A/N: Two chapters in one day?! I must be addicted... Or its your great reviews! I would like to thank everyone who reviewed the last chapter! Its great to know that there was such a good response over all.

This is definitely a considerably long chapter. Its longer than I had thought it would be, ha. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who reviewed for the last chapter, again. This is your reward! Please read the whole chapter, it ends with the great fluff I was talking about :).

Also... Thanks to Michelle (Ha, I used your name this time, hope you're happy, lol) for beta-ing. You're amazing and helped my badly-in-need-of-editing-written-when-I-was-half-asleep rough draft immensly, even if you did contribute to quite a bit of angst in this chapter ;).

P.S.: I still don't own Gossip Girl. Damn.

Days

After five more days of the same routine, Blair noticed that Nate wasn't staying as long during the nighttime. He would leave for brief periods of time, possibly even hours. She didn't know or care what he was choosing to do with that time.

What she did know was it was time to break out of her pathetic funk. It was time for her to use her best and most-developed skills and make a plan. This time, it was not a plan of revenge. It was one of domination. A plan of winning and superiority. Blair would be damned if she kept moping.

Whenever Nate left, she would flick the switch on her bedside lamp and stare out at the glittering lights of New York City, the gears turning rapidly in her mind. She even permitted her imagination to run wild on some nights, thinking of the most impossible of situations. She would picture fake worlds, places where everything ended perfectly. Settings where she received her happily-ever-after. Because Blair deserved it.

On her thirteenth day of not being in the house, she gained hope again. She knew she could do it. Blair had hatched the most perfect plan. She knew what must be done and she planned to execute the ploy as soon as possible.

Nate was no longer coming back during the day. She expected that he was tiring of her. That he was becoming bored with just looking at her, praying for different results each time, and only getting the same. When she was done with her operation, it would be time to talk to the Archibald. She needed to come clean. She needed to tell him the truth about everything.

And so, on that thirteenth day, Blair Waldorf put on her finest, most pristine, vibrant, blue Chanel dress and stood in front of the mirror. She had nothing to lose now. Not one thing.

She twisted her hair back into an elegant bun and primped it slightly. She fluffed the bottom of it and gave herself a twirl in the mirror. Even without any makeup, she looked better than she had in months. This still didn't mean she didn't need the objects that made her ethereally beautiful. These things would help her to plead her case.

Half and hour later, Blair was in a cab, heading to a place she had vowed not to go again. However, she knew she had to. It was the only way to fix things. She could fix this and she would.

It was a bright morning in Manhattan. The sun was shining for the first time in weeks, and it was a welcomed change. Looking out the window, she was able to see a beautiful, aqua colored sky with bits of white wisps flicked in stray spots. She knew today would be different just by looking up at the sky.

She arrived at The Palace and stood in front of the revolving doors, her face burning with the brutal cold of New York. She needed to think this through. Blair never made rash decisions, and, if she did say so herself, this was pretty rash. She had simply gotten up from the bed and started to get ready.

Though her plan had been in place for nearly a week, she never thought it would actually be put into play. Now, though, Blair knew that she needed to do this. She would feel whole again if she did.

The young girl put her hands on the handle of the door and pushed with all of her might to get inside of the warmly lit building so she would escape the terrible cold. She shivered, getting used to the temperature change, and shrugged off her coat, laying it across her arm.

She didn't need to talk to the concierge. He knew, based on her appearance and general air, that she belonged in this place. She was also able to ascertain that he had seen her several times before.

Blair simply strode into the elevator, staring straight ahead with nothing to say to anyone in the lobby. She saw the van der Woodsens out of the very corner of her eye, but still, she had not one word to say even to them. She rode the elevator up to the eighteenth floor, steeling herself. She was preparing herself. Getting ready for the imminent rejection and denial she was sure to face.

**********

He'd been like this for days. He hadn't showered once in the last week, and he hadn't provided himself with any nourishment, either. No food, no drink, not even scotch. He wasn't even sure he was still alive. Perhaps he was just a ghost that was visiting places he had once been. Re-living familiar experiences.

He hadn't taken a hit in over a week. Not since that night after it happened. After that, he'd stopped. He had ceased because it didn't do anything to soothe him, as it usually did. It didn't take him away from his problems, it seemed to only escalate them. Even the heroine did nothing. Nor the hash. Usually these two combined made him effortlessly unthinking. But after that, they did nothing. Just made it worse.

Chuck had just lay in his bed for the past week. He hadn't moved once. He smelled faintly of urine. Yes, that was right, he hadn't even moved to use the bathroom. The only shifting that gave away that he was still breathing was the blinking of his eyes. It was like he was in hibernation.

Ever since that night when he had been on the couch, he couldn't hold it together anymore. He had bellowed incoherent and frightening phrases to the woman who had awakened in his bed the next morning. He felt the tiniest bit guilty now, she had seemed so frightened.

But she should have been. I'm Chuck Bass, he thought with dark, dry humor. Women were always afraid of men in that family. The Bass males were known for it. In fact, everyone feared them. They got what they wanted, when they wanted it, because people feared them. So why should he be any different?

He decided to shift onto his side and look out the window. Normally by then, there would be dark, looming clouds in the sky and rain pounding incessantly on the roof. But now, it was bright and sunny. It was so unlike his feelings that he wanted to throw a punch at the air, though he knew it wouldn't help anything. He wanted to yell and scream, but he felt like he wouldn't be able to.

He hadn't spoken in nearly a week. The last thing he'd eaten had come from room service and he had barked out orders over the phone. That had been it. One single phone-call six days ago. Every now and then, he would clear his throat, just to make sure he was able to make some sort of sound.

Chuck stayed there like that. He stared out the window and just stared at the blowing trees and watched the smallest, minuscule snowflakes flutter down from the sky. He heard the faint sounds of children squealing and inwardly smirked. He could no longer give the same reactions he once did. It wasn't possible.

It had been days. So many days since he had seen her. It hurt and he hated to admit it, but it wasn't like anyone would ever know. It had been so long.

**********

Nate sat in the swiveling chair of his dad's old office, deep in thought. He had left the Waldorf's nearly three hours ago, and Blair had still been asleep. He was getting sick of everything. He was starting to feel like she was purposely ignoring him to make him feel terrible. He wanted to strangle her sometimes for making him feel the feelings he was starting to feel.

He stared out the window and watched the trees sway in the slight breeze. Before he knew it, he was being assaulted by memories. All sorts of memories from his childhood and even from his more recent teenage years. They all involved a happy and excited Blair, and he felt a tear slip down his cheek. She wasn't like that any longer. It killed him to see her the way she was.

Nate had started to imagine things he never thought possible for him to come up with. He was starting to have thoughts that had no business being in his brain. These things startled him. He even began keeping a knife in his pocket. Every now and then, he would look at the shiny part of the knife and think about things.

Maybe she was already dead and he was conjuring things up in his mind to satisfy him. She may have already been in heaven, and the stench of her dead corpse just hadn't reached his nostrils yet. These things began to convince him and he would become mesmerized by the knife, running the sharp edge along his fingers.

That was what he was doing right then. Running the edge along his hand. It even went down and followed the veins in his wrist. He stopped himself, though.

Blair was alive and well. She was fine. Slightly, anyway. There was no need for him to have such terrible and sad thoughts. Had she been coherent, she would have most definitely hit him hard. She would have told him to wipe his mind of anything terrible.

But that was just it. She wasn't awake. And he wasn't sure she ever would be.

**********

She raised her hand, curled it into a fist, and, with several juts of power, knocked on 1812. She stood there for a good five minutes without receiving a response and just repeated the action. This would not fail. She had made sure it was foolproof before she had ventured out. She would make it through.

Blair listened acutely with her perky ears and finally heard a tiny bit of rustling inside. She took a deep breath and steadied her body, which she hadn't known was leaning very far towards the door, causing her to stumble a little. She raised her nose slightly, fixing a look of importance and perseverance on the delicate features of her face.

Then the door opened to reveal Charles Bartholomew Bass.

His hair was mussed up and incredibly oily, his eyes were wide and rimmed with red, his clothing was stained with horrible unmentionables, and, was that pee that she smelled on him? His hip was stuck out as the door was supporting him, all of him.

Blair reached out for his body instantly. He didn't make any move to stop her or pull away. He didn't resist one bit, and she was eternally grateful for that. She heard him breath her in and felt his nose in her hair as he smelled her and embraced her with a strength she didn't expect.

And so they stood, Blair Waldorf and Chuck Bass. Nothing mattered then to her except them. Nothing mattered at all. She had waited days for this, weeks. It had been so long and she had achingly longed for him for days and days on end. As she had lay in bed, she wished for his arms, for his chest. For his mouth and words that came out of it. For days she had hoped, and now everything had happened exactly as she had wanted.

It seemed she just might have, in fact, gotten her happily ever after.

**********

"Blair," Whispers left his mouth with shaky breaths and a part of him, inside his brain, started. So he was able to form words. He was capable of speak like a normal human being, contrary to his beliefs. It actually made a part of him happy. That part, though, was so small he didn't know about it until hours later.

"Chuck," She spoke clear as day and he just continued to smell her hair. He took in the smell of her at her shoulder and collarbone, her perfume enveloping him and seeping into every crack and crevice of his body. He got completely lost in her and he didn't even care. It felt so good.

She felt so good. Their fight almost two weeks ago didn't mean anything. And apparently, his smell meant nothing to her. He was unconditionally grateful for that.

Finally, Chuck regained a little bit of composure and reality. They were hugging and showing affection in broad daylight, in a hallway. Anyone could have seen them and snapped a picture.

He pulled her into his room and closed the door. Even though he hadn't eaten or drank for a week, he had this burst of energy that just popped up inside of him when he saw her at the door. He now walked with a jaunt in his gait and followed her to his bedroom.

They didn't have sex. He didn't know why, but they didn't have sex. This disappointed him at first, but then he realized that in the end, he hadn't really wanted sex. He just wanted her to be there, as she had told him she would be all those months ago. She could fix him, he was sure of it.

Many moments later, she spoke. "Hey," she murmured, her voice velvety and so very Blair. "You have no idea how much I've missed you."

"I'm Chuck Bass..." he smirked, but the action felt foreign to him, as well as his voice box flexing to speak. "Of course you missed me."

She glared at him, and he changed the direction of his words. "But I missed you, too. A lot."

Blair smiled beautifully at him and he felt his heart swirl around in his chest. He didn't want to ruin the moment and ask about Nate. Knowing Blair, she had already taken care of him. Or she hadn't, but already had a plan.

He pondered for a moment and then words tumbled from his lips that he never thought would.

"Blair, I-" he sighed heavily. He wasn't so sure this was the right time. She was Blair Waldorf; she would expect something extravagant and amazing. This was something that Chuck could have given her, since that was where he had come from and how he had been raised; it really just wasn't his style as much anymore.

"Yeah, Chuck?" She whispered into the crook of his neck. Blair had nuzzled in next to him as they lay on the loveseat in his room. He refrained from the bed, knowing that snide remarks would be made about the rancid smell.

"I want you to know that what I said never leaves this room, alright?" His voice had turned hard and he regretted it instantly when her warm breath left his jawline.

"Alright," Blair's voice was equally hard and he cringed. She was about a foot away from him now. He had literally pushed her away with words. He needed to work on that. It was something that needed to be mended immediately.

Chuck grabbed her hand, roughly at first, but then held it loosely in his. It felt so right, now, to be holding hands. If someone had told him, six months ago, that he would be holding hands with Blair Waldorf one day, he would have laughed in their face and kicked them hard in a place where it hurt.

"But I meant it," he breathed onto her cheek before kissing it and letting his mouth linger on the soft skin of her face for a moment longer than necessary. His tongue darted out to taste her. It was like strawberries. He knew that was the most peculiar sounding thing that had ever been uttered in anyone's mind, but it was the truth. She tasted like the sweetest strawberries picked from the most prestigious gardens of the world.

"I love you," she whispered. Her voice was high and it cracked very subtly at first. He felt tears in his eyes; so maybe, just maybe, this was the right moment. He would take his chances. He could always redo it later if the need arose.

Chuck took the deepest of deep breaths and let it out slowly. He concentrated on what needed to be said in response to her words. The sentence that would fix everything, that would let them escape into their fake world, full of truth and promise. He couldn't stutter. That was not an option. This was important and he couldn't ruin it with petty stumbling.

"I love you, too, Blair," he said. He stated it with a clarity that rang like a bell and he was proud. He was so damn proud of himself. He'd finally done it. Chuck had accomplished one of his hardest tasks yet. He was sure he knew what was going through her mind. That it had taken him long enough. Well, things like this, matters of the heart, always took him longer than most other people. All that mattered was that he had finally uttered the words. And he had finally meant them.

Before he knew it, her lips were folded over his. His bottom lip was trapped between her teeth as the muscle inside her mouth ran along it. It tickled him and he smiled for the first time in years. He had never really smiled, not for a very long time. But he was so happy then, it was almost unreal. He fought back the urge to giggle like a little girl.

Everything was perfect now. Nothing mattered but Blair and the couch that they were currently seated on. Nothing else mattered at all. Although it had taken them days to get to this place- days upon days upon days- they had finally gotten there. And the feeling was one of complete ecstasy and triumph.

A/N: I can't wait for the reviews that I am sure are to come! I'm so excited to hear what you guys think, because it always makes me smile and melts my heart :). I unconditionally love every person who leaves a review :D.