Disclaimer: I do not own Gossip Girl, or anything, or… are you even reading this?
Title: Who Will Cry For Me?
Author: quibbler149
Summary: When Blair finds out she has an incurable blood disease, she makes the decision to tell nobody and fit whatever life she can into her one remaining year.
Characters: Blair W.
(o) - O - (o)
"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
-Abraham Lincoln
(o) - O - (o)
She has big dreams, big hopes, big fears. She has a lifetime to face them. She has college and Chuck and feels happy for once. She is unstoppable.
But her annual check up report comes back faulty and she reels for a second. They want her to take further tests.
It's probably nothing, she tells herself. Nothing bad ever happens to her. She is the lucky one. She is always the one that gets away.
But the world stops spinning and Blair can hear the musical drumming from her splintering imaginings and the only thing she can think of is that she can't cry. She wants to and she knows such an act would be appropriate in such a situation, but the tears don't come.
There is a fatal flaw. There are no tissues in the doctor's office.
And that balding, middle aged man is telling her all these things that can't possibly be directed at her. She has a year at the most. She is dying. There is no cure.
But all she can fucking think about is how if someone cries in this office there are no goddamn tissues.
The doctor advises her to spend the last of her days with her family. She looks him dead in the eye, suddenly very clear on what she wants, and orders him to never speak of this to anyone. He blinks and tells her it would be best if she shared this 'fascinating news' with her loved ones. She repeats her request because obviously this doctor is stupid and can't understand her when she says she is of legal age and entitled to her rights and doesn't want anybody to know.
He lets her be.
.
Her plans change.
She's always planned so conscientiously, everything right down to the finest detail. It's what makes her Blair Waldorf. She must be sure of exactly what the ground smells like, looks like, feels like before she is willing to take the next step.
Some insects can fit their entire lives into a single day.
Why can't she do the same in a year?
And suddenly she isn't afraid. She knows she was always meant to die young. This is the right thing to do. But there isn't much time to do it.
Blair starts living. Everything always got in the way of living. There was too much drama, too much trouble, too many issues to take care of first. And now Blair has absolutely nothing to lose.
So she finally starts living.
She waits for when Chuck comes home from business, leading him to the dining room table with candlelight and promises, telling him countless times of how she loves him. He's confused, but he doesn't ask. Maybe it's just another Blair thing he doesn't know about.
She spends an entire day with Serena, surprising her when she tells her she doesn't want to do any shopping. They just talk. They walk around Manhattan and Blair insists on taking the subway. It's not as dirty as she first imagined and if she closes her eyes she can almost say she enjoys it.
She always avoids Nate. He's the hardest. They have too much of a history and too many hurts to ever truly be friends. But for the first time, Blair realizes how precious time is and how much they've wasted already. This time she doesn't sit on her high horse. This time she is the one to wave the white flag.
.
Blair thinks a marathon would be fun. She's never been very sporty. There's always been too much sweat and tiredness and training for her to like sports. And that is why she wants to run the marathon.
So she sets her music on shuffleand runs all the way through two thousand songs before she's collapsing on the grass of some stray park she's never been in before. It's getting dark and she's not troubled. She just lies there, waiting for the twinkle that signals evening and listening to Evanescencemutter in her brain.
Her heart is still beating.
She's not dead yet.
And she trains everyday. People inquire if she's crazy and Serena asks her what she did with Blair Waldorf. She laughs because people are so narrow-minded. Is it so hard to believe people change? Then she remembers how she used to be the queen of narrow-mindedness.
She ditches the skirts, the flounces, the ruffles, the hair bands, the Gossip Girl blasts, the bitching, the pride.
And now Blair Waldorf is laid bare.
.
Her mother asks her what is going on, and Blair is suddenly three years old again. The long awaited tears start as a small trickle, but increase steadily until a flood is smearing her mascara down her face. She is vulnerable and the fear hits her.
Eleanor holds her daughter, her beautiful daughter. They rock together until sunrise comes, the dappled colors of beginnings blinding their eyes.
It's so sad that it's happy and Blair feels like she's swimming a long race by herself. Her companions have been long swept away by the current.
Harold and Roman fly from Paris when Eleanor breaks the news over the phone. They're trying not to cry and to be brave, but Blair can tell their tears. This is why I didn't tell anyone, she thinks. I can't handle tears.
It's autumn now and the leaves fly in circles before landing in her hair. They never looked as attractive as they did now. She can recall a time when such leaves were a nuisance, a tiresome object to be brushed quickly from her hair. Now they are a blessing and Blair catches as many as she can. They are sprites, fairies, magical whispers that make her beam and dance around New York like a madwoman. People look at her and she finds that she doesn't care anymore.
Blair is looking forwards to Christmas.
She wants snow and pudding and a huge Christmas tree smothered with tinsel and lights. She wants to see her whole family and all her friends gathered around a table. Thinking about it reminds her that it's the last Christmas she'll ever get.
How strange it is that the idea of missing Christmases depresses her more than when she was told she was going to die. How strange indeed.
.
College is more interesting now. For one thing, Blair doesn't work herself to the bone anymore to achieve perfect results. What's the point?
For another, she had taken to publicly voicing her opinions aloud in class, no longer contained by the thought of being in trouble or receiving bizarre glares.
She is free and she can contradict whoever she damn well likes.
Filled with a newfound frenzy, Blair reads like she's never read before. She frequents the library, pouring over the words of Shakespeare, Hemingway, Salinger, Mitchell, and so many autobiographies. Her joy is short lived because the moments when she is utterly entranced by the books end so quickly and then she is left feeling emptier than before.
Abruptly, she ceases all reading.
.
It's Christmas now. Blair thinks she should feel happier, but all she can taste is plum pudding mingled with a heavy dose of sadness and regret. Chuck's beside her, holding her hand, but she's numb. She cannot feel it.
It's early, but Blair feels really tired. She can't keep her eyes awake. She needs to sleep.
She knows it's her illness. But nonetheless she nonchalantly brushes it off as fatigue from lack of rest the night before. Her friends are fooled but her mother's eyes trail her departing figure painfully. She wishes the worried glances would disappear. They burn a hole in her neck.
And now she's crying.
She's never cried like this before.
It's a good thing the party music drowns out her wild sobs, the night air blankets her coughing. She's alone with only the racing shadows on her wall for company. They seem to mock her too.
For the first time since her illness, Blair understands what it means to die. She can't breathe.
It's cold.
.
The sunshine is too bright. Blair shields her eyes with a limp hand and croaks out a wish for the blinds to be drawn. Sweet Dorota comes before she's even finished her plea.
She is falling.
Somewhere on this Earth there is a deep chasm opening up with memories and picnics and once-upon-a-times. Blair is looking down that chasm.
But now she is toppling forwards.
She's panicking. There's no one there. There's no one left to catch her.
When she wakes up she is covered with a salty layer of sweat. She is immobile. It hurts to move. But today is Sunday and she has brunch.
She fixes on her best smile and brushes her hair with a shaky hand. Her hair has faded into a dull brown. It's limp and greasy, but she doesn't have the energy to wash it. So she sprinkles some matte mousse onto her roots to hide the streaky oiliness and dons a hat so no one can read her expression.
Somewhere in reality Eleanor is asking her if she's sure she wants to go.
She doesn't want to ignore her, but if she stops, even for a moment, she might collapse. There are no lucky breaks left.
.
The hustle and bustle of the brunch brings back a glint of light into her eyes. She glances around wonderingly, admiring the normality, the familiarity, the old feelings of belonging.
It's all a lie.
And she knows this.
And there's her college professor: the one she always mouths off to. She doesn't like him very much, but that's okay because she knows he doesn't like her very much either.
And now he's announcing his greetings loudly. Oh, dear. He seems to be drunk. Blair is too weary to turn away.
And now he's accusing her of wasting her life. He's accusing her of abandoning her future.
And now all the eyes in the room are on them.
And now Blair laughs. She can't stand up, her legs are dead. But her mouth moves with surprising clarity.
And now she snorts in their phony faces. She tells them all about her little game. She tells them they've all been tricked. She tells them that she'll be dead in a month or two and that she's spending her life the most productive way she knows how. She tells them she has no future.
And now she musters some strength in her legs to walk away because she doesn't want to cry in front of everybody.
Blair decides that she doesn't want a big funeral. She directs her mother to write down what she says because her fingers are too lumpy and useless to hold a pen anymore.
She wants those little white flowers on her grave. Not roses, she insists. Roses are too common. She can't remember what those white flowers are called, but she tells her mother it's the kind you always stick inside a bouquet.
She wants them because no one ever just wants those flowers but they're always needed. They're always there.
Her mother seems to understand.
Blair wishes they'd all stop crying.
She wants them to play Lucia di Lammermoor at her funeral. She wants opera because everyone her age hates opera and she feels like being a bitch to the end of her days. Maybe it might drive away those fake friends of hers that pretend to shed tears onto designer handkerchiefs when they're actually texting each other about how boring Blair's death is.
She wants all the grins in the world, she wants strawberries. She wants the stars, the moon, the sun, a planet, a universe. And she knows that if it were possible, Eleanor would bring them all to her.
But it's not. Possible, that is.
.
The days are growing shorter, the nights longer. Blair sees crazy lights in her mind and now she's Alice. Now she's the Mad Hatter. Now she's the Queen of Hearts.
This makes no sense because she doesn't even like Alice in Wonderland.
She just sleeps all the time. Consciousness and unconsciousness dissolve together.
They wanted to move her into a hostel, but she firmly told them she was dying at home.
Vaguely, she can feel the warm pressure of a hand sliding into hers. Is it Chuck's? Is it Serena's? Is it Nate's? She can't open her eyes to see. Maybe it's all of them.
There's a murmur of secrets outside her window. She can hear them more clearly by the day. Blair feels remarkably light. It's so wonderful and so horrible. She has no weight at all. Her mother's voice is crying out to her like a lone soul dragging back a whole ship to the harbor. She tells Blair not to go. She's crying… again.
Blair shakes her off.
And all the moments melt into one.
.
AN: Extremely clichéd, I know. But here's the best I tried to explain how it might feel to be dying. I'm sorry if it's not very accurate. I was inspired by the book Deadline. Big thanks to Demetra for beta-ing this oneshot.