering his place as a crash pad, telling particularly pushy guys off, and always making sure she's okay at the end of the night.

It is for that reason, consequently, that he's the one sitting next to her on the floor of his suite and holding a glass of water out to her when she's crying and there's mascara streaked on her cheeks and she's admitting that she misses him. Chuck shoves the glass firmly into her hands and loops an arm around her shaking shoulders and tells her that it's not that bad; he still writes to her all the time, doesn't he?

And he does, that's true, but she's learning now that that isn't a relationship. It's hardly even a friendship. Though neither of them ever said they wanted either of those things – most of the time they don't, not with most people – she longs for both from him. He tells her wonderful things and she can read love-you-miss-you between the lines, but there are so many things she wants from him that can't be sent in the mail. She wants his arm around her shoulders, not Chuck's, his lips, not those of some random guy, his laughter, not anyone else's. She wants his company.

Chuck reassures her lecherously that he is always there and she laughs through her tears, drinking her water and pushing him away. Chuck must talk to Nate and Blair, because they remember her then and force themselves into her life to ground her whenever she gets carried away. Blair swoops in with croissants and Audrey Hepburn and girl talk and taking care of her when she wakes up after a particularly bad night. Nate meets her in Central Park for lunches of Pop-Tarts and diet Coke and talks to her sweetly, telling her jokes and making her giggle girlishly, feeling her age for once.

But the only thing that really puts her at peace is the postcards she gets. Carter has long ago shed his parents from his travels and his adventures grow wilder as her life does, a perfect parallel. He writes to her from Cape Town, from Casablanca, from Ljubljana, from Hong Kong. Now that they know each other even better and their older, his writing softens a bit, less formal and more comfortable and a little bit naughtier. Once, just the look of the doorman's eyebrows when she skips into her home after school tells her he's written her some dirty joke he heard in some exotic bar. He starts his messages with Dear S. or Hey, beautiful and his squished-together writing uses only the necessary words to convey his sentiments so that he can tell her even more in the limited space. He signs off with Yours or Always, the two merged together, or a farewell from wherever he is, usually just scrawling his initials beneath. The only thing that remains consistent in his style of writing is that last line that never fails to warm her heart: here's your postcard, I'll send you another, promise. They sealed it with a kiss when she was four and he was eight, they made it absolute, and she takes great comfort in knowing that it's one thing which will not change.

In July of the year she's turned fourteen he writes to inform her that he's working in Moscow. There's a picture of him in a fuzzy Russian hat, smirking at the camera, and there's a return address written along with his message on the pack. She knows it's her cue. She's tired of being the caterpillar, anyhow. She breaks free of her cocoon, packs her bags, and walks out of her building to spread her wings.

[&]

She sticks to Europe for her first big adventure, where it's always possible to drink the water and there are no bugs carrying deadly diseases and it's almost always possible to find someone who speaks a little English. She speaks pretty good French and she picks up random words of other languages easily; it's not difficult for her to make friends. She's pretty and bubbly and fun and downright lovable. Everyone she goes a new group of people adopts her and shows her a good time. Maybe she's too trusting, but it has yet to work against her, and she's just in the mood to roam. As long as people are willing to show her the best places to go, she'll let them help her.

Even though Carter's already done the whole European tour, she takes pictures of herself at all the famous landmarks, blowing kisses to the camera or making silly faces. She writes down all the places in London he took pictures of himself in for her ninth birthday and she makes a whirlwind tour of the city one day to take pictures of herself at them all, so that they've both been there. In taxis or in a bookshop or on double-decker buses, she writes messily on the back of each photograph and signs off with promises and x's and o's. She stuffs them all into a bright blue envelope and writes the address she's had memorized since she received it on the front. She marches into the post office, her last stop of the day, snapping one last picture of herself and forking over the ridiculous amount postage it's going to cost her before heading back to her hotel, toying with the diamond heart that hangs around her neck.

Moscow is her last stop. She digs up a little information and accosts him on the way to his job. His face breaks into a boyish grin when he sees her. She wants to squeal, but the look on his face makes the noise get caught in her throat, so she just beams back and runs to him, hugging him tightly as he whisks her up off the ground and spins her around.

He shows her both sides of the city, the tourist-y things and the real, authentic stuff. When they're visiting landmarks a kindly woman offers to take their picture and Serena jumps at the opportunity; never before have they been in a photograph together. They pose next to one another, smiling, and at the last minute before the flash Carter leans over and kisses her cheek. When they go back to his apartment that night they tear each other's clothes off impatiently and don't even make it to his bed; the next night he takes her to dinner at some pricey restaurant and they flirt in the candlelight and have a chance to build up that slow burn. She wears a short dress and those Jimmy Choos she bought long ago and she knows he's admiring her but she's too busy admiring him. His mouth looks better than her dessert, so in the end she arches her eyebrows and he throws down some money on the table and they walk briskly back to his place – patience was never their forte.

On the day before she's supposed to catch a flight back home she gets sick. Not sick in a nervous way, not sick in the way of cold, but sick in the way of a horrible flu. She can hardly get out of bed before she's so dizzy that she has to lie back down, she uses an entire box of tissues in about two hours, she's nauseated and coughing and miserable. Plus it's always worse to be sick away from home, so she's a complete and utter mess. And to her surprise, Carter takes care of her like it's the most natural thing to do. He wraps her up in blankets and brings her medication, puts cool clothes on her forehead and holds her hair back when she vomits. He calls a doctor to make a house call and check on her and holds her hand the entire time the she's poked, prodded, and quizzed about her symptoms in heavily accented English. He books her on another flight seven days later, when the doctor declares she won't be contagious anymore. He lies in bed next to her even though she protests weakly that he'll get sick as well; they watch The Sixth Sense on one of the two English channels available and when she starts to cry because she's so tired but she feels too awful, too intermittently hot and cold to fall asleep, he kisses the tears off her cheeks and cracks open War and Peace. He teasingly promises that the length of the novel is plenty long enough to lull her to sleep and begins to read to her. His voice soothes her almost automatically, reminding her of that night when she was four that they talked almost until dawn, and she falls asleep curled into his side, the blankets tangled around her legs. As she drifts off, he keeps reading steadily, one of his hands gently stroking her tangled hair out of her face.

A week later, when she's feeling almost back to normal and he's starting to sniffle, she doesn't want to leave him and she cries in the airport when they're saying goodbye. These are the things she can't put into the words on the back of a postcard, these are the things she craves in her life and she's starting to think she can't live without, these are the ways she needs him. And now he's starting to get sick and she won't be able to take care of him; she'll write, but her words won't do it the way her presence will. He holds her tight and kisses her hair and sends her on her way, and she feels so conflicted between fulfillment and emptiness as she sits on the plane contemplating her summer with him and the year that spans out in from of her, void of his presence in anything more than some postcards.

[&]

Maybe she's trying to protect her heart when she starts to fall for Nate Archibald. Start isn't really the right term, because there's always been something between them, but it's only now that she's really starting to allow herself to feel it, and when she does, she realizes that he's been feeling it the whole time. The thing is, in some other universe or maybe in what this one used to be, he'd be her perfect fit. He understands her, he loves her, he doesn't judge her, they thrive in the summertime the same way, they giggle and chortle the same way, he comes from a good family and all adults would approve, and with his hair and eyes and tan matching hers, they pretty much look like Barbie and Ken.

There is, of course, the small issue of his being Blair's, but Serena can't help that she feels that you can't really have claim to a person. Nonetheless, for the sake of her best friend and their relationship, she tries not to feel the way she does about him.

She tries to distract herself with school and Georgina and partying and other boys and movie marathons with Blair, but those things don't work. She tries to distract herself with Carter's postcards, but they only make her ache for him more. Now, when she gets out her shoebox and stares into it, her heart breaks a little. The thing is, about Nate, the biggest thing of all, is that he's there.

At the beginning of the summer she turns fifteen she is so very restless that she just knows she's going to do something stupid if she spends the whole summer in the Hamptons with Nate close by. She tells her friends, as casually as she can, that she thinks she'll just take off for a while. She needs a break. So she sits on her bed, box of postcards at her side, and spins her globe lazily. She hasn't heard from Carter in nearly a month; it's a little longer than she normally waits. As far as she knows, he was last in Cairo. She stares at the space on her globe labelled Egypt contemplatively. It would be kind of stupid to go there without knowing where to find him, and she doesn't want to have to chase him down. That doesn't seem fair.

As she drums her fingers on the globe that she's kept for so long, she suddenly remembers who it was that left it behind, the only reminder that they once knew each other, never mind that they're related. She decides to channel all her restless energy into something useful: she's going to find her father.

A week after she makes the decision, she's tugging her suitcase off a boat that's docking in Santorini. She loves it instantly, the white buildings and the gorgeous blue water and the sun shining down. She feels like she was made for it, a feeling she couldn't quite explain on the back of a postcard and makes her wish he was there to experience this with her. But she shakes off her heartache and shoulders her bag and finds her way to her hotel. The woman at the front desk is middle-aged and motherly and hovers over Serena in a way she hasn't needed hovering in years, so it's no surprise when she opens the door to Serena's room and her lips twist into a disapproving smile. What is a surprise is what causes the frown – the boy standing by the window, taking in the view.

Carter?! She drops her bags and rushes over to hug him, demanding explanations as she clings tight. He says, to make a long story short: he missed her. The woman at the door clears her throat and bids them goodbye, the disapproval on her face making Serena giggle into Carter's chest when the door closes. She grabs his hand and drags him over to the bed to sit and asks for the real story. He shrugs and tells her the PI she contacted just happened to be his PI, and she balks that that must violate some rule of private investigating, and Carter rolls his eyes and reminds her that the smile on her face indicates that she doesn't really seem to care.

Seeing him again is essentially just what she needs, and for the first couple weeks she forgets about her original reason for the trip. They swim and eat and dance at night; Serena matches their surroundings with her blonde hair and blue eyes and the outfit of a white bikini, a sarong tied as a dress, diamond necklace, and no shoes that she's taken up wearing. One day when they're waiting to go out of boat he wraps his arms around her from behind – she savours the feeling, cuddling up – and whispers lowly in her ear that she looks like a goddess. He's already good at riding Vespas, so they rent one and sail down the Grecian streets, her cheek pressed against his back and her arms wrapped around his torso. To her delight, he speaks a little bit of Greek – rough, old-style stuff, but at least he's got more vocabulary than she does: the only word she throws around is opa! and that doesn't really count. When she's marvelling at him he reminds her that he studied Greek in school and she nods. She remembers. She's read his postcards enough time that it's ingrained in her memory, along with the fact that he wanted to travel to Greece. It makes her heart jump around, being there with him, together.

They stay up late and sleep in until it's nearly nightfall some days and their schedules get all screwed up but it doesn't really matter because they're coordinated with one another. Sometimes it's unbearably hot, but that doesn't stop her from snuggling up to him at night. She loves the feeling of his bare skin against hers, admires the way their bodies seem to be such a perfect fit, likes the feeling of his breath hitting her cheek and the weight of his arm wrapped around him. She almost never wants to go home again.

The spell is broken one night in mid-August when they're eating dinner at a small, obscure restaurant and she's got her bare feet resting atop his sandal-encased ones under the table, tapping out a rhythm with her toes. He tells he knows why she's there, in Santorini, and she almost spits out her mouthful of wine. His eyes are gentle and probing, asking her if she still wants to find her father. She shrugs shakily, her summer bliss having been intruded by this burst of reality. The way he's looking at her makes her want to say something completely off topic, to drop three precious words into their conversation, but just as she opens her mouth she hears a gunshot and there's a scuffle – even in the confusion she's impressed by the way he hastily reaches for her, trying to keep her safe.

By three o'clock in the morning she's tired and her feet are cut up and there's a stain of something on her pretty sundress. She's been in and out of rooms at the police station for hours. Carter's got her hand in his, his grip the only thing holding her up, as he argues with an officer. He gives her a piggyback back to their hotel and walks quietly up to their room. She doesn't know what to think or what to say to him. She yanks of her dress, with its offending stain, and he murmurs something about looking at her cuts, so she perches on the bed in her underwear and extends her foot toward him. He kneels, decides they're nothing a first aid kit can't fix, bandages her up, and kisses her ankle. She blinks back tears as he straightens up and kisses her for real, his body settling over hers. She's confused, barely able to process what just happened, and her life is a mess and her father is maybe here but probably not anymore and she thinks maybe she's in love as they have sex that is as much about comfort as it is about affection and want.

Early the next morning she sits on a boat, telling herself the tears in her eyes are a result of the sun's stinging rays, heading back home and decked out in jeans and sturdy sneakers.

[&]

The day of the Shepherd wedding she gets a postcard from Greece that says nothing on the back but promise and it's the catalyst to her breakdown. Her regret for leaving him fuels events that just spawn even more regret. Having sex with Nate on a barstool is the result, watching Pete Fairman die is an unpleasant addition.

She escapes from the Upper East Side to Hanover, where she makes a slew of new friends and admirers and tries to forget how much she's going to miss his postcards now that she's no longer at home. It gets lonely. She misses Blair even though she betrayed her, misses the messy-but-sweet nature of Nate's kisses, misses her baby brother, and misses Carter most of all.

She begins to wonder why she left in the first place, why she's so damn afraid. She stows her necklace in a drawer because she doesn't exactly feel worthy of wearing it.

Three months into her term at Hanover she gets mail that is not a short letter from her mother or a magazine: it's a postcard. It's strangely oversized, bigger than the average postcard, and it comes from Mendoza. His familiar writing informs her that he's disowned his parents and he's travelling the world, getting into all kinds of trouble. The stories he makes fit into that small space make her laugh out loud, a genuine sound for the first time since she slept with her best friend's boyfriend and kind of killed a guy. He sounds like he's having the trip of a lifetime, and she loves that he took the time to track her own, but she wishes she was there with him. And if she can't have that, she wants to talk to him for a minute, to tell him to be careful. She left her cell phone when she escaped Manhattan and hasn't bothered to get another one since there's no one far away she needs to contact – everyone's just a doorway or a building away. He doesn't have a phone: he doesn't want to be found sometimes. She contemplates calling her PI – also his PI – again, but in the end she decides she trusts him to keep himself in one piece. He signed off as usual, promising to send her another, so she settles into her schoolwork and does nothing more than flirt with the boys and drinks a little less.

The postcards keep coming in, from Machu Picchu and Nantucket, from Zagreb and Johannesburg. He's certainly making his way around the world, and it kind of feels like he's taking her with him in some abstract way, which is nice. He sends pictures from Kyoto and Istanbul and then there's a lull, a period during which she doesn't receive anything at all. She worries about him, starts biting her nails and wearing his sweater that she still kept from all those years ago. When she finally hears from him again there's both a photograph-postcard and a letter, since he needs a little more room to explain all the trouble he got into in Dubai. His words read like a short story or something, as she sits crossed-legged on her bed devouring them hungrily, equal parts impressed and appalled. When she's done she giggles, snuggles into the sweater, and starts to read it over again.

Pictures reach her from Auckland, Saint Petersburg, and London. She gets actual postcards from Monaco and two from New Orleans – it makes her heart speed up for a second, having him so close to her. But then he's writing to her from South America again, Buenos Aires this time. She reads them all repeatedly and stashes them away in her shoebox in her closest, the space inside which is so limited it could only ever exist at a boarding school.

It's funny, how when she left New York in a rush she managed to forget her cell phone, but she remembered her shoebox of postcards.

[&]

The day she gets the call that Erik attempted suicide she dries her tears and packs up her guilt along with her postcards, does the clasp of her heart-shaped necklace at the back of her neck, stuffs Carter's sweater into her bag, and goes home.

Home happens to be just as, if not more, complicated than it was when she left it. She aches for her little brother and his suffering, and she concentrates so much on Erik's wellbeing that it takes her a while to miss the postcards. When it finally sinks in she feels empty. She knows it's probably due to the fact that she relocated so abruptly. But a small, nagging voice in the back of her mind wonders if Carter had heard about her brother. Lily kept everything so under wraps, but he has a PI on call. He could know. And if, if he does, why hasn't he come?

Nate's lusting after her and Chuck's disturbed by the way she's changed and Blair feels betrayed and her life is one great big mess. So when Dan Humphrey covers for her sweetly, she figures she'll go out with him. He's obviously got a crush on her and he seems like one of those people completely determined to be good, and if Serena needs anybody at this point, somebody like that is perfect.

But Dan Humphrey is well…Dan Humphrey. They are strikingly different people, and not in that wonderful opposites-attract way, and not necessary because of their backgrounds. He has this ideal of her built up in his head; it's different, he hasn't understood her since she was four years old. With Nate, there is an aspect of comfort and an easiness, but with Dan it's all judgment. She can't remember ever apologizing to someone so much for things that aren't even her fault. They don't mesh, because he's dating who he wants her to be, not who she really is. It's okay, at first, with innocent kisses and sweet words, but it falls apart quickly. Not just because Carter comes back and he's standing next to her grandmother and smirking at her like always, but that is a contributing factor.

She ditches Dan easily, and he looks only vaguely hurt because it's not like he wants to attend a debutante ball. And Carter's there, winking at her over tea and joking about things that have a hidden meaning that only she understands and touching her knee subtly as he stands and walks by her. And he's meeting her in the bathroom and Blair's and pinning her back against the sink and swallowing her giggles when he kisses her hard. He's calling her beautiful when he meets her at the ball and she's pulling him into an unused room in the building and planting kisses all over his face, and he rewrites her mother's horrible presentation statement perfectly, and their laughter slips together harmoniously. She asks him about Erik at one point, bringing their conversation down several notches, and he gives her a solemn hug and says that he would have come to NYC sooner, had he known, and he's sorry. She believes him without a second thought, because he is never so genuine with anyone else.

He whispers to her while they dance together, her hand resting in his, his other hand at the small of her back, keeping their bodies close together. It just feels right, being with him, and it delights her that her grandmother loves him so much. She feels so content around him, never like she has to hide anything, because he doesn't either. It's that indefinable something that defines their relationship and pulls them to each other. They sit alone at one of the tables in the room, leaning close to one another at first. As people start to leave, she leans back and drapes her legs over his lap as they talk. She knows he's only there for a few days, but they take what they can get, and she feels relaxed and peaceful with him back in her world, so much so that she's oblivious to the love triangle brewing between her three best friends.

She goes back to his hotel with him and they don't leave the room for the next twenty-four hours, not until he has to leave. He gives her a ride home in the car he's hired and kisses her on the sidewalk, pulling her toward him by lightly pulling on the chain of the necklace he gave her. She cuddles into his embrace for a moment before letting him leave, knowing how badly she'll miss him. He kisses the top of her head and whispers into her hair: you somehow always get me to come back here. She looks up, blinks back her tears, and shoots him a triumphant smirk before kissing him one last time and walking inside.

Ten minutes after she arrives home and is halfway into an argument with her mother, the doorman calls up with news that something's been left for her. A postcard. And so it begins again.

[&]

He keeps writing, through everything. His postcards and photographs come in bi-weekly, like they used to. She gets a postcard as she tries to keep up her schoolwork and get into Brown and avoid Georgina when she gets back to town and worry about Blair and worry about Chuck and Nate and about her family and about herself. No matter how crazy things get, she receives a postcard telling her of crazy things happening to her other half on the other side of the globe, and she feels like she'll be okay.

He learns of her successes through things like Yale's press releases and says that he's sure things aren't always perfect, but he's proud of her and knows she'll be okay. She reads love-you-miss-you in between the lines, as she always has, even though they have yet to say those words to one another. But she reads something else there, too, something new, something akin to I-wish-I-was-there. Her shoebox starts to get full.

[&]

The next time he falls back into her world it's at an entirely inopportune moment. She never thought there would be a day that she wasn't happy to see Carter Baizen, but it does exist, and it occurs right in the middle of Blair Waldorf's total meltdown. And, according to Chuck, not only is he in town, but he's with Blair. Like, with her.

It makes her feel startlingly unsteady. They've made a lot of promises to each other, but none of them guaranteed exclusiveness. He's a bit of a womanizer and she's slept with other people. Yet, she's known for so long that he's hers, in the same way that she is his. And it doesn't help that he was the one boy she thought she'd never have to share with Blair. She and Chuck both pout about Carter for a while, knocking back a shot each in his suite before they get it together and decide to put an end to this. She's feeling kind of ruthless and Chuck just wants to see Blair in a better place; it's a strange reversal of roles but it's probably the only thing that's going to end this.

She doesn't even try to reason with him or ask for an explanation, because her mind knows she isn't owed one even if her heart is screaming out to the contrary. She simply hands him a ticket to Dubai and sets her lips in a line and blackmails him lightly. He's mildly surprised as he reminds her that, technically, he could blackmail her right back. She just looks back at him. Maybe she's a little disappointment with him and with them in that moment, but she knows him. He won't, and he doesn't. He calls it even between them and leaves, something close to regret flickering in his eyes.

The next photograph-style postcard she receives, he's wearing an apologetic expression and standing somewhere in Dubai that looks particularly desert-like, holding a bouquet of fresh flowers. Something about it makes her laugh so hard that she forgives him instantly.

[&]

She sees him again when high school's over and she feels something brewing inside of her; she's overjoyed to be free to roam about as she pleases, she's got the time and the money at her disposal. Her necklace and his sweater and safely packed away in her bag to keep her company, and maybe she'll send a postcard to Dubai.

But then he appears, as he has a knack for doing. She wants to hug him but she refrains, bringing up Blair's name as a test instead and he brushes it aside so quickly it's as if it never happened, and she can't help the uncertain smile that springs to her lips when he reveals that he's found out where her father is. So she steps toward him and kisses him, their arms wrapped around each other. When she pulls back for air, she clings to him momentarily and nods. So they embark on their second mission to find her father, determined to only get involved with each other and not the authorities this time around.

Fiji is beautiful and vaguely reminiscent of Santorini, and she adapts to it effortlessly, enjoying the beach and the bed, both with her boy. For the first time ever it seems really realistic that it might actually happen for them. They're there to find her father, they say, but it's a bit of a cover-up. She's already found the most important person she could ask for. She's done school, no longer bound to the eight-thirty-to-three days of public education. He's here and she's here. There is so space or time between them, and out in the real world their age difference means next to nothing. This feels like their chance.

One evening when they're sitting on the beach as the sun finishes setting and she's all wrapped up in his arms, leaning back into his chest, she turns her head slightly to look at him. He smirks at her and kisses her cheek and holds her a little bit tighter, and her heart feels like it might explode, so she says it.

I don't want to live through postcards anymore.

He looks shocked by her words for a moment, but then he nods slowly, understanding. For years and years they've fallen together whenever they can or whenever fate will have it that way, but now she wants to have all those in-between moments, too. They are so drawn together and she just wants them to finally stick. Postcards are sweet and wonderful and fulfilling when she needs them to be, but nothing can compare to having him there. There are some things, many things, that can't be written or expressed through a photograph, like his showing up whenever she needs support finding her father or his taking care of her that time she got sick in Moscow or the way he knew exactly what her presentation statement needed to be in order to shock her mother.

There are things that can't be expressed on a postcard that she wants with him. She wants three words, eight letters and holding hands and stupid, normal dates like movies with shared popcorn and what they're doing right now, cuddling on the beach. When he has adventures she wants to be there, and she wants to be there for the boring parts, too. She wants to drink lattes in Central Park. She wants to fall asleep at night curled up to him and wake up in the morning with him at her side. She wants him to be the one who takes care of her when she's sick and she wants to be able to return the favour. She wants to listen to him read as she falls asleep and go to all those society events that they must attend with him at her side. She wants to pick an apartment, a place to settle down, and fill it with things that are theirs. Maybe she'd like him to put a ring on her finger and marry him someday, and she's reluctant to admit it, but she's pictured their children, with bright blue eyes and his dark hair, adorable smirk-y smiles, and vibrant personalities. And she wants that, every bit of it.

She's had something pulling her toward him forever, and now she just wants to have forever with him right next to her, rather than as some destination she can never quite reach.

Opening her mouth, she tries to think of how to tell him all of that, but he beats her to it and says it with such perfect simplicity. I love you, you know that?

Serena bites her lower lip to hold back her grin, but it breaks free. He's thinking all of that, too, she can see it in his eyes – it's probably always been there. He doesn't want to leave her again anymore than she wants to watch him go, and vice versa. With her heart full and their future, together, spanning out before her, guaranteed to be one big wonderful adventure, she has the confidence to tease him: Promise?

He smirks back at her and leans down; her hand slips up behind his head and her fingers slip into the hair at the nape of his neck as he presses his lips to hers. They seal it with a kiss; it's official, it's absolute.