Hey!
So, I KNOW I shouldn't be starting another multi-chapter fic, but I've been wanting to write this for some time now, and just haven't had the chance. I think my uni work and work-work should be calming down a wee bit in the next week or so, which will hopefully allow more time for updates across the board ;)

Hope you enjoy…

Title: Darwinism
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot, inexplicably saddening as that is ;)
Summary: After his father's funeral, Chuck Bass disappeared. Most assumed he'd run away, escaped a society he could no longer tolerate. He created the perfect cover for his own abduction. Chuck, Eric centric. CB.

.

"Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it."
Benjamin Franklin

.

Prologue: Eric's Song

It's dark, so impossibly dark, both inside and out. He's not sure if that's intentional on their part, or just a simple act of nature.

The world keeps spinning after all.

He's lost track of how long he's been gone; it was bound to happen, he knows. Apparently he should've been counting the minutes, calculating the days, measuring the time that's passed to the nth degree. But, in truth, it's just too damn hard.

He's been gone for so long, too long, with no word, not even a murmur; and that's all he cares to know.

He bites back a hiss when the metal tears at his skin; blood rushing to the surface and bubbling out quicker than you'd think it could through scar tissue.

And he slumps to the floor; slides down the wall as his legs give way quickly beneath him almost in perfect sequence with the lacklustre lift of his other hand. His arms drop to his sides, wrists exposed, fingers splaying apart, and the sides of his legs feel wet already.

He closes his eyes, takes a breath, and tries to imagine life as it was before.

He hears shouts swirl somewhere in the air around him, but there's such a pounding in his ears, and it seems so far off anyway; it always does.

There's hands on his shoulders, fingers grasping his wrists, slipping in the torrent of blood he'd let loose with that first slice that dug deep and more than just nicked his artery.

There's a fog in front of his face, but he can make out his name on their lips, their eyes determined as they stare into his.

His brother's face swims before him, fills his vision with nothing but him, and he smiles; because really, that's what he's wanted all along: to be back with his brother once more.

.

"How swiftly we choose it
The sacred simplicity
Of you at my side."
'Eric's Song', Vienna Teng

.

TBC...

A/N: I'm quite the shameful lurker on random fan sites and a while ago I found this song posted on one – I think it was fanforum – and it just stuck with me. I can't remember who posted it, but if someone knows, then credit goes to them for helping strike some more inspiration in me to write and for finding the song and sharing it. I'll probably be using the lyrics in future chapters too, because it just fits the two of them, and what I have planned for this fic, so well – and it's such a hauntingly beautiful song.

Thanks for reading, and please let me know what you think. It means so much to me!
Steph
xxx