Youth Lost and Mortality Fleeting
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Gossip Girl.
"Oh B," Serena said softly, "I'm so sorry for your loss."
"Thank-you," Blair stiffly replied, straightening out her immaculate black Givenchy dress. Other mourners filed pass and nodded respectfully at Blair.
Serena regarded her best friend of sixty-six years with a knowing look. "B, you don't have to pretend with me. Would you like me to stay with you tonight and I can—"
"No, no, I'll be fine, S," Blair assured her with a tired smile.
Serena slipped her arm through Blair's. "Be sure to call me at anytime of the night, okay? I'll be there in a flash."
Serena's husband Dan who was still sprightly and active at sixty-seven years old came up to the two women. "Let me know if you need anything at all because Serena and I would be most happy to have you stay with us for as long as you need."
"B's being stubborn," Serena said in a half –affectionate and half-exasperated tone, "She says she'll be fine."
Dan gave Blair a sympathetic look. He understood Blair's desire for privacy. "Look, I know Chuck and I had our differences in the past…but in the end, he well—really grew on me and I know how much he loved you."
"Tell me, Bass," Dan said, sipping his brandy, "What do you care about?"
Chuck stared unseeingly into the fire for a moment. "Blair."
A slight grin tugged at Dan's lips. "Is this the alcohol talking? I thought big bad Bass only cared about money, money and more money."
"I care about money, I won't deny that. But I love Blair above all my money," then Chuck fixed Dan with a piercing stare, "and if you breathe so much as a word of our conversation to anyone, Humphrey, I shall deny it ever occurred."
"My lips are sealed, Bass."
Blair's unbreakable composure almost wavered and she swallowed. "Thank-you, Dan," she managed to get out.
"Whatever I may have thought of him in the past, he fought the cancer stoically…and I really admired that," Dan continued.
"Dan and I both think that," Serena agreed, smiling lovingly at her husband who squeezed her hand. "Bess, Liz and the twins send you their best wishes. They're sorry that they couldn't stay after the funeral."
Blair clutched her handbag tightly, emotion threatening to consume her. "Your children are very kind. Tell them thank-you from me." She saw her limo with the Bass crest glide into the car park spot at the front of the church.
"Here, we'll help you," Serena offered.
"I'm fine. I may be a widow, but I'm not a cripple," Blair said tartly with that old sass that Serena had not seen since Chuck died.
Serena smiled wryly at her friend's bravado but did not push her offer. She and Blair exchanged kisses on the cheek and a tight embrace and Dan gave her a gentle hug, then Blair made her way down to the limo where the driver Paul was standing. Again, Blair rebuffed Paul's offer of help in getting into the limo because Blair was still healthy and she had her pride.
As the limo pulled away from the curb, she saw a lone figure standing by the church. Nate Archibald. A surge of resentment rose up in Blair for Nate did not even have the courage to see her personally at the funeral. Instead, he had slunk in through the back and then disappeared before Blair could make her way over to him.
Her relationship had been at best distant with Nate. He and Chuck's friendship had been strong and then it eventually fizzled out. Blair had always suspected it had been because of her but Chuck had been evasive about the whole issue and said shortly that he and Nate no longer had anything in common. Blair was even more puzzled when she checked her joined bank account statement and found ten thousand dollars withdrawn. When she confronted Chuck about the issue, he finally admitted that Nate had got involved in a dodgy business deal and was in serious debt to a lone shark who had threatened to kill Nate. Chuck had stepped in, like he had done in high school, and bailed Nate out with the necessary money. When Blair questioned further, Chuck said that a fight between him and Nate had ensued, where some things from the past were raised that should have remained buried and Chuck refused to elaborate further, but Blair knew it was about her. She just knew.
Old resentments about Chuck 'stealing' her from his best friend had obviously not died out and had been fuelled by Nate's failed marriage to Jenny Humphrey and the fact that Serena was still deliriously in love with Dan and not with Nate.
The tooting of the horn at a careless pedestrian shook Blair out of her reverie and she felt an overwhelming surge of weariness. She longed for this whole event to be a bad dream in which she would awake and Chuck would be lying next to her with that irresistible smirk and say in that arrogant tone that he loved to use to rile her up, "Miss me, did you?"
"Your children are waiting by the front entrance," Paul announced, pulling up in front of the Bass apartment.
Her children. Juliet and Gavin. Blair could feel a migraine coming on. She longed for some peace where she could think about Chuck in privacy. She did not want to have to deal with them now. Not now.
Paul eyed her through the review mirror. "Would you like me to continue on and take you to your suite at the Dorchester, Mrs. Bass?"
"Have I mentioned how sexy you look in that black teddy?" Chuck drawled, placing his hands behind his head.
Blair smirked as she pulled the fluffy Dorchester bathrobe around her bare body. "A couple of times, though I barely got it on before you ripped it off me."
"You know your effect on me."
"I do indeed, Bass," Blair breathed as she lightly climbed onto the bed with the grace of a cat.
A self-satisfied smile spread over Chuck's face. "Coming back for more are you?"
"Don't be too full of yourself," Blair archly replied, straddling Chuck and leaning over him so close that her hair was dangling in his face like a sheer curtain of silk.
"Well you seem—"
"Shh. No more talk, Bass," Blair murmured, kissing him deeply.
Chuck readily complied.
Blair smiled, knowing Paul was attempting to spare her from an inevitable conflict with her children. "No, they can't be avoided. It's best if it is done now, and not later."
Once Blair got out of the limo and with the grace that Chuck had always admired, she met her children at the front entrance.
"You took your time, mom," Gavin said in a bored tone, flipping open his phone to check for any messages.
"Shut-up, Gavin!" Juliet snapped. She turned to her mother. "Now, I've been talking to a few charity stores and they'll be happy to take all that jewellery and dad's other possessions and auction them off."
"Excuse me?"
"You and dad have hoarded all this stuff and I think that the less fortunate would benefit greatly from all your possessions."
"Saint Juliet!" Gavin sneered.
"Shut-up!"
"What kind of suggestion is that?" Blair asked coldly, as her maid Dolores took her coat and ushered them into the living room. "Your father has just been buried and you're talking about selling off his possessions."
"You and dad have so much stuff—too much stuff, really and—"
"Your father and I worked for all this. This was not given to us on a platter."
"You mean dad overthrew our grandfather and took control of the business," Gavin interrupted, smoothing back his gelled hair. "It's not like dad built the business up from scratch. The both of you were born rolling in cash—why, you practically had a golden spoon wedged up your arse when you were born!"
"Listen here. Your father rescued the business from your grandfather's drugged up and whoring hands and expanded the Bass empire. If it weren't for him, Bass Industries would be bankrupt now."
"Don't tell me what dad did was honourable," spat Juliet, "Dad breached so many statutory codes that he should have been investigated by the federal authorities. You always defend his heinous actions."
"You're heinous."
"Which is probably why you called."
"You know me well."
"Don't you dare speak about him in that manner!" Blair reprimanded, her whole body trembling. "You were never lacking in anything! How do you think we paid your way through university and your law degree? Not to mention your nice apartment? It's not as if you didn't know where that money came from!"
"As a human rights lawyer, I know that—"
"Christ, you know nothing, Juliet! Nothing is black and white. Your father always made sure we were provided for."
"It sickens me the way you and dad would spend money…the jewellery and holidays that dad lavished on you would be enough to pay off the third world debt!"
"Your self-righteousness sickens me!" Blair retorted, somehow managing to retain her composure by a thread. "We are your parents and that you should treat us—him, with such contempt, is disgusting. We have always tried to provide you with the best of everything. It was when you met those renegade friends of yours that you changed—"
"I saw things clearly, mom. I saw for the first time that I had been living in an artificial bubble of mindless luxury, not in the real world. That was when I had to break free or I'd become exactly like you, dad and Gavin."
Blair stared at her daughter who had become so alien to her. Where had that bubbly, affectionate girl gone who loved to be spoiled by her parents? Where had that girl gone who Chuck had planned to groom to take over Bass Industries? Blair felt as if Juliet may as well have been adopted. She wore dowdy, cheap clothes in greys and pastels and her illustrious hair that had once been her pride and joy was pulled back into a severe bun. Juliet's face was pinched and solemn and had only a hint of lip gloss and clumpy mascara.
Juliet had once been her parents' favourite, the golden child but it all changed once she got to university and fell in with the lefties and activists who filled her head with ideas that were completely foreign to Blair and Chuck. She started repudiating everything her parents stood for and even cut herself off from her whole family, refusing any financial help. Eventually, when Chuck was first diagnosed with cancer, Juliet reluctantly reconnected with her parents and allowed them to channel money into her struggling bank account.
"Mom, you should sell over some of these things to me because you know that I'm struggling financially and…"
"No, Gavin. Just because your father died, it doesn't mean I'm going to change my mind and give you control of Bass Industries, let alone anything in this house. You'd spend all the money on coke to snort up your nose."
"You bitch!"
"If you call your mother that name again, Gavin, you can forget about me footing the bill for your damned ex-wives and your gaggle of bastards!" Chuck said coldly, leaning back in his leather chair and making a steeple with his hands under his chin.
"She-she said that if I didn't get some help for my-my—"
"Drug habit, Gavin," Blair interceded coolly, elegantly perched on the arm of Chuck's chair.
"Why don't you shut up!" Gavin cried, thrusting a finger in Blair's face.
"Do that again Gavin and you know I will act upon what I have just said. I don't make empty threats. Give your mother the respect she deserves."
"That's the best you can do, is it? I've had worse epithets than that," Blair said blandly, feeling a sense of repulsion for this boy who was such a disappointment. He was an overweight man with greasy hair slicked back. Gavin did not retain his slim figure that his father had so successfully maintained till the end of his life. In fact, he had all of his father's vices and none of his virtues. He was like a perpetually obnoxious, whoring, amoral adolescent with scant regard for another being and devoid of any business sense. Chuck had attempted to instil some responsibility by giving him the reins of Victrola which was of sentimental value to both Blair and Chuck.
"I'm just saying, I have moves."
"Come on, you're ten times hotter than any of those girls," Chuck said lazily, nudging Blair in the side.
Blair eyed Chuck. "You really don't think I'll go up there, do you?"
Chuck smirked. "I know you won't do it."
However, Gavin ran the place down into a cheap strip joint and after several embarrassing police raids, Chuck removed him from power and refused to allow Gavin to have any position in Bass Industries. Even when Chuck was hallucinating on medication in the last few painful days of his life, he did not back down and install Gavin back into Bass Industries.
Gavin went through two failed marriages—none producing any children as both marriages lasted barely a year— though he had two children by drunken and drug fuelled flings. Gavin had run his finances to the ground with divorce settlements and child support, not to mention his ruinous coke snorting habit. He had been checked into rehab six times but had failed to complete the course all six times. He was the bane of his parents' life and he was a constant disappointment and embarrassment.
Blair did not know how her family had come to this. Gavin and Juliet and grown so far apart from their parents that she was envious of Serena for a brief moment. Serena had the picture perfect family with four children—two girls and a set of boy twins—who were faultlessly loyal to each other and rarely fought.
While her own family…was it because of money? She and Chuck had always loved money and the pleasures that money had brought but above all the money, she and Chuck loved each other. Sure, they didn't express it in trite sentiments and moon-eyed poems, but she knew Chuck had been faultlessly faithful to her and their relationship had been a passionate, enduring, brutally honest and vital one that never tired or frayed. They had fought and reconciled with equal fervour and passion. Blair had stood by him through everything, even when Bass Industries was being investigated for fraud. She had schemed on his behalf and ruthlessly removed business opponents.
Chuck paced around the office.
"Will you stop doing that?" Blair asked in an irritated tone. "What is the problem?"
"The problem is that bastard Wallace. He says he will leak those documents to the federal authorities if I don't give him a hundred grand."
Blair raised an eyebrow. "You know what you can do?"
"What?"
"You know how he has a particular weakness for rent boys and bondage?"
"Yes. It's the worst kept secret in New York."
"Use that against him. Hire a private detective, get incriminating pictures and tell him that if he goes to the feds, you will give those pictures to every tabloid in the country. If he refuses, remind him kindly that if these pictures are published, he will be ruined: he'll lose his business, his precious wife and his reputation. If he's smart, he'll accept the offer."
Chuck smiled broadly, his brown eyes gleaming as he opened his arms. "My Lady Macbeth. That is clever."
"I do have my uses," Blair purred as she stepped into his embrace.
She and Chuck had perhaps not always used honest and lawful means to stay above the rest in business but in their cut-throat world, one could not have too many scruples if they were to stay afloat.
Blair felt bone weary. She wanted Chuck to be here beside her. It was silly and weak but she could not deny it to herself. She missed him. He was far from perfect—he was full of faults—but he was her other half, her soul mate who understood her. Blair stumbled back, her throat suddenly dry and her eyes hot.
"Mom?" Juliet called, immediately stepping forward to grasp Blair.
Blair shook herself free. "I'm in no mood to deal with any of this. I need a lie down. The both of you should feel very ashamed of yourselves accosting me about material matters at such a time. I am no infirm cripple yet and I will not allow you two to bully and patronise me, because I will not stand for it! Do you understand me?"
Her two children stared at her open mouthed.
Gavin was the first to recover. "Of course, of course," Gavin responded ingratiatingly with a sickening smile.
"Dolores!" Blair called imperiously.
Dolores immediately appeared.
"I'm not to be disturbed for two hours. I am fatigued."
"Yes ma'am," Dolores replied and escorted Blair up the stairs to her room.
Blair did not know how she did it, but she had managed to keep herself together and not shed a tear or display any unseemly emotion all day—all week. Only now, when she was all alone could she finally vent her grief and frustration.
As soon as Dolores closed the door behind her, Blair sank to the ground, her thin frame being violently racked by sobs she attempted to muffle by covering her mouth with her slender white hands that she had always been exceedingly vain about. Tears came cascading forth, spilling down her cheeks. The mascara trickled down and stained her hands and smudged on her cheeks. More tears came forth and her throat became tight and she began letting out gasping sobs. An anguished cry left her lips, the kind of cry that only a spouse could make to signal the departure of their loved one, to herald to the world that their other half had departed. She lay in a foetal position on the plush Viennese carpet, her frame shuddering with her vainly suppressed sobs.
Suddenly, she jumped off the ground and with fumbling hands and blurry eyes, undid her safe and pulled out all her jewellery that Chuck had given to her over the years. Tears flowed freely as she feverishly pulled out one necklace after another. Each of them love tokens. Each of them conveying a private message of his devotion that no one else but the two of them could decipher.
"Something this beautiful deserves to be seen on someone worthy of its beauty," Chuck said softly, his intense gaze piercing her to her very core.
Diamond butterfly necklaces…
"Do you...like me?"
"Define like."
"I do not believe this!" Blair exclaimed, raising a hand to her forehead in disbelief.
" How do you think I feel? I haven't slept. I feel sick, like there's something in my stomach. Fluttering," Chuck said shortly, flushing much to his horror.
"Butterflies?" Blair asked incredulously.
The diamond necklace he had given to her on her seventeenth birthday. As she took them out, she could still picture his dark head bending down as he clasped the necklace together. She could still feel his warm fingers as he lightly pressed down on the chain to ensure it fitted properly. She could still hear him murmuring in her ear how gorgeous she was, how lucky he was to have her, how he wanted to ravish her right there and then until she was wearing nothing but the necklace and other such silly things that lovers would say…
Soon she had adorned herself with all the jewellery in that box. The necklaces seemed to be heavy, cold and leaden. She was filled with a sudden urge to rid herself of all these necklaces, tiaras, bracelets and rings. She looked at herself in the mirror. She seemed to be a tragic Queen of Sheba with her large mournful eyes and full red lips. She appeared ridiculous. A farce. A shadow of the woman she used to be. She was old. Mortality never tasted so bitter as it did now. She wanted to be youthful again…
"I've done it! School's over! I'm going to burn all my papers!" exclaimed eighteen year-old Blair as she uncharacteristically sprinted down the steps of her prestigious school to a familiar figure leaning lazily against his limo. Her brown locks blew crazily in the wind like a mahogany halo and her cheeks were flushed. Serena laughed.
"Why don't you burn your bra too, Waldorf?" Chuck called out, smirking.
"You're a pig, Bass."
"And proud of it. Why be—"
Chuck's words were cut off as Blair flung her arms around his neck and pressed her lips against his and proceeded to kiss him fervently. Chuck grinned against her all-consuming lips and enfolded her body in his avid hands. Immediately Chuck lost all sense of all else but Blair and was completely engulfed by her scent, lips, skin and hair…
"Get a room, you guys!" shouted out Dan, rolling his eyes.
Two smitten and dazed faces turned to face Dan. A couple of catcalls and whistles sounded out from amused spectators.
"That's a good idea, Humphrey. I'm impressed with your ingenuity," Chuck drawled and then suddenly lifted Blair off the ground and their lips hotly came together. Chuck was suddenly filled with a bubble of ecstatic joy that he could not contain. School was finished. The unchartered world of adulthood was opening to them all. Blair's excitement was contagious and he twirled her around, their lips not moving an inch from each other.
Blair giggled, throwing her head back in delirious abandonment. All inhibition had left her. She was free. And suddenly three words that she had never thought she would say fell softly from her lips: "I love you."
Chuck stared at her, amazement filtering into his eyes. The arrogant façade dissolved and a warm, genuine smile spread over his face. He leaned into her so close that their lips were almost touching and he murmured so that no one else but her could hear him: "I love you, Waldorf."
The end. I hope you all enjoyed it! Please review and tell me what you think!