Disclaimer - I don't own Chuck and Blair, and I don't own gossip Girl. We all know how it would turn out if I did.

So I was just looking at a poster for Nesquik cereal, and this came into my head. I don't know why, 'cos it has nothing to do with cereal. Enjoy, and please review :)

Power Cut

Her outfits are impeccable

She's wearing midnight blue when he leaves – his favourite colour on her (besides the ruby red she'd continually worn in high school) and she believes it'll make him stay. So when he brushes past her; no sparks this time, the fire out, the power cut, she parts her lips and waits for his sorry kiss (because he always was that; sorry, even when it wasn't his fault). Only this time, he's not sorry, and neither is she, so he's no choice but to go.

The bags are packed, all two of them, and he's used the old ones, Blair notes, not the usual leather goodness that accompany the four of them on 'family' trips to Connecticut or business deals in Shanghai. He's probably left her those on purpose, because she picked them out, demanding she have them if only because they matched her newest shoes.

He'd given in then, because he loved her (still does) and because she pretended to love him back well enough for him to believe it. Now, when he looks at her, when he stares right through her cold eyes (that were never warm to begin with) she knows he can see every lie that ever left her mouth.

"Where will you stay?" She asks, voice harsh and devoid from all emotion – the same as it's always been save for fleeting moments throughout those last two years of high school. Even then it hadn't been quite right anyway.

He doesn't answer and she knows why. If he tells her, she'll call, and when she calls, he'll feel guilty because nobody ever really loved her except him, and he'd go back, if just for that reason. He'd forget that she failed to respect him or their marriage, or herself really, and they'd play happy families for another drunken Christmas, pose for photos in Dan and Serena's living room before he hit the scotch and she threw up her turkey.

-

She let him fall out of love with his favourite Ice Queen, even though she doesn't remembering letting him fall in love with her in the first place

She should let him blame her mother really. Perhaps her father even, Roman. Maybe she could have played this out as being Nate's fault, or Serena's, or even Vanessa's, because it hadn't taken much before to put the blame on Brooklyn girl's shoulders.

But then, she remembers that his father is Bart Bass, and he still managed a couple different emotions from time to time. She just seemed to have given up long ago.

She thinks, that maybe, just maybe, if she could squeeze a couple tears over the multiple coats of mascara, she could stop him from taking another step towards the door. They're just standing there, the two of them, in the hallway, empty apart from the sideboard with it's one 'family' photo. And when a tear finally forms in her left eye, he watches her as she blinks it away. And then she silently curses herself because maybe that's what he was waiting for.

Chuck just shakes his head and takes another step.

-

Her body's just as empty as her conscience seems to be

"Are you going to say anything before you leave?" Blair asks. "Goodbye maybe?"

He watches her blankly. "You look pretty."

Her nose curls at his lie because she's gotten way too thin to be pretty anymore. So she tells him that she's never been pretty anyway, just attractive once. He used to tell her – when they talked – that that was better. Now he doesn't even warrant her defiance with a response.

He looks at her, a mixture of disgust and confusion crossing his eyes quickly. The last time he looked at her like that was when he caught her slumped beside the porcelain toilet bowl, wedding ring on the floor beside her, making her fourth finger look horribly bare. He told her he'd never seen anyone look so pale and so weak as he watched her trying to regain composure.

Blair remembers her legs being too shaky for her to stand, and when she'd attempted it, she fallen back down in a heap.

Her skin was cold, he'd let her know as he'd carried her to one of the guest bedrooms. She'd never asked why he hadn't placed her in their own bed, but she'd stopped asking him questions they day he'd started asking her, and so she never found the answer.

"You stopped letting me love you." He says gravely.

All Blair does is shake her head. "I never started."

"Sometimes." Chuck replies. "Sometimes, I actually hate you."

She only shrugs. "I hate me too."

He leaves then. Actually shuts the door behind him after telling her he'll come back "sometime" to see their babies. Only they're not their babies, they're hers and someone else's, and she knows he won't take a second glance.

William's eyes are too blue and Alfie's mannerisms too pure for the two boys sleeping upstairs to share their DNA.

-

Until that moment, she'd forgotten how to remember

The last time they'd made love was nearly five years ago. They'd been to the grocery store, and on impulse, decided to buy enough ingredients to make an apple pie.

The pastry was soggy on the bottom and burned on the top, and the sugar in the filling had separated from the apple. She'd smeared some over his lips and then kissed it off and he'd done the same to her.

Their clothes came off faster than Blair could ever remember them coming off before, and he had her right there, on the kitchen counter.

The next day, she made herself sick in Macy's men's bathrooms because the smearing of apple pie had taken her over her daily calorie limit. A member of senior management found her, told her she looked "absolutely beautiful" and she fucked him there and then, in a damn public bathroom. Afterwards, he'd noticed the ring on her left hand, and asked how far away she was from the reading of her husband's will.

She'd stormed out and made herself sick back home without her wedding ring. That was the beginning of Chuck's departure.

The last time they'd had sex was five days ago. He'd kissed her forehead and rolled over, closing his eyes, before she'd told him to fuck her. She'd never used those words before, nor would she again, and now she remembers the frown etched into his face as she'd removed her silk nightgown.

"What?" She'd barked as he stared. He said nothing, just fingered each protruding rib, both hip bones until she couldn't stand the scrutiny any longer and she'd taken charge, on top of him like he'd always wanted back in high school. Only it wasn't high school and now when she remembers, Blair thinks he most probably didn't want it at all.

She remembers the way he'd held her hand in delivery suite 23 and the way he'd told her to breathe calmly in delivery suite 49. She remembers him relenting when she told him she hated the name Christopher, and she remembers him trying to understand when she didn't want to even look at Alfie in his crib after they'd gotten him home.

She remembers how he looked at her the day of Serena and Dan's wedding, when she stood at the top of the staircase in grey silk and cream fur. She remembers when he kissed her neck and told her she'd better not be wearing panties, because there were all kinds of things he wanted to do to her in the limo.

She remembers his scent and his eyes and the warming mixture of scotch and marijuana on his breath.

She remembers the day she fell in love with him and the day he told her he loved her almost a thousand times.

It takes a further two seconds for Blair to remember that she still loves Chuck, and that she's in love with Chuck.

For the last five years, she'd forgotten how to remember. Now she can't remember how to forget.