A/N: So this is just speculation and wishful thinking for beyond the mid-season finale. Stay optimistic, dair-devils! Reviews are like rainbows. Title from the flawless Lana Del Rey – you need her music in your life!
Promise You'll Remember that You're Mine
(Baby can you see through the tears?)
When her eyes open, blurred and misty, all she can hear is the steady beeping of the machine monitoring her heartbeat.
Her first thought is of Chuck. Where he is, how he is. She lets her fingers trace her now cut lips that he had been kissing a matter of minutes ago, and she thinks her life has already been enough of a car crash of late without involving an actual accident.
Her vision catches Nate asleep in the chair beside her bed. She figures that Serena must be with Chuck. She hears them trade playful banter inside her head and hopes he's okay. He has to be. They cannot have gone through all of this not to be in the end.
When Dan appears through the door and stands at the bottom of her bed, her laptop and Audrey DVDs under his arm, Blair remembers that ever fairytale has a rocky road to get to the happy ending, and she suspects she just might still find hers.
She lets herself sigh before greeting, "Hey, Humphrey."
When Nate leaves that night, Blair curls herself into foetal position somewhere along the way during watching Breakfast at Tiffany's and starts sobbing, muffled and quiet.
If this wasn't one of the more tragic days of her life, he would probably say something like Waldorfs don't whimper, and she might give a hollow laugh in reply.
But Dan knows that if he's ever experienced a moment when he can actually feel his heart break, this would be it.
Because he cannot be the boy to kiss her better.
That doesn't stop him from climbing into the tiny hospital bed and holding her anyway. He has seen her broken before and it strikes him that he doesn't even care that he shouldn't be the one to save her; nothing or no-one will stop him. So he pulls her close, feels her erratic heartbeat and her delicate hands cling to him for dear life and he keeps whispering, like if he says it enough times it will come true, "He's going to wake up, Blair. He will."
The next morning, Blair is told that she has lost her baby.
The doctor's talk of complications blurs into meaningless blabber that barely registers in her head, and all she seems capable of doing is fighting back tears. Because you can't miss someone you never had. When S left years ago, Blair thought she has successfully taught herself not to miss anyone. Friends leave, boyfriends betray you, the world keeps spinning, and life stops for nobody, not even the Upper East Side elite.
She could not have anticipated then, when her life consisted primarily of scheming and hair-bands; that her life would quite literally crash like this, too much, too fast, too soon.
"How's Chuck?" She asks at the end of the doctor's speech. He appears taken aback by the apparent lack of emotion before him.
"Your boyfriend still hasn't awoken, but he's stable." Blair fights back the urge to scream at that last word.
But then she catches the sight of Dan's face through the glass of the door and gestures for him to enter, and somehow she starts breathing regularly again.
The doctor leaves them alone, and Dan catches Blair's gaze fall downwards.
"I'd like to apologise for that emotional wreck you saw last night, Humphrey."
He knows this is something he should forced himself to stop feeling a long time ago, but all he wants to do is tell her that they're going to be alright and hold her all through the night again.
Instead, he sits at the end of her bed and says, "Blair, I just want to be here for you...through all of it. However ugly this gets."
And he just looks so earnest when he says that; like he wouldn't feel right doing anything else or being anywhere else but here with her. Blair thinks about how she hasn't seen that for a long time, so she tells him that she has lost her child and she ends up in his arms all over again.
All she can make space for to think about is waking up this morning with Dan's hand resting on her stomach.
Blair knows she has to go home sometime. It just doesn't feel right leaving Chuck and returning to the world without him, but she just adds that to the list of situations that haven't gone her way for a while.
Louis leaves. Blair is so unsurprised that she can't even bring herself to feel the humiliation she would otherwise be feeling.
She's in a numbed trance. Serena stays with her but Blair shuts herself off, not even sure that her Serena can understand this. She feels terrible for even thinking that when Serena starts talking about Chuck. When Serena leaves to give Blair her space, she calls Dan, without really knowing why, but knowing that out of all of them, he will somehow be the one to understand. He's been making a habit of that.
"I think that she needs you right now, Dan. I know it's weird considering how you felt, but I think your company is just good for her, you know?"
Dan has to remind himself not to correct Serena on the word felt.
When he arrives at the Waldorf brownstone she's making her way down the staircase, and he knows this another one of those scenes to add to the romantically tinted film of him and her inside his head.
(He's always held a general disdain for how people say ChuckandBlair or NateandSerena, it's something he just can't pinpoint.)
"I assume S sent you here to be my knight." She comments, sounding so tired. The kind of tired that sleep can't cure.
"I know you don't need a knight," he begins, so she can lay down whatever weapons she's about to use to push him away, "however you do need to start living again. You know, in the real world."
She contemplates suggesting they visit Chuck, but she decides against it. Dan's seen enough of her tears for a while. She's still Blair Waldorf.
They walk around the city aimlessly, visit galleries, and the conversation is sparse. She knows that he knows that today won't fix her. But she lets him know she's grateful for him trying.
When he hands her a coffee, he catches her smiling at the ground for a second.
"Did I just see a smile?" He asks, playful and actually surprised.
She almost feels guilty, for being happy without Bass. But she cannot lie. "I may have enjoyed our day thus far, Humphrey."
Their day doesn't end there, however.
They're watching a film at the loft and it's not one of their choice picks; just something that happens to be on.
She thinks about how Louis has left, how harshly she has learned that even fairytales are rooted in reality, about how Chuck, the person she sacrificed it for, might never wake up. About how if he doesn't, she's afraid she'll never really wake up. Then she looks up at Dan, who has fallen asleep, his arm slung around her.
You'll still have me.
He feels warm and safe.
He wakes up and she's standing on his fire exit.
"I thought you might have left." Is all he says.
"I needed to ask you something," she begins, swallowing, "When you found out Milo wasn't yours...how did you get over that? How did you go back to life without him?"
Dan replies wearily, "I didn't get over it. I got through it. I've gotten used to his absence from my life, over time." He knows it's a dangerous reply. But Blair Waldorf stopped being safe banter territory a long time ago.
She nods, slowly. "You know Serena thinks I'm broken because he hasn't woken up. And this is ridiculous, but I'm afraid of what I'll have to tell him when he does."
Dan's heart starts pounding faster; he doesn't want to know why. "Why?"
Blair throws her gaze to the black sky. "I'm not in love with him." She murmurs, she has to say it to realise it.
"What? I thought you two were like...I just thought that you wanted to elope with him and have your happily ever after?" Dan asks in disbelief.
She laughs hollowly, "If this has taught me anything, Humphrey, it's that my happy ending is in need of a serious redraft."
The evening Chuck finally wakes up, she ends up in his arms anyway.
When his hand cups her face, his eyes are expectant, but sad.
"I'm sorry." He says, she can only wonder what for. For starting this when they were sixteen and sassy enough to actually enjoy the toxicity of their relationship before letting it seep to the core of them, for taking Jenny Humphrey's virginity, for taking so long to be the man she finally wanted, once upon a time, the dark prince found redemption.
"I never wanted you to change." She says, kissing his forehead. "I'm sorry too. Running off together to live some kind of lie. I thought we'd left all of that behind us."
"I never wanted you to change, either." He replies tightly.
A single tear falls down his face, and they mourn all the promise they once held.
But they've changed irrevocably, and you cannot scheme for happiness.
Usually, it comes from unexpected sources.
She's dragged back to Brooklyn to find him writing. Blair figures that since he was the first to know how she felt, he should be updated.
So she tells him.
"I'm happy for you. No seriously. Being single is the best, just ask Nate." He remarks with a grin.
"It's not even about being single, it's about letting go. I never thought I'd be able to, you know? If I had felt this way when I was seventeen it would have seemed like the end of the world." Blair smiles bitterly.
"I felt the same with Serena." He replies mutedly. Then he tells her about the story he wrote about her best friend, how he felt that day seeing her at Grand Central Station upon her return. In turn, Blair tells her about the first time she and Chuck got together, and this Humphrey-Waldorf brand of therapy actually works well for them.
"Love really is over-rated, isn't it?" She sighs, sitting beside him at his desk and letting her head rest on his shoulder. As the Blair-side of his body hums, Dan has to disagree with her on that point.
Serena stops hanging out with Chuck for a day so she can check in with B, and when they end the evening at a bar and Serena starts looking seventeen again Blair hears the words Dan and feelings and you inserted into a sentence she can't help but be unnerved, and wonder what the hell she just heard.
"Okay S, you're drunk."
The next night is for her and Nate to catch up. They talk about school and the spectator; she's proud of him.
"I'm glad you both let go." He says when they part, and kisses her forehead. "You know Waldorf, I haven't seen you this happy in a while."
And it has absolutely nothing to do with the company or advice of one Daniel Humphrey.
"Not to be cliché Waldorf, but have you been avoiding me?" Dan asks at yet another charity event. Lily's in charge of the whole affair so she should have known he would be here, but she knows she's being petty. Serena was monumentally drunk that evening, and maybe Blair didn't want to go another day without talking to him.
She seizes his hand and drags him to a bedroom and gathers herself. He thinks it's cute, when the ever-poised Blair Waldorf has to compose herself around him.
"Serena may have said something that...disturbed me. Regarding you." She says, leaving him blushing.
"It wouldn't be the first time Serena said something regarding us." He replies, cautious.
"Dan, you know how much I value your friendship but –
"I'm in love with you." He says it, knowing he has nothing to lose at this point. And if it is love, he is willing to risk it. He was willing to risk letting her go to Chuck. "I was going to tell you before the wedding but you and Chuck still had issues and I figured you didn't need my crush on top of everything you were already coping with." He looks at her steadily.
"So that's what it is then. A crush?" She asks.
"No." Dan says. "It's more than that, now." His eyes fall to her lips and her breathe catches and when he kisses her, it's like he's kissing the Blair Waldorf she wants to be back into her.
"I don't know if I can...if I'm ready to feel the same way."
"I understand." He says, tight and bitter, "But I swear to god Blair, if you go back to him so he can leave you dismantled again, I won't be able to forgive you for it."
He doesn't mean to slam the door. He didn't mean to add another crash to her already fragile life.
Serena sips champagne with her and says, "Don't think I didn't catch you two tonight." She smirks. "At least tell me my sheets aren't stained."
"You know you love me." Blair replies, feigning sassiness. "As if, S."
"You know I care about you. And him. And I didn't think I'd ever say it, but it's beyond obvious now, how much you both care for each other." Serena says, tipsy and philosophical.
"I can't..." Blair trails off, smiling at how ridiculous this is.
"You can't shut yourself off from happiness, B. I thought the accident might have taught you that, if not everything since." Serena smiles. "I mean, Chuck's happy. He really is, for the first time. You should be too."
Dan walks to the loft that night.
All he can think about is how he should have followed his own advice when he said let's not do it again sometime. It would have been easier for them to retreat into their respective worlds; their own separate spheres of Brooklyn and the Upper East Side.
Then it would take something considerably more challenging for Dan Humphrey to even consider maintaining this friendship with Blair Waldorf, something even more absurd for Blair to even desire his company (surely he was just her last resort option, she'd always have Nate and Chuck) and something completely maddening to make him grab her face and kiss him.
And it was clearly still maddening, how he just had to kiss her tonight.
What could prove more maddening still, is how she is waiting for him in the loft.
"Did you go on some bender after you left in a drunken pathetic attempt to get over the rejection, Humphrey?" She asks, one eyebrow raised. "I've been waiting here for hours!"
"And that's not even a tad creepy." He replies, and his anger just dissolves into amusement. Her eyes are wide and surprisingly warm. "Why you're here after the rejection is the better question."
"You never gave me the chance to explain myself." She huffs, before remembering why she even came here. "I said I wasn't ready to feel the same way. And maybe I'm not ready. But I may possibly feel the same way regardless."
"Oh."
She lets her stern expression break and her tone soften. "Would you like to apologise for that emotional wreck I witnessed tonight?" She teases.
He can't help but smile and let his hands rest on her small of her back. "Well in fairness, things did turn quite ugly tonight."
As she remembers how he declared that he would always be there for her, she lets her body dissolve into his warmth. They fit.
They are not based on words. He is the only one who has been there throughout this.
"Whatever. Sometimes I still hate you Humphrey. For always surprising me." She admits.
She kisses him; the beginning of something new. Another change.
The only difference now is that Blair has found someone she knows should never change.
Fin.