A/N - I own nothing. I have no idea where this one came from. Or what to make of it. Dedicated (again) to my lovely wifey who wanted a little rose redemption. :) Let me know what you think.



"This isn't how I wanted to do this," he begins and not for the first time since she'd edged her way across a leather throne not unlike this very one, she wonders just what 'this' is.

But he's still talking and she gets the feeling that she's about the miss the punch line.

Though life isn't supposed to be a joke, now is it?

She's tempted to cut him off. To scream and kick and bite and spit if it will only stop the fall of words from his mouth. She'd even chance a yawn at this stage, though her make up has been applied immaculately as always, and she wouldn't want the mask that does more than add rouge to her lips and charcoal to her eyes to slip.

Not with him.

She'd be naked then. And though she thinks the setting would be more than appropriate, she can't bring herself to be vulnerable before him like that.

Not again.

Besides, it's colder in the dead of January then when winter first looms in mid November.

And now she has missed the punch line because he's looking at her expectantly, searching her face with eyes that normally see her despite her magic mascara wand.

She's not sure when they stopped, not even sure when they started. And for the life of her, she can't figure out when she'd begun to want them to. Begun to crave the tingle of his gaze on her skin, pulling secrets from her vault like her very own Houdini.

She bites her tongue to stop the giggle – nervous, though she can't decide as to why – that's tickles her throat at that.

Houdini had a death wish, too. But he got what he wanted.

"I had wanted this to be special." His tone is scaring her now, and she swears she can hear the overture as the overgrown shark approaches in the background. But her eyes find their way to his and to her astonishment – and maybe just a little delight – no disgust! – he's taking her hand in his.

She thinks for a boy who's as germaphobic as the one who the seventeen year-old version of herself had fallen long and fast and hard for, he's reached for her hand and accepted hers as it searched for his more times than she can count.

Twenty six, that voice she's been trying to burry along with the broken shards of her heart whispers and she's sure he can hear it in the dark of their small enclosure.

And maybe he can because they are coming to a halt and he's slipping from the black beast like he slipped from her bed that night he'd darkened her pillow with his tears. But she refuses to follow this time.

She'd rather lead.

It's safer for her sanity. Safer for them both, really.

Safer for your heart. She wonders if murdering the voice inside your head would constitute the prohibition of her burial on sacred grounds?

It's a good thing she's not Catholic, anyway.

And her door is opening, letting light and cold and him seep into the air surrounding her. She'll need a weeks worth of manicures after clinging to her resolve this long and this tightly.

She will not hurt herself to heal him. She can not sacrifice herself to save him.

But she's been raised a lady and it's impolite to ignore a person when their words ask – she ignores the pang that comes when it isn't 'demands' – for your attention. So she turns her head, intent on glaring at him until even through his blurry haze he can see the picture she's painting for him.

But her brush has crumbled in her hand or maybe it's just her resolve, because his fingers are filling the void between her own and her feet are hitting pavement.

"I wanted this to be everything you wanted." His eyes looker clearer, more brown and less red then she's seen them since paper snowflakes adorned fake skies and she can't help but feel her fingers squeeze his in a gesture she shouldn't be shocked to find is reassuring.

But it is and she is because not every inch of her, apparently, had been informed that they were over; that she was done. She'll worry about punishing the incompetent party later. Because he's still talking and she's just now noticing that the fingers laced with hers feel rough, almost as if he'd made whatever's in the velvet box he's pulling from his pocket himself.

But he's Chuck Bass and she knows better.

"I know our track record with these…" His voice rumbles in her chest as if she were the one to speak the words.

Which is crazy, since she's not speaking to him at all. Hasn't been speaking to him for months. Years, even.

And isn't supposed to be looking at him. Or touching him. Or letting him touch her, letting herself be touched by him.

"But that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

Be touched by words of a poet dancing on his lips.

But she is.

And he's pulling his hand from fingers she's not sure if she should be ashamed or terrified that she finds are reluctant to let his go.

To let him go.

Jack Frost whispers in her ear and but she refuses to head his call because for the first in nearly twenty seven times, since brown replaced blue and fire edged out ice, the games are a foot no longer and he's reaching for her hand.

Her pulse is screaming in her ears, her heart kicking in her chest so she bites her tongue to keep herself from spitting the words she knows he's about to say.

Because he's still talking…

For the first time in a long time it's Chuck's tongue and not Charles' who's forming the words.

…and she doesn't want to miss her chance to giggle at the punch line.

"Blair, I love you."

She realizes then, as her smile spreads slow and wide and her tears tug her mask from her face, that she's been here before.

Stood in this very spot before.

But her skin hadn't touched his then. She'd been wearing a second skin, one of black leather not un like what lines the belly of the beast behind her, and his fingers weren't plastered – though he himself had been – in band aids.

"I love you." The words fall from his lips again, but not in a plea to hear them from hers. And not in a prayer, either.

It's a fact that he's stating. The sky is blue, winter is cold, and Chuck Bass is in love with Blair Waldorf.

Her mask is gone now, she doesn't need it any more because he's handing her a single white rose. A rose, it dawns on her then, that's he's pulled the thorns from himself.

With his own fingers. To save hers pain.

Save her pain.

So she smiles and nods her head when he resumes the position he'd been so found of waiting for the future to return to.

Because their future is now.

Though it took them light years to get here.


A/N - If you'd like to leave me a request for C's ILY, feel free. I'll see what I can do. And thank you to everyone who's been leaving me their thoughts, I'm working on getting back to you :)

(And, Lauren, I'm still checking out your stuff. :))

Lynne