A/N: I can't hold back & there's no way I'm going to. I'm on the verge of exploding & the most inspired I've been all season. Holy crap. This is a multi-chap. It's going to be long and angsty and 100% Chair. Hold on tight. I'll try to update regularly.

*I own nothing. No copyright infringement intended.

…

Prologue-

She stood in front of the mirror, her eyes glazed over as she stared at her form in her wedding dress. There was lace and sequins, silk and satin. The cut was perfect. The shoes matched. Her hair was swept up into a sweet half-bun and glittering earrings hung from her ears. The necklace that hung around her neck was the necklace, but her fiancé didn't need to know that. He didn't need to know anything.

He didn't need to know how she cried every night and wiped dry her tear-stained face in the morning. He didn't need to know that she sat in front of her vanity every day and just stared into her eyes seeing only Chuck's. He didn't need to know that she shivered whenever they passed The Empire when he forgot they were in the vicinity. He didn't need to know that every smile she gave anybody was fake, and that it only lessened in the presence of Serena and sometimes Lily when her mother wasn't around to hold her.

She'd tried to cope, and she'd become good at keeping up the act in public. She was convinced that even half the time Louis was persuaded. After all, he'd persuaded her to come back to him after the accident and she'd obliged because he was the only one and he was the father of her baby. The freak accident had somehow managed to save anyone in that car but Chuck. Even the damn baby survived. When she sat in front of her mirror and saw only Chuck staring back at her, she wished her baby had died in that accident. She wished even more that she had never conceived that baby. She wanted Louis and herself to just go to hell.

But Chuck wasn't dead, she reminded herself, as she did every day. He would wake up soon, she told herself cheerfully, as she'd done every day for the past three months.

"That really is a shame about the miscarriage, Blair. I'm so sorry… On the bright side though, we won't have to be refitting your dress!"

She shivered at the memory. The woman had no idea, but she'd given up trying to get sympathy from Louis' mother. Sophia hadn't even gotten her facts right. Blair couldn't tell if she was happy about the baby actually surviving or not, but it didn't matter to her regardless. The only reason she was marrying Louis now was because once upon a time she had been certain he could make her happier than Chuck ever could. It had been a lie right from the start, but it was the one that kept her living and breathing and moving now. It was what Chuck would want too, she was sure. If he was having some out of body experience and watching over her, she knew it would be what he'd be telling her, hoping she would hear him. And she was. This was the only way.

The door opened behind her. She didn't realize it until the figure of her future husband appeared behind her in the mirror. She jumped slightly, and then forced herself to relax in his embrace when he rested his hand on her waist and his chin on her shoulder. Quickly, she transformed her crestfallen face into a sweet thoughtful one with a smile designed specifically for her dearest Louis.

"You're not supposed to see me in my wedding dress before the wedding," she reminded him, as she had often done throughout the last few weeks when she'd set off with Serena and come home with a potential gown for her wedding. She stained all the dresses with tears, but they went back without notice.

"I couldn't resist," he said, admiring her in the mirror. "You look beautiful." He kissed the crook of her neck.

She continued to smile, holding back tears and trying not to tense or swallow visibly.

"You really shouldn't be in here," she said, turning in his arms. He eyes her skeptically. She looked him up and down. "You're not even dressed!" she exclaimed, as if just realizing he was not wearing his tux. Truthfully, she just had. She was oblivious to a lot these days. Only Serena understood, and still not in the way she really needed her to. "Our wedding is in forty-five minutes," she hissed, grabbing a fistful of her skirts a pushing him towards the door.

Dorota burst in just then and gasped, then began her rant. "Mr. Louis! You must not be in here! Miss Blair in her wedding dress!"

He threw a half-sincere amused glance over his shoulder and left the premises of her bedroom. The door was almost closed, Louis now being ushered down the stairs, when Dorota popped her head back in the doorway and whispered discreetly.

"You want me send in Miss Serena?"

She shook her head. "No, that won't be necessary. Thank-you, Dorota." The maid nodded her head once and shut the door.

Blair returned to where she'd stood in front of the full-length mirror. Sick of looking at herself, she abandoned the spot and went to sit at her vanity, ignoring for a moment the mirror there staring at her determined to be noticed. Finally, she turned and looked into it, once again seeing only Chuck.

You look beautiful.

Tears flooded down her porcelain face. It ruined her make-up. She held out her hand and gingerly touched the mirror with her fingertips. She sighed shakily as the tears curved under her chin and dripped onto the top of her dress, staining the silk.

"I wish you were here, Chuck." She sniffled, letting her hand fall to the vanity's marble surface, bare of any objects usually lying there. Goosebumps formed on her arms.

She set the flowers on the table beside him. The bouquet she'd set there the day before was still in full bloom. She wanted it to always be that way. She never wanted to stay away long enough for any of them to wilt. She looked across the room and noticed a dried leaf fallen to the floor from a bouquet she'd brought the week before. She sighed and crossed the room, picking up the fragile leaf between her thumb and forefinger and then dropping it into the small trashcan. She turned again and, smiling softly, she returned to the hospital bed Chuck lay in.

Her fingers drifted across his blanket-covered body. The blanket was so light; typical hospital bedding. She wanted to demand better service, especially since she knew she could get it, but she knew there would be no point. Any time she so much as opened her mouth to suggest something she nearly dissolved into a puddle of tears. After three months of watching him lie motionless, barely breathing on his own, bringing up the notion of his blanket would send off warning bells to her family. It being on the day of her wedding would certainly not bode well. She'd been lucky to finally get all but Serena off her back on how well she was doing. Her best friend was relentless, though discreet. She appreciated her for that.

Her fingers finally reached the edge of his face, tracing his high cheekbones. She crouched beside the bed and looked at him intently. She'd be at eye-level with him, if only he'd open his eyes…

She sighed shakily.

"Open your eyes, Chuck," she pleaded softly. A tear dribbled down the side of her face. "I'm getting married today," she offered hopefully. She'd gotten so much of a stirring from him before when that topic was brought up. Now, nothing. She bit her lip and looked on in desperation. Her tender threading her fingers through his hair grown fierce as she suddenly clutched at his dark locks. Unsteady breaths escaped her.

"I don't want to marry him, Chuck," she continued, tilting her head to the side to relax herself somehow. "I want to marry you. Why can't you just wake up?" She let her hand drift across his face, pressing gently against his cheeks and nose and forehead. Delicately, she brushed her fingers across his closed lids and full lips. They were a little chapped from the unnatural air she was sure circulated in the hospital. She turned half-way and pulled out the chapstick from her purse, applying it lightly to his lips – as she did every day. She couldn't understand how his lips dried so easily. Or, rather, she didn't want to.

"I won't be able to come as often after today." The shaky sighs just kept escaping her, but alone in this room with only him beside her, insecurities were nonexistent. "I may even have to move to Monaco." She attempted a laugh, but a few tears came with it. "Though, after everything I've been through, I'm sure Louis would be more than willing to accommodate me by staying in New York. At least for a while." She paused, taking the time to admire his face in silence. She took his lifeless hand in her own and threaded her fingers through his. One of her tears dripped down onto his skin and her breath caught in her throat.

"He thinks I can't let go of you, that moving to Monaco is what I need to move on." She raised her eyes to look at his face again. "He's probably right." She lifted his hand to her cheek and leaned her face against it. "But I don't want to let you go," she sobbed suddenly. "I know this is what you'd want me to do…to be happy. Next to you, you said Louis was the only one who could make my dreams come true." She sighed harshly, cries evident in the heavy breath. "And he has apologized and made things right with me. It's like when we first met…"

She hung her head and shook it. "But it's not…and you know it." She played with his thumb, moving it around with her two fingers and getting choked up all over again when the top of his didn't fold over her moving digits.

"Chuck, I miss you so much." Tears streamed down her face relentlessly. "Come back to me." She looked down at her bubble of a belly and then back at his closed eyes. "I'm going to be miserable if you don't. This poor baby won't have a mother worthy of her, or him. I don't care anymore. I don't care about my own baby. I'm a horrible, horrible person." She laid her head on the bed between his arm and the rest of his body and sobbed. She wished he'd move against her and ask her what she was doing and what he was doing in hospital clothes, and why her eyes were red and her face was stained with tears.

But he didn't. Just like every time before.

She blinked away tears and dabbed at her make-up, which was now ruined beyond repair.

"S!" she called out, turning her head towards the door. When her best friend appeared in the now open doorway she let her crestfallen teary eyes remain untouched. She sighed shakily as two more tears dripped down her face and onto her silk gown, mixing amongst the diamonds and glitter.

"It happened again," she said, unconsciously raising her hand to play with the necklace around her neck as her best friend walked into the room and closed the door behind her.

"It's okay, B." She kneeled beside her on the floor and reached for the tissues, drying her best friend's face. "We can do it again. I found the waterproof mascara." She offered a light smile.

Blair nodded, not speaking, but swallowing hard. She breathed out, shaky, and let her best friend reapply the make-up. She tried her best to keep her face still so that the make-up wouldn't be ruined again, but tears still escaped her watery eyes and Serena dutifully wiped them away, dabbing with the tissues on her cheeks. When it was finished, they both turned to look at Blair's rejuvenated face in the mirror. But all Blair saw was an image of her and Chuck on her seventeenth birthday as he held her in her grief.

You look so beautiful.

She started crying again, hard. Serena caught her as she fell into her arms and held her for twenty minutes. Then they tried again.

….

A/N: Omg. I'm so choked up already. Please review. =)