Disclaimer : I do not own Gossip Girl.


Foreground

~ sprinkles everywhere, candy hearts and bruises

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She can't really think of a better time to do this.

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It's in the middle of July and they've all recently graduated. There is no clear whereabouts about Chuck except for a few GG blasts here and there. Serena tans by the pool in her yellow bikini, making boys and girls alike blush fierce red and Nate misses his best friend and finds no one else to confide to than Daniel Humphrey.

Blair Waldorf clenches the letter in her hands as they all arrive. Yale is off the question and no elite school will take her at this time of the year and especially not with her reputation. She tells herself that it is for the best and her father does sound excited when she tells him that she'll be close to him and of course, he offers her a room and she is thinking about it instead of an apartment. She'll never turn time with her father away.

They all arrive together, which isn't a surprise at all. Serena is clutching both of their arms. Nate looks hazy to her, almost like he isn't really there. Humphrey has yet to improve on his clothing style. She took the table in the middle of the room, the white cloth on it adding to the formal effect. This is not just some luncheon that they always have and drink a little too much wine.

She hides the letter in her red Coach purse and watches as Serena purrs her name out in her sultry voice and wraps her tanned arms around her neck (this is Serena and this is Blair and it will always be Serena and Blair because it can be just Serena, but there is never just Blair, her name always attracting someone else's. Nate and Blair. Chuck and Blair).

Nate kisses her on the check and Humphrey – well he clearly doesn't know what he is doing here. He doesn't know the surest way to attract Serena is to make sure he is here, because, like her, his name always comes up with someone else's.

"I wanted to tell you something." God forbid, she'd steal the spotlight just for a few seconds. Nate hums and Serena tries to pay attention and Humphrey, well his attention is all on her. And she wonders why, why he bothers. "I'm leaving for France, in August. I'm going to attend school there."

"But B…" Here is the protest, the Serena Van Der Woodsen doe eyes and the surprise frown and why, oh why, was she not born with beautiful blue eyes and long, wavy blond hair, the one meant for the spotlight and men's attention.

Nathaniel says that, he knows she'll do better there than at NYU. She's leaving at the beginning of August and it leaves her barely a month to make sure everything is in order before her departure. Her mother has Cyrus, Dorota is seeing that Russian lad and Serena is still the doe eyed girl she's met all those years ago. Everyone she cares for is set. Her eyes meet Humphrey's as Serena tries to come up supportive words.

She briefly wonders if he sometimes wishes that he'd been born with the light brown hair and the light blue eyes.

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Serena offers her a ride and Nate doesn't mind riding with them, but both look appalled when she wants to walk to her house, which is a few blocks away. Brooklyn offers and she doesn't quite smile, merely nods her head.

They are halfway there when he starts talking again.

"I hear they have great culinary schools in Paris." Something inside of her freezes and it takes her everything not to stop dead in her tracks and gap at him. But she is Blair Waldorf and Blair Waldorf doesn't gap.

"How?" And then he looks at her, really looks at her and he rolls his eyes and he is the only one from Brooklyn that would dare roll his eyes at Blair Waldorf.

"It's what Audrey would have done, Blair." And he says it as though it's the most obvious answer, as if everybody should know that her life long fantasies have been about Audrey Hepburn.

She can't even answer him with some smart comment because – because in a way he is right, although the fact that Dan Humphrey from Brooklyn knows her more than the people she grew with (and maybe Chuck would have known, he'd always known about her dreams and her passion, but he is not here and he is Humphrey and it isn't right).

"Goodnight Blair." She's never paid attention to the way he said her name before.

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It's all packed.

Dorota says she'll help, but Blair is already finished when the maid walks in. Everything worth anything to her is hidden in one of the expensive, black suitcases. Indispensible accesories are stored in her purse, like her passport and her latest YSL lip gloss that makes her lips a shade lighter. Her Dior sunglasses push her hair back from her face and she chooses a simple green summer dress.

She leaves tomorrow and suddenly everyone remembers she exists (no, not him and he doesn't even bother with a phone call, but it's okay and he is far away). Serena swings by clutching Nate's arm to take her to lunch. Her mother takes her afternoon off so they can enjoy tea and somehow create a nice family memory.

It's only when Humphrey shows up at her door, hands hidden in his pocket and with his bored, but too aware look that she knows the world has gone mad.

"Fancy a drink?" And yes, here the world stops and she falls into the abyss. Humphrey is offering her a drink, in the dead of the night, in New York. Her. It's already past eight and she should be resting for the tedious plane ride that awaits tomorrow.

"I'll go get my purse." It's happening again. Her mouth and her body have been disconnected from her brain and she does find herself climbing the stairs of her town house to get her black Prada purse. When she comes back, he is talking to Dorota with that same expression from before and yet makes the woman swoon with extensive vocabulary and a hint of kindness.

Something tugs at her heart, but she ignores it with sharp clicks of her black heels and grabs Brooklyn by the arm.

"Let's go." And she is touching him, the hand she has on his arm gripping even more as he says goodbye to Dorota. What impresses her (and him also, because Dan Humphrey just has to notice every single little detail) is that she doesn't shudder with repulsion. When she finally releases him, he blinks at her – his expression not so bored anymore and is that a smirk she sees?

"If you wanted to touch me Waldorf, you only had to ask." She let's out chuckle and he knows exactly what it means.

"I wouldn't have had to if you weren't so slow." And it's back to snappy comebacks and just like that the world starts spinning again and everything goes back to normal.

There is this balance, a balance they have created over the last two years. And even as they walk the busy streets and they share jokes about things that the people surrounding them wouldn't understand about old cinema, the balance must remain. Because if there is no balance and that eventually, the lines of hatred blur… they both shudder at the thought.

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"Don't cry." What she means to say is 'don't make a scene', but even she feels tears threatening to fall as Serena hugs her for the seventh time. It's annoying and her hair will probably frizz (because we can't all have perfectly messy blond hair when we wake up) and she doesn't want to be late for her plane. She's running on one hour of sleep and three coffee cups from Starbucks.

Of course, Serena looks beautiful today and Nate isn't too far away. She loves her blond best friend and her ex-boyfriend now turned best friend also, but they are both to sickeningly perfect it makes her want to hurl.

'You have to take care of them. When it comes to practical thinking, these two aren't the best.' She shakes her head because it is true and now that she is leaving (and that Chuck is nowhere near the Tri-State area) it falls on Humphrey, the commoner, to take care of these two. It's the best she can do in such a short notice.

"I love you, B." Humphrey doesn't come to say goodbye and she's glad. The whole thing would have been awkward and suspicious. Her mother sends her a text because she is too busy and her father will be picking her up in six hours.

"I love you too, S." And she does mean it in someway. She is Blair Waldorf and her best friend is Serena Van Der Woodsen and it will always be that way. She can't imagine anyone else in that role. Her luggage has been checked in, Dorota is crying (unlike her mother) and Nate just stands there, white teeth like pearls. "This is only goodbye."

She'll come back eventually. She'll come back when looking at everything here won't hurt so much and when the darkness in her heart has been drained away. Then, she agrees with herself, she'll come back: stronger than ever.

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Blair Waldorf excels at cooking – but that doesn't surprise her. She is being formed and moulded by the best, to become the best. Her teacher, a good looking man close to his mid thirties appreciates her enough, he even let's her use the kitchen whenever she asks, even when the class is long finished and there is no one but her and cooking pans.

Her father loves having her around; he also loves the way she makes those red velvet cupcakes that go so well with earl grey, on a sunny afternoon. Roman takes her shopping everywhere she pleases and she even makes a friend or two. It's after three months of breathing the Parisian air that she finally allows herself to miss New York and when she bothers to check her e-mails, the inbox is full.

Serena chats about random places and how she gets manicures, but it's not the same without her. Nate keeps her updated: he hasn't died from an overdose. It's only when she scrolls down a bit more that she notices the single e-mail he sent her. Dan Humphrey to Blair Waldorf.

'It's certainly not the same without you ruling the Upper East Side.' It makes her smile. She writes Serena a short, quick e-mail, tells Nate to not give in to his leafy demons and takes a good thirty minutes to write back to Humphrey because he is the literal type and he'll understand every allusion to 'Sabrina'.

It's too week later when she receives his response. He says that Serena has started drinking again and that last night she decided to go swimming in a pond. He misses her headbands (but she doesn't wears them anymore, she settles for pony tails and Dolce & Gabbana high-waist shorts and comfortable Chanel t-shirts). She's changed. Her father says she looks more laid back, at peace he even dares after one supper where he's had a little too much wine – and maybe it's true.

'When are you coming back?'

In two years time, she'll go back. She'll be back with a degree from one of the most sought out culinary school's and with a new perspective and the black thing in her heart has already started to drain (because she doesn't think about Chuck when she's baking and it helps, but late at night visions of his face still haunt her and she has to breathe).

And everything will change, because she won't be Blair Waldorf who stays hidden in the shadow of her blond best friend or her mother. She still loves fashion, but cooking has a therapeutic effect and she can even dream of owning a restaurant one day: a very expensive and lush one.

She tells that to Humphrey, sends the e-mail with shaky fingers and her thoughts are racing. He answers two days later with a 'good luck' and 'tell me when you're back, I'll arrange a committee to pick you up'. In those lines she reads 'I miss you' and she hopes she isn't mistaken.

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Time flies by when you are happy. She doesn't go back for the summer, wants to spend more time with her fathers. They walk through the Champs Elysees and when they are too tired, she goes to the Louvre alone. She spends an awful lot of time on the top of the Eiffel tower and even get's a few proposal for drinks by young and very French Parisians – she declines all of them because forgetting Chuck the same way he is forgetting her is beneath her.

She doesn't wear the dresses she was so fond of anymore. Roman buys her a new wardrobe, trying to ease the guilt he feels. The clothes are perfect, simple and expensive, things she would have never worn before because apparently she's got fat thighs and ugly knees. But the guilt isn't necessary and she tells him so. Her father is much more happy here, in a chateau, with a good man, than in New York where everything is frowned upon and gossip follows you like a tail.

Roman hugs her.

Vacations end a bit too quickly for her taste (she doesn't even get to finish her latest biography of Audrey Hepburn) and she is back to school with an apron and those cooking pans. She learns to grill steak like a true queen and makes a 'Roti' like no other. Her teacher this year, an old French man, doesn't really socialise and badgers all of them constantly.

But she does graduate. She is twenty and is Blair Waldorf and somehow the black thing in her heart has emptied itself while gazing at historical paintings and beautiful sceneries and cooking medium rare steaks. Those vivid dreams are gone and she can breathe well enough to go and look at Gossip Girl's website without fear of something on Chuck deflating her pride.

And like she promised herself, at the end of her school year and with a degree from one of the most sought after culinary schools, she goes back to New York (and she goes back with dreams and hopes and a new perspective and new clothes and with memories of her father and Roman smiling hand in hand and with a new will to live a little).

She boards the plane (a private plane, of course) and her father cries a bit because he will miss her and she loves him. Roman is holding him tenderly and blows her a kiss. If she weren't sure she was ready, she'd stay here.

But Blair Waldorf keeps her promises, especially those she makes to herself.

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A/N : What did you think? I'd really like to know what you think and your opinions and if I made Blair any justice at all. I'd like to believe that, beyond her cold stone facade there is something else... well, I'd love to hear feedbacks. I hope you enjoyed.