all your dreams got lost or traded
Title: all your dreams got lost or traded
Characters: Jenny, (Serena), (Nate)
Rating/Word Count: PG/1,721
One-Line Excerpt: A peasant can't overthrow Serena van der Woodsen, but why can't another queen?
all your dreams got lost or traded
“Every night, you lock up,
You won’t let me come inside,
But the look in your eyes,
As I can turn the tide.”
-The Wanted, Heart Vacancy
Jenny Humphrey wakes up one morning and decides she likes Nate Archibald. He does the same.
She walks to school in designer shoes, with a designer purse and sultry eyes behind designer sunglasses. She looks hot. He looks hot too.
He asks her out the same day and she doesn’t squeal-she’s not a little girl, she’s an heir, a prodigal queen-but answers maturely, with a promising smile to match the sparkle in her eyes. His lips, she decides, look as delicious as hers.
They date until she’s finished her first year at college, first sharing smoothies, then kisses, then a bed. When she’s eighteen, they move in together. She loves the apartment she’s picked out-fully-furnished and full of UES nobility-and he loves it too.
When he proposes, it’s the perfect surprise. It isn’t cliché (nothing says trashy like a ring in a cupcake) but sweet and romantic and there’s petals on the bedspread and candles everywhere and the New York skyline shining through the window. She leads him into the bedroom and they both say (scream) yes.
Her wedding is beautiful; his family (Anne, Grandfather, the Full Monty) accepts her, her bridesmaids are pretty (and famous) but don’t outshine her, the nuptials are featured in every magazine. Life is perfect.
They’re joined by a beautiful baby girl that she always dresses up in the latest designs, and a handsome little boy who’s just like his father, and all of the girls that want him (Nate) stand by in obvious jealousy. She feels a sense of pride and accomplishment (and smugness).
Of course it isn’t real.
Jenny Humphrey wakes up one morning and decides she’s realised she’s in love with Nate Archibald.
And then sees him splashed all over Gossip Girl with his tongue down Serena van der Woodsen’s throat.
She decides to be someone; more than just Dan’s little sister, Blair’s little follower, the newest girl on the UES radar.
More than Little J.
Before she abandoned everything for spirited dreams and half-baked plans and an idea that was (in hindsight) too much (too bold), she was on her way to something big. She felt approval, tasted ambition, savoured being remarked upon.
Watched their eyes (his eyes) widen and then harden in grudging respect as they realised that she had (helped) dethrone the indestructible Queen B, that she was almost queen...
Blair, ironically, calls in the cavalry and proclaims Jenny her successor. Awaiting lay designer clothes and Tiffany’s jewels and a sea of lustful command.
Her eyes turn sultry and her lips turn promising and she sprays herself with the scent of shadows.
It isn’t enough; (his eyes don’t catch hers). Being queen of a high school is nothing.
She knows it’s a sin, but the thrill of power is as sinful as his lips at fourteen.
It doesn’t help that they’re friends. Serena’s her step-sister and she cares, and where she is now (who she’s aspired to be) that isn’t something you take lightly. Even the legendary B and S catfights have gotten tamer over the years.
Most people grow up, but she feels like she grows younger. Behind the sultry eyes and promising lips is a girl just waiting to creep out and scream. She’s squashed every time.
She doesn’t exist.
And Nate...he loves her. The other woman. The pretty one, sexy one, rich one, shameless one; the girl who’s on page six, who reels in the boys with a snap of her fingers, whose friends are in his circles.
She’s unconquerable.
She’s not there yet, and with a name likes hers (and no noble birth) she doubts she ever will be.
But a girl can wish. And Jenny Humphrey can plan.
It’s a night in with the boy she loves and when she reveals what’s underneath the school clothes, she expects his enthusiastic approval.
Dreams can come true, right?
But his shock and his anger and his disgust pierce her-she hates the way he looks at her (she hates the way he makes her feel).
It’s final.
No one will never make her feel this way again.
His reaction is a harsh wake-up call that sends her to strip away her innocence in a smoke-filled bar with someone three times her age.
If there’s anything left, it soon fades away.
The UES is a kingdom, and Gossip Girl, with hard evidence of her betrayal, asks not to shoot the messenger.
Nate has always been the prince, never quite the king, but give it a few years and things might change. Chuck’s a lord or a duke or something noble, but never good enough to wear the crown.
For years, she thought Blair was the queen, the top of the hierarchy, someone beautiful but imperfect, someone powerful but with flaws, someone that could crumble.
Someone that a lowly peasant with big dreams and reckless abandon, with enough power and followers and blackmail, could overthrow.
But now she realises that Blair, with all of her control, would never (could never) be queen. She didn’t have the presence (didn’t have the power).
The spot had always belonged to the girl who could have it all.
By betraying her queen, she betrays her kingdom.
Banishment she expects, perhaps even humiliation, but forgiveness, she does not. Nor does she expect (or want) the guilt that comes with it.
Jenny Humphrey leaves without retribution, regret, and only a blue shirt in her bag.
For a week, she wears it religiously.
But then come the thoughts, the darkness that clouds her mind, that shape her into someone worthy of holding a crown. If he could see her, Chuck Bass would applaud her.
She takes a leaf out of Agnes’ book. As the shirt burns, so does the last shred of her humanity.
Like everything else, it’s not overnight. She becomes who she is through years of plotting, of shooting, leaving behind a trail of destruction that rivals Blair Waldorf’s. Hudson quickly appoints her as queen.
It’s not enough (it’s never enough) so she leaves (starts over) and finds somewhere new (tries again).
She’s older and wiser when she’s finally back in town, and maybe the city’s the same, and the people haven’t changed, but when she walks out of Grand Central, people notice.
She’s different, she’s someone, and loves it.
Gossip Girl reports instantly, as usual, but Jenny doesn’t find it in herself to care. She needs to no surprise attack, she’s ready enough for war. A war she’ll win.
A peasant can’t overthrow Serena van der Woodsen, but why can’t another queen?
The first thing is to isolate her, and this time, the messenger is her aid. She drugs the lord and leaves all the evidence of a blonde queen. The best friend and a boyfriend, once again.
Classy, S.
And though Chuck and Blair are over, and S and B won’t ever be the same, she smirks at their predictability and stabs the girl wanting to break free and plans the next move.
Check.
Nate’s the part that scares her. Thinking about kissing him brings back memories she’d rather forget.
What the hell are you doing?
She remembers being young, remembers her innocence (stabs the girl inside again), remembers the look on his face as she took off his shirt.
God, Jenny, put some clothes on!
Remembers the look on her face when she handed it back.
I know how it feels not to have him.
It feels like spitting in her face and he pulls away after a split-second of shock, but the damage is done. There’s no going back.
The old Jenny Humphrey is dead and gone. No chance of return.
No chance of reverting.
It’s a war that lasts years, that feels like centuries. People watch, read, hear all about it. Each scandal is as ruthless as the next. Soon, Serena fights only half-heartedly.
She rebels, puts everything into this; what else does she have left?
It comes to public blows, to catfights broadcasted on Gossip Girl, to adults acting like teenagers and not giving a damn.
Even without trying, she’s still winning.
She puts in more effort, refuses to give up even when it seems like time is running out.
It’s not the end. It can’t be.
Serena waves the white flag unexpectedly, hand on her stomach, wedding ring glinting, head on Nate’s shoulder. Who needs to be queen when you carry the king’s heir?
Checkmate.
She wins, but it feels like she’s lost.
You can’t make them love you, but you can make them fear you.
She rules with an iron fist and keeps the borders safe and upholds the hierarchy.
She’s fairly just and justly fair and perhaps-though no one will admit it-the kind of queen the UES needed.
Women scorned always make the best queens.
When she was nine, Rufus took her and Dan to a gypsy-themed fair (Alison wasn’t fond of all that nonsense) and she had a fortune-teller read her fortune. It went like this:
You will be a great queen...
Check.
...but you will face many trials to get there...
Check, again.
...and in the end, you will be remarked upon...
Check once more.
...have a rich husband and beautiful children...
Check, and check.
...and live happily ever after.
It’s (almost) exactly what a nine-year-old wants to hear. It’s something she’ll believe.
She gave up on the last the moment she had her heart broken and turned her back on the world.
She goes slightly psycho at a housewarming gala, cries and shrieks and makes Georgina Sparks proud, and her husband covers, says it’s been a hard time after they the lost the baby.
There was no baby, but they’ve both known how to lie for a long time, and truthfully, nobody cares.
Maybe it’s then that she decides; likely not.
You can’t make them love you, but you can make them fear you.
Typical Blair Waldorf. Who gives a damn about fear?
Who gives a damn about love?
Can you imagine a world without it?
A vortex, no time, no space, just the tendrils of darkness she brought upon herself.
‘Cause I wouldn’t want to.
Jenny Humphrey wakes up one morning and decides she doesn’t want to wake up again.
So she plans.
The dagger that killed the girl inside kills the host as well.