A/N: Just my rationalization for Chuck's actions. Once again. :)

Summary: She was the beginning and she would be the end. He was so sure of this conviction, that it was no surprise it felt as though his heart was tearing itself out of his chest.

Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me. Thanks to the awesomest beta ever, comewhatmay.x Title comes from Remy Zero's "Save Me." By the by, this vignette was written before the season finale. Jsyk.


A man was meant to be an island. All to himself—fending, surviving, isolated. That was the only way that Chuck Bass knew how to live. It was the way his father had taught him and the way his uncle demonstrated. He never questioned, never challenged.

Chuck was a Bass and he never needed anyone to save him. Chuck was a Bass and he never had a reason to be saved.

Until the Bass patriarch died in a tragic accident and he found himself shooting up veins of lust, misplaced grief, and opium. He never let anything through. Not care, not understanding.

Not love.

She opened doors for him. She always had and he had no doubt that would never change. She was like him. Too cold, too hard, too passionate when it came down to it. Too much baggage. Too many problems with heads of the family, too much subservience when it came to refusal of approval.

Too beautiful.

Too magnetic.

She pulled him into her maelstrom and he wanted to inhale her into his lungs until he choked on her.

He didn't know why he pushed it away so hard. Her sharp heels, her shining white silk dress, her furious words. He felt his weakness and he hated how it had to show itself only in her presence. His emotion was too real, too powerful for him to suppress. Never had he cried in anyone else's presence, and he knew he wouldn't. Not even if he was bleeding to death or betrayed beyond his wildest imagination.

Her arms wrapped around him.

Too much emotion.

Too much feeling.

Too much love.

He gripped her forearm in his, pulling her with them as they sank down on the bed.

Too beautiful.

Too terrible.

Too destructive.

He would let her swallow him up because she was the first. She opened those floodgates and he knew that she would be the one he would never forget.

She took his virginity in a different way that he took hers, and he liked to imagine that when her barriers were stripped away to the vulnerability of another man, she would think of him.

Because he could never forget her.

Bleeding to death on a street in Prague, he never showed that much emotion.

But he let himself be saved.

Being betrayed by someone who had promised him his father's legacy, he never broke down.

He had let himself be saved from loneliness.

And he still felt those barriers.

He let an idealized blonde pry lead from his hip.

He let a desired dark beauty pick him off the floor of the kitchen of The Palace.

But he could never care enough to save them. He let the saint carry him to philanthropy and the sinner lead him through business politics. But they couldn't be both. They didn't have it in them to have the cool exterior and the fire below. They couldn't be the devil redeemed or the angel drawn to the dark side.

Because they weren't her.

He couldn't save them.

Because they weren't her.

He wouldn't.

He let himself be saved because it was easy. But he never broke his back to save them.

He couldn't care enough to save them.

They weren't her.

She was the beginning and she would be the end. He was so sure of this conviction, that it was no surprise it felt as though his heart was tearing itself out of his chest.

Always the way she broke his heart. It was the same way she made him feel that no other could replicate. The distress at seeing her with someone else. The insanity wracking his entire body. The sort of fear that drove him to rooftops and long white lines of oblivion.

Only her.

And she was the only one, with her back to the cold tile of her bathroom, that he would ever need to save.

He was paralyzed. He was struck to his core, he was shaken to his heart.

It wasn't the first time he had seen her like this.

It wasn't the first time he loved her, either.

Her eyelashes were fluttering and her chest was rising and falling faintly.

It was the only thing that kept his heart going.

The floor was hard against his knees as he knelt beside her, easing his hand beneath her neck.

"Come on, love," he whispered. "What did you do?"

She shifted slightly at the sound of his voice and he could take another breath.

"What did you do?" he asked again, shifting her body so he could cradle her fragile body in his.

She was the only one.

The only one that could fiercely knock him down with a gaze, and could fall apart so cruelly. She was so fierce, so fragile, and he loved her far too much. Too much for one man to handle for one lifetime. One love. But he didn't care.

She was stirring.

"Chuck?"

He didn't know how long she had been out, how close she was to fading from him.

But all of it could be all right again because she was saying his name.

"Are you going to let me fade away?"

His answer was communicated with a tighter grasp, the scent of her hair masking the evidence of every other sin that had occurred in that bathroom. The sort of ugliness that ripped from her throat. The sort of sheer terror resulting from neglect and criticism that he could understand.

That no one else could.

"Never."

He left everyone else to their own devices. Everyone else he could trust that they were strong enough, or someone else could help them.

It wasn't that way with her.

He could only trust himself when it came to Blair Waldorf.

Only Chuck Bass could take care of her and save her.

"My head hurts," she whispered. There was a faint smear of scarlet trickling from her hairline and he wished he had been there to catch her when she fainted.

With acid in her throat and self-loathing in her soul.

Like only he could understand.

"I'll take care of it."

Blair Waldorf was the only one who could say that.

Chuck Bass would always take care of her.

Only for her.

Only for Blair Waldorf would Chuck Bass do anything to save her.