8. Where Angels Fear To Tread

Alcove by library, bring champagne.
CB

Bass,
Give me back my book! I don't care how you feel about the characters or content, you will return it to me this instant! You will also bring macarons.
Your Waldorf

I see we're on 'your' terms; perhaps this means you are not in fact in love with the villainously Scottish Lord Montagu from your charming little story? If not, I would be more than happy to return it. You may, however, want to restrain your sighs in my presence, lest the same thing happen again.
You may sigh over me at your leisure.
Chuck

Cloakroom, bring ciggies.
BW

The fire curdled in the grate, a sickly yellow which had everything to do with the wrong kind of fuel, but seemed to Blair to be yet another sign of her forthcoming destruction. She had waked all night with the bundle of letters Chuck no longer had any use for, turning over page after page with the feeling of heaviness in her limbs, dryness in her eyes, the taste of blood flooding her tongue as she bit it over and over. These were her words, his words. These were little pieces of the start of a life together, rich in wit and naiveté and love, ridiculously simple love poured into every line and every signature: yours, mine, ours. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but no tears had been shed.

What use were her tears?

Now I'm going to push back.

Now he would push hard enough to break her back, the spine of whalebone and steel she had in her corset instead of a real one, instead of the one she had given up when she gave him up in the first place. Blair was well aware by now that she was spineless – after a night with her own words, their own possibilities belying every word had mother had said, she could hardly deny it – and more spineless because she would not, could not take her punishment like a lady. Her mind whirred, going over escape routes, battle plans, convincing denials. He had nothing but the truth on his side, and she her good name, but his truth was enough to finish her.

"Miss?"

The eastern sky was amber tinged as Jenny slipped through the door, still in her nightgown, still with smudges of black makeup on her eyelids. The sight of her was little enough comfort to Blair, but she tried for a smile anyway.

"It's over, Jenny," she whispered. "I lost."

The small white figure stepped further into the room, gingerly lowering herself to her knees at her mistress' side. Her blue eyes were wide and acquisitive, grasping for information as a beggar would for food. "Forgive me for asking, Miss, but was it...if everything is over, there's no harm in asking...was it...what I'm saying, Miss Waldorf, is –"

"You want to know what it was like."

"Yes."

"For me, as a girl."

"Yes."

"For my first time."

"Yes."

Blair leaned down and gripped her maid's wrist. "Don't let anyone tell you it doesn't hurt," she said fiercely. "Because it does. For the first moment, it feels like someone's cut you with a knife, like you're holding your hand in a candle flame. My mother told me that there's pain because that is a place where angels fear to tread – hence why it's always devils who take a lady's virtue." She couldn't manage a true laugh, but a weak chuckle escaped her lips. "It seems apt, considering what follows. What follows, Jenny, is...it's all the feelings of loving someone coming to life around you. It's all those feelings forced upon you, into your head, into your limbs, into every beat of your heart. It's the feeling of being wrapped up in so much love that you might die of it or explode, but you wouldn't mind if you did because he loves you...he loves you so very, very much."

Waldorf Mansion, Fifth Avenue
1897

"I love you."

"I love you too."

"Please."

"No."

"Please..."

She moved against him in the way she'd only just learnt to move, and Chuck groaned and pressed his face to her throat. "Behave."

"Chuck..." Blair stitched her fingers through his hair, made him look at her. Her pulse fluttered at even that, just his eyes meeting hers, only his were the golden brown and hot and radiating life and love as her own spilled out the same. She couldn't resist one brief kiss, one tiny pucker of her mouth on his that made him groan again and grip her waist. "I want you," she murmured. "All of you."

"How do you think I feel?" It came out as a growl. "You have no idea what you do; what you are. No idea."

"And what is that?"

He was close enough to kiss her again, but didn't. Their lips moved against one another as he spoke, sending shockwaves through both.

"Almost," Chuck murmured. "Irresistible."

"But?"

"But I'm saving you." His smile was suddenly guileless, as pure and perfect as an expression could be. "For that happy ending you're always talking about."

"We make our own fairytales."

"Not this time."

Her memories were and would always be vivid enough to be her undoing if they were shared, but at least Blair didn't count them like cash and use them to buy an execution.

Jenny was enthralled, her oval face smooth and pallid and yet somehow savage with concentration. It took a good few beats for it to subside and then, quite coolly, she said, "I know a way to get your virginity back."

~#~

He ought to have known he was doing wrong when he couldn't meet his own eyes in the mirror.

Chuck was dressed immaculately in a dove grey suit with a jaunty square of pink emerging from his top pocket. He knew perfectly well that he looked dapper, suave, handsome; he also knew he was stepping out at dawn to prepare a star for her descent. That was why he had downed the shot of fiery clear liquor – not scotch for once, but something Russian which burned and roiled uncomfortably in his stomach – because he was really going to do this. He was really and truly going to end it all, have his retribution, achieve what he had returned to New York to achieve. It didn't matter that the city called to him because the whole damn place echoed with her, and there was no way he could live there and remain...undisturbed.

Blair's deceptive little maid opened the door, seemingly unsurprised to see him despite the early hour. Chuck cleared his throat.

"Is Miss Waldorf up yet?"

There was a canny smile on her pretty, bland face. "She's gone."

"Gone? Gone where?"

"You can't reveal my mistress' lack of virtue," she said with relish. "Not if she has it back."

"That's impossible," he returned coldly. "You can tell Waldorf to quit whatever game she's playing and –"

"Oh, it's not a game, Mr Bass." She came out onto the step, on a higher level and still shorter than him, corn coloured strands of hair whipping in the light morning breeze. "My father knew a lady in the Points, you see, who knew how it could be done. That's where Miss Waldorf is going."

Chuck felt the alcohol rush up from his stomach and into his throat, and he almost vomited there and then. Gripping the maid hard by the shoulders and noting absently that it was the second time in two days he was treating her thus, he shoved her back over the threshold, out of sight of the street, and then began to shake her with a ferocity and disregard for his own faultless appearance he hadn't known he possessed. He was snarling and digging his fingers into the girl's arms, and he knew that she'd bruise, but for no reason clear in his mind he was utterly focused on the words that had just come out of her mouth.

"The Five Points?" Chuck roared. "You sent Blair, who can barely lace her own boots without assistance, into the most notorious slum district in the city? Half of it's been cleared away, and the half that's left is part brothel, part bullring! Where the Hell did you send her?"

"To...an...abortionist...in Mulberry Bend..." Her teeth were rattling in her jaw. "She knows..."

"How to stitch her fucking legs together? How to gut her so she'll never carry a child? How to burn her so it looks like she's never been touched? What in God's name is wrong with you?"

Abruptly, he released her, and she staggered back and almost fell. The maid's cap tumbled to the floor as she tottered back into the entryway, and Chuck slammed the door shut himself and sprinted back down the steps. She wouldn't be so stupid; she couldn't be. She couldn't think that he...but this was Blair Waldorf, and he had fallen foul of the Waldorf pride and pigheadedness at least once to date.

"Stupid little bitch!" He cursed her beneath his breath, forfeiting any composure had left and casting about for Arthur, for a carriage, and for the quickest way to the worst part of town: to a place where angels feared to tread.

~#~

The door to the abortionist's – such things were forbidden, but the inhabitants of the Five Points set no store by rules or decrees – made Blair shudder. The portal itself was normal enough, if rotting and smeared at the bottom with filth from its clientele's shoes. It was however flanked on either side by a small window, constructed entirely of red glass. She fancied that the windows themselves smelled like blood, and her heart turned over even as she knocked.

There was no description for the woman who answered but crone. She looked as if she spent the last ten years of her life being pickled, so wizened was she, and so accompanied by the stench of vinegar and spirits. Blair swiftly pulled the hood of her cloak closer about her face and retreated into its velvet darkness.

"I'm looking for help."

"Help?" The crone cocked her head like a dog. "What kind of help?"

"I was told that you can..." Blair bit her lip, but ventured on. "I was told you can restore my virginity to me. Is that true?"

She made no reply, only thrust her face forward to peer beneath the blackness of Blair's hood. Blair shrank away from the stench of her fetid breath and rotting teeth, but the abortionist seemed satisfied with whatever it was she saw.

"Come in."

The room beyond the ominous door was fairly clean, not to the standard of Fifth Avenue or even quiet Brooklyn, but a welcome change from the filthy and derelict exterior. The hearth was empty and cold, but there was a well scrubbed table with grooves running down it, as a butcher's table had for draining the blood off meat. The one chair was assumed by the crone herself, and she extracted a pipe from the pocket of her grey apron and tucked it between the stumps of her teeth. After much tamping down of the tobacco in the bowl, lighting, re-lighting and wheezing, she sat back and gave Blair her full attention. "So you'd like to have your virtue back, am I right? Let me see..." Her eyes were faded, but had once been green, and they flickered up and down Blair's idiosyncratic cloak and the hint of fine shirtwaist underneath. "You'll be a Gramercy Park girl, you."

Blair didn't bother to correct her.

"Lost what God gave you for your husband?"

"Yes."

"How many men have you had?" She sucked and spat into the hearth, and Blair shuddered and turned her face away.

"Only one."

"And how many times?"

"Once."

The abortionist barked out a laugh. "Once is all it takes, love. Was it rape?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Did you want him? Did you agree? Or did he push your knees apart and not take no for an answer?"

"I..." Blair raised her chin a fraction of an inch higher, wrapped her arms tight around herself as if to ward off the cold instead of the dread clogging her lungs and threatening to drown her. "Yes. I consented."

"Dear me, and all through fault of your own. But no matter to me." Her dratted pipe had gone out, and the process of tamping down of the tobacco and wheezing and sucking and spitting had to be repeated. "Was he large?" She asked. "How long after were you sore?"

"I have nothing to compare it to." The rustle of notes brought a gleam to the old crone's eye and silence to her sharp tongue. "I've told you there's only ever been one, and that should be enough to know what to do."

"Love." That laughter again, almost a cackle. "You're more a virgin than them that's still intact, but until I've seen exactly what your boy did, I can't tell if I need to stitch." She rose and shuffled across the floor, turned the key in the door, and then was suddenly ramrod straight as her broad, dirty palm slapped down upon the tabletop. "Up on here, if you please. Lift your skirt."

It was then that Blair realised why there were grooves in the table, why blood might need to be channelled away, and stumbled a step backwards toward the door. It was as her back hit the wood that one of the bloody panes of glass exploded, showering the room and its occupants with fragments of crimson glass. Blair felt heat spreading across her cheekbone, touched her fingers to the skin and watched as they came away red. Over her shoulder, a hand intruded through the smashed pane, turned the key, and then the door burst open hard enough to send her almost face first into the abortionist.

The light of the Points was tinged almost permanently grey from fumes, and it framed Chuck quite excellently as he stood in the doorway, knuckles smarting and face contorted. Blair was far too stunned to make a sound, trying to absorb both her cut cheek and the shock of his presence at once, and she stayed silent even as he entered and deposited a neat stack of bills on the table.

"She was never here," he told the startled crone. "You know nothing about her."

Seizing Blair's arm by way of retreat, he dragged her out of the door, past the ramshackle house she had so lately entered and down the tiny alley which ran along one side, connecting the abortionist's street with the next. Chuck's fingers twisted cruelly on the delicate flesh of her wrist, and the strength of the burn summoned tears that Blair had to bite back. She gasped aloud, but to no avail; he only released her when her back was against the dour brick of the alley wall and his face was very nearly upon hers, no more than a hairsbreadth separating them. She tilted her head as far back as she could to escape his gaze, his mouth, the brush of his cheek against hers, and her every breath came short and shallow.

Chuck ran his thumb over the gash on her cheekbone, prompting more pain as he pulled the skin taut to inspect the minuscule wound. Blair closed her eyes, not so much to revel in the contact as to make a definitive decision about where to look. He angled her face with the lightest and barest of touches, as if she were unclean, and then held her face between his palms for a long time. When she did chance a glance at him, the expression on his face was unfathomable: he appeared to be at war with two reactions and, registering her scrutiny, settled upon anger.

"You deserve to be violated," he snapped, all former care forgotten in an instant. "Or worse, you stupid little fool!"

"How dare you come here!"

"How dare I? How dare you even countenance such a cowardly way out!"

"I don't want you here!"

"I don't care!"

"Why did you come?" Blair shot back, slapping at his hands where they held her, thumbs resting on her temples. "If I so richly deserve all this?"

It took her a moment to realise that Chuck wasn't going to answer. His jaw worked and his gaze was averted, and Blair was so stunned as the truth of what he wasn't saying dawned on her that her mouth fell open. Her cheek stung, and it seemed suddenly as if someone had given a fierce tug to her corset strings and robbed her of the faculty of speech.

"Say it," she breathed.

They both knew what she wanted: for him to call his own bluff, for all scores between them to be settled with only emotions left to sift through. He would run back to California, and things would go back to the way they were in the time after they loved but before they hated one another. Blair's eyes held such a yearning for that endgame that her whole face seemed to follow after; Chuck's roamed darkly over her features, consuming her expression and finding the one way out his pride could never countenance.

"I would never want you physically damaged," he said finally, too quietly. "It's a sin not to my taste."

The last remnants of sentiment – anger, anxiety...affection? – melted away between them like smoke caught on the wind. Blair wrapped her cloak around body and levered herself unsteadily away from the wall, sliding from the arms that held her and turning back towards what the Five Points thought of as thoroughfare.

"Thank you." The words were insincere, drifting from one corner of her mouth. "That's all I needed to hear."

~#~

Jenny was waiting, silent and shamefaced, when Blair returned and threw her cloak onto the fire without a word. She let the maid draw her a bath and then dismissed her, shutting herself in a silent world of steam and staring at her own fair limbs beneath the water rather than thinking. She methodically pulled a stiff brush across her skin, over and over until she was raw, then washed her hair through twice and still didn't feel clean. She didn't feel like herself either, not like Blair Waldorf, not even when she was dry and dressed in a clean nightgown and curled up in her father's chair before the fire. Her little feet were tucked up beneath her and she was warm almost to the point of feverish, but she felt cold and weary to the bone.

Blair no longer knew where she stood in the world. Chuck's return had forced to cross back and forth between the then and now so many more times than she had in the past two years, and what Alice found down that rabbit hole was scaring her.

Steam rose off her long dark hair, and she whispered, "I loved him. Oh God, I did."

She had known for longer than she had let herself know, and know it was confirmed beyond contestation. The letters and her confession to Jenny had been the final straw, the final blow to bring down the wall Blair had built all that time ago to protect her heart from remembering. She had loved Chuck Bass as deeply as she was capable of loving anyone, and she had betrayed him.

But what drove him now, drove him to punish and yet pursue her all the way to the Five Points, the deepest circle of Hell that New York had to offer? He had been so close to saying he would never reveal her secret in the alleyway, but his wounded male ego had won the day. She would never apologise while he still held a sword over her head, if she would apologise at all, and so the game would go on. It would never be quite the same, quite as frantic or as brutal as it had been before, but it was still a game with a winner and a loser – and Blair had no choice but to be the winner. It was a choice she made everyday she was pulled into her corset, every time she ate food she abhorred or denied herself nourishment in order to fit into a ball gown. Blair Waldorf was a winner, and this kind of game could have no stalemate.

But he would block her quest for a good match at every turn.

She would fight him, tooth and nail, hand over hand towards the pinnacle of victory.

And yet even now, he climbed faster.

Every time he caught her, held her, held her back, he climbed faster.

Blair clambered into bed, pulled the covers up to her chin and thought of white silk dresses and bridesmaids. Such things made her feel blissfully blank, so who cared if the groom's face changed every time he lifted her veil?

How dare you even countenance such a cowardly way out!

Because marriage to that nameless, faceless groom was the only defence against Chuck Bass that Blair Waldorf had.


Seeing as it is my eighteenth birthday on the 24th, I appear to want to give you all a present (yes, I'm aware that's not how it usually works), so here is the promised two chapter update. What would I like as a present, you ask? Well, I accept cash, cheque, or direct debit...or maybe a nice review for each chapter?
You know you want to...