A/N: See Chapter 1 for Disclaimer. I also want to apologize for not warning you all in advance like I should have. As I bring One Little Girl to a close, a major character death WILL occur. The final chapters of One Little Girl will be terribly intense and dramatic, and it is possible that they could be triggering for people who have been abused, so please read responsibly.
I also want to let you all know that while this story is based mostly on the FOL cannon, it is not completely based on cannon. Obviously, for those of you who have read One Little Girl this far, you know how both of Blair's DNA donors have horrifically abused her through her childhood. It is for that reason that I feel that the scenes between Blair and Monica Warner in the episode A Friend in Deed are inappropriate for this story, so as far as the story is concerned, I'm basically asking you all to pretend that that one episode never occurred. Thank you for stopping by and God bless.
Chapter Summary: After waiting for the opportunity for years, Blair finally gets the chance to make her move against her DNA donors.
Chapter 13: Endgame
The rest of the school year practically flew by at the speed of light, and it certainly hadn't been fun and games for Blair. She accomplished a great deal that year, though, having rescued several more children from the child trafficking industry, including a young friend of Tootie's named Kristy. While the older girls were planning to go to Manhattan together to watch a Broadway play one Saturday, Tootie's parents did not give her permission to go into the city with the girls, and out of anger, she decided to sneak away from Eastland and meet the girls at the theatre. In the midst of all this, Tootie met and befriended a young girl named Kristy, who was actually a prostitute. After Mrs. Garrett and the girls had tracked Tootie down in Manhattan and they'd all returned to Eastland safely, Tootie ended up pouring her heart out to Mrs. G. and the girls about her experience with Kristy. Very soon after that, Blair met up with Kristy's pimp, Mike, and successfully convinced him to allow her to buy the freedom of several of his prostitutes, including Kristy. Blair then got in contact with her parents in Akron, and she also bought Kristy a bus ticket home, and the next day, Kristy was reunited with her family.
Blair, too, had a family reunion of her own when she and everyone else all returned to Eastland at the beginning of the fall semester in September of 1982. On the one hand, she was thrilled to be back together with the only people who'd ever truly felt like a family to her. But even though she was so happy to be back with her Eastland family, she also had an incredibly heavy weight on her shoulders, and she was very subdued because of it. Unfortunately, no matter how badly Mrs. Garrett and Natalie and Tootie tried to get her to open up about what was bothering her, their efforts throughout the fall semester were in vain. When in private, Jo also tried to get Blair to tell her what was wrong. Blair did admit that she had not been herself lately, and she explained to Jo that she now had a terribly risky mission to complete as soon as she turned eighteen in January, but that was all Jo could get out of her. Blair utterly refused to get into specifics about it.
Blair remained fairly solemn in the weeks and months leading up to her eighteenth birthday, and when her birthday came and went, it was only then that Blair finally explained the entire situation to Jo. In what was to be her very last mission, a mission Blair had named Operation Omega, she would be taking a very grave risk with her life. In fact, the chances of her surviving the mission were so miniscule that Blair basically considered Operation Omega to be a suicide mission. She was not expecting to come out of this alive.
As soon as Blair explained Operation Omega to Jo in detail, she was both devastated and terrified. However, no matter how much Jo loved Blair, she did not try to talk her out of doing the mission, because Jo knew in her heart of hearts that Blair was right. If Blair did not go through with Omega, many children would continue to suffer all kinds of abuse in Hell City, and many would continue to die there. As indescribably heartbreaking as it was, Jo knew it had to be done. The Warners had to be exposed and brought down once and for all. Their reign of terror in so many little children's lives had to be put to an end, and it did seem that Blair's plan was the best way to accomplish that.
The day after Blair explained Omega to Jo, understandably, she just couldn't take being at Eastland any longer. She knew that with her mission only two days away, she would never be able to keep herself from breaking down in front of Mrs. Garrett and the girls, so she and Jo sneaked away from Eastland and went to one of her father's mansions in Manhattan. (Both David and Monica Warner owned many different houses all over the world.)
David Warner's mansion was very modern in design, but its white walls and black marble floors and gray furniture made it seem cold and sterile. Blair now stood before one of many floor-length windows, just gazing out at the evergreen trees and the winter sky. Jo, who was sitting on the grey couch in the middle of the living room, looked over at Blair then and asked, "Are you okay?"
Blair looked at Jo with a sad smile and replied, "How okay would you be if you were in my shoes right now?"
In that moment, Jo got up from the couch, walked up to Blair, and said, "You know you don't have to go through with this."
"I do have to go through with this, meimei, and we both know it. So many children have already died because of my DNA donors. And if I don't go through with this, if I don't put a stop this now, Lord only knows how many more children will suffer and die in Hell City. This has been going on for way, way too long now. No matter what happens to me, Jo, this must end."
"Are you planning on telling Mrs. G. everything before…?" Jo asked, allowing the sentence to trail.
"While it would be very comforting to have Mrs. Garrett here with me now, bringing her into this would probably be the worst thing I could do. I'm terrified of what I'm about to face, and if Mrs. Garrett were here, she'd probably try her hardest to talk me out of it. And with me being this scared, she probably would succeed. That's not a risk I can afford."
"I understand. You know, Blair, the way you've gotten everything planned out for this, all the years it took you to move the final chess pieces into place…it's just extraordinary. You are extraordinary. You've taken care of everybody. You've got a whole team of bodyguards at Eastland, working as janitors in disguise, so that if the Warners somehow did escape all this and became a threat to Mrs. Garrett and the girls, they would be protected. You've even got guards in disguise near the Greens and the Ramseys and my folks. And you know that when Warner Textile Mills goes under, there'll be thousands of employees who will be out of a job, and you've even set aside money to take care of them. You're incredible, Blair. You really are. You've thought of everybody and everything."
"Well I try. I learned long ago that when it comes to my DNA donors, you can never, ever be too careful. And what you said just now about moving the final chess pieces into place is definitely true. This is it, Jo. This is really it. We're in the endgame now. I always knew this day would come, but even so, I'm actually in a kind of shock that it's finally here. I can't believe it. You know, Jo, these next few days are going to be the most important days of my entire life. I almost feel as though I've been in training for this every day of my life. And even though I've never been this scared before, I know that Jesus will walk through the valley of the shadow of death with me. I know He won't abandon me, especially not now."
"Blair…I could do this with you, you know. If you want me to, I'll go with you. Just say the word."
Blair shook her head and responded, "We've already been through this, Jo. I appreciate it so much that you'd even consider walking this road with me. But you can't walk this road with me. There are some paths a person has to walk by herself. And besides, the last place I need you to be is with me, getting yourself killed in Hell City. When all of this goes down, I'm going to need you here. I'll need you to take my place in caring for all the trafficked kids at Eastland and Bates, and I'll especially need you here to help Mrs. Garrett and the girls get through this. When I'm gone, everybody's going to look to you, Jo."
"I'll do the best I can, jiejie, but no one can ever take your place. Ever."
It was then that tears came to their eyes, and the two sisters just held on to each other as tightly as possible for as long as they could.
Two days later, a small television station called WJM in Minneapolis unleased many bombshells of white collar crimes committed by David Warner, Jr. on The Six O'clock News, courtesy of Lou Grant. Such a story might have gone unnoticed by all other news outlets in the country had it not been about the Warners. However, it was precisely because it was about a family as wealthy and prestigious as the Warners that many other news outlets throughout the United States quickly picked up the story. Surprisingly, nothing was released about the Warners' involvement with child trafficking. It was only about David Warner's white collar crimes, and to the naked eye, it did not appear that anything about his and his ex-wife's involvement in Hell City would be revealed.
However, beneath the surface, this was actually a very strategic move on Blair's part. There were certain illegal investments David Warner had made that he knew he had only told Blair about and no one else. There were a number of other white collar crimes he'd committed as well that, once again, only Blair could possibly know about. When WJM first ran that story and it spread all over the country, David Warner knew that Blair was the only person who could possibly have leaked all that to the press, and he knew exactly what that meant: Blair had turned on him and had made her first move against him, and it would only be a matter of time before she exposed his and his ex-wife's deeper crimes against humanity. The instant Lou Grant exposed David Warner's white collar crimes on WJM, the die was cast, and events were now set into motion that could not be altered or stopped.
The evening after the story hit the national news, David and Monica Warner finally found Blair in David's Manhattan mansion after a long search. They were so furious that they didn't even turn the doorknob to open the front door. They just banged it with their fists and kicked it in. Blair and Jo had been sitting on the living room couch when they burst inside, but while David and Monica were practically foaming at the mouth, Blair appeared to be perfectly calm and perfectly in control of her emotions as she and Jo stood up and faced them.
"Hello, David, Monica. I've been expecting you," Blair told them, perfectly calm and composed.
It was in that moment that Blair's "father" punched her in the face and knocked her out cold.
When Blair regained consciousness about an hour later, she woke up right where she expected to be – in her DNA donors' living quarters in Hell City. The moment she looked up at her "father," he didn't say a word; he just dropped his pants and his underwear, climbed on top of Blair, and began raping her, all the while, her "mother" was yelling in the background, actually cheering him on. Then, several moments after climax, he punched her in the face once again as hard as he could, with Monica screaming in the background, "Do it, David! Do it! Beat that bitch! Kill that bitch! Kill that little whore!" It was absolutely demonic, and that was putting it mildly.
Over the next several minutes, David Warner mercilessly beat Blair's head into the floor, and he kicked her rib cage as hard as he could, breaking her ribs, and he pummeled her body with endless punches.
A few minutes later, a tall, slender black man burst into the Warners' quarters, and he yelled, "What are you doing, man?! Stop!"
"I'm giving this bitch what she deserves!" Warner responded. "We've got her in our trap, and now, we're giving her everything that's coming to her!"
"Fool!" the man said aloud. "I don't know how it's happened, but somehow, somebody installed hidden cameras in here! Not only that; somehow, everything you're doing is being broadcast on TV RIGHT NOW. Everything you just did to Blair, the beating, the sex, all of it, just went out live on national television. Practically every person in front of every TV set in America just saw what you did! Blair never fell into your trap, you fools! You fell into hers!"
As David Warner looked down into Blair's bruised and bloody face in that moment, she actually smiled, despite all the pain she was in. She then struggled to her feet, broken and bleeding, and she stumbled around a bit. And in that next moment, she glanced at the chess table, and she quickly deciphered that only one more move needed to be made on that chess board to end the game. It was then that Blair moved the final chess piece into place, and locking her eyes with her "father," she cried out, "Checkmate!"
"You guys need to stop what you're doing right now and get out of here. If you don't stop, the entire country is going to witness the two of you killing your own child."
However, both David and Monica Warner were so completely out of their minds with rage at this point that they actually no longer cared that their abuse of Blair had just been witnessed by millions of people nationwide. They were just completely overwhelmed with their demonic desire to murder Blair with their own hands.
The beatings continued, and one of them grabbed a sharp knife from their kitchen drawer and began stabbing Blair as she just sank into unconsciousness.