Summary: "Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery." Her whole life put into words.
AN: Aldous Huxley got the better of me. One person's attempt at justifying ChuckandBlair.
Happiness is Never Grand
There was no doubt in her mind she could fall in love again. We all have the potential to fall in love. A thousand times, a hundred, or maybe just once: they all count. She didn't doubt her ability to love another.
No, the fear she could not stifle was that Chuck Bass had become her very own definition of love. He had unknowingly set the template for what she could only love about another, even if those lovable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable.[1]
That fear resonated within her bones and chilled her to the core. Because although she no longer believed they were inevitable and she no longer believed she could love him, he wins. He wins and she loses because for the rest of her life Chuck Bass will control how she feels about everyone else.
Childhood dreams of princes and castles and fairytales will no longer do. Moroccan princes will miss the mark. Hair too light, eyes too bright, voice not nearly deep enough, and the list goes on.
She meets a boy in her Sociology class, sits in the back, brooding and dark. Rumor has it his mother recently passed. His father newly burst onto the Fortune 500 scene, rich on cash yet poor on love. It all seems too familiar. She tries to stop herself but she can't.
She approaches him and he doesn't push her away. They go out and he's all smiles. He's sharing and chivalrous and she's confused. He holds her hands like he needs her. Never ending spurts of, "never anyone like you" She realizes she's pieced this person back together. He lets her. He loves her for it. He's attentive. And she suffocates.
She ends it after 3 words, 8 letters.
She understands that he's too much like Chuck but nothing like Chuck. She's edging towards the truth. So close she can almost taste it but afraid she won't enjoy the bitter taste.
She will never find another soul as dark as Chuck. As tormented, as fucked up. She needs to. Because it's not the saving that she needs. It's the challenge. Blair Waldorf fought every single day, for survival, for boredom. How should her relationship be any different?
She needed to be ignored. So she could claw her way back. She needed to be hurt. So she could appreciate his arms around her.
She gets this reading Huxley:
"Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And of course stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."[2]
It's her whole life put into words.
She loves misery. (She's a drama queen. Say it however you want.)
"Happiness is never grand," she tells him.
"What's that supposed to mean?" He asks.
It's a dark night on a dark roof, always their setting.
"Happiness is never grand," she repeats, "I was wrong before."
"About what?" He's smirking like he's all knowing. Maybe he's understood long before her.
"Love doesn't make things simple. Love makes things complicated, and miserable…and altogether fucked up." She breathes.
"Your point being?" He's inching forwards.
She smiles.
"Doesn't that make life more interesting?"
Their storybook ending. (The kind that makes every psychiatrist and feminist moan.)
FIN
[1] Borrowed from Chuck Klosterman's "Killing Yourself to Live" page 232
[2] Aldous Huxley quote