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This is what happens: at fifteen Serena Van Der Woodsen is sent to boarding school in Connecticut. Three months later Blair starts studying at the same school.
Blair doesn't ask why Serena left and Serena doesn't ask what she's doing there, they just hug. Serena thought she was missing New York the last few months, but when she hugs Blair all the longing disappears and the world feels a little more right.
Serena organizes a mini welcome party in the dorm on Blair's first night at boarding school, almost at the end of the party one of Serena's new classmates makes a comment about how pathetic the protagonist of the series Felicity was after all what kind of girl would pick her college just to be close to a guy she likes?
Over the years that followed, Serena and Blair had very different opinions of what the girl meant by that, with Serena thinking it was just a random comment and Blair thinking it was a personal attack, and one that put the girl's name permanently on her list of enemies.
For the next two hours Blair locks herself in her bedroom's bathroom.
This establishes her reputation among the boarding school girls as the hyper emotional bitch, but it doesn't matter because Serena stays with her on the other side of the bathroom door talking to her and when one of the girls makes a joke about the situation Serena tells her to shut up and kick the other girls out of the room.
Five minutes later Blair comes out of the bathroom, her eyes are swollen and she apologizes for ruining the party Serena organized. Serena says it's okay, the two lie down in the same bed despite there being two in the room and Serena keeps changing channels until she finds something that Blair likes. Despite everything, they still consider it a good night.
This Is What Happens: For three months Blair and Nate try long-distance dating, until a Gossip Girl update shows a photo of him kissing a blonde girl at a party.
Blair breaks up with him via text that night and spends the entire morning crying in Serena's shoulder. The next day she takes her fake ID that had been unused since she left New York and goes to a lesbian bar and kisses a blonde girl, not the blonde girl she wanted however, but it feels sweet and right and she knows that it will probably become a reasonable and constant part of her life in the future.
The party that first day is one of the few they are invited to, Serena still has a few people she calls friends but most of the people avoid Blair like the plague, and Serena is almost always with Blair.
Their class schedules are the same and they spend most of their time together, they have movie marathons in their rooms and picnics in the garden. Except for a few hours a week when Blair goes to study at a library on the other side of town because according to her the state of the boarding school library is deplorable by the standards she was used to.
One day Serena shows up unexpectedly at the library with smoothies and madeleines from a bakery that Blair liked, and Blair isn't there.
Serena drinks the smoothies and eats the madeleines alone.
Later in the dorm she asks Blair how it was in the library and Blair says it was like always. A part of Serena wants to confront her about the lie, but she knows she doesn't really have the right after all, she was keeping big secrets too. That night she falls asleep with her heart feeling much heavier than usual.
This Is What Happens: Blair introduces Serena to Anna, her girlfriend.
Anna is pretty, and smart and a little older and she makes Blair laugh. And Serena hates her. She doesn't say this because Blair is her best friend and she just told her something big and important about herself and she must have felt quite scared before coming out and Serena showed support and acceptance.
She forces herself to laugh at the sarcastic things Blair's girlfriend said and when they return to the dorm and Blair asks what Serena really thought of the other girl she only says positive things (a few years later Blair tells Serena that she didn't fake it so well like Anna as much as she thought she did because all the warmth that Serena usually gave in her interactions, even with strangers, seemed to disappear when she spoke to the other girl and in the month that followed, every time Anna showed up to pick up Blair for their dates, Serena's expression was one of pure irritation).
In the following weeks, the crush that Serena had on one of the boarding school teachers since one of her first weeks there disappeared and in place of those thoughts were thoughts about Blair (and Anna unfortunately), Blair who was beautiful and intelligent, Blair who made the world feel like it stopped spinning out of control, Blair who was constant and Blair who should be hers. Not some other random girl.
But Serena was her best friend and she wanted to show support so she pretended and pretended that everything was okay and that she was happy for Blair and Anna, until the moment she couldn't pretend anymore.
This is what happens: the afternoon was perfect, it was the weekend and for some reason basically every other girl in their hallway had gone out and Blair and Serena had spent the last few hours having a Natalie Wood movie marathon, eating pizza and laughing remembering funny things that had happened in New York. It feels sweet and comfortable and the closest thing to magic that Serena has found in that world up to that point.
And then the spell breaks with Blair commenting that she was trying to convince Anna to go to Yale and not Princeton so that in two years they end up at the same college together. And Serena freaks out.
She starts crying and she tells Blair three things. The first is about the man she killed. The second about how she had sex with Nate when he was still dating Blair. And the third that she loved Blair, not just as a best friend although she had tried her best to be a good best friend to her for the last month, but that every time she saw Anna or heard her name a part of her wanted to scream anger, and just thinking about the two of them kissing hurt and thinking about them together and Yale was like having a knife stuck in her heart.
Serena had often thought about how Blair would react when she told her these things (although she had never visualized herself telling her all three at the same time), she imagined Blair crying, or screaming, or maybe hugging her and telling her everything was okay. Blair didn't do any of that, she just listened in silence and after Serena finished she left the room, when Serena tried to go after her Blair told her not to follow her.
The hours that follow are some of the worst of Serena's life, she cries against Blair's pillow, and sends her so many messages and doesn't even remember deciding to sleep, she just does it because of how sad and exhausted she feels. When she wakes up Blair is next to her, before Serena could think of something to say Blair says:
“You did a lot of shitty things S, and I'm not sure if I can trust you, you're going to have to do a lot to make it up to me.”
“I will Blair, I promise. And I will try to be kinder to Anna and try to get to know her better.”
“Uh about that, you don’t need to try to get along better with Anna.”
"Why not ?" Serena says feeling so much hope that her heart felt like it's going to explode.
“Because she’s not my girlfriend anymore so it seems a bit pointless.”
Serena feels like she was about to start crying again, but what she does instead is to kiss Blair. And her whole life seems to divide into the moment before that and after that.
This is what happens: on Wednesday one of the school representatives is sent to Serena and Blair's room to see if the girls are okay since they haven't shown up to any of their classes for the last two days.
The bedroom door is locked, and when she knocks one of the girls says she's going to open it, on the other side of the door you can hear a lot of noise being made and the door only opens about two minutes later.
The two girls say that they have had the flu for the last few days and that they will show up to class the next day. The woman notices that they were both too flushed for someone with the flu and that Blair's blouse was on the wrong side, but decides not to comment.
When she leaves the room she can hear the two girls laughing.
That day Blair tells Serena why she asked her mother to enroll her in that boarding school, Serena already suspected why but it feels so good to hear Blair saying it out loud.
This is what happens: Serena's brother tries to kill himself and Serena goes back to New York, and Blair goes together with her. Shortly after they disembark Blair kisses Serena and says everything is going to be okay.
Less than three minutes later she receives an update on her cell phone from Gossip Girl about how Blair Waldorf and Serena Van Der Woodsen were seen kissing at the train station.
Blair rolls her eyes, clicks unsubscribe and continues walking hand in hand with her girlfriend.