The Tell-Tale Heart
Every time a singular sickness comes, you gain a little more of a propensity for it - meaning, in layman's terms, that you're more likely to catch it more often. Sickness is like sex this way in that, while the initial symptoms may be more fleeting, the after effects will last and linger longer, time after time; the first time you get out of bed after either, you'll find yourself a little shaky. Doctors call this residual weakness, and it can be caused by any number of things - your body learning more about a particular pathogen, a sudden mutation, the slight wasting of muscles through disuse - therefore, the longer your residual weakness lasts, the more likely you are to catch that sickness again, especially while you're still too frail to fight it off.
Blair Waldorf was born with a hole in her heart.
Strange, but true.
All human beings are born with holes in their hearts, but most close up after a few brief moments in our weary world. Blair's, however, was a little larger and took a little longer to close than most, so someone else did it for her. They cut into her baby soft chest, fixed the hole and sewed her back together again. She healed, the line of stitching slowly disappearing as she stretched and grew and focused on becoming Blair Waldorf instead of admiring the colours and patterns of her brand new frontier. It never quite vanished, though, for all her stretching and growing; she was left with a tiny silver scar between her breasts, off centre and listing to the left, only noticeable if you were looking for it.
So Blair started life with two things to her detriment: the hole in her heart, and the scar. She liked neither.
And she grew up. She grew up with absolute purpose and forethought and grace, achieving by each birthday what she'd set herself to achieve at the last. She never let the hole in her heart - which she was told was still there, but was far too small to do her any harm - or the scar - which wasn't noticeable unless you were looking for it, anyway - slow her down. She honed her body to be perfect, knowing that one silver line wasn't going to make her any less desirable. She honed her heart and caged it in steel, making it ready for the one fine day when a predestined white knight would sweep her off her feet and snatch it from her keeping.
Blair was well aware that she could never have a whole heart and so could never give her heart wholly, but at least she could reserve the marred portion for herself in order to step back from the brink if needs be. What she was not aware of, however, was that she didn't need a white knight to rescue her:
She needed a dark prince to unleash her.
She met Chuck Bass when she was four and a half years old, and she found him interesting. He interested her because he was a boy in the same way that Peter Pan was a boy: unfailingly a boy, selfish and cruel and utterly a boy. He would never grow up, he would never age, he would never advance beyond her and ascend.
This pleased her.
She met him again (to use 'met' in the carnal sense, the Biblical sense) when she was very nearly seventeen and very gently, under the cover of darkness, the diminutive piece of muscle Chuck called a heart insinuated itself into the hole in Blair's.
A perfect fit.
And so focused was she on not letting the world know that her body was blazing (because Chuck Bass was a boy, and she liked to do with him what girls liked to do with boys) that Blair didn't notice that her heart was suddenly whole, throbbing in her chest, blooming like a flower and putting down roots like a seed. His heart was warm inside hers, and it too grew - and, as it did, widened the space where it resided so that, when it retracted, the hole left was a little larger and a few more tears were shed over his going. And just like that, Blair's lingering symptoms gave her a little more of a propensity for that singular sickness: residual weakness.
Time passed and time and time again, Chuck's heart infiltrated her own. Each time it grew, living through Blair's joys and its own reflected joy, widening the hole in its host's heart with every removal. He could want her, be with her, promise to say he loved her, love her and trust her.
He could also refuse her, abandon her, throw her words back in her face, barter her and deceive her. Of course, she could do all these things too, but her retribution never had quite the same effect on his heart as it did on hers.
It got to the point where the hole in Blair's heart was so big that no other heart could fill it but Chuck's (which was not a good situation to be in for a boy who would never grow up and a girl who had grown up too fast). She tried - with old flames and new flames, with lords and princes and paupers - but in the end, her residual weakness for Chuck was too consuming to allow any other heart proper purchase, any other charms the time to take hold. Blair's heart could not function without Chuck's heart, and she would have been more than willing to undergo any number of painful operations to make that not so -
Sometimes.
But most of the time (even when the two things to her detriment were to his advantage), Blair couldn't bring herself to untangle the mess Chuck had made of her heart from the mess she had made of his. Why? Because he was a boy, unfailingly a boy, selfish and cruel and utterly a boy. He looked for her scar, and he said he liked it.
"Why?" She asked.
"Because it means you're not perfect," he replied.
She could give him her whole heart - whole meaning complete with a flaw, a hole - because he liked that marred portion the very best of all.
Fin.