As always I want to thank all of you for your support and your reviews. I really appreciate them and it makes me really happy to know that you're finding the story still interesting and the characters IC.
This chapter will give you more details about someone's past. I hope you'll like it!
What happened in chapter 11:
- Being left alone in the desert, Chuck and Blair fight to find a way home.
- Daphne discovers that Nicholas has stolen Chuck and Blair's phone to prevent them from finding an easy way out.
- Unexpecatantly Dan appears to Chuck and Blair with a 500. They suddenly get in the car believing the worst has passed.
Dan's car run out of petrol right in the middle of the nth
of Chuck and Blair's fight. The only way to resolve the problem is walking to the gas station. Chuck and Blair decide to stay in the car.
- A new fight and a little desert rabbit let the fire explode between Chuck and Blair. Their hate becomes passion.
- When Nicholas and Daphne, pick up Dan, and come back to find Chuck and Blair they find out that they had sex in the back of Dan's car
Chapter 12
Mother without children
My mother's bedroom has been kept intact. My grandmother has never removed or thrown away anything. I've secretly been there a few times, before I was 9 and still unaware of many things. I adored the fact that I could open her closet to find her clothes. It felt like she could have come back home anytime soon. Once, I stole a picture from the room, knowing that I couldn't go there whenever I wanted. She was dancing in a beautiful white dress that reached her knees and her hairs were gathered up in a colorful foulard. She happily smiled. It was the portray of a young and sunny girl, full of life and with a wonderful future to build. She was my beloved mom.
"How can you be so sure that she'll help you?" Dan asked them while they were reaching Elisabeth's door.
"Because if she doesn't, you'll publically denounce her" Blair explained to him, showing all of her security.
"I'll denounce it..." Dan repeated it, contemplating the meaning of those words. "I'll denounce it?" he finally asked, running after her on the garden path.
"What did you think? That we brought you here just to listen to your childish novels?" Nicholas specified with an arrogant voice, keeping on walking.
"Man, I…" Dan started to say something, but Nicholas unexpectedly stopped and turned toward him.
Dan halted too and stood motionless under his gaze.
Nicholas wasn't the one who had joked about Chuck anymore. The guy in front of him, was the one he had written bullshit about, the one who had lost the baby he had put on the covers of every paper, the same one rejected by his father and the one who was there to meet the mother of the ex-girlfriend he had lost because of their family issues.
"The fact that I didn't kick you when I first saw you at the gas station, or that we had a little fun about their little fuck" Nicholas motioned towards Chuck and Blair "doesn't mean that you can become friendly with me". Nicholas explained looking straight into Dan's eyes. "We're not friends! If I only wanted, you'd be already cleaning the toilettes... Never forget it, Humphrey"
When he finished, Nicholas walked back on the house path, without even waiting for Dan to reply or defend himself. Nicholas had simply left him there to follow him with his gaze.
"Don't you think you've been a little rude to him?" Blair scolded Nicholas, well aware of the fact that it was not easy for Dan being there with them.
She didn't like Nicholas. She didn't like the way he behaved. "He admitted he was wrong and he's here to help us. Maybe it's not enough but it's a good start" she was sure about it.
Nicholas interrupted his path for the second time and looked at Blair with a smirk.
"It's Weird that you're defending him…" He stared at her, travelling up her body with his gaze "should I recall you that you've just screwed your ex-boyfriend in the back of his car?"
Chuck reacted immediately.
He stepped ahead placing himself in front of his best friend, covering Blair from his view, with a stiffened jaw and a serious look. He didn't have to say anything because his authoritative gaze showed his disappointment.
Nicholas knew exactly what Chuck was doing and he didn't stepped back.
"Chuck..." Blair called him to stop whatever they were doing, but he didn't move. It was a men thing, and between friends like them, respect was a priority.
"Apologize to her" he ordered to Nicholas, but he did not as asked.
The others could feel the tension rising up between them.
"Enough!" Daphne interfered to put an end to all that theater. They weren't there to start a fight, but to find her mother.
"We're all nervous, but Blair is right. Dan is not our enemy. He regretted what he did to us and this makes him an honest in my eyes" she explained to Nicholas.
"You've always been too naive" he accused her.
"Yes, probably I am. And he's not a friend of mine but he's here to help us now, which is something I appreciate".
"If it's what you want…" Nicholas accepted with reticence, biting the bullet.
In the same moment, a long limo was reaching the house, driving though the garden, heading towards them.
They all made it street, realizing that Elisabeth could be inside.
Chuck and Blair instinctively got closer, without touching each other, Daphne didn't move. She stood motionless in the middle of the path to stop the car.
The black car windows bent down and exposed a chic woman with big dark sunglasses to their view.
Chuck stiffened, Daphne paled, Blair felt a shiver of anger running down her spine, Dan put a curious expression and Nicholas coldly stared at the woman.
After taking a good long view of each one of them, Elisabeth glanced down.
"I was waiting for you" those were the first words she pronounced.
It was a majestic and refined house.
Elisabeth had ordered to her waiter to bring them some fresh tea and settle them in the huge living room. She joined them just a few minutes later, changed in a more comfortable dress, taking a seat on their opposite sofa, never looking at Chuck and Daphne.
Chuck was nervously rubbing his hands while his gaze was incessantly orientated to the floor.
Daphne looked detached, cold, instead. It was as if she was careless about whatever was going to happen, looking smugly around.
It was after an endless silence that Elisabeth finally laid her eyes on her kids.
"You look good" she started, taking the tea carafe in her hands to pour it into their glasses.
"I don't want it" Daphne informed her.
"It's not a wise choice. It's pretty hot today, It'll help you" she insisted.
"It'll help me..." Daphne echoed her with a painful tone that made Elisabeth turn towards Chuck.
"Charles, please drink the tea" Elisabeth handed him the glass.
Chuck lifted his eyes on her. He briefly stared at her, then at her hands. His gaze was so dark and penetrating that Elisabeth's hands started to tremble.
"Dan is thirsty" Blair interfered, coughing to catch his attention.
"Oh...Oh, yes... I am, Mrs.." Dan nodded understanding what Blair was doing. "With this heat I really need something fresh... Is it always this hot around here?" he started to prattle, but Blair looked daggers at him.
"Texas is not New York" Elisabeth conceded Dan.
At her exit, Nicholas chafed. They weren't there for a family chatting, and the air of the room was becoming heavier as the minutes went by. They needed her answers to be able to leave that horrible place and finally find some peace.
"What kind of link does still exist between you and my father?" he asked threatening, standing up, next to the big mirror of the wall. His voice didn't allow ways out. It was the direct question everyone was waiting for, but that anyone didn't expect in that very moment.
Elisabeth looked intrigued by the profile of that boy, she didn't even seem surprised by his arrogance. Even thought, her eyes came back on her children who were looking at her with hard to please eyes. She swallowed.
She had to take time, avoid the matter, make that encounter last longer, because if she had given them what they wanted, they'd walked out of her door forever.
"I know why you're here…"
"Good, so we can avoid this embarrassing theater and we can get though the point" Blair cut out, pissed at the way Elisabeth was taking time. It was old school, the one she, as queen of the Constance, had started.
"Blair…" Elisabeth stared at her picturing a pleased smile on her face. "Finding you here with my son, doesn't surprise me" she sipped the tea from her glass. "Still by his side" she specified.
Blair's blood started boiling in her veins. She knew what she meant with that sentence and she knew better than all the others in the room, that she was telling it to have a reaction from Chuck.
Chuck hardened his hands in a fist. He was going to answer but Blair's voice interrupted him. She was so calm that he got worried immediately.
"I've already told you Elisabeth that I've invented that doe look. Let's not repeat ourselves. I don't" she put a malicious smile.
"By the way, Years passed, and things changed" Blair communicated her, pouring herself the tea in her glass while Chuck's eyes were following all her moves.
"I wanted so desperately that Chuck could meet his mother that I wrongly believed in you..." she sipped her tea, crossing her legs with elegance "…not because I thought that you were an high class woman, but because I've always thought that there couldn't be a mother in this world who'd have renounced the chance to know a son like Chuck". Blair didn't hide all the emotions she felt talking about him and their past. Chuck, himself was enchanted by the sweet expression she had made talking about him.
However, at that point, Blair cleared her voice and her face became a challenging mask.
"Too bad, that after what happened I believe that he deserves much better than you. Actually, both of them do. Plus, this time I won't make the same mistakes".
Elisabeth was stunned by Blair's protective words. She was warning her that everything she had in mind, she would have stopped her.
Chuck couldn't stop but keeping on staring at Blair with admiration and devotion.
Elisabeth nodded, giving Blair the sensation of victory. It was just an illusion. She looked back at everyone to study them in silence.
"I won't say anything if my kids won't ask" Elisabeth challenged them, finding the courage in herself. She was still an experienced vixen. Many years of war had thought her how to control her emotions and think clear.
That exit took everyone back broken, but not Daphne and Chuck: Daphne was expecting it and Chuck raised his lips into an ironic smirk.
Elisabeth understood the answer only by their looks. Something in the way they reacted made her feel proud of them. They had the Harvey's blood, the blood of the strategists.
"I'd like to say that It's been a pleasure, but It wasn't" Chuck slowly stood up, buttoned his jacket. He looked at his mother with coldness one last time and left the room.
Elisabeth turned to look at her daughter who looked back at her for a while, before taking her purse and following Chuck outside.
"Congratulation. You had a last chance with them and you've just lost it" Blair stated, preventing Nicholas from speaking and showing the exit to Dan with her eyes.
"You stood up and left! What the hell was that?" Nicholas scolded Chuck, following him outside. He was hysterical. "You should have asked for her help! Accept whatever she offered!" he accused him, rising up his voice.
"I'd rather die" Chuck was furious. His mother was just toying with them, like all the other times. He wasn't going to play her game anymore.
"Maybe you've forgotten it, but that's the reason why we're here" Nicholas reminded him with hardness.
"Shut up!" Blair protectively showed up in front of Nicholas to stop him from keeping on insulting Chuck.
"What the hell do you want now?" Nicholas asked her as he had enough about her.
"Don't you understand how difficult this is for them? She abandoned both of them and she acts as if they could eat muffins together"
"They should stomach them, if necessary, because without accomplishing her, our journey here had meant for nothing!" Nicholas was full of resentment. He was so angry at his father, that he couldn't see what Daphne and Chuck were into. His revenge was the only thing he was thinking about.
Hearing his words, Daphne went pale but Dan was the only one who realized it. While the others were shouting and fighting she had isolated herself, staring at the ground like a baby.
Dan couldn't believe it, the man who loved her didn't even care about her feelings. His selfish behavior was hurting her to death, but his own family issues came first.
"Why don't you speak with your father?" Chuck suddenly asked Nicholas with heat, walking to him and bringing him by his collet. He was completely out of his mind. He wanted to hurt him as much as he had done to him and he knew exactly where to hit him.
Nicholas felt it and didn't react at Chuck shot. His words had opened his bloody wound.
"I don't have a father" he whispered to his best friend, staring deeply in his eyes.
"And I don't have a mother" Chuck stared back at him, replying slowly to him. He let go the hold of his shirt and made a few steps away. They were sons of the same war, destined to the same pain.
"Excuse me..." In that moment Elisabeth's waiter appeared at the door and interrupted them.
They all turned to look at her.
"Mrs Elisabeth instructed me to show you your rooms for the night" she announced.
They all looked at each other astonished.
"Please, tell Mrs. Elisabeth" It was Daphe who replied, coming out of her miserable mood. "That she can't buy us".
The woman, ashamed by the situation, nodded and walked back inside.
"Chuck, Wait!" Blair voice got everyone's attention.
"Where are you going?" She was running after Chuck who was reaching a limo which had just appeared at the end of the house's path.
"Leave me alone" he said to her, getting into the car and avoiding her sad eyes.
"Chuck, please don't go!" she begged him. That moment was so familiar to her that her heart broke in her chest.
Something in the way she had said those words made Chuck turn to look at her. His eyes softened for a while, sinking in hers. However, when Blair took a few steps toward him, he moved his gaze away.
"Text me the hotel address" he just asked before closing the door and leave her alone on the house path.
Blair closed her eyes to hold back tears. The story was repeating itself, but that time he was going to come back. She could feel it, he just needed time. She breath in and out. He just needed time.
Dan, who was following the whole scene, standing next to Daphne, couldn't help but realize how much he had been wrong.
He shook his head disarmed.
He was standing in front of the richest guys of the planet, the young promises of the world, people who could have changed the life of many people just with a finger's snap. Though, in that very moment, right in front of him, they were just miserable kids, facing their fragilities, perused by the desperate desire to own the most natural thing of the world, but also the only one they would have never bought: the love of who gives birth to you.
"I saw her" Daphne confessed in front of her glass of tequila.
"What did you feel?" Uncle John's voice on the phone was professional. He was too used to psychoanalyze people.
"Irritation" she didn't need time to think about it.
"I expected it"
"Do you know the saddest thing of all this? I didn't even care about her anymore..." she admitted, before swallowing her tequila in one go.
"That's weird"
"Do you believe it's possible to be in front of your worst nightmare only to realize, that it's always been just an illusion?"
"What are you drinking?" his uncle teased her and she conceded herself a smile.
"The best tequila I've ever tasted"
"Buy a bottle for me, it seems it works!" John joked. Since she was 15 he had always been the one able to read all of her shades and keep her at ease even during the worst moments.
Daphne pictured a smile, realizing something.
"What if I was wrong?" she wondered.
"What do you mean?"
"Maybe, during all these years we've just played her game, blaming us and thinking about her, believing that we had to felt guilty..."
"They call it "facing a loss"" he explained.
"Can you believe it?" she animatedly raised her voice. "She wanted this! She confined us in a pathetic life so that she could feel relief for what happened to her! She abandoned us just to watch us crawling back to her, begging for her help!" Daphne said opening her eyes wide on the truth.
"Are you sure?" John asked, already realizing the answer. She could have been right. His sister had always been obsessed by revenges since she was a baby.
Daphne didn't reply. What she had realized made her sick and good at the same time.
"It's about time that someone cuts the umbilical cord, once and for all!" she announced.
Her uncle got worried. He knew what his sister was capable of, and that thing scared him.
He sat on the bed's board of that drab motel the others had chosen for the night. Even if he was used to his luxury hotels, he would have found pleasant every kind of accommodation to avoid a night at Elisabeth's house.
A thing was having a brief encounter with her, another one, was sleeping in her own house, smelling her scent in every corner or hearing her voice behind the walls.
He had found consolation in his old Jack bottle, but the alcohol had no effect on him anymore. It couldn't do anything against his mother poison.
He took a deep breath and the imagines of the day replayed in his head.
His mother.
The unbridgeable emptiness he felt deep inside whenever he remembered his childhood.
His father.
His mother again.
He couldn't deny that that woman had something magnetic. Maybe it was the fact that they had the same eyes, or the rare way she faked sweetness, or her ease self-confidence of being such a bitch.
He was the son made of evilness, bastardy and bitchiness. Chuck Bass, the ass of Manhattan, son of Bart the bastard and Elisabeth the bitch. Bart the bastard, had been fooled by Elisabeth the bitch to make an infallible equation with the name of Chuck Bass.
He run his hand through his hairs.
His eye still ached. The mirror in front of him reflected a big swollen purple livid that circled the eye. He tried to touch it, but he screamed when his finger made contact with the hurt skin.
It was the fourth punched he received for Blair.
He closed his eyes and deeply breathed in and out.
Blair Waldorf... The other side of his day. The other side of his life.
She had protected him and defended him in front of his mother. She had attacked her and challenged her like a tiger that was defending her own kids.
Chuck smiled, thinking back at her courage, at her combative glare.
She had heard in his silence his sos signal and she has stood by him, against his mother with the boldness he had always admired in her. When she cared about something, nothing could stop her.
His hand slipped in his pocket.
He slowly took out Blair's Tiffany pendant he had accidentally ripped out of her neck during the moment of passion they had shared in Dan's car.
They had been so much taken by each other, not to realize that she had lost it, so, when he had found it on the floor he had collected it with the intention of giving it her back, but it was his mother's moment and he had lost the right timing.
He observed it with a smirk on his face, as the memory of his name that had echoed inside of the car, while she was clinging into him with every fiber of her being, became vivid to his mind.
It wasn't just sex. It had never been just sex between them, which was something they knew better.
He kindly caressed the pendant.
He had seen it on Blair's neck for a year, as she wore it in every picture, every public appearance he had seen of her.
Even if it was a Tiffany piece of jewelry, it wasn't that expensive, unlike any other jewels she used to buy, each one scarcely under 1000 dollar value.
It intrigued him as it didn't come from the period of her engagement to Louis, but it wasn't so distant from the moment they had left each other, neither.
It should have meant much to her as she didn't remove it or replace it with anything else, like the ruby ring her father had given to her before leaving NY with his boyfriend Roman.
He could still remember the day he had found his own bedroom at the Empire, completely overturned by The Waldorf tornado. She was so desperate for losing her father's ring to throw both their expensive clothes everywhere just to find it.
If that tiny pendant meant the same to her, as he believed, he could only imagine how she was feeling.
However, a part of him knew, deep inside, that it was something he would have not liked.
"Blair, What's going on?" Serena asked her on the other hand of the line. She had sensed her tension.
"I can't find my pendant!" she replied with trembling hands, while she was rummaging in his suitcase.
"Are you taking about the little cherub?" Serena seemed interested. Blair stopped.
"How do you know?" Blair got worried but she suddenly corrected herself. "I mean, how do you know that I'm looking for it?"
"Because you never remove it from your neck" Serena reasoned, with calmness.
"Of course" Blair took a relief breath before starting back to throw cloths everywhere. It wasn't there. Where was it?
"Blair is just a pendant..." Serena tried to make her think. "You own almost 8000 pendant as beautiful as that one" Serena couldn't see it, but her words made the tears reach Blair's eyes.
Blair heart was beating faster. It wasn't like any other pendant, but, of course, Serena couldn't know it. No one knew, except her.
Blair tried to compose herself to be able to reply to Serena, without building any kind of doubts in her best friend.
"You're righ,t S" she pretended to be indifferent.
"Fine"
"Fine. I'll call you tomorrow" Blair switched off her phone.
"Blair? What are you doing here?"
"The car's key" she quickly ordered him.
He stood perplexed for a while. Blair puffed, it was always the same story, he didn't understand.
"Humphrey, give me the key of you car!" she repeated exaspered.
"Why?"
"I've lost something which could be in your car" she kept things vague, but the anxiety was getting bigger. It should have been in the car. There were no other options.
"What have you lost?" he tried to help her.
"My pendant"
"Which one?" his journalistic mood was on.
Blair stood speechless. She had hanged out with him as friends for over a year and he had never noticed that pendant. She always wore it.
"The cherub one" she specified. He tried to remember it.
"I've cleaned the car almost an hour ago, I didn't find anything" His words chilled her blood.
She hoped that she had lost it there during the sex with Chuck and not in the desert.
Something inside of her broke.
"Maybe Chuck has seen it" Dan suggested her with a malicious tone. He still had in front of his eyes the image of her and Chuck in the back of his car.
Blair paled at his exit, but didn't catch its shade. She was too lost in her own thoughts to pay attention to Dan and his comments.
If Chuck had really found the pendant, what she would have done? What she would have said to him? She knew him so well, he was going to ask her things which she wasn't ready to reply just yet.
She really didn't know what to think or to do, so she turned and walked back to her room.
Chuck and her pendant… Chuck and the truth…. She kept on thinking in head, holding back the tears.
Dan called after her a few times, but she didn't hear him.
Chuck and her pendant…Chuck and the truth…
She struggled broken hearted in the alley.
In the darkness of the night that room was a narrow place.
The empty walls which lacked of memories were different from the houses where she had been raised up during her childhood, full of pictures and fragments of their family life.
That house was an unfamiliar place, far away from the warmness of what she was used to.
She just had to walk in the kitchen of the Milan's apartment to find a huge picture of her grandfather, dressed like Mickey mouse on her 6th birthday, attached on the fridge, or run in the alley of the house in Monaco to watch tons of family portrays. One day her grandmother had told her that a house without memories was like a man without a soul.
It felt weird, being in the house of a mother and couldn't find any sort of memories of her children in it. There were no pictures, no fist teeth inside of a can, no drawings with the word mama written on, no souvenirs from the family vacations. There were nothing but empty walls and chic furniture.
"You came" a voice called her from behind. Daphne slowly turned toward the woman who was hiding in the shadow.
"I'm here to put an end to this story" Daphne anticipated with a deep breath. Being the adult of the room was difficult, but it was the right thing to do.
"Your brother's not here" Elisabeth sounded disappointed.
"He doesn't know I'm here"
Elisabeth nodded. The way Daphne was standing in front of her under the pale light coming from the window, with her head held high and the voice full of courage, reminded her Josephine, her own mother. There was so much of her in her daughter, and nothing of herself.
"I've missed you, my sweet girl" in the darkness, the tear which was falling on Elisabeth's cheek was invisible. She had been right not to turn on the light, because the cold mask she had put on for years, was fading away in front of her first daughter. The darkness of the room could cover her emotions.
"I've missed you too" Daphne replied, but her voice was cold, something that Elisabeth sensed. "Once" she specified with her honesty. "But then I cut off the power and I didn't feel you anymore"
After her confession, Daphne felt light for the first time in years. She had waited for the return of her mother for too many years, and the more the time was going by, the more she slowly survived to that pain.
The time for a mother-daughter reunion was over.
She had lost the right to be her mother when she had destroyed her life over and over. In her eyes Elisabeth was just a biological parent, with the same dna samples. She had found a real mother in Josephine, the woman who had cleaned up the mess Elisabeth had left behind and looked after her.
The lonely tear on Elisabeth's cheek was followed by tons of other tears.
Daphne had Josephine's fire and Andrew's honesty.
She had never admitted it, because the pain and her revenge had blinded her, but she missed them too with all her heart. The way she had hurt them, the emptiness a life without them had touched her, had hunted her since the last time she had seen them.
Finding her own beloved parents in her daughter's words and way she behaved, broke her heart into pieces. She felt a coward, obsessed by the senses of guilt for a war that had made her powerful, but lonely at the same time.
And in that very moment, for the first time in her life, right when her daughter was telling her that she had lost any right on her, Elisabeth understood what being a mother would have meant.
I had Blair's files in my hands. Nicholas had put them into the envelope full of information against his uncle. The file fell on the floor while I was leafing through the papers. Only when I picked it up, I realized that I was holding medical reports and phone records which had nothing to do with Nicholas's uncle. I was tempted to read them, but destiny wanted that Chuck called me right in that moment. I felt guilty toward him, and the idea of someone else reading a file about me pissed me off. I took those papers and closed it into the safe, after hiding it between plenty of documents no one would have touched. I don't know why I didn't destroy them, but the few things I'd read, had worried me.
He leaned on the wall in front of her door. He was trying to understand where she could be as she wasn't in her bedroom and Humphrey had left the hotel alone.
Then, half an hour later, she appeared at the end of the alley, shaken, absent, and probably just over a cry.
Chuck didn't like being able to read through all the features of her face when they showed sufferance.
He moved from the wall, in the anxiety to know what was going on with her. Seeing her that way had made him forget what he was doing there.
The Blair he knew would have complained about the lack of respect of their pact. "What the hell are you doing here Bass? Are you crazy? What if someone sees?" she would have said, looking around nervously, after hitting him somewhere.
The Blair he was standing in front of, instead, didn't even care about his presence. She was lost in her own world and pale like a ghost.
When she got closer and recognized him in the shadow of the alley, she pretended not to be surprised by his appearance or affected by his presence.
It didn't work with him. The way she had quickly moved away her eyes from his when she had seen him, had told him that she was hiding something from him.
"What happened Blair?" he asked her in alarm, making a few steps toward her.
He could sense a moment of indecision in her.
She was deciding what to do with him, if she had to let him in or out. The intensity of her gaze on him, gave him hope, but finally she glanced down at her hands. I was enough for him to understand that what she had, was too big for him, or that maybe she should have asked for someone else's help.
Those reasons tied a knot in Chuck's throat. He would have given anything not to see her that way, not to feel out of her life.
"Blair…" he urged her because feeling out of her thoughts scared him.
He slowly got closer, taking her hand in his own, while the other one was raising up her chin so that he could be able to look into her eyes and prevent her from taking him out.
However, when her eyes laid back into his, what he found, harassed him and made her look back down.
She was so close and so vulnerable that he just wanted to hold her in his arms and whisper to her that everything was going to be fine. But something stopped him. He didn't have the courage to do it, worried by the thought that if she would have rejected him there, he'd have lost the chance to stand by her side.
So Chuck Bass stood there and waited for a sign from her.
After a long moment of silence, she lifted her heard back, but her eyes suddenly focused on a specific spot.
She raised a hand to touch the wound of his eye, only to make him scream with pain.
"I told you that you had to place the ice on it!" she scolded him, moving away from him and opening the door of her room.
Maybe if he had told to the others, it would have been easier.
The beacons of his car could barely shine the deserted street in front of him and that woman lived in an isolated area like a mafia don.
It was late, almost midnight.
He knew that showing himself at someone's door so late in the night was rude, but his instinct had been more powerful than any rational thoughts.
He had been wrong on everything he had written about and that woman was the only one who can give him the true view on every missed details of the story. She was the guardian of the higher truth, the one who could bring the whole Harvey story into a new light. She could be the best way to restore the good opinion his friends and his family had on him.
The 500 took almost 30 minutes to reach Elisabeth's House gate. He almost believed that Chuck was right: that car was too slow and not that secure.
During the night, the villa looked mysterious and cold like its owner. Dan counted to 10 before opening the door and getting out of the car. He could do it, he kept on repeating in his head. He had to return the favor to Daphne and Blair who had trusted him, in spite of everything he had done to them.
He used all his strength to ring the bell. The housekeeper appeared a few minutes later, opening the door in her dressing gown.
"What do you want?" she asked perplexed, frowning at him. He could say that she had recognized him, but that didn't mean that she was pleased by his presence.
"I need to speak with Mrs. Harvey" he composed himself.
"Mrs is sleeping" she replied back.
Dan stood motionless. It was is only chance to talk to Elisabeth Evelyn Harvey: a win or die situation.
"Ok, look...I know it's late. Generally I don't visit anyone at this hour of the night, but I seriously need to talk to her. It's urgent…" The woman didn't make a move. His words haven't impressed her, so, as Blair had taught him many times during their schemes lessons, he had to charge the deal.
"It's about her kids" He didn't lie, but the woman looked still indifferent.
"They are in danger. It's a serious thing" He unashamedly lied to her, trying to repress the image of Chuck smirking in front of him in approval. He had to stay as far as possible from him. He was seriously risking a Bass contamination.
"Who do I have to announce?" the woman finally gave up.
"Daniel Humphrey"
He was waiting for her at the door frame, a hand on his eye and the other in his pocket.
Blair had disappeared into the little bathroom of her hotel bedroom to wash one of her foulard and she had come back with a nervous path.
She was running away from something and his wound was the best excuse she could use to avoid the subject.
When she got close to her bed, she turned her gaze toward him, who hadn't moved. He was still at the door, observing her. She giggled inside, thinking that the great Chuck Bass, was now shyly waiting for a sign from her to enter in her room.
"There was a time when you didn't ask the permission even to enter in the bedroom, Bass" she reminded him.
He deeply stared at her.
She was wearing a blue silk pajama, her hairs were uncombed and finding her in a room she would have never accepted in any other circumstance made him smirk. She was tempting him. He had never been able to resist her, but what she was hiding from him, was stopping him from having dirty thoughts about her.
"I'm a changed man now…" He slowly walked to her. Was he saying that to himself or to convince her that she could talk to him?
He needed to know what was consuming her so much. He didn't want to see that expression on her face anymore.
When he was close enough that just a few inches divided them, he looked into her eyes, trying to find a way to break her wall, but waiting, waiting for her to feel the need to tell him, to trust him.
So he let her making him sit on her bed. Without feeling ashamed, she got close to place the fresh watery foulard on his eye.
Paradoxically, Chuck didn't feel anything. No complains came out of his mouth.
Maybe it was because of her body pressed against his or her Chanel nr. 5 scent that was penetrating his nostrils, intoxicating him.
"It's the fourth time" she begun, leaning closer to take a better look of his eye. She made a face, it was really bad.
"What?" he asked confused.
"That you take a punch in my defense" she explained to him.
Chuck mumbled when she placed the foulard back without paying attention on the pressure of her hand.
"Is it that bad?" she asked with a smirk, knowing that he'd read a naughty proposal in her sentence.
He stiffened, showing her that she was right on that count.
She maliciously leaned closer to his eye again and blew on it, well aware of the fact that the contact of her breath on his skin was something he would have liked.
"Well you surely know you how to hurt…" he flirted with her with a voice so deep and low to quiver inside of her and his eyes drowned into hers, while his hands were placing on her hips to take her there on him.
Blair didn't protest, but his provocative sentence, got her in a very different way.
She immediately moved her eyes away and changed her mood.
Their little game was over and Chuck freed her from his hold.
"What's going on Blair?" he asked, exasperated by her ups and down.
It was not one her games, She just kept on appearing and disappearing from him every 5 minutes.
Her eyes went back on his.
She stood there in silence, looking back at him, while he was desperately searching for the answer in her eyes. Her heart was beating faster and her hands were softly caressing his face.
How she could say it to him? Was she ready to tell him? Was he ready to understand her?
"Blair… talk to me" he begged her, exhausted by her silence and scared by the distance she kept on creating between them. He knew that she was fighting herself to decide what to do. He could see it in her anguished eyes and in the way her body was trembling against his own.
It was only in that moment, following the path of his own hand caressing Blair's arm, that he saw the mess of her clothes, thrown everywhere.
His face suddenly changed into a worried expression, something that Blair sensed. She forced him to look back at her, but he didn't need an answer anymore.
Seeing her so lost had made him forget about the little pendant he had found in the car, the same one that had brought him there, waiting for her outside of her door. He hated knowing her so well.
His jealousy for that tiny piece of jewelry and the fear of losing her, faded away the moment his eyes laid back in hers. He slowly put the hand in his pocket and took out the cherub.
"Is this what you're looking for?" he showed it to her, opening his hand.
The expression of pure joy that suddenly pictured on her face consoled him and scared him at the same time.
His first thought was that she looked like a mother who had just welcomed back her lost child.
Blair took the pendant in her hand, smiling while a tear was running down her cheek.
There was an unconditional, eternal, unreachable love in the light that was shining in her eyes, looking at the cherub.
"Blair.." Chuck placed a hand on her cheek to caress it, craving to have her attention back. He could read gratitude, relief and something that he couldn't define in the big brown eyes that were looking at him.
"Thank you" she sweetly whispered to him with a happy and carefree smile. He had many questions in his head, but her happiness was the only thing that really cared in that moment.
It was a matter of a second before Chuck's lips were on hers, kissing her tenderly.
He loved her when she had that bright smile for him.
It had been different from that afternoon. It had been different from any other times.
Chuck innocently slept on his back. With is purple eye, he looked like her "masked hero".
That though made her giggle before laying back her eyes on her pendant that she had placed on her table, right next to Chuck. She stood motionless, moving her gaze from the pendant to Chuck, and then back from Chuck to her pendant.
He had brought her back her beloved memory. He had brought her back the gift she had deprived him of, a gift he didn't know he had given to her almost a year before.
Chuck and the foreign pendant which was more connected to him than what he could expect.
Blair closed her eyes, swallowing.
She could hear him, regularly breathing in and out, like a baby.
She started to tremble. Chuck Bass and their little cherub.
She cuddled, circling her legs to her chest, and rocking on herself.
The cherub held a past that Chuck didn't know about, a past that would have made him run away from her forever.
A slight Chuck's stretching, scared her.
What she would have done if he had found her like that? What she would have said to him? Because if there was something she knew about Chuck Bass, was that he would have asked her, and if she had avoided the subject, he would have searched for the truth on his own.
She panicked and jumped out of the bed.
He would have never forgiven her. How could he? If only he had known, he would have hated her for the rest of their life, he would have repudiated her from his heart.
She felt suffocating.
She couldn't lose him again, she selfishly thought. The only idea, made her feel like dying.
She slowly walked to the side of the bed where his head laid, to stare at his sleeping face. She loved him so much… It was something she couldn't deny anymore. What she felt for him, was even stronger and deeper than before.
Telling him the truth would have meant coming back to a life without him. She would have just found him back only to lose him forever.
Maybe she could have hidden it, kept it as a secret… She could have pretended it to be another gift from her father... She could have... She couldn't…
The memory of Elisabeth came to her mind.
It had been difficult for him to manage the encounter with his mother.
He had spent an entire life hoping that she was still alive and when he had found her alive, he had wished her dead.
Elisabeth, the person he should have trusted the most, had denied him such a lumbering truth, for so long that any explanation couldn't be enough to loosen the pain for her betrayal, for her abandon.
The sense of guilt hit Blair.
How could she still look at him in the eyes after that night? Tears were running down her cheeks.
She would have looked like his mother in his eyes… He would have stared at her with the same disgusted expression. She couldn't bare it…
She quickly dressed up, took the pendant and left the room in silence.
Running away was the only option that helped her feeling safe. Running away was the best choice for both of them.
The church was bare but impressed her because it was gigantic.
It took all her strength to walk in at that hour of the night. The darken Church was lightened only by the fire of the candles.
She wasn't used to that place, but she needed to be alone and think clear.
The meeting with her mother had been more difficult than what she had imagined and had left her with nothing. Elisabeth wanted to see Chuck, but she had refused to force him against his will, so she had stood up and left her mother for the second time.
It had been odd, meeting her mother the night before the anniversary of the death of her child.
Elisabeth had taken her hands in hers and said "I know what losing a child means".
Daphne had resisted to the urge of slapping her hard: Elisabeth had chosen to lose what she had, her own child's heart instead had stopped beating, before his tiny eyes could even see the light.
When she was back, she had looked for Nicholas and she had found him at the bar, drunk and surrounded by naked girls.
He would have never changed, she had always known it, but for the very first time, that view of him didn't shock her.
She was tired, so tired that she had stopped feeling anything for him. She wasn't jealous as well as she didn't feel cheated anymore by his behaviors.
She had learned how to stand on her own feet and how to fight every single day for her own self. And that new sensation told her, that deep inside of her, she would have bared his loss and moved on for real that time.
She slowly walked through the central ally of the Church. After a few more steps a sight of a familiar profile, seated and bent on a bench, came to her view.
Daphne quickened her path because she wasn't sure, but in the silence of the building, she thought she had heard a cry.
She made baby steps, slowly showing herself to Blair at the pale light of the candles, not to scare her.
Blair didn't react. She just allowed Daphne to take the seat next to her and waited for her to say anything, but Daphne kept quiet, looking straight in front of her.
Why was his sister going into an empty church in the middle of the night?
He was looking for Blair who had disappeared, only to see Daphne heading into that building.
Was she still shocked about Elisabeth? Or was she in pain at the dawn of the anniversary day of the death of her child?
Chuck followed her without hesitations.
"Why are you here?" Blair asked, realizing from Daphne's pale expression that she was as surprised as her by her presence in that place.
"It's 4 years today" Daphne confessed in that gravestone silence and staring at the cross on the altar in front of them.
Blair didn't reply, but closed her eyes. Chuck had told her that it was the anniversary of her baby's death. She cursed herself for asking it.
When Blair opened her eyes, she turned to stare at Daphne's featuring.
"I've never seen my baby, I've never held him in my arms. Did you know it?"
Blair nodded. She could imagine Daphne's pain, more than she could have ever desired.
"What happened after? I mean, after that.." she tried to ask her but her voice broke on the last words.
"I locked myself in my room for a month... I stood in bed alone and in the dark, like in this church..." While Daphne was remembering her past, a lonely tear had run down Blair's eye. She quickly rubbed it away.
"I didn't care about dying... I didn't care about anything anymore..." Daphne's face was relaxed.
Even if she was telling her such terrible things, the way she was taking about her mourning was peaceful, as she had built a religious place in her heart to live with that sorrow. Maybe she had just suffered so much to get used to it.
"The thing is, that Sometimes I feel dead this way" Daphne explained. "Living without my baby was enough moving, but hiding his own existence every single day of my life had slowly killed me"
Blair instinctively cuddled on herself. She knew that sensation pretty well.
"Waking up every day, moment of my life, as if she had never grown inside of me… I won't forgive myself for doing it…" It was only in that moment that Daphne laid her eyes on Blair who was forcing herself to breath in and out.
"What are you doing here Blair?" The fact that she was there, the way she was acting… Daphne got worried. One thing was clear: Blair had something which was due to other reasons.
Blair didn't speak and didn't move. She was too concentrated to control all the emotions which were crushing her.
Daphne took her hand maternally.
"These last few weeks must have been quite heavy for you... my grandmother, Chuck, my mother, all the articles about you,... my past..." Daphne tried to help her, trying to reason Blair's state in the easy way.
Blair still didn't reply, standing motionless like a statue, so Daphne decided not to insist anymore.
"She was a baby girl" Daphne smiled a little, coming back to her memories.
In her own world Blair was wondering how many times, Daphne had dreamed about her daughter, or imagined to spend her time with her. That thought made her sob.
"I never wanted to know her sex because I wanted it to be a surprise... Children are gift, right? Maybe at the beginning you don't expect them, but when you know that they are inside of you, you can't stop but love them with every fiber of your being".
Everything that Blair was uselessly trying to control, busted out like a river full of water. She tightened Daphne's hand so much to hurt her, while she was bending on herself, unable to suffocate her sobbing anymore.
"Blair.." Daphne's attention was back on her. Staring at her hand and feeling the way she was holding on to her hand, made her realize that whatever Blair was hiding, was destroying her from the inside.
"I didn't wanted to.." it was the only thing that Daphne could hear before turning completely toward Blair.
She was cuddled on herself, while rocking and liberating a cry. "I love him..." Blair looked in trance, with her cheeks watered by a river of tears.
"Blair?" Daphne leaned the other hand on Blair's shoulder to shake her, but she didn't react.
She simply kept on sobbing and mumbling disconnected things.
"I didn't know it..." Blair shook her head,.
"Blair…" Daphne got closer to take Blair's face in her hands and force her to look at her.
Blair sensed her presence and stared at her for a while. Her lips were trembling and her eyes were wide opened into hers even if the tears were keeping on pouring out down her doll face.
"I didn't know it was inside me... I didn't know it…" Blair shook her head almost to show to Daphne that she was telling the truth. The pain was too much that she closed her eyes, pushing Daphne to caress her cheeks and her hairs to calm her down, like a mother with her crying little child.
"Chuck won't ever forgive me.." Blair repeated twice, glancing down at their hands as she couldn't sustain Daphne's gaze.
Daphne had a terrible feeling.
She removed her hands from Blair's. Instinctively she thought back at the medical report she had accidentally found in her hands a few weeks before. They were inside of the envelope Nicholas had given her, to help Blair against his uncle.
Her sixth sense was telling her that the two things were connected.
"Why Chuck wouldn't forgive you?" she asked her without judgmental tones. She needed to know. "Blair..." she insisted, showing her that she could trust her.
"…He would forgive you anything, we both know it" Daphne was sure about it.
Chuck could be mad at her, do crazy things to show her how much he was mad at her, but in the end he would always come back to her, loving every part of her.
Blair shook her head in disagreement. Daphne felt a shiver down her spine. It was really as bad as she thought.
"Why not?" she asked to Blair in a whisper.
"Because I killed his child" Blair confessed divested.
Daphne felt it.
His brother had a son. His son was dead like her own daughter.
The way Blair was living her sorrow made Daphne's heard ache.
It was as she had never survived it, if she had never face it or share it with someone, as she had never talked about it, neither with her own self.
The thought that Blair could have hidden that excoriating pain and lived with it just in her own heart, lacerated Daphne.
She threw her arms around Blair and held her close, to let her know that she was there.
"It's ok" Daphne softly whispered to her, while she was continuously trembling and sobbing.
"I killed my baby" Blair cried out in a desperate lament.
Daphne took her face in her hands again, she cleaned her cheeks and removed her watery hairs form her face.
"Blair, listen to me..." she wanted that Blair heard it clear.
"Whatever happened, I'm sure, it was not your fault. It was not your fault, Blair"
At those words Blair fell into her embrace back, letting Daphne cuddled her like a child.
He was slowly falling to the floor, slipping down the pillar.
He had to impulsively ripped out the closest buttons of his shirt to his neck, to be able to breath, while his hands were uncontrollably trembling.
"I killed his child"
4 words that were running and twisting, reproducing over and over in his head.
If he had tried to say something, nothing would have come out of his mouth.
He couldn't move.
He couldn't hear anything but that 4 words that echoed in the absolute silence of his heart.
"I killed his child"
They had stuffed me with downers to help me sleeping. I woke up 6 hours later. Even though, the medicines hadn't slowed down my head. I could still remember the doctor's expression when I had given birth to my child: the baby wasn't good.
My grandma took my hand and glanced down, trying to find a better way to tell me that my baby was gone, as a more polite sentence could have changed my agonizing pain.
When a child dies, a part of us dies too and there's no consolation able to fulfill that sense of emptiness. Never.
I sensed it, before she could say a word. A mother knows things first. I had understood it, waking up and feeling something missing.
I wanted to see my baby but they prevented me. It was better not, they told me. I didn't care what they were saying to me.
I ripped out the drip feeds, I hardly stood up, ignoring all the pains in my body and I walked out of my room looking for my baby. I wanted to see him, I wanted him to open her eyes and stay with me. I demanded it.
They blocked me and sedated me. While the medicine was forcing my eyes to close, I prayed it was just a dream. I prayed that I'd wake up later to lull my sweet child.
I just had to waken up later, to realize that something was still missing.