The shrill ring of a mobile phone pierced the silence in the dark room, startling her out of her reverie. Clicking her tongue in irritation, she pulled the eye mask off her face. Her efforts to sleep had been futile anyway, her thoughts too muddled of late to give her any peace. She answered without glancing at the screen.

"Hello? Blair?" the voice was instantly recognizable, despite her not having heard it in months. The panic in it was instantly recognizable too.

"Nate? What's wrong?"

"I-", his voice broke momentarily, "I got a call from Lenox Hill Hospital." She was out of her bed and halfway dressed before Nate finished his second sentence. Five minutes later she was standing in front of the guest bedroom. She hesitated a minute before knocking loudly and informing her sleeping husband of the situation. Ten minutes later, they were in their town car, hurtling through the deserted city streets.

The harsh fluorescent lighting of the waiting room brought the dark circles under Blair's eyes sharply into contrast with her porcelain skin. She was speaking to the nurses and doctors, calm, collected yet determined and demanding. Chuck sat silently on the hard plastic seats, watching her out of the corner of his eye. The woman before him a far cry from the girl he married eleven years ago. The girl who would've stomped her expensively shod foot and shrieked at the hospital staff. So much had changed over the last ten years. He sighed and pulled his mobile out of his pocket to glance at the time. 4:00 am. When Henry was a few months old, he'd always wake at this hour. Blair had labelled it the 'Waldorf Witching Hour', claiming she had been the same.

A small commotion at the entryway made him look up. The tanned, leggy blonde entering turned heads even in her jeans and hoodie. Serena crossed the room to Blair and enveloped her in a silent hug. "What's going on?" she said.

"Nate's mom was in a car crash earlier tonight, she's in surgery right now but it isn't looking positive. Nate's still in Europe, I don't know what to tell him," Blair said with a sigh before rubbing her tired eyes. She turned to Chuck, "She'll be in surgery for a couple of hours at least, why don't you go home and get some rest. You have that big meeting with your investors in the morning. I'll call you if there are any developments." He kissed his wife briefly on the cheek and thanked Serena for being there for Blair before leaving.

Blair and Serena sat with their heads together, one a sleek brunette bob the other a wild, tangled blonde. They hadn't seen each other in months and distracted themselves from the ominous glare of the red light above the operation theatre by filling each other in on their lives.

Their relationship had matured over the years into the kind of sisterhood that they'd always hoped it would be. They no longer constantly fought. The petty jealousies of their girlhood a distant memory. Blair excused herself to call Nate with an update and Serena thought of the night before her wedding to Dan Humphrey. She'd chosen to forego a bachelorette party in favour of one last girly sleepover with Blair. They'd talked into the wee hours of the morning, unmindful of whether they would look tired at the ceremony. Growing up with Blair, Serena had thought that she knew everything about her but that night the two of them really opened up their hearts to each other. Blair confessed her feelings of inadequacy, how she'd always thought of Serena as a blithe spirit and envied her for it. Serena had almost laughed at how badly their wires had been crossed and confessed her own jealousy. She had spent her teenage years envying Blair her ambition and clarity. She'd been so confused about what she wanted and whom, whereas Blair had always just known. They'd embraced tearfully, full of drunken promises of never letting anything get between them again. Despite the many similar promises they had made to each other before and broken, this time they kept their word. Time and experience given them a fresh perspective on the importance of their friendship. They were soulmates, it was as simple as that and no boy or girl or one of a kind Manolo would ever be more important than each other.

Blair shivered in the cold night air as she hit the call button on her cell. Nate picked up on the first ring. She could picture him in her mind, his eyes bloodshot and his hair standing on end from where he'd been running his hands through it anxiously. She gave him what little news she had about his mother. "When are you coming home then?"

"Times like this make me wish I still had the Spectator jet. I am on the next flight out, but that isn't for a few hours," he paused as though he was about to say something else.

"And?" Blair prompted.

Nate sighed, "I don't know what to do. I came in early to prepare for a major presentation but I've just been sitting here staring at my computer screen since I got the call. Blair… what am I going to do if she-"

"Don't even say it Archibald."

"She's been begging me to come visit her for months but I've just been so busy and now-"

"And now you're going to stop wallowing in your thoughts," Blair instructed briskly, "You're going to get someone to cover your presentation, you're going to make arrangements for someone to take over the running of the European branch of the Spectator for a few months, you're going to go home and pack a bag and get on the plane to New York. Once you're onboard the flight, you can turn your brain back on and think of your 'what-ifs' and 'if-onlys'. OK?"

"Are you going to text me this as a checklist the minute I hang up so I don't forget?" She could picture the wry smile creasing his features.

"You know it!"

"You can't boss me around like I'm one of your minions, you know?"

"I never could. Not that I didn't try…" her voice trailed off knowingly and he chuckled halfheartedly.

"I'll listen to your instructions just this once. Keep me posted on what's going on?"

"Of course, see you in a few hours."

"And Blair?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

"Just a part of NJBC code, Nate." Blair smiled as she hung up. Her fingers were a blur of motion as she quickly typed out a text and pressed send.

Three thousand five hundred miles away, Nathaniel Archibald heard his phone ping with Blair's itinerary and almost smiled.

Eleven miles away, across the bridge in Dumbo, Dan Humphrey pressed 'End' on his cell after his call with Serena. He remembered a Gossip Girl post he'd written back in his sophomore year of high school about how most great stories began with someone mysteriously disappearing or a stranger coming into town. Nate was no stranger to the Upper East Side, but he'd been gone so long he might as well have been. He poured some Folgers into his usual chipped mug and thought 'Things are about to get very interesting.'

A/N: This is my first fic so I would love to get feedback on it, so please do leave some comments! I am trying to follow the original show's canon as much as possible, so if I get anything wrong in the future please let me know. Also let me know if there are any factual/logical inconsistencies. It's going to be a multichapter fic and I haven't planned any lemons or limey bits so far but that might change. Will update the summary to include a warning if it does.

Thanks for reading!