A/N: Okay, so I definitely was not planning on starting another multi-chaptered story, but I so cannot fit this SL into a 3-part fic and I'm too inspired to drop it. I will however have to drop the other two BoB preview fics I was going to start along with DaP. I just can't possibly keep up with 6 multi-chaptered fics. Heh. I hope you enjoy this though. I'm going off of the SB talk webclip for 3x14 and the promos for 3x14. I probably won't be able to see the 3x14 episode until the Sunday following it, so please don't tell me anything in regards to it, except the webclip I'm going off of and the promos until after I make it known that I've seen it. Heh. It'd be much appreciated. ;p I'm sure the show won't go to such extremes as I'm going to do in this story, but the idea came to me in an incredibly intense dream last night. I'm really very satisfied with how things are going on the show and had no intention of writing a story off of the SL, but I can't help myself. This is post 3x13, and definitely a dark fic. I hope you enjoy. =)

*I own nothing, unfortunately.

Ch.1—Stark Obsession

The dark blue swirl pattern on the carpeting beneath her feet hadn't changed in the last ten minutes. She hadn't expected it to. The hope that something would change might have stirred in an almost nonexistent surprise when the design did not alter the shade of its color or the way in which it curved its form. She so desired change. But it had not happened in the last three weeks, and now she found herself drowning in foolishness for thinking anything otherwise.

Chuck was rummaging about in the adjoining room. The door was ajar to the room she stood in and she could hear him rushing around, fast-paced from one side of the room to the other, almost frantic. He had tossed papers about on more than one occasion. Something appeared to be missing. On this particular morning though, she did not ask what he was looking for. She knew.

It was a luxurious hotel they resigned in halfway across the world. It was also the third one they'd approached and slept in since they had arrived three weeks earlier. They did not stay in the penthouse of any of the hotels, much less this one, cradled mysteriously on the urban side of the city. Blair could see smoke rising from distant factories. It was still detestable, much like the shelters for homeless people back home in New York, but she did not grimace at them anymore.

The noise lessened in the other room and she knew he had found what he was looking for. Every night he lost it and every morning he found it. She had been awfully suspicious of his doings during the day and heartbroken for his soul for awhile now, but she didn't speak of it anymore. There didn't seem to be much point to it. That didn't mean the feelings hadn't intensified from her first outburst. She was strong-willed. He knew this when he'd conceded to let her come with him. With each aggressive response though, she was afraid he'd leave one morning and not come back to her. He was not himself. He was obsessed with the woman he believed to be his mother, the woman who had never showed to meet with him after that anticlimactic event almost four weeks earlier. She had taken off for Taiwan, apparently, and Chuck was determined to find her. In the course of all their time together, flitting across the crowded city, that was all she had gotten out of him.

"I'll be back tonight," he said gruffly, shutting the door behind him before she could respond. She didn't even turn to the direction his voice had come. She had become accustomed to his neutral, ignorant behavior, particularly in the last week and a half. She knew he was getting desperate, losing control, running out of resources.

Her eyes blinked slowly, still staring across the fume-stained part of the city she'd been aggravated with when they got there eight days prior. Now she was numb and it took a great effort to turn away from the clear-paned window and move from the dimly lit maroon covered bedroom and into the pale mahogany sitting room.

Papers were still scattered across the large table on the far side of the room. She could see where he'd walked and what had moved around him when he'd been there. He'd forgotten the freshly baked bagel she'd called in for him early that morning before he was awake. It didn't really hurt that he'd forgotten what she did for him than it hurt that he was going without eating. They hardly were around each other, but when she doubted his care for her entirely, she would get peonies sent to the room and the finest room service delivering her meals at the appropriate times. She used to get little notes that told her he loved her, but those had vanished entirely in the last few days. A couple of times a young girl had called asking for him. He'd stolen the phone away the moment she'd questioned the girl's name, and he'd talked to the mystery woman (or women, perhaps) for nearly an hour. Blair forced herself not to consider infidelity a possibility. When she realized for the first time the day before that he'd found a way around kissing her during the entire time they'd been there, she became concerned. The night before he'd sensed it, despite the clouded mind he was always lost in, and he'd kissed her soundly on the lips before holding her in his arms as they slept. It had been the only time during the entire trip that she'd felt she was not alone in the room designed for two. In the morning the revived intimacy was gone, and she could hardly stand it.

"This isn't New York, Chuck. She's not in the city anymore."

His eyebrows narrowed. "She is, and I'll find her."

The little argument had brought her restraint on tears to an end, and she'd burst out despite herself. She had shaken her head violently and cursed herself for showing the weakness in what should have been his constant support throughout it all. The last two weeks had erased most of the emotions from his face, but when she cried she saw how he broke for her. She was afraid to have him hold her, though she did not think it would happen until it did. She did not want him to send her away. Her ability to fight him off in that regard had lessened considerably. The gentle kiss set her restless tension free and she was able to breathe that night, even if she could not deepen the kiss enough to convince him to make love to her. It still had been a breakthrough.

The still tension had returned in the morning. He'd hardly said two words to her, and she wasn't always numb. A great deal of the time she spent in silent mourning, waiting in the eerie silence of the room for him to return. Three weeks earlier she'd taken advantage of the foreign country as an excuse for shopping excursions, but when it became clear that his time with her was waning considerably, she abandoned any potential desire she might have had for the city, and stayed in the hotel room.

She missed Serena, but knew it would not be wise to let on what was happening with Chuck half-way across the world. When she'd informed her that Chuck wanted to get away with her for some time, her blonde best friend accepted the excuse immediately in light of Bart's recent death anniversary. It was delayed, true, but that did not seem to register in the head of the blonde who was flitting off to trysts with Nate multiple times a week, if not per day. Blair had left the world behind when she'd taken off with Chuck to Taiwan. A few days into the trip she'd realized how serious the situation had become. They hadn't been in the first hotel for more than two hours before she'd called the NYU admission's office and dropped out of the spring semester. Chuck was not in the room to catch that conversation.

Blair tried desperately to hold onto something real. She knew it was not in her best interest to intervene, but somehow the empty cycle Chuck had fallen into once again had to come to a halt. She took a deep breath, plastered on her best fake smile, so it'd shine in through the phone and dialed the number she'd spotted resting on the face of Chuck's phone a few days earlier. She memorized it to perfection in the case she would need it, and she knew she would.

"My name's Blair Waldorf," she said smoothly, "is Andrew Tyler available? I need to speak with him immediately."

The sandy beaches of Sydney, Australia used to captivate her. The hot breeze that surrounded her and brushed past her fair skin and spring dress used to ease her in the most incredible way. Now on the balcony leading out of his office, she hardly felt herself worthy of ease and relaxation.

"This is wrong," she said softly. Her voice sounded choked with tears. Inside the office the man cleared his throat but said nothing. He either hadn't heard what she'd said or was choosing to ignore it.

Her hands rubbed along her upper arms briefly as if she shivered from the cold. The whole warming atmosphere was nothing but bitter to her now. It would never be the beautiful place she knew it to be before her life had burst into flames at least twenty years earlier.

"Have you no conscience?" she asked, turning around in a flurry. Her skirt spun with her. Her auburn hair tied part-way up danced around her neck of the softest skin. The man sitting behind the desk finally looked up at her. He seemed very appreciative of her still quite attractive figure, and the smirk that lit up his eyes was no doubt intentional.

"Define the word 'conscience', Ms. Fisher," he requested politely, leaning back in his chair. Her eyes searched his face but found his hungry gaze unbearable and looked back out at the ocean, wishing she could spot a distant island to escape to, if only by the talent of her own swimming skills. She was an excellent swimmer.

The ocean lay bare to nothing but the water and the sky meeting on a distant horizon.

"Thinking and acting on or for something or someone other than yourself," she said, sounding quite intelligent in her definition, quite fiery too. The man stood from the seat behind his desk and walked around it towards her. His eyebrows were raised in amusement.

"You are always surprising me, Elizabeth. I did not realize you had such a close relationship with Mr. Webster." He leaned against the doorway leading out to the balcony. She could almost feel his smirk against the curve of her throat, or the way he'd undress her with his eyes when she wasn't looking. She visibly tensed and knew that he was enjoying it. He always seemed to take great pride in making her feel uncomfortable.

"As far as your question," he folded his arms across his chest, and directed his focus to the subject at hand. "I believe that definition is left up to interpretation."

She wasn't angry, didn't turn around in a fury and show him the pure hatred resting in her eyes because of what he had forced her into every day of her life for the last eighteen years. He would enjoy that too much. She would have to retreat to her room and hide from him for the rest of the day. He had a key to the lock she always used when alone in the room he'd given her to keep away in. But he hadn't used it yet. For that she was grateful.

"He's just a child," she said weakly.

The man's face changed into a stone cold disfigurement of his cocky self. He never showed compassion for anyone, despite how broken they might have sounded. He didn't like her switch from accusations directed at him to endless compassion and sympathy for the nephew he'd vowed to destroy. It was harder to counter, though not impossible, as he always reminded himself.

"…he's believed his entire life that he killed me in childbirth. Bart's let him believe it," she choked, gasping for a moment in time at the tragedy of her statement. She turned back around to face the man who's expression now seemed uncertain.

"How can you let him believe that?"

His eyebrows narrowed. "We all have our secrets, Elizabeth. To keep them, we must make sacrifices."

Her lips parted as he turned away from her and stepped back into the office, closing the glass door behind him, unaware of any call she might make out to him. He'd heard many over the last three weeks. It would not be something he hadn't heard before.

The dusty air was treacherous. She wished she could glory in it, use it against the soulless man behind the glass door. There was nothing he hadn't done to her that she wished she had never done. He had invaded her in every way, and always against her will. She knew she should have avoided Bart's grave on the anniversary of his death. She had thought the lateness of the hour would be a safe time. No one had recognized her for eighteen years, three of which she had gone into hiding and changed her identity completely. There was no way she could have known that the one person to reveal her secret would arrive just as she was in the midst of her tears over the man who would always believe she had betrayed him.

The glass door slid open again, and very hesitantly she turned to face the stony figure again. He was eyeing her with blank desire and she feared he would not take her again.

"No, Jack," she begged. His eyes glittered, almost maliciously as they pinned her to her spot on the marble deck. She did not look afraid, had mastered the cover-up of that particular emotion, but neither did she look eager to partake in what he had in mind.

"Come, Evelyn," he smirked wickedly, holding out his hand to her, "I would like to show you something in my bedroom" he said darkly. The constant threat loomed over her as she contemplated what choice she actually had in the matter. She had never had a choice from the very beginning, not if she valued the life of her only son.

She slipped her hand in his lazy hold. His fingers tightened around hers. The sick feeling swallowing up her stomach stirred again. Her mind went dizzy and she cursed herself for not having the strength to simply slip in through the doorway and follow him into his room. Because of this he had to slip his dangerous arm around her waist to assist her.

"My name is Elizabeth," she repeated as a mantra.

"Mmm," he murmured against her ear. "Indeed, Elizabeth Fisher."

A/N: Well, that's chapter 1! =D Review! Oh, and if you're confused about something, that's normal. Lol. I intend for this to be sufficiently confusing until the end. It is going to be a great, dark mystery. One that I hope you will enjoy solving. ;)