A/N: For those of you who are begging and pleading for the angst to end... I'm sorry? We've wandered as far into the desert of angst as is possible, so we gotta work on making our way back. It won't take forty years, but it will be quite a journey. Big thanks to all of you who took the time to review! Hugs for you all!

SPECIAL THANKS to my beta... you know who you are girl. -kiss-

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Gossip Girl's Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf, I just want to prove they can stand by each other through anything.


Chapter 28

"Fall on Your Knees"


It had been hours since Chuck had caused her to lose her temper, moments since her plan had backfired and seconds since Blair had given up the fight for her father.

The mess she had made of her campaign to win Daddy back had Blair storming upstairs to her bedroom. Her failure, when compounded with the imperfection of her life lately, only gave the tears she was constantly holding back the tiny extra shove they needed to fall. Crying as she crossed the threshold, she fell to her knees beside the bed.

No matter what Blair did lately, she felt defective.

She had invited Freddy, the inappropriately scandalous model to whom Roman was formally attached. There was a quick argument until Eleanor, of all people figured, out what had happened. Everything fell apart at that moment and she saw something that had previously seemed impossible:

Her father's disappointed face.

Whether it was her broken relationship with Chuck, her possible condition, or her failure to secure her father's love, she was feeling entire too fragile. The only time in recent memory that she'd even felt like herself was when she was threatening Cabbage Patch's entirely too friendly best friend. And the Boho Barista hadn't even looked properly frightened.

Just when it seemed that Blair's life couldn't fall apart anymore thoroughly, her father figured out she was using underhanded means to split him from his lover. Now she had no one she could confide in; she'd driven away both of the people she longed to share her secret with and Serena, her third choice in this case, was too busy giving Humphrey's evening a 'Happy Ending'.

At least the tears had stopped, subsiding and taking with them the heavy feeling of hurt in her chest. The numbness spread through her the more she thought about her hopeless situation and came to terms with it.

She was lying on her bed, reveling in the first absence of any type of pain she'd experienced since Chuck and Blair met their ending, when her father's soft voice said her name.

The bed beside her sunk slightly under his weight and she felt his hand on her shoulder.

He sighed before speaking. "Please, forgive me, dear. I should have told you I was bringing Roman. I knew that having him here would be hard on you, but I was hoping that if we were all were thrown together something perfect would happen."

Blair sat up slowly, her father's arm shifting to wrap around her back, and she schooled her face into a mask of disappointment before speaking. "I was going to convince you to move back to New York temporarily, but there's no room in your life for me anymore." She sighed, "At least not the amount there was before." She was trying to explain her actions without spilling every detail. There wasn't anyway to know his reaction to the truth now that she'd upset him. She couldn't risk pushing him even further away than he was now.

He was studying her face closely as she spoke and he must have seen through her attempt to hide that the problem ran deeper. "I know that you try hard to act grown up, and you fooled me for awhile, but you're still my little girl and right now you need your father." He spoke firmly, but kindly as he held her chin to make her meet his eyes. "Tell me, what has you resorting to trickery in order to have me close? You said that you would tell me after the party, so there's something other than my home country that has you so upset. Tell me what's wrong, darling. Does this have something to do with your break-up with Nate?"

She sat for a moment and breathed deeply as she fought through her mind's wish to keep things hidden from him and her heart's inclination to tell him every sordid detail. Her father had always been someone whom she knew wouldn't judge her and right now that would come in handy, but she wasn't going to start the story with the most difficult truth. Deciding to ease into her impending change, she started with the beginning.

"Nate was selfish and brooding," she responded to the use of her blond ex-boyfriend's name. "The further I get from the break-up, the more I see him clearly, but I can admit that his inability to love me broke my heart." She sighed, "After everything that's happened since, I'm not the little girl that loved him anymore."

"And why's that?" Her father was listening intently and patted her arm when he thought she needed encouragement to continue.

"Because I went straight from breaking-up with Nate to falling for the last person I thought possible," she explained with a pang of hurt in her chest. "He was the opposite of the guy I grew up knowing I would love. Somehow I'd stepped into the trap that every other woman does: she wants Romeo, not Hamlet. She wants the love of someone who makes her the center of his world, even if the end isn't pretty. I was happier in those six weeks than I'd been in six years with Nate." A sardonic smile lifted her lips slightly, "Of course, that led to my first real heartbreak and made me realize I'd never truly loved Nate."

"What happened?" he asked gently, removing his arm from her back so that he could face her completely.

"My revelations were too late," she answered him, deflated. "I lost him because I couldn't see what he meant to me. I sabotaged myself..." she dropped off, steeling herself for what she'd be revealing, "I'm paying the price now. He's fled the country because I hurt him and my punishment is dealing with the consequences alone."

He was holding her hand now, hanging onto every word of her story, but she couldn't look at his face as she whispered, "I'm almost sure that I'm pregnant, Daddy."

She hated the crack in her voice when she said the word, the same word she'd been trying her best not to say to herself for the past week. Hearing it aloud was making it all too real. Blair felt his hand tighten around hers in reaction, but he'd kept silent, most likely stemming his first response to protect her.

Thick tension echoed through the air like electricity and a tear dropped down Blair's cheek when she pleaded, "Please say something."

The weight of his eyes fell on her as a few more tears joined the first escapee and then she was in his arms. He was holding her tightly and she began to sob when he spoke her childhood nickname.

She cried in her father's embrace and knew the numbness she'd felt earlier was a fluke. The exhaustion of pretending had her body weeping, her heart was still bleeding and broken, but her pride had been holding her together. Showing the world a brave face had taken so much energy because she was bearing a huge burden alone. Now that someone else knew her painful secret it was clear that she had been lying to herself.

Now that it was shared, she could begin to accept her condition was possible.

Her life would never be the same again.

"What will you do?" her father asked against her shoulder.

She shivered, the shock of how much lay ahead of her still sinking in. "I don't know, Daddy." And she really didn't know what the next step was. Should she take a test when she was so certain? Was there a part of her that wanted this baby? Could she take the steps to end the pregnancy if she didn't?

Would Chuck take her back if he found out or would he run?

Harold cleared his throat and loosened his hold on her so that he could see her face. "If you find that you'll need a place to stay for the summer, you always have a place with me."

"Thank you," she sighed heavily, "I may take you up on that if you promise not to tell mom the reason for my trip."

He smirked, "I think that would be wise." He knew her mother and Blair hadn't a doubt he would agree to the secrecy. "I still have one question before I leave, though."

Closing her eyes, Blair's stomach churned knowingly and she placed her hand over it. Her father's eyes followed the movement, but met hers when she asked, "What is it?" She knew full well, but she wasn't going to volunteer the information.

"Who is responsible?"

The soft question reverberated around in Blair's head. "He was Nate's best friend and my partner in crime," she smiled sadly. "When Nate and I broke up, he comforted me. Sometime after that he fell in love with me and I was blind to my own feelings. When I lost him I figured out I felt the same."

Somehow, she couldn't bring herself to say his name. Maybe she was being mushy because of the hormones, but telling someone how she felt about the evolution of their relationship helped calm her nerves about everything she'd divulged tonight. Someone should know she loved him besides herself.

"So you're saying," her father deducted carefully, "That I may share a grandchild with Bart Bass?"

Chuck had said that her father didn't trust him around his daughter. Now she knew her time off the beaten society path wasn't a surprise to everyone.

There really wasn't anything else to say but "Yes, daddy," so that would have to do.

If he had any misgivings about Chuck's reputation, he kept them to himself. It would have been hard to explain to her father why Chuck was so different without going into details that her father didn't really need to know. There were some things about the way they were that she wanted to keep all to herself.

There seemed to be something about the conversation that signaled it was over, so her father presented her with a computer disc. Happy to have something else to think about, Blair took it from him and popped it into her computer only to find out it was a digital tour of her father's home.

Complete with a room for her.


The next morning was Christmas and her present was having her father there. She should send a thank you note to the airport for grounding his flight.

In the midst of opening gifts and enjoying the holiday merriment her father's eyes were on her, observing her. He was going to want regular updates on her condition now that he knew about it and Blair would provide them. She was relaxing a bit in the sharing of her secret and she owed her father for being that person she could trust.

She sent 'Merry Christmas' text messages to all her friends and when the cursor rolled over Nate's name, it barely registered that he hadn't shown up the night before. He hadn't called and she was proud of herself for not dwelling on it; she was truly over him.

She hesitated over Chuck's name in her phone's address book then decided not to risk the scathing reply. He could no longer be counted among her friends, but it smarted to leave his name off of the list. There was so much pain involved with any thoughts of him now and it was hard to imagine that things would never be the same again.

While she was looking at the screen on her phone, it signaled an incoming text and all the text contained was a picture. It was Nate and Chuck on the beach in Monaco, with Nate smiling at something off the screen and Chuck giving her a mischievous smirk.

She'd obviously been unsuccessful in convincing him that Nate was the last person on her mind.

By luring Nate away on Christmas Eve, Chuck had declared war. This text was her warning to surrender...

But he knew Blair would never go quietly.


A/N: There's Chuck in here! He's in the picture! -feels guilty- Okay, okay... Roman Holiday is complete so maybe Chuck will be home next chapter. Tune in to find out. :)