Summary: Blair was not the woman he was going to spend his life with. But as it turned out, she was also the woman he was never going to get over.
He could say that he'd always been suspicious of the two, that deep down he'd always known, but it would be a lie.
It was so impossible. Blair had never seemed the type. She'd been so devoted to him, so committed to their relationship. It had been a foregone conclusion from the time they were children up until their junior year. Blair was sure that nothing could ever get in the way of it.
Until suddenly, several things did.
It was even more unbelievable of Chuck. Chuck was his best friend, the only person in his life he could be completely honest to. He was closer to Chuck than he was to anyone – closer than he was to Blair, at any rate. He and Chuck had firmer roots, went back even further than him and Blair. If he'd always known he'd be with Blair forever, he'd always known the same of Chuck.
It was so ironic, so cliched, but so true, that he never appreciated her until she'd lost her.
They married young.
Blair had always been the one to imagine their wedding, but he'd occasionally imagined it as well. He'd imagined a tasteful Autumn wedding, probably the year after they were to graduate from college. They would get married in the evening, and then have a cultural, tasteful honeymoon in somewhere like Italy.
Chuck and Blair made other plans.
They became engaged almost immediately after graduating from high school. They went backpacking in Europe (backpacking. Nate could hardly believe it when he heard) and when they came back, Blair was sporting a large, sparkling diamond ring that they'd picked up at an antique shop in Milan.
Even though Eleanor thought they should wait until after they graduated, and Bart made it somewhat clear that he thought it was a starter marriage that would come and go quickly, they couldn't wait.
They were seen registering for wedding gifts the Christmas of their sophomore year, and were married that summer.
It was not as he had imagined their wedding to be, and part of him was glad. They had a huge, extravagant summer wedding (August 12th, the Plaza Hotel, three o'clock in the afternoon, the year two thousand and eleven). He was not invited, though he had thought he would be. He had thought that either Blair's courtesy or Chuck's spite would warrant him an invitation, but only managed to find out from the invitation his mother abandoned on a side table.
He wasn't invited, but he went anyway.
He knew it was cliched and somewhat morbid, to watch the wedding of his first love, but he couldn't help himself. Parking his limo across the street and a few yards down from the church he watched, fascinated, as they emerged.
Blair wore a strapless Vera Wang gown to her summer wedding. Nate drove away as she gave her new husband a long, cinematic kiss for the purpose of the cameras nearby.
They were seen everywhere.
Dancing almost indecently close at fundraisers, going for morning coffee. Chuck, apparently, had all the time in the world for his wife.
It was a skill that Nate could never manage, and because of it his own marriage died a quick and early death. Chuck and Blair never had the fights that they had, about working late hours, about shifts on the weekends as well.
It hardly bothered him at all when she left him, taking with her a generous settlement before marrying the one they'd always known she really belonged with.
It had been years since that he'd not lived his own life, anyway. He was used to it by now.
Through Nate's eyes, it seemed that they procreated in alarming and rapid succession.
Both of them were only children, but they wanted a big family. Nate became used to seeing Blair pregnant. Glowing with a rounder belly and enlarged breasts. Became used to seeing the inevitable birth announcements, even grew used to seeing the four children running ahead of their parents on excursions that they all took together.
Chuck, miraculously, still had all the time in the world for his family.
By now he could tell them apart. The eldest boy, Graham, a charmer like his father who still did his best to protect his sisters from any harm that would befall them. The eldest girl, Vivian, a vivacious brunette who turned heads and broke hearts as easily as her mother had done. The younger girl, Holly, in awe of her big sister, ever trying to live up to her. Owen, the spoiled youngest.
By this time, Nate knew that he'd become a cliche. Unwilling to let go of the One That Got Away, unable to live his own life and even attempt to be happy.
He wished he could change it, but he knew that it was already too late.
It is years before he can talk to them once more as if they are all friends.
It happens, slowly. Blair is hesitant and Chuck even more so. By the time they can all have dinner together, talk casually about their lives, their children are half grown and Blair has grown gracefully into middle age.
He becomes, with some reluctance on their parent's part, Uncle Nate. He brings them elaborate presents on their birthdays and is close to them, but less so than Aunt Serena and Uncle Dan, or even Aunt Jenny. He is on the outer fringe, and he always will be.
Even when he marries again and has a child of his own he remains there. His child is considerably younger than all of theirs, as is his wife. She is unfamiliar to them and not part of the circle. Really, he admits to himself, they think of her as a nameless underclassman.
The sort that one of them might date for a while and then break up with, allowing them to sink back into anonimity. So none of them are surprised or particularly caring when his younger, almost nameless wife divorces him and takes their child, only giving him back every other weekend.
There had been a whole slew of wedding in their twenties, when they'd all gotten married within the same five or so years (Blair and Chuck first, Nate at the trailing end, Serena, Dan, Kati, Isabel, Jenny and Erik all somewhere in the middle) and when their children grew older, there was another slew.
Blair and Chuck's daughter married first out of all the collective children. The younger one Holly, married before her elder sister Vivian. Vivian had been promiscuous all through high school, with many flings and many long relationships. Holly had been at a contrast, until her senior year when she'd fallen madly in love. She'd gotten married at almost the exact same age as her mother, and even Nate had little doubt that it would work out and live happily ever after.
Her happiness, so glowing and contagious, was amazing to him. He was reminded painfully of her mother on her own wedding day, and he realized once more that he had never been able to make a woman that happy.
Blair smiled politely to him as she stood beside her daughter, politely receiving the guests who came to grant their best wishes. He could tell that she didn't want him there. He couldn't delude himself any more. It had been too long. He couldn't pretend that she was unhappy, that Chuck was any sort of consolation prize for her.
They had not been old at the time of Holly Bass' marriage, but it happened eventually anyway.
Blair's children go off and start lives of their own as does Nate's son, financed but not inspired by him.
After the slew of weddings, there is an inevitable slew of funeral's.
Much like Blair's and Chuck's wedding was the first his funeral is the first, as well.
Blair Bass is a widow for a year before it occurs to him that if he'd gone about it in the right way, at the right time, she could have perhaps finally been his again.
Of course, this is an easy thing to say in retrospect. He's gotten so used to lamenting that finding new reasons is easy and almost painless. If it had occurred to him a year ago to be closer to Blair, to go to her in her time of need with an eventual goal of something more, he never would have done it. It's a much nicer idea in theory.
A year has passed and she is still mourning him, albeit subtly. She lives with her youngest daughter and wears clothing more sombre than she has ever worn before. She is free now, but he knows that she'll never really be free.
He is old, still, but pretends that he is not. His third wife made it easier to pretend that he is still young. Like a memory left out in the sun to fade, she reminds him of the Blair that once was. His first two wives had both been younger but not indecently so. One had been a blonde and the other a redhead. Both times he had pretended that his marriage was something it was not, but now he's too tried to pretend. His new wife is ridiculously younger, an obvious gold digger. She knows that he imagines her as Blair, the old Blair who no longer exists, and she lets him.
The Blair who does still exist is his friend, to a degree. Still an elegant woman, she now sits at society events and can rarely be induced to dance.
Nate finds himself wishing that he'd salvaged her friendship years ago, and given up on the idea of her romantically. He can tell himself that it would have given him peace, freed him from the endless speculation he'd become accustomed to. He wished that he'd befriended them both, years ago, but as always he knew that an act was only easy now that he was looking back, and and impossible back when he'd still been looking forward.