Blair isn't crying when she goes to see Serena. She's not crying because she's with Nate and Serena's out of jail and Georgina is definitely 100% evil again, so she can finally rest. She can rest and let herself be happy. She can make herself be happy.
Serena is crying, because she doesn't know how to be strong like Blair. She doesn't know how to not cry anymore. Blair sits next to her on her bed and hands her tissues from the box on the bedside table. She convinces her best friend that her mom loves her, that everything will be all right, and that her criminal record will be erased. Serena's hands are full of used tissues and when the tears don't stop Blair pulls another tissue out of the box to wipe them away.
"How are you like this? How can you be like this?" Serena asks suddenly, with a sob.
"Like what?" Blair asks, but she knows what. She had seen Serena through blurry eyes as she rushed away from the bar at the Russian Tea Room, and she knew that her friend heard everything.
"Why is my life so screwed up?" Serena asks, changing the subject, but not really. "Why can't I get a guy to like me for me, just me and only me? Why does no one love me like—"
Blair looks away then, because she knows what Serena was going to say but doesn't want to hear it. Hearing it will make it real and then she will have no reason not to cry. Blair's not a child anymore; she doesn't cry just because she lost a game. And it was just a game.
"I just wish…" Serena starts, and she hiccups. And that's when Blair gets angry. Because she too wishes, she wishes so much.
Serena's tears have stopped, so Blair takes her chance and runs, because she's afraid of what Serena might say. She's angry that there is something for her to say, something that seems to be always left unsaid.
She's so angry that she can't help but look into Chuck's bedroom as she rushes down the hallway. She so angry that stops in front of his door, watching his back as he sits on his bed, looking out the window into the night. She's so angry that she wants to see him as unhappy as she is—she's not as selfless as he—but seeing him broken like this doesn't feel as good as she expected it to. He has a glass of something dark next to his bed, but it's mostly full and he doesn't pick it up.
She takes a step forward into the dark room. She knows he knows that she's there, because when she walks over to the lamp, he murmurs, "Leave it off." She closes the door, and he turns toward her and gives her the smallest of smiles, the saddest of smiles.
The darkness doesn't allow Blair to be as angry as she'd like. He's just a shadow of a man here, a silhouette against the windows that glow in the light of the street lamps and cars far below. She can't be angry at that.
Chuck is looking back toward the window now, and Blair creeps forward, crawling over the bed to come up behind him. His head falls, eyes to the ground, as she puts her arms around him. So she can try to remember that he's a man. So that she can feel how he tried to transfer all her unhappiness onto himself, onto these broad shoulders that she grasps. How he put all his strength into making her happy, even if it left him like this. Left him sitting there, not drinking – which is somehow worse than drinking, Blair thinks, worse than drowning himself – in the dark.
With her lips pressed against his shoulder, she asks, simply, "Why don't you believe in yourself?" Then she leaves as silently as she came, leaving the lights off and closing the door behind her.
*******
The next night, Blair is sleeping. As of the night before, she no longer spends restless nights wishing she knew where she and Chuck stood, drifting in and out of dreams; now her sleep is deep and dark and dreamless. Her eyelids are still and her face is blank when Chuck enters her room.
He leaves the lights off.
Blair wakes up when she feels the bed sink behind her, and she turns her head for a kiss because it's all she can bring herself to do. She knows it's Chuck crawling under the covers behind her, even though the lights are out, but she is just too tired to resist. She has worn herself out trying to be happy.
His lips feel tired under hers, but there's a familiarity there that she never felt with Nate, not even after all this time. It seems as though it's been forever since they've kissed – since they've kissed with no underlying motives spoiling the taste of each other's lips. This kiss tastes natural.
It's been even longer since he last undressed her like he does now. At the same time, Blair thinks that it seems like just yesterday – they never managed to fully leave each other's lives.
As he enters her, staring into her eyes, Blair thinks that it doesn't count as cheating if it's with someone you love. She thinks she would know what cheating feels like – and she certainly doesn't wish Nate the pain that he caused her by sleeping with Serena – but this just doesn't feel like cheating.
"I love you," she tells him after they both climax, and it feels final. For once it doesn't feel like a question waiting for a response. She gives him what she has, even if he has nothing to return. After all, besides that brief breathy statement, she has nothing left to give either.
He's curled up behind her, they're lying in silence, and perhaps he thinks she's asleep. Her breathing is slow and heavy when she hears Chuck murmur in her ear, "Someday, I'm going to make you so happy. Someday, you will kiss me while wearing a white dress and I will be the happiest man on earth. Someday, our children will laugh and I will look at you and know that you couldn't be happier with anyone but me. I believe it."
At this promise, Blair's eyes threaten to overflow but she won't let them, not now, not in this moment; she will not let them ruin this momentary and tenuous happiness.
He has given her that much.
When she awakens, beside her the bed is empty but still warm, and Blair is not surprised. There is no note this time, and finally her eyes burst with all the tears she had left unshed because she knows he is not coming back this time, not any time soon.
But then she smiles, as the tears trace heavy tracks along her cheeks, because she suddenly remembers that she dreamed of rose petals and a long white train and laughing babies with Chuck's dark eyes.
END
AN: Inspired by "Tears" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, an excerpt of which is below:
If, as some have done,
Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place
And touch but tombs, —look up! those tears will run
Soon in long rivers down the lifted face,
And leave the vision clear for stars and sun.