A/N: It's late but I just came up with this idea. I've noticed a few one-shots on what Chuck might be thinking after 3x17 so I merely wanted to explore what Blair might have done afterwards (if she weren't one of the main characters and could just do what she wanted regardless of screentime yenno.) Review if ya can, I hope you like it. Apologies for any mistakes, like I said, it's late and my grammar/punctuation sometimes fails me :P
Policy of Truth.
Blair pushed through the crowds on the street, searching for something and yet not really looking. Words were falling across her thoughts, broken promises filling every moment she let herself think of him with cheap reasoning's. She knew then, that she couldn't go back, not now.
She stopped, somewhere near Serena's, breathing heavily as she leaned against a lamp post. The milky colours of dusk coated rims of buildings, soon it would be dark. She had cried until the tears wouldn't fall anymore and she was exhausted, every movement was forced. After a minute, grasping at frayed calm, she kept on her way.
The wind seemed to guide her, tendrils of her hair caught up in the air. Several blocks later, Blair stood at the bottom of the steps, staring up at Constance as though its stone frame might hold any of the answers she wanted. At this point, she'd be willing to break it apart, piece by piece, with her bare hands.
This place, oak lockers and plaid skirts, had been where it all started, where she'd fallen. That fact alone made her want to dry heave, cutting into her stomach with disgust.
"The worst thing I ever did, the darkest thought I ever had, you said you would stand by me through anything. This Blair is anything." He had said it as if he truly knew, deep down inside, that she would come to forgive him. She had felt so small, hardly able to form the reply.
"I never thought the worst thing you would ever do would be to me." She had been trembling as she looked into his eyes, and all she could see were pigments of colour, the straight line of his hardened jaw. It was then, in the lobby of the hotel, that she wasn't so sure she could bring herself to stay.
"You went there on your own," Chuck defended. And their fate as a couple had been sealed, just like that. Blair had waited months for eight little letters and merely two seconds and six words down the line for everything to be completely washed away. Too easy.
A shiver ran through her at the way those broken words had dropped off of her lips. Tightening the sash around her coat, she propped the lapels up around her neck and pressed gloved hands to rosy cheeks. The pieces of her romance, in all its discarded glory, were falling at her feet.
Where there signs, had there ever been? Times when she could have seen it, the shift. Or, had there been a moment, a singular breath, when her heart had made the decision without her head, to ignore every indication?
It hurt to think that Chuck might not be the man she loved anymore.
His edge wasn't intriguing when she thought of it now, it stung, tearing her into bits. Blair had been left with whatever he hadn't taken, whatever she could pry from his hands. She had given so much of herself to Chuck Bass, she had loved him so much, that she hadn't even noticed.
With a sigh and a frown, she pressed onwards, away from the scene of it all. And halfway down the street, as she hailed a cab, she wanted nothing more than to be home.
Blair sat in bed, shirt hanging off her shoulder, the sunlight peeking through her bedroom curtains. She couldn't tell what time it was, somewhere between early morning and late-afternoon, but she couldn't bring herself to go to class.
She stood up, watching her cell phone vibrate against the bedside table. Serena had texted her five times in the last hour and voicemails were peppering into her inbox faster than she could blink.
If she thought about it too much, felt the rounded events of last night fall into her minds eye, she wouldn't stop moping. It was hard to think of Chuck when she didn't know what light to cast him in, how to keep him in her heart without scooping everything else out.
She moved towards her closet, shifting around in the compartments for clothes, laying them out on the bed. She changed quickly, pulling a shirt over her head, jeans over her thighs, slipping into a pair of platform heels. Blair Waldorf didn't mope, she didn't sit around dissecting a man's words, Chuck had been in her world but he hadn't been her world.
"Dorota!" She called, peeking out of her bedroom door. The maid appeared rather quickly, it was almost suspicious, like she had never gone far.
"Yes Miss Blair?" She cocked an eyebrow, prepared.
"Please get my luggage from the downstairs closet," Blair asked, turning back towards her room.
Dorota murmured something in Polish, disappearing down the hallway.
Blair felt the tension in her shoulders as she carefully selected outfits, folding them, placing them on her desk. The piles of schoolbooks she'd carried to class the other day had been dumped on the bed, pages open and pens on the floor, bits and pieces of the puzzle.
Some time later, Dorota propped two empty suitcases next to her bedroom door and knocked sharply. Blair packed without thinking, without allowing herself to start justifying why she was leaving, she didn't need to explain anything. Maybe Nate and Serena thought she was hiding out, ashamed of what had happened, but she wouldn't tell them. Let the rumours of her feelings swirl around, give Chuck a variety of options to choose from.
Was Blair angry, willing to work things out, still in New York? He couldn't be sure, not if she didn't tell anyone, who could relay the message back to him, where she was going.
She rested her head against her shoulder, staring at the dress she had peeled off last night, the gold specs and long soft material of her lovers indiscretions. Would she pack it, tuck it in the corner of the suitcase and take it with her? If she didn't, then she left her only solid reminder of Chuck in New York, where it rightfully belonged. But, she was too in love with him to forget entirely and so it was hidden away in a compartment.
By the time she reached the bottom floor, her suitcase trailing behind, she felt a little relieved. She had called NYU, talked briefly (albeit cryptically) to Serena and two months spent in a French vineyard spanned before her, sun soaked and beautiful, with her father. Blair pushed open the front doors and stood on the sidewalk, the fresh air filling her lungs.
As the driver put her luggage into the trunk, her eyes were stuck on the limo idling across the street. Had he come to tell her it was all a mistake, beg for her forgiveness, would she even give it to him? Probably not. The back window fell away slowly, his face revealed in pieces. Even from a distance he looked tired, his hair was mussed, lips set in a thin line.
No, he wouldn't stop her; he couldn't even if he tried. She wouldn't forgive him, not now. Chuck Bass didn't exist, he was simply another stranger she had somehow fallen in love with. And, as she got into the town car, Blair turned her chin up at him, eyes away from his gaze. She knew that if she looked, she might change her mind and try to heal a man willing to hurt the only person who had loved him with all her heart.