AN: I just reread Yesterday's Roses. Makes me remember just how much I adore British history.

Oh, and I want to say – I really love historical fics.

Part 21

Blair huddled under the thick blankets that Dan had collected from the household. He had thrown the blankets over her shivering form, and wisely rubbed warmth into her hands as her teeth chattered.

"Speak to me, Blair," he urged.

But she stared at a point in the distance and rocked herself instead. She shook her head, and her tears continued to flow.

Daniel was concerned for her, for the child. Her hands were ice cold. He had seen it before, in the early legs of the rebellion. Boys of fifteen were asked to take up arms for the first time. There was one boy in particular, who shot dead a Redcoat at the bridge when gunfire erupted, who saw the vacant eyes of the British corpse. He had been insensible for hours, and almost slipped into a place where there was no coming back.

"It is over," he said. She closed her eyes, and still cried. "You are safe. You are in Carter's house." Her house now, but there was no need for a reminder of another death.

She made noises in her throat, and would not open her eyes. He had been with Georgina for weeks, and during that time she had spent her time with the earl. Just as Georgina had informed him, belatedly so. Chuck sailed to America to take Carter to his father, and since then Blair had depended on no one but Bartholomew Bass.

Who most assuredly was dead.

"The earl wanted you safe, Blair. I do not doubt it. He wanted you and his grandchild to be safe." He sighed. "And you are. Take comfort."

"Carter," she whispered.

He had opened the topic when he mentioned the house, so he nodded. "Carter as well. We wanted you to be happy so we took you here. And Carter made certain you are safe from the threats."

"He's dead," she said. "And Lord Bass. Dead."

Dan sighed. He moved to take her in his arms.

She pushed him away and yelled, "Do not touch me. Do not come close to me." She looked at him with terror in his eyes. "You will die!"

"Blair, stay calm." He moved to hold her, to comfort her, but she raced away from him and stopped by the stairs. Dan's heart caught in his throat. "I am not going to die, Blair. I am here to stay." He raised his hands. "Please step away from there."

She shook her head and sobbed. "Everyone is dying. Everyone is being killed. Everyone."

"Chuck is alive," he said slowly.

She gasped for breath. "If he were, he would have been back. Where is he, Daniel? It has been two months. He should have come for me a fortnight past."

He took a careful step towards her. She flinched, as if she suspected that the closer he came to her the sooner he would die. "Has it been two months?" he said softly, needing to calm her from the shock. "I did not notice it. But you are right. It seems like two months. Your child is growing large."

At the reminder, she glanced down at her swollen belly. She placed her hand over it.

"In but a while you will give birth to your child. Come, Blair. I wish to see if the fire harmed you."

He released a sigh of relief when she took the first step towards him. Daniel grasped her hand and pulled her away from the steps. "I should not have left," he said quietly, keeping her mind away from the terrible things that happened. "It seems I am a man, easily led by temptation."

The plan, of course, had been Carter Baizen's. Who else but Carter Baizen could think of a plan so harebrained as one that required Daniel Humphrey to seduce Chuck Bass' bride?

"Who else but I could so completely, epically fail a simple plan and fall in love for real?" he muttered.

"Did you truly love her?" she asked softly.

"As selfish as she was, I can say that I truly did, Blair."

She bit her lip. "Then you should place her above me. Daniel, best friends come first only until we fall in love." Her words hurt a little, but he had taken her mind off the death of Bartholomew and the terror of the burning mansion. "Out there in Victrola, I agreed to go to England with Chuck. I was completely prepared to abandon you." She smiled. "Indeed, I did not spare you a thought, Daniel."

He had been running around with Nathaniel Archibald then, in pursuit of the two men who would eventually teach him the most important lessons of all. From Carter he would learn what it meant to love a father. From Chuck he would find out that true love went above country, your family, yourself.

But Daniel would prefer to believe that he himself had a virtue that others would learn from, and that was that friendship came first of all. "I will not go back to Georgina until I know you are safe."

"There is no safety here!" she said quietly. "They have killed Carter, and now they have killed the earl." Both events Daniel had missed. "I fear for my son's life here." With a trembling hand, she unclasped the bracelet on her wrist, then held it up to Daniel. "I must secure passage to America."

He shook his head. "No. It is almost time. No ship will allow you aboard. Especially not these days."

"These are diamonds," she stated. "There will be a ship captain who will give me passage in exchange for this." Dan stubbornly set his jaw. "If you will not help me, Daniel, I will secure my trip myself."

But Daniel had left Georgina and her bed, for his friend. He had been happy with Georgina. At the very least he expected some gratitude. Irrational, he thought. No one asked him to abandon Lady Georgina. It was his own conscience he battled then.

"What do you expect to do, Blair? Will you scour the country in search for one man?"

"Yes!"

He hissed. "Do you even know if he is in Boston? New York? Virginia?"

"There are only two reasons that Chuck has not come home to me," Blair answered. "He is held against his will, and that will only be done in New York."

"And the other reason?" Daniel pressed.

"I dare not say it," she told him softly.

~o~o~o~o~

Serena had been missing her. Awfully so. When she had learned of Blair's wedding to Carter Baizen, Serena had raced to the docks only to find that she had already sailed away. Serena had lost her best friend, and she mourned it.

Everyone said she was beautiful. When she married Jack Bass, all her friends thought she was the most fortunate person in the world. She was set for life, and Jack seemed unwilling to go back to England.

He entered the room, and Serena looked up. "I'm having a baby," she declared.

Jack's eyebrows shot up in surprise. His voice was tentative when he said, "You do not seem happy."

So Serena turned back to the mirror and stared at herself, then tied her gold hair up in a bun. "I always dreamed that I'd raise my children together with Blair, you know." She smiled sadly. "That she would have her babies and we would be neighbors. And now it's coming to me. I've lost my best friend."

And she was going to have a baby with a man she did not love as much as she did the one that she drove away.

"The night I met Blair Waldorf, and she confided in me her mother's scheme for her to marry me, I asked her if that was what she wanted. Do you know what she said?"

"Blair wanted to make her mother happy above all else," Serena answered her husband. "She said yes."

Jack nodded, but corrected her, "There are worse fates than to be married to you."

"What?"

"That is what she told me. There are worse fates. Yet here you are, married to me, untouched by this war almost. I have given you a child. And yet you seem to be the most miserable woman in the world." Jack frowned. "Almost like this is the worst fate a woman can have."

"We're different—Blair and I," Serena stated. "She wanted her mother happy. I married you because my family abhorred the man I loved. Now… I want to be happy, Jack."

"Everyone wants to be happy," Jack said. "Even Blair."

Even Blair.

And through the friendship that she formed with Nathaniel Archibald in that long ago morning when Blair abandoned both of them, she learned about the capture. Finally, it was her chance to find her friend. One night she asked Nathaniel to take her to Chuck Bass' prison cell. The man looked grim as he sat in the corner of the cell.

"My name is Serena van der Woodsen," she said in a thin voice.

"Bass," Chuck said quietly.

"Right. Right." She hesitated. "Serena van der Woodsen Bass. I'm your uncle's wife."

"Well hello, auntie," the lord replied. "I remember you. Anything I can help you with? Or have you come to help release your new nephew from prison?"

She gripped the bar on the cell, and asked, "Where is she, Lord Bass?"

Chuck turned his head and assessed her, then moved his gaze to Nate as he stood behind Serena. "Forgive me, auntie," Chuck snarled, "if I do not trust any of you with that answer."

"Please. She is my best friend," Serena said. "I need to know that she is safe and unharmed."

"She's safe," Chuck said.

"Is she in England?" Nate demanded. "In London?"

Chuck ignored Nate. To Serena, he said, "She is safer where she is now than here where your companion would most assuredly throw her in jail for not marrying him."

"She committed treason during a time of war!" Nate exclaimed. "Do not dare make light of the charges, or accuse me of having acted unfairly. I did my duty."

And Chuck calmly said to Serena, "You will not learn of her location from me."

So Serena returned home with no address, but her heart was light. Her best friend was alive. One of these days she would go to England with her husband and she would find Blair.

When she looked at herself in the mirror, Serena could not comprehend what all the others saw. Her hair glowed under the moonlight. Certainly. Her hair was the color of wheat, and it would naturally shine like so.

Her husband strode into the room and removed his smoking jacket. He placed it on top of her dresser, over her brushes and powder. She pursed her lips. She saw the folded parchment sticking from the pocket. There was a wax seal on it, one she did not recognize.

"You have a letter from England," she said.

Jack continued getting ready for bed. "Aye. It's from my family solicitor."

Serena straightened in her seat. It had been months since Chuck Bass had been captured. In that period the young lord has battled his way to the colonial court to insist that he was innocent. Any other man and Chuck Bass would have long swung from the rafter after a decision of guilty. In fact, a young woman who had been charged with conspiracy for colluding with Lord Bass—who was arrested for treason for helping him in a plot against Nathaniel Archibald—had been judged guilty as was executed a week after her arrest.

She had been unable to speak to Nathaniel the entire week following the execution. When she asked Nathaniel about the woman—Vanessa Abrams, Nathaniel said her name had been—he had only just said that it was justice.

Yet Chuck Bass had sparked another outrageous impasse between the colonials in New York and those in Boston.

She had learned it from Nate, and so she shared, "Abram Baizen had sent his own men to defend Chuck Bass at trial."

"This is why this war is impossible to win," Jack had commented once at the breakfast table. "Too many factions, too many divisions."

"Would you rather your nephew be found guilty?"

"Guilty or innocent. Just make the judgment quicker," Jack expressed. "In any way, if they find him guilty, there is no way Chuck would be executed. The quicker then that England would demand for his return."

They could not now ask for Jack to help free him. They had a tenuous stature in their community now, with everyone suspect of Jack. He had not actively participated in any activity of the war, and the dozens of skirmishes that erupted in the different cities.

There was no place for it, no time. They were only just building their livelihood.

"What do they want?"

Jack sat down and informed his wife, "I am to return to England."

"For what reason?"

"Bartholomew has died and Chuck is missing. I have been invited to take the title and the estates."

Serena's eyes narrowed. "Chuck Bass is alive and in prison," she reminded her husband. "Do you mean you have not informed any of your solicitors?"

"Serena, I have waited long for this. I have given up on it." He licked his lips. "This is my chance."

When he had fallen asleep, she took the letter from his jacket and read through the plea. She needed to go to England, needed to find Blair. But the content of the letter was horrendous at best. She folded the letter and slipped it into her pocket.

The prison was dark when she arrived. She nodded at the guard who allowed her through. Serena placed a lamp atop the table and proceeded to the cell.

"Lord Bass," she whispered.

From the mat on the floor, Chuck opened his eyes and looked at her. Serena knelt on the ground and extended the letter to him. Chuck did not move to take it. Serena said, "I sincerely pray that you have not left Blair in the care of your father."

At that, Chuck stumbled to the bars and grabbed the letter from Serena's hand. He read through the message quickly, then his horrified gaze met hers.

"There were seven bodies retrieved from the house," Serena said quietly. "None of them were recognizable. Please, Lord Bass, tell me you did not leave my best friend in your father's house."

The letter floated on air for a moment, swung right to left and fluttered at the corners and it drifted down to the ground. Her heart sank the way the paper did.

Chuck Bass stepped backwards, then sat quietly on the wooden chair in his cell.

"Lord Bass," Serena repeated.

With no response, Serena made her way out of the prison. She had been a few yards away by the time he heard the deep howling scream. Her arms prickled. She quickened her pace as she made her way back home. She sat by the bed and looked down at her husband.

Jack opened his eyes and met her eyes. He took her hand. "What is it, Serena?"

"I had a thought—" Serena said in a hoarse voice. She crawled into bed beside him, then pillowed her head on his arm. "There are far worse fates than what we have."

"Taking a lesson from Blair Waldorf, I see," Jack commented.

Serena closed her eyes and burrowed in his arms. It was no heaven, she thought. In her childhood dreams, heaven was in the arms of Daniel Humphrey. But life happened and he was completely unsuitable. But Jack was here, and he was all that Cece Rhodes had wished for her.

This was no heaven.

But Blair had journeyed far to find her own piece of heaven, to end in this nothingness.

The next day she learned from Nathaniel that Chuck Bass had decided to send Abram's lawyers back to Boston and to face the court with a plea of guilty.

Yes, she would take a lesson from Blair Waldorf. This marriage was no heaven. But, Serena decided, there were far worse fates than this.

tbc

Almost all the character goals have been achieved. And so, we are almost done.