The Epilogue

Chapter 1

An anxious Blair Waldorf paced up and down the hallway in front of the big metal door. The door had no windows, but that did not stop her from envisioning her new husband being beaten to a bloody pulp by two burly cops. Of course deep down she knew she was just being melodramatic, but she was allowed; she was the drama queen of the Upper East Side after all.

In actuality, her husband, twenty-two year old billionaire, Chuck Bass, was going through extensive interrogation regarding the recent death of his father, Bartholomew Bass. Nevertheless, the typically calm and collected Blair Waldorf was currently an emotional wreck, fearing the worst for the love of her life. Blair had gone through routine interrogation herself, but she and Chuck had gone in at the same time, and she had been released over an hour ago. She glanced at the big clock for the twelfth time in the past five minutes and her heart nearly broke for her husband when she saw that it had already been an hour and a half since she was released; this realization left a fresh deluge of tears streaming down her already tearstained cheeks.

She hadn't cried this much since her and Chuck's accident last year when, in addition to losing her unborn baby, she'd almost lost Chuck. The memory was still a sore spot for Blair; the thought of it only made her cry even harder, if it was possible.

She leaned back against the wall across from the big metal door and slid down to the floor so that she was sitting with her knees tucked into her chest, trying and failing to pull herself together. She sucked in a deep breathe in a feverish attempt to calm herself down—Chuck could walk through the big metal door at any given moment and she could not let him see her like this. She didn't know what was wrong with her, this was her wedding day! This was supposed to be the happiest day of her life and yet all she could do was think of all the hell that they'd been through in their struggle to immortalize their relationship by becoming man and wife. It had been a long time coming to say the least, but it seemed to Blair that their dreams were about to finally become reality; of course now that she was stuck in a police station she realized that it was all too good to be true. It was if fate was against them being together, like Blair and Chuck were star-crossed lovers or something.

Calm down! You can't let Chuck see you like this. He'll just assume that you regret getting married and you'll break his heart! Blair told herself. Luckily Blair had witnessed plenty of emotional breakdowns over the past twenty-two years, having grown up on the Upper East Side-she'd been to enough therapy sessions and knew that her shrink would tell her to calm down and sort out her thoughts.

Reluctantly, Blair forced herself to recap the trauma of the past thirty-six hours in an effort to work through her emotions. She supposed the drama really kicked into full swing yesterday morning when Bart Bass kidnapped her and threatened Chuck with the lives of Lily, Chuck's beloved step mother and the only parental figure he'd ever had, Nate, Chuck's best friend, and none other than Blair herself, the love of his life. Chuck was exiled to Moscow in exchange for their safety. Chuck, being the genius that he was, figured out that Bart planned to take Chuck's life by arranging for the plane to crash over the Atlantic, and was able to save himself before it was too late. Chuck then went on to crash the gala at which Bart was being honored as man of the year and revealed to the world that Bart had arranged to have his very own son killed. In his fury, Bart tried to kill Chuck by pushing him off the roof top of the building. Blair arrived on the rooftop just in time to witness lunge at Chuck to push him off the roof; luckily Chuck moved out of the way in self defense and Bart was left dangling off the the roof. Chuck watched his father's fingers slip off the ledge one by one before falling to his impending death. Blair and Chuck flees the crime scene and ended up spending the night in a bed and breakfast in upstate New York. Their morning was interrupted by Chuck's Uncle Jack, who, upon finding out that Blair was the only witness, suggested they get hitched. They agreed, of course-they were planning on getting married to begin with and spousal privileges said that a wife could not be forced to testify against her husband. And so by noon Chuck and Blair were married in front of the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. Within seconds of saying 'I do', the police arrived to escort Chuck and Blair to the police station, since they were both persons-of-interest in the investigation of Bart's death.

Blair was positive that there was no possible evidence that could incriminated her husband, but if that was the case, what was taking him so goddamned long? To make matters worse, when she'd first gotten out of her interrogation and checked her phone she saw that she had eight missed calls from her beloved father. That's when it dawned on her that she hadn't exactly told her father that she had gotten married. She figured her mother had called him to tell him the news and she knew he wouldn't be too happy with finding out about his only daughter's wedding from his ex-wife.

She quickly returned his phone calls, but when he picked up the phone and they got to talking, she realized that the situation was much worse than she imagined. Her father had received no call from his ex-wife; he heard about it on the news. The problem with that was the fact that her father lived in Paris, which meant that her and Chuck's quickie wedding had already made international news even though they'd only been married for four short hours. And it wasn't just the wedding that had made the news, but the entire scandal starting with Bart's death and including headlines about Blair and Chuck being fugitives from the law.

To say that Harold Waldorf was disappointed would be an understatement. She could hear it in his voice, he was downright heartbroken, not just with her for her involvement in the case but also with the fact that she hadnt included him in one of the most important days of her life. She knew how much she'd hurt her father and she had never felt more ashamed in her entire life. Blair didn't disappoint her father very often, but on the rare occasion on which she did, she had a nasty history of falling into the bulimic habits that plagued her adolescence.

After ending the unpleasant conversation with her father, Blair looked up some of the headlines regarding the scandal. They were all pretty harsh, but the one that hurt the most was from the Monaco Times:

Former Princess of Monaco, Blair Waldorf just got married for the second time this year. She married our very own Prince Louis in January but divorced him within a month. As if she didn't have enough shame for having a shorter marriage that American reality star Kim Kardashian, she just added the title of felon to her resume for aiding and abetting her longtime lover Chuck Bass in the murder of billionaire and CEO of Bass Industries Bartholomew Bass. In the hours following Bart Bass's death, Chuck and Blair were reported MIA for just under twelve hours before getting married in Central Park this morning. It is suspected that they got married due to spousal privileges...

Blair closed the web page, not wanting to hear anymore about the scandal. She knew she'd made a lot of mistakes over the past year, but marrying Chuck was definitely not one of them. The article successfully brought back the most painful memories of all her horrible choices and major fiascos.

She failed to be a mother when she lost her baby. She failed to be a wife when she married Louis. She failed to be a princess for Monaco. She'd failed to be a best friend to Serena when she dated Dan. And today she failed to be a good daughter to her father. The desire to make herself throw up in self-hatred was so overwhelming, she cursed herself for skipping breakfast so that she had nothing in her stomach to throw up.

And so here she was, still staring at the big, windowless, metal door.

Her tears started to subside as she came to peace with the painful truth-she was a failure. She stood up slowly and waited for her husband.