Amor Fati
Author's Note: My first attempt at Gossip Girl fan-fiction, mainly inspired by my love of all things Leighton Meester and Blair Waldorf. Totally un-beta-ed. Spoiler-free after Age of Dissonance. There are no tragic underpinnings here. ;)
Disclaimer: Do not own despite all attempts at trying.
I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams...
~ William Butler Yeats
She liked the way he tasted. Not worldly as expected, but sweet and tart like a Tom Collins swirling down her parched throat. She wished she could regret it but she didn't. What was the use? These were not tragic circumstances, this was fate. And Blair Waldorf could run and she could hide, but she would not wallow. It was not how she survived. So she let him kiss her, and then she let him take her home. She let him deep inside her and he obliterated the thought of everything else. The next time she faced down Chuck, she watched him with glazed eyes still lost in memories he had no part in. And when the dark knight offered his hand, how could she have refused?
She spent two years traipsing all over the world, from Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City, from Rio de Janeiro to Machu Picchu, from Paris to Vienna. It was a whirlwind of fire and ice. Storms that rose and calmed the darkness in her and serenity that set the chaos adrift. When she stared into his light eyes, she saw the worlds within that she'd been warned about by everyone she'd ever known.
Finally, every secret, every dark thought, every single moment guarded inside the fortress built around their hearts had been revealed. It was exhilarating and incredible, like watching a maelstrom from within. And when she landed at JFK with his warm hand clasped in hers, waiting at the helipad to get back to the Upper East Side, she knew in her heart that it would never be over. He smiled at her encouragingly and then kissed her lips so roughly that she knew they'd be swollen in the morning.
Her eyes lit up at the sight of her family, pieced together through experiences shared, and memories unforgotten. She welcomed the sights and sounds of home. There was truth in tragedy, she saw it as she stood by him and watched him give the eulogy at his father's funeral. And throughout it all she sat like Patience on a monument, was this not love indeed? And when he lay in her arms at night, begging for sleep as she brushed her fingers through his damp light hair and the day-old stubble, it reminded her that he lived within every part of her.
The day dawned in spite of however much they craved the twilight. And then the vultures descended. This was no dead carcass. Blair Waldorf still breathed and she still dreamed. He wouldn't let anyone take that away from her. He held her in the daylight, as she held him at night-time. He loved her with every breath he took and she prayed to every deity to make him hurt less.
They all wanted to know every detail, every intimate moment. To disparage how they felt, to make it out to be nothingness when it was everything. To the others who'd known her all her life, he was not good enough. To those who'd loved her once, he was an interloper. To those who'd known him best, he'd finally stopped running, ready to take his place. And while her family may have been not as welcoming, his sisters and his mother were all she'd ever truly wanted all her life.
When it came time to embrace the life they'd once chosen to leave behind, they took up their responsibilities. His to business school and his father's business empire, while hers to a nearby college and the promise of a law degree. Nothing had really changed but now you couldn't reach them on the weekends because they lived in other worlds where none intruded. And when they returned from their sanctuary to face the rest of the world it was never for too long. So they clung to each other, remembering the candle they'd lit at that small non-descript French chapel as they pledged each other their forevers.
The culmination of five years spent together was finally apparent to all and sundry. And it happened like everything else did, not with a bang but with a quiet sound. It should've been apparent after all this time, she'd been his for so long and yet it came as a shock to many. It took a considerable amount of hassle and money to extract the Bass limousine out of the Hudson River when the Upper East Side woke up early one March morning to receive the hand-delivered invitations. Charles Bass, Nathaniel Archibald, and Serena van der Woodsen were for once on the outside and looking in.
Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus Rose
And
Mr. Harold Waldorf
request the honour of your presence
at the marriage of their daughter
Blair Cornelia
and
Mr. Carter Baizen
son of
Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Baizen
on Saturday, the twenty-fourth of June
two thousand and fourteen
at noon
Methodist Church of New Canaan
165 South Ave,
New Canaan, Connecticut.