When she thinks of childhood, all she thinks of is Serena.
It goes so far back she doesn't even remember how they met anymore, tangled hands and braided hair- sometimes she looks back on kindergarten, elementary, childhood, as just a mess of golden strands and green grass, blue eyes and freckled skin.
(she thinks that's why it's so hard to deal with Serena, sometimes, because she loves her, loves her more than she loves anybody else, but she hates her, too. Hates her so much it hurts, the jealousy and pain that runs through her bones.
You take everything from me!
Blair can't help but to be terrible to Serena because really, she doesn't know any other way to deal with it, can't think of other ways but throwing up and acting out- Ihateyou, Ihateyou, Ihateyou- she memorizes the feel of the words against her tongue and she never forgets them.
You can't even help it. It's who you are.)
(Even years later, she can't- can't forget them, sometimes she'll look at Serena and feel them burning in her heart, lingering on her tongue: hate, hate, hate.)
It's different with Nate (she sewed her heart on his sleeve, so it's different, different, different).
"I love you," She says to him (without a second thought, tells him, you belong to me, and doesn't for one minute think he won't listen).
"I love you too," He says back with a smile (all Blair sees when she looks at him is perfect- maybe that's not fair, but it really is all she sees, gold and green eyes and perfectperfectperfect).
She won Nate, won him fair and square, so that should mean she gets to keep him.
(a child's chant, a preschooler's prayer: finders keepers, losers weepers.)
And the sad thing is, she really thought it was true (breathed the words into her skin, I won, I won, I won and believed in them, like she did everything else before her heart disappeared- she was too young and too naïve to know: anything you do, someone else can do better. Blair eats, lives, breathes this motto, because she is best friends with someone who is the epitome of that motto).
She won Nate, so Serena couldn't take him from her- she truly, truly believed that, thought if she got to him first, everything would fall into place.
(It doesn't. The world burns itself to pieces in a deserted bar at a wedding where her best friend and boyfriend get drunk off champagne and fuck on a counter. The world ends with glittery gold and alcohol and she isn't even there.)
I'm just tired of trying to hold myself back so I don't outshine you
(she sewed her heart on his sleeve and he never noticed, told him she loved him, he belonged to her and he fucked her best friend- Blair decides she might be the stupidest person alive because she gives Serena her heart first, on some day that neither can remember, gives Nate her heart second, puts her heart on his sleeve and they both betray her. Sometimes, Blair can't even stand it, can't even bear to be in the same room with both of them, because they shine so fucking brightly she feels like she might suffocate, burn up in the wake of their beautiful, shimmering, perfect light.)
She fucks Chuck Bass- fucks him before she loves him.
Blair could write out all the reasons she shouldn't love Chuck, could write books and essays and papers on the subject- she is well versed in the lessons that are Blair and Chuck (Chuck and Blair). So, yes, she could write pages about it, her dilemma that is Chuck Bass but she won't, she can't. She thinks if she were to ever try and really, really think about it, wonder about it, she just... wouldn't. Just wouldn't be able to. She can't even comprehend it, the mess that is them (the darker ones, the scheming and smirking and bitching and lecherous ones).
(Rode hard and put away wet. Sometimes Blair can still hear them echoing in her head, all the insults he's spewed out. She puts up walls around her heart made of metal so no one can get in, nothing can get in, but that's the problem with Chuck, he knows all her tricks. "We're the same," he once tells her but she refuses to believe him. Says nononono because if someone was the same as her, that would mean they would be able to destroy her, and Blair can't- won't be destroyed. It's a mentality thing: say no and the answer will be no. That's all it will be.)
(She wishes her life was that easy, but she wishes on empty stars that reflect faces of everyone she knows, Serena, Nate, her mother, her father, him- she wishes on them and they all fail her, every single time.)
Blair memorizes the lines of a play she'll never write (her perfect life that will never be), takes pictures of events she never sees (Until I found out you had sex with my boyfriend), gets her invisible heart broken a thousand times over.
See, that's the thing about Blair, she never forgets.
-fin-