Sometimes Blair thinks she is devoid of any sparkle. She is dark and twisted deep inside, a black hole of nothingness. She covers herself in jewels and sequins, beading extraordinaire, as if sparkling enough on the outside will cover up what she lacks on the inside. She smiles brightly, the fakest jewel of all.
Dan tells her she sparkles, that she outshines everyone on in the room. Blair wishes she could see the same person he sees but every time she looks in the mirror the darkness is still there, lurking behind her eyes.
She wants to shine, from her skin to her lips, to the eye shadow she smears across her lids before she goes out. She wants to shimmer, to glow so no one will notice that inside she's nothing but darkness.
...this is who you are...
Chuck's voice echoes in her head and she wants to tell it to shut up, to get the fuck out of her life, but it's there, in the middle of the night when she wakes up, confused, disoriented, not knowing where she is, until she slowly realizes that she's at the loft and Dan's next to her, breathing heavily, and she should feel safe, but that voice is still there.
...come back to me...
He is always there, across the room, staring at her with that intense gaze, the one that eats through all the superficial layers and sees down to her core, the part of her that she works so hard to hide from the world. Blair wishes he would just let her go, cut those ties that bind her to him, but he won't. He won't move on, just watches her, waiting for the blackness to well up from under her shell, to leak out of the cracks that are always forming, and then Dan will realize who she is and he will walk away. Chuck's gaze hold promise that he will always be there, always there to pick up the pieces to put her back together in whatever form he envisions.
...you are mine...
Blair wants to tell him that she's not his, that she never was, that she belongs only to herself, but part of her thinks that maybe he is right. Maybe the only person in the world who could even like who she really is could be someone just as twisted up on the inside.
Dan loves her. He's never said those words but she knows it. She's known it from the moment of the revelation, those words that slipped out in front of an entire audience, but Blair didn't care, because at that moment she knew they were true.
...Dan loves me for me...
Sometimes she looks up and finds him watching her, and it's some strange, random moment in life, no big romantic gesture, no declaration standing in the rain, just a moment. Sometimes it's between bites of pasta at their favorite Italian restaurant or while she's reading a book and glances over the top of it to find his eyes just watching her, or when she walks into his bedroom with a towel wrapped around her, her skin damp from the shower, and she sees it in his eyes. The love, the adoration, the boy who worships the ground she walks on, the one who tells her in so many ways that nothing about her can be horrible, because he loves everything, every part.
Blair thinks he doesn't really love every part, he just hasn't seen the dark parts yet.
It's those moments that Blair should run into his arms, should tell him what lurks in the back of her mind, what has lodged itself in her heart. It's those moments that she should open her lips and let the words come out, the ones that she has said to other boys in the past, the ones that have left her open and shattered and scarred, but this boy, this one will not hurt her, and she knows this without a doubt.
Still, she is not sparkly and even though she knows he loves her, she doesn't think he really should, because that would mean he loves the parts that even Blair herself has not found a way to love, and who can love someone who can't even love themself? Even though she loves him and he loves her, Blair has still not found a way to believe that this is something real and not just another layer of shine and gloss she's applied to her life in order to keep up her carefully cultivated facade.
No one can live properly when they're waiting for everything to come crashing down.
That's what Chuck tells her, what he whispers into her ear as he leans against the bar at parties, and Blair stares straight ahead and never answers him because she has nothing to say.
...I'll pick up the pieces...
It's a promise, a vow, that no matter how far she sinks, he will always be there. He will always sink even further. Because they are chuckandblairblairandchuck, and he tells her she can never be anything more or anything less. Except Chuck doesn't know the truth. There will be nothing left to pick up when this is over. Blair has been destroyed enough times to know that nothing lasts forever and she's positive that if...no, when...Dan walks away, she's going to implode, to finally become the empty shell of a person that she tries to hide from everyone. The darkness will finally spread everywhere and she's not even sure if she could keep up the sparkle on the outside as well.
...you will destroy me...
Blair whispers this breathlessly with Dan inside her and his face is buried in the crook of her neck and her hands are tangled in his hair, and it's the only time she can tell him the truth. The truth that what they have will end with her in a million jagged little pieces of nothingness and she can't see any other option, and she can't walk away because the end result is the same either way, and Blair is entirely trapped. Trapped by love. It almost makes her laugh. Instead she cries.
Louis had told Blair to smile for the cameras, and she still does this. She smiles when Dan walks into the room, when he takes her arm, when he kisses her on the cheek. She plays the game, the role of the perfect girlfriend and Dan looks so happy that she knows he doesn't think anything is wrong.
So much is wrong.
Blair has done this for years. She smiles. She is standing next to her mother who is prattling on about her summer in Lyon and Blair's perfect grades and how she's going to Yale and all Blair can do is smile and think how close the nearest bathroom might be because all she really wants is to stick a finger down her throat and feel the relief that vomiting up the two desserts she ate at dinner will bring. She smiles and tells Serena she is so happy for her as yet another thing Blair had wanted falls into Serena's lap with just a flick of her beautiful mane of hair and a simple easy-going smile, even though all she wants to do is run home and bury herself in the safety of her bed and cry. She smiles as she steps out and faces a world that knows her boyfriend was willing to whore her out for his empire, that she's has been given a price, a marketable value. She smiles now, despite feeling small and out of sorts and entirely unworthy in this world, what feels like a lifetime piling up around her of shame and self-hatred.
Blair doesn't know how to stop the cycle.
She's doing what she's always done. She did it with Nate, always needing presents and reassurance. She did it with Chuck, needing games and manipulations. She did it with Louis, needing a crown and a title. Now she does it with Dan, but she's not even sure what she's doing anymore or why she's doing it. Putting on a show, pretending to be someone she's not, has become reflex, like breathing, something she does because it's the only way she feels alive.
She starts to crack around the edges.
The whispering won't leave her alone, the voices telling her over and over that she's worthless. Chuck's words swirl in her head and some days Blair has no idea how to stop them.
Sometimes she wants to hurt Dan. Hurt him in a way that is permanent, a way that she thinks will end everything and he'll finally decide he's had enough, that even love isn't worth putting up with Blair Waldorf, and he'll walk away and then she can finally let all the pretend sparkle go, because if he already hates her, how could he hate her even more. Then she can finally show him who she really is. If she hurts him she can prove to herself that she was never worth his love in the first place. How odd that she loves Dan so much that she needs him to hate her.
Blair is trapped, feeling like a caged animal and Dan notices that something is wrong, and he asks her one night, his hand stroking her arm tenderly and Blair feels the tears start to well up. She almost tells him, as she stares into his eyes that are filled with concern and love and suddenly she wants nothing between them anymore. Suddenly she wants him to know that she is a liar and a cheat, that she has somehow convinced the world that she's strong and successful when she's really almost dead inside. Instead she smiles and tells him she's feeling just a little out of sorts, and maybe it's a cold or something, and Dan kisses her and the next day he plies her with hot lemon and honey and makes her sit on the couch under a blanket and Blair thinks she might actually feel a little sick with the amount of unworthiness she feels.
She has to do something, has to break out of this cycle, and one morning she wakes up and Dan is snoring softly next to her, his arm draped around her waist, and Blair has a moment of clarity and suddenly she can see everything she needs to do, and while it should make her happy and feel free, all it does is make her cry.
Dan wakes up and finds her sobbing silently and he pushes himself up on his elbows and traces the paths that the tears have made down her cheeks, then leans down and kisses them away, and this makes Blair cry even harder. How is it fair for her to love him this much?
She wishes he'd been someone else, someone callous and calculating, someone who could just let her be who she is, let her live devoid of sparkle, let her maintain the facade, but he isn't. He has gotten under her skin, mined deep into her soul, he has dwelled inside of her and become part of her, and in the process she has realized how empty she really is, and now she can only live in fear of the moment that he realizes this and walks away.
Blair makes the phone call that day. She gets everything set up. The money is transferred. The plan is set in motion. There is one thing left to do.
She does it that night, ordering Dan's favorite take out and setting out candles on all surfaces of the loft, surely a significant fire hazard. She fills the room with flowers and picks out his favorite music. When he comes home from his classes, Blair answers the door in sexy, expensive, shiny satin lingerie and they don't even eat the dinner or light the candles because Dan's mouth is crushing hers and she's frantically pulling at the buttons on his flannel shirt, trying to find his skin under her fingers, and they are both sliding to the floor because it's become clear they won't make it to the bedroom this time. Dan pulls off his pants and Blair is tugging at her lingerie and wondering why she picked something with so many buttons, then Dan's fingers are slipping under the panties and he is moaning something about how wet she is into her ear, and his fingers find her clit and Blair bites her lip.
This is not how things are supposed to go, so with great effort Blair pulls his hand away and pushes him down onto the hardwood floor, finally manages to undo her undergarment, and then lowers herself onto him and watches his eyes flutter shut. She moves her hips, pressing toward him then back, again and again, pushing against him, and his hands come up and find her breasts, covering them, pinching a nipple, then she's moaning right along with him and just as she starts to feel tight and really good she leans down and says what she was planning to say all along, the whole reason she decided to surprise him, what she had intended to say after a good dinner and wine, with the candles lighting up the room, in a big romantic gesture.
...I love you...
HIs eyes fly open and Blair pushes down hard and he can't say anything back because his hips buck and he comes with her name on his lips.
...Blair...
...I love you too...
Afterward they lie in his bed and Dan is happy, smiling, playing with her hair, kissing her over and over, and it almost makes Blair want to cry because he doesn't know that she's done the cruelest thing of all, and maybe she shouldn't have even done this. But she needed to, needed him to know that he wasn't like all the others, that he was special, and that was why she needed to tell him that one thing before she left, to give him something so he wouldn't be left wondering if he was anything more entertainment. And that was why she couldn't stay, because it was only a matter of time before he realized that loving Blair Waldorf was a sort of curse.
She also needed to make the deepest cut, a wound that cannot be recovered from, because Dan deserves so much better and if she doesn't hurt him enough she knows he will never move on and her plan won't work. She needs him to hate her so she can set him free.
Blair waits until he's asleep before she steals out of his bed. She knows she should hurry, but instead she stands in the dark room and stares down at him, memorizing the way he looks as he sleeps, thinking that this will be the last time she sees him.
Blair pulls on the clothes she'd put in the bathroom earlier. She finds her raincoat and heads downstairs, pulling the loft door shut for the last time. The town car is at the curb and the driver is too professional to ask questions, just nods when she tells him to take her to the airport.
Blair has decided that the darkness will not win this time but the only way to defeat it is to make sure no one can ever find it. So she is leaving, and someday she hope Dan will be able to understand that this is the only way she can survive. Blair Waldorf has realized that she isn't meant to love someone the way she loves Dan without hurting him, that loving her is a curse, that she will never be able to defeat the darkness, and the only thing to do is to run away.
Chuck was right. This is who she is. Twisted and dark and devoid of any sparkle.
She stares out the window as the lights of the city flash by, blurred by the tears that won't stop. Somewhere people are getting up and getting ready for the day, or coming home to warm beds. They are not like her. They are not adrift in the world but anchored to home and family, to jobs, to friends. They sparkle and shine with each other, full of love and friendship. They belong. Belong to each other.
Blair doesn't belong anymore.
TBC