Author's Note: So people were criticizing me – in ways that I felt were quite harsh – in the reviews after I posted the previous chapter. Not for bad writing, but for bad plot choices. It was a bit discouraging, to be honest. While obviously I welcome both good and bad reviews, like any respectable writer, and I'd like to know your honest thoughts… I want Dan & Blair fans to like my fic. I adore Dair and in the end I plan to give them a happy ending. But it seems that a large number of Dair fans, who are my target audience, want me to treat Chuck like the abusive psychopath they believe he fully was. They don't want any characters, especially not Blair who they do love, mourning him. But my plans for my fic are to yes, have Chuck's life be missed and even honored by pretty much everyone. Especially Blair, who in the show (as far as I interpret it), truly loved him. She was in love with him for a large portion of the show and I'm picking up right around the end of the series. I think Chuck's character basically was redeemed by the end of the show, and I am going to continue from that with my fic. It actually is sad that Chuck is dead. However, don't worry – I'm not going to write that the only reason Blair will be end up with Dan is that she can't be with Chuck. He's not her consolation prize. I mean, I ship Dair and I'd choose Dan over Chuck if I were Blair. I'm going to try to write a story that satisfies you Dan/Blair shippers, as well as any Nate/Serena or Rufus/Lily fans who drop by.

Thank you for your feedback, and I hope in the future you enjoy my fic more.

I'm so sorry for the delay with this chapter. I know it's been over a month. Which is pretty much completely unfair to all of you. But here it is now. I truly hope you all enjoy it. I am pretty unsure about a lot of it, and definitely feel free to continue being honest about what you do and don't like. I appreciate any/all reviews. I do. Despite the fact that I was feeling a little frustrated by some of the negative ones I've received, I ask that you please still leave me your thoughts in a review once you finish reading.

Also, this chapter was not beta-ed. So if you catch any glaring errors, such as a failure in me getting Gossip Girl canon backstory correct or a problem in my grammar/spelling/whatever, please let me know. I don't like posting things un-betaed but I don't think my work is that bad, even unedited. In fact, I did go through and try my hardest to proofread my own work this time, editing it along the way.

Chapter 3: "The Plan"

"So, Eric, how have your classes been going?" Serena asked, wanting to make small talk to pass the time. "Or if that's boring, you can tell us about dorm life."

Lily and her two children were sitting in somber awkwardness, in the living room of their apartment. Serena didn't think she'd missed out on anything by turning down Brown, but she hoped her younger brother was enjoying his time there.

"Classes are anything but boring," he answered. "They're quite difficult, but fascinating. I particularly like my literature classes. There are some books you've never heard of that they're having us read, and I think they should be just as well known as the classics." He tried to sound cheerful, but the women in the room could hear how forced it was. He had always been such a sensitive soul, and Chuck's death had clearly hit him hard.

"That's nice," Lily answered, also trying to push past her sadness and smile at him.

"So have you decided on a major yet?" Serena asked, knowing he had entered college as one of the many 'Undeclared'.

"Um…" he seemed a bit embarrassed with his choice. "Yes. English."

"Oh," Serena answered without judgment. She looked over at her mother, who seemed lost in thought.

"I know it's a lame move, career-wise," Eric started to defend, despite no one attacking him. "But I don't care about making tons of money. I don't need to live on the Upper East Side my whole life. I think I could be happy settling down with a guy in a small town, teaching English in a public school," he explained, emphasizing how little the crazy rich lifestyle he had been raised into mattered to him.

Before Serena or Lily had a chance to respond, Lily's phone started ringing with a muffled sound. She looked around for her pocketbook. Finding it, she opened the bag and reached in, then answered it quickly.

"Hello?"

Serena and Eric looked at one another, wondering who might be calling. Lily gave them no hints.

"Oh, hi," she said, her tone making it clear that she was glad to hear the voice of whoever was on the other end of the line. "Hang on a second." She pulled the phone away from her face and covered the mouthpiece with her hand.

"I'm gonna go take this in private, if you don't mind," she announced to her children.

Serena and Eric exchanged more meaningful glances this time, while Lily made her way toward the staircase.

"It's Rufus, isn't it?" Eric asked, knowingly.

"I'd bet money on it," Serena answered.

Dan and Nate were on the sidewalk outside of the condominium where the Van der Woodsens resided when Dan felt his phone vibrate. Pulling it out of his pocket, he was shocked to see the text was from Blair. She had been in his thoughts constantly, but he figured he'd be low down on her list of people she wanted to contact in this difficult time. He read the message quickly.

Could you please come over sometime today? And bring a pregnancy test.

He did a double take. "A pregnancy test"? That wasn't very ambiguous. There was really only one thing this could mean. This whole time, Blair had not only been grieving the man she considered to be the love of her life, but she had also been carrying his child? Well… it could be a false alarm, Dan realized. But Blair had actually been pregnant, just last year. She'd know the difference between what being pregnant and not being pregnant felt like. He was torn away from his thoughts by Nate.

"What is it?" he asked. "Someone text you?"

"Um… yeah," Dan answered. He wasn't sure how much to reveal to his friend, but decided to be mostly honest. "Blair… wants to talk to me," he elaborated.

Nate's eyebrows widened. "Blair hasn't been talking to anyone," he commented.

"I know," Dan replied. "Do you think you can handle…"

"…the thing with Lily?" Nate finished his sentence for him. "Yeah, man. I got it covered. You go help her with whatever she needs." He too had been worrying about Blair.

"Thank you," Dan said. He turned around and started heading to the nearest drug store, which happened to be a Walgreens.

"I'm so sorry," Eric blurted out, his voice laced with tears that were scarily close to falling.

Serena was taken aback by his sudden and unexpected apology. "What in the world are you sorry for?" she asked incredulously. He almost sounded like he felt at fault for Chuck's death.

"I'm sorry I tried to kill myself seven years ago," he clarified.

Serena slowly closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened them again. "Eric…" she began, but she was abruptly interrupted.

"I know I apologized before, and I know it's ancient history, but I still can feel a scar if I touch my wrist, and… I know what it means." He looked at his sister, emotion emanating from his eyes. "Death is heartbreaking for everyone who loved you." He clearly felt the words as he said them, his voice breaking as thoughts of Chuck entered both Eric and Serena's minds. "And I know that now. I know it in a way I really didn't appreciate back then. I had never lost someone close to me before. I had never even seen someone I loved lose someone they loved before."

Serena was having trouble keeping in her tears now. "Eric, you don't have to-"

"I want to." He pressed on, "I love you so much, Serena, and I'm sorry for what you must have felt when you found out about my suicide attempt." A couple tears escaped from his left eye and trickled down his face.

She got up and wrapped him in a huge hug. "I love you too," she whispered, breathing in his scent as she squeezed him tighter. He squeezed back.

Dan saw the slightly ajar door to Blair's bedroom and tapped it lightly. "Dorota let me up here," he softly announced.

"Come in," she replied, just as softly. She had been sitting on the edge of her bed, staring absently toward her closet. She turned to face her doorway.

Dan moved the door just enough for him to be able to walk in. "How are you doing?" he asked with genuine concern.

Blair's eyes darted to the brown paper bag in his hand as she ignored his question. "So you got one for me?"

"Of course," Dan answered. He wasn't sure what else to say.

"Thank you." She hopped off her bed with a surprising lack of lethargy and snatched the bag from him. She proceeded into her bathroom.

"Um, Blair?" Dan asked, almost amused.

"Yes, Humphrey?" she called back through the now closed-behind-her bathroom door.

"Do you really want to do that with me standing right here?" He tried to ask it nicely, so of course his voice didn't quite accurately reflect just how uncomfortable he felt.

"I'm sure you've been in the next room when people have been in the bathroom before. Relax. I'll have three minutes to kill here. I figured maybe you had something interesting to say," she added. She looked at the instructions. There was a lot to make sure she did right, if she wanted the test to work. She had taken one of these things before, but it had been a slightly different brand and she was grateful the Brooklyn boy was taking his time thinking of something to say as she carefully read through the instructions. Keep the tip pointed down for the first step, lay it flat after that. Five seconds of urine on the stick, no more, no less. Got it, she mentally confirmed to herself. She began the process right as Dan finally seemed to have thought of something to say.

"So um, Nate and I came up with a plan for… Bart," he hesitantly started to explain.

"Go on," she replied.

"I mean, it might not work, but we hope it will. Tomorrow at… the funeral, we want Lily to… upset him." Dan paused, worried that talking about Chuck's funeral… or Chuck's murderous father… or any of this would be exactly the opposite of what Blair wanted him to say to her.

"Humphrey," she said with an impatient tone, opening the door. She was just at the waiting stage for the test, at this point. "You don't have to tread on eggshells. I'm a big girl. This is important news. I want you to tell me."

Dan half-smiled, somewhat amused that she knew exactly what he'd been thinking.

"Okay. She'll… Lily will, I mean… well, if she agrees…" he trailed off, and then took a moment to gather his thoughts. He knew he needed to stop stuttering over his words. If he didn't, Blair – who was very likely pregnant right now, and therefore probably more on edge than usual - just might kill him. "We're hiding cameras in the Van der Woodsen penthouse today, while Bart's away at work. She'll also have audio recording devices hidden on her."

Still in the bathroom doorway, Blair looked at him intently and nodded slowly as he kept talking.

"We are prepared to capture potential evidence for hours, so if at any point during the funeral, while he thinks he's alone with Lily, he incriminates himself, we will have hard evidence to present to the FBI. We have a few different ideas for how Lily can best incite him into a confession. We think he'd be most likely to reveal his capacity for evil if he finds himself in a position where he feels compelled to threaten to kill her too, just like he killed Chuck." Dan said that last part with a lot of emphasis, but then half-regretted bringing up Chuck at all. He worried about what might be running through Blair's mind.

She didn't seem fazed by any of his words, though. So Dan continued.

"He's hidden the physical evidence scarily well, so it seems that the only way we'll be able to get him behind bars is if we do it this way. It's not guaranteed to work, but we figure we ought to try it. And the funeral is a good time because… hopefully despite us trying to get Bart to feel incredibly enraged toward Lily… he wouldn't dare do anything when there are a bunch of people attending his son's funeral in the next room. She'd be safe because his fear of getting caught triumphs over everything else."

Blair took it all in. It was quite the plan.

"What do you think?" Dan asked her.

She looked down at the fancy watch her father had given her on a visit home. It was a beautiful, jeweled souvenir from Paris that she never wore - because when would it be fashionable, as a member of the female gender, to have a watch adorning her delicate wrist? Bracelets were acceptable, but in Blair's mind, in the current fashion climate, never watches. However, for this occasion, when she needed to keep track of the time temporarily, she figured it would be a good occasion to take the object out and put it to use.

"It's been three minutes," she said simply, not commenting on the plan at all.

Dan held his breath while Blair reentered the bathroom, leaving the door ajar, and took a look at the stick.

"I'm pregnant," she said calmly. She wasn't surprised. She had mainly only wanted to do the test for the benefit of Dan and everyone else in her life. She knew if she told people she was pregnant, the first thing they'd ask would be, "Did you take a test?", and if she dared admit the truth and tell them, "No", they wouldn't be sure she really was.

After a long pause, Dan carefully asked her a question. "How do you feel about that?"

She exited the bathroom and went back to sit on the edge of her bed. Dan looked at her sympathetically, and then stepped closer to her.

"May I…?" he asked softly, gesturing toward the bedspread.

She nodded. "Please. Sit," she said with a gentle smile.

He sat himself down beside her, and then waited for her to break the silence.

"I think your plan sounds worth trying," she finally said. "I'm glad you have some kind of plan." She didn't sound too hopeful that it would be successful.

Dan couldn't blame her. Hope was a pretty positive emotion, and positivity was difficult to hold onto at a time like this.

She lightly stroked the gift from her father that was still sitting on her wrist, feeling with only one fingertip the beauty in the object and thinking about the beautiful man it had come from. She loved her father. Dan loved his father. All children deserved fathers, if they could be so lucky as to have good, loving ones. Her baby already was fatherless. Chuck would have been such a great dad. The thought had crossed her mind countless times since she'd realized she'd missed her period. He would have been the complete opposite of his own, horrible, father.

"I wish my baby didn't have to be fatherless," she said softly. "I wish Chuck hadn't been, either," she added.

"Yeah," Dan replied.

They turned to look at each other. Blair searched Dan's eyes for something… anything to comfort her. The more she thought about her baby… and Chuck being gone… the more she felt broken, like she might never feel happiness again.

Dan picked up on what she was silently asking for. He wasn't sure how to help her. He doubted anything he could say would be good enough. But he knew he had to try.

"Your baby will have so much love in its life, Blair. You'll be the best mother ever, and the baby… won't be completely fatherless. He or she will hear stories about Chuck, not only from you… but from Nate, Serena… even me. They'll know they had a father."

Blair let a tear escape from her eye. She wiped it away hastily and smiled.

"Thank you," she replied. She knew Dan was right. And he had said exactly what she'd needed to hear.