"It is so easy for a woman to become what the man she loves believes her to be."
― Edith Wharton
"The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"
- Sylvia Plath
...
"What do you want, Blair Bear? You can have anything".
That afternoon, Tiffany's on Fifth Avenue was filled with sparkling snowflakes, blue baubles and dozens of panic-stricken boyfriends and husbands.
Sixteen year old Blair Waldorf stares silently at her father. You're leaving in two hours. Again. You're taking away the thing that I want the most. How could you not realise? How could you not care?
Later, Blair stands on the street, alone, shivering, feeling like she can't breathe. The cold Christmas Eve wind is suffocating.
She opens the little blue box in her hand and takes out the tennis bracelet, heavy with crystals and a father's guilt. Without thinking, Blair hurls the piece of jewellery as hard as she could across the street, the expensive silver tinkling against the pavement like a sad festive jingle.
The two candy canes Blair had laid out neatly that morning were still on the table when she gets home, place as empty as the meaning of the word.
The Parisian clock on the mantelpiece strikes midnight. She goes to the bathroom, and shoves a finger down her throat.
...
A half-undressed Blair holds onto Nate Archibald, holds onto him for dear life. Kiss me, she demands, she asks, she begs.
Still, Nate hurries out the room; Blair closes her eyes as if the whole world is crashing down.
Firmly zipping up her lace black dress, eyes not glancing on the photograph on her bedside table once, Blair follows her boyfriend out the door.
She sees the way he looks at Serena.
It's enough.
Just like that, years of dreams, of graduating from Yale together, of Nate surprising her with the Vanderbilt ring one morning in bed, of living in an apartment with the best view of Central Park with their two kids and two great danes, began to unravel apart, as carelessly as they were carefully stitched together.
"I just don't know what it is you want from me." Nate had told her a few weeks before, after they had gotten into another fight.
That's the problem, Blair thinks.
...
Victrola: prostitutes, raging lights and broken dreams.
"What do you want, Waldorf? Or were you going to tell me you love me again?"
...
"So, I want to know," the deputy editor of Vogue France leans in, peering at Blair over her rhinestone glasses, "how it feels knowing that you're going to be Princess Blair Grimaldi in just a matter of weeks? How does it feel to have everything you want?" she asks, mont blanc pen poised.
"Well..." Blair pauses for dramatic effect, hands lightly brushing her knee length Chanel skirt. "...it feels pretty fantastic!" she finishes, laughing effortlessly, like she's Grace Kelly in the movies.
Her life was going to be perfect.
...
"...I told you it meant nothing, less than nothing! Can you at least understand what I was going through? You left me to go to Poland for two months without any explanation, I didn't even know if we were together, or what we were. Dorota said you stayed with them in a three star hotel. What is happening, Blair?"
He waits for her to say something.
"I'm sorry I missed our wedding anniversary dinner tonight." he mutters quietly, gesturing to the stone-cold dinner and the two burnt out candles. "but Jack and I were that close to closing a deal we've been chasing for weeks, months even. Do you know what this could mean for Bass Industries?" he pauses, forcing his voice to soften again. "Look, I'm sorry, Blair. I'm sorry."
He looks at her expectantly, but even he knows it's been a long time since that word meant anything. Blair turns to look at him, like she could see right through him, and through the window of their Manhattan skyscraper penthouse; they were so high up that the sky outside was a dark, infinite blur of nothingness. Her eyes, once like lighters, remained blank; her face, thinner than ever before, expressionless.
Minutes go past in silence. Blaring sirens and the rush of traffic swirl furiously around below. The ticking of the clock is unbearable.
Blair doesn't flinch when he slams his glass down so forcibly that the ten-thousand-dollar-a-bottle, fifty year old scotch spills onto the table.
"This is ridiculous". He gets up, frustrated, pacing around, tone bordering on threatening. "You said yourself that you would always bet on me. You said that you're all in. Well, you're not, and you haven't been for a while. I've had a long day, and I'm tired of your silent treatment. It's weak and pathetic. Just say what it is you want to say."
Blair says nothing, continues on staring.
(The answer is etched in her eyes: we were a mistake.)
He sighs exasperatedly, head in his hands, rubbing his temples, anger rising. "What do you want?" he yells.
She says nothing.
...
Dan had asked her the same question once.
It was a long time ago, before she was defeated, before she lost a bet she'd never win.
It was a time when she still had his promise, his heart, his everything. They were standing at his loft, a haven in the midst of chaos. She was standing barefoot on tiptoes without her three inch Vivier heels, enveloped in his warm embrace. She'd never admit it, but she loved the way he smelt of old books, dark coffee and mildly expensive cologne; it was comfortingly familiar, like home. They stayed like that for a minute, a hour, a lifetime: her resting on his shoulders, like it was better than seeing stars and endless possibilities in the night sky, he was the breath of fresh air that saved her from drowning; him holding her like she was the ending to every story he could never finish, the end of all restlessness, all malcontent.* When they finally let go, he had asked her a question, the space in between them lingering with thoughts that would always remain unsaid.
His dark brown eyes had pierced her with a sincerity she'll never forget.
She clutched her heart as if about to reveal a secret, and met his gaze, mahogany eyes glistening. For a flicker of a moment, they sparkled bright with quiet defiance, and a delicate kind of simplicity.
"To be happy", Blair answered finally, like it was an epiphany.
*the end of all restlessness, all malcontent = seven words "borrowed" from F. Scott Fitzgerald (who I'm sure is spinning in his grave because I used his words in a Gossip Girl fanfic)