AN: I love all of you for showing your support. Whenever I start a new fic, I always really try to see what you thought. Anyway, I had to post another part of this quickly so I don't lose the idea. Tomorrow, promise, Heaven in Your Embrace or Mr and Mrs Bass. For now, do let me know what you think of this. And yeah, be openminded.

Part 2

There comes a time in the life of any man when fate catches up with him unaware, and he would sink, swim, or sway by an unseen hand's command. In all his years, he had been fortunate that the day seemed unable to catch up to him. He traveled the world, jumped from island to island and lived life high on everything old people said was bad, and everything he thought was so pleasurably good.

In all the years of his life he had done perhaps two kind things, and so every night for the past year he woke up with a start and reached for the space beside him on the bed. And his heart would be cold and distant, aloof to his head, guarded in case she was not there. Most nights when he felt her body lying beside his he calmed.

There comes a time in a man's life when fate catches up to him and gives him a gift so wonderful he wonders if it's all part of one grand nightmare that ended with him waking up alone.

With the gift as generous as the one he received, it stood to reason that he would work to deserve it. One breath at a time, he turned his life around.

Even the world, that previously held an incomparable allure, had lost much in his eyes. In front of the sweeping majesty of China, all he could think about was coming home.

He made his way through the throng of people that deplaned, and strode towards the escalators with quick purposeful steps. He searched for the familiar head in the crowd below, and when he spotted her, looking up at him and waving, his heart stopped. It always stopped now whenever she smiled. She mouthed words to him, and even from afar he could almost hear her voice.

Welcome home.

He pushed through the people in front of him on the escalator, and made his way through. The few seconds of delay were equivalent to centuries away from her. At the sight of him fighting his way through the crowd, she grinned. In return for his effort she walked over to him to meet him part of the way. He hefted his knapsack onto his shoulder and approached her.

And God, he couldn't wipe the grin from his face.

"Hello, beautiful," he greeted softly as he looked down at her smiling eyes. He placed his hands on her waist and gently pulled her close. He dropped a kiss on her forehead. Her lips curved. "No more trips alone," he said, dipping his head down to kiss her.

It had been an experiment, she said. Until the first minute passed on the plane when he remembered Frankenstein's monster was a product of an experiment.

"How was Beijing?" she breathed when their lips parted.

"Gorgeous," he told her. "But it was nothing compared to you."

Her lips curved. "Flatterer."

"How was New Zealand?"

"Green," she said casually.

He wrapped an arm around her waist and walked with her out of the airport. She laid her head on his shoulder. It took a moment, but he buried his nose in her hair and breathed in. "Did you miss me?"

She looked up at him, her eyes sparkling. "Did you miss me?" she returned.

Someday she would be able to answer the question just as he asked. Someday she would not need to throw it back. Someday, when he was worth it, when she acknowledged it.

"I missed you like I was detoxing." He grinned. He jumped onto a rusty train and almost missed the handlebar, and when he stared down the rough rocky road that almost scraped off his face, he thought of her. "Sweating and trembling and completely losing my mind."

"Then," she said primly, "I missed you too."

She stepped away, and his arm fell from around her waist to his side. "Blair," he said. "Where are you going?"

She turned around and grinned at him. "We've got to beat everyone else to the line, or else we won't be able to get a cab."

He shook his head and yelled at her, "I can call for a car!" When she did not stop, he hurried after her.

She arched an eyebrow at him. She admired many things about him—things she used to hate. "You're not spoiled, Carter," she pointed out. "You can ride a cab."

He had ridden camels in Egypt. The hump on the back hurt his groin. He had ridden sitting atop a rusty jeepney maneuvering a hillside in the Philippines, and had stared down the drop to a rocky river below because the roads were so narrow.

"I can ride a cab," he affirmed.

Hell, he had traveled from Dubai to Istanbul to Zagreb to Monaco with next to nothing. If his parents abhorred anything about the way he lived his life, it certainly was not because he drained their bank accounts. He would survive on his wits, and by his wits he had kept for himself the piece of heaven he would have lost much earlier if he had been ignorant.

"Good."

He licked his lips, then caught her wrist. "Slow down," he whispered into her ear. "No one's chasing you."

She started at the words. Her eyes flew up to him. Her lips, still moist from their kiss, parted slightly. "Right," she said softly.

He walked with her to the line, and stood behind her, resting his chin on the top of her head as they waited. The line moved slowly, and it was irritating, almost impossible. There were a million cabs waiting on the line. Any other time he would have cut in, or yelled for the tourists to get their asses in gear.

"Was the Great Wall really that amazing like in all the pictures?" she asked.

Was it?

"It was spectacular," he answered. "You can see it from the space."

She turned in his arms. He straightened, and looked down to see what he had been waiting to see, what she had deliberately kept him from seeing. He took her chin between his fingers and raised her face so he could meet her eyes. She averted her gaze. He turned her face again.

No words. And yet he told her everything she needed to hear.

She closed her eyes, then leaned forward, almost like she was letting herself fall. And he was there to fall against. He wrapped his arms around her and just stood. The line in front of them moved, and he remained in place. Carter looked up beyond the line of cabs, and saw a small group of girls in their late teens holding up their weapons of choice. He fixed them a stare, made sure their damned camera phones would capture the image with him looking straight into the lens.

No backing down. No scurrying away. He had one audience for the look, and the result would have been in the making since they were younger.

She was in his arms now, and they were back in New York City where they belonged. And maybe he had changed, little by little, breath by breath, to make himself more suitable for her. She never asked, never demanded. But every time he did something well, she thanked him with a touch, or a brush, or a squeeze. He had no doubt by the time he was thirty he would be a model citizen.

"It's our turn," he said quietly.

She raised her head, blinked up at the line that had vanished in front of them. She walked forward, then reached behind her to tangle her hand in his. He opened the door for her, then climbed in after her. Carter have the driver the address of the Baizen townhouse, and glanced at her to see her looking out the window.

Old familiar places.

He placed a hand on her thigh, waited for her to turn to him.

It took ages. Always, it took her ages to look. Sometimes he wondered if in the delay she cheated, and when her lashes lowered each time, she imagined it was someone else's hand. And he lashed out the only way he knew, because for her, the gentle tone was worse than violence.

He made her listen to his voice, caressing in a manner that Chuck Bass' certainly had not. "It's good to be home," he said. And the wealth of secrets behind the words throbbed from every syllable.

"Help me find her," said the man in front of him. Carter looked up from his scotch glass and assessed Chuck Bass, whose hands gripped the bar as he leaned heavily forward. Chuck turned to him and demanded, "Leave no rock unturned."

The man had flaunted his happiness in front of New York City for so long that seeing him shattered was only so much delight. Carter furrowed his brows. "Why do you need me? Don't you have an army of PIs on retainer?"

Within their circles, everyone knew. The police had no evidence. There had been no witnesses. Apart from what now was legendary—Eleanor Rose's accusation sweeping across the hotel—there had been no reason for Chuck to stay free. Carter had stood yards away, watched coolly, detached.

But he had seen the blood. Knew the blood was more than the head trauma. Watched Chuck the exact moment that the hotel doctor, who rushed to give first aid, said the crisp words to Eleanor Rose.

"How far along?" Eleanor whispered.

Serena had been a sight in her bridal gown when she rushed from the restaurant and flew down the steps in her heels. It had been the bride who offered, "Two months."

Carter had been there when Eleanor swore that Chuck Bass would never see her daughter again. Carter had been there when the paramedics arrived to take Blair.

Then, despite one wild drunken night, she had been nothing more than a stranger.

"Is it?" she whispered.

He was here. 'But so am I,' he wanted to say.

But they had survived so long with one simple rule.

Never Chuck Bass.

Never say it; never think it.

Never remember.

"Because I don't know anyone else who can hide in the world as well as you can," Chuck told him.

Carter wondered how much saliva the guy had to swallow to say the words. "Are you asking me for a favor?" he drawled back.

In truth, he hated the kid. He always held such disdain for the likes of him. Born rich. Bred rich. Entitlement oozed from his pores. Him and his friends, all of them. People like them were why he ditched his inheritance and traveled the world.

"Yes," Chuck managed.

Chuck Bass had never looked more like poor little rich boy than he did then.

But he was a poor little rich boy who owned billions worth in property and businesses. He could always vacation in Chiang Mai for three full months with the smallest amount. And so he asked, "What's in it for me?"

Carter released her thigh, then reached behind him and hefted his backpack to his lap. She watched him with curious eyes, mostly to occupy her time. He glanced out the glass window and saw that they were passing by the Palace. He unzipped the pocket and reached for something inside.

"I have a gift for you."

He slowly drew out his hand, and hers flew to push it back inside the backpack pocket. "I hate gifts," she said.

Serena had rattled off enough during the debutante ball for him to know Blair Waldorf lived for presents. "It's a really small one," he assured her, but she gripped his wrist and shook her head. "When I saw it on the path I thought of you."

"No gifts, Carter," she reminded him.

No flowers, he remembered. It was a small dried hyacinth, pressed inside his small phrase pocketbook. Someday when she acknowledged he was worth it, she would let him give her his sad gesture. He hoped the hyacinth hadn't crumbled by then.

Paris. Milan. London.

Carter Baizen had scoured the places he had been certain she would be in. He had turned up outside her father's villa asking about her, and was invited inside for tea. The two men—and he wished Chuck Bass had given him a heads up that Harold was living with a gay male model—had been wary in speaking with him. When he denied knowing Chuck, the two seemed more open to share.

"We have no idea where she is," Roman told him.

"No calls?" Carter prodded. "No request to wire her money?"

He felt Harold's eyes on him, measuring him, weighing him. Against his better judgment, Carter sat up straight.

"Why do you want to know?" asked her father.

Four months of searching for her, and really, it was no lie to say, "Because I want to find her."

Harold handed him a postcard, and Carter held in his hands the miniature picture of little white huts running down the shoreline beside a deep blue ocean. Venus statues paved a walkway to arching cypress trees.

"Oedo island," he recognized. "She's in South Korea."

When he had first kissed Blair Waldorf, her lips had been wet with martini, but they parted underneath his like surrender. The first time he ran his thumb under her eyes, his skin came away wet with tears. Back then he had been nothing, exactly the man he was trying to grow out of. But she had been beautiful and vulnerable and he had been Carter—no more than Carter.

The first time he had sex with Blair Waldorf, she had been trying to bury part of herself, and he had wanted nothing more than to fuck Snow White. She had been a legend, and the night had been sloppy and inelegant.

But looking at the postcard, turning it over and seeing her name scrawled at the back, the uninteresting night grew clearer in his brain.

"South Korea," Harold repeated. "That's a long way from here."

Carter's lips curved. "Just so happens I was on my way there."

"Does it?"

"Do you need me to bring her anything?"

"Send her my love," said her father.

Within two days, Carter Baizen stood in the center of a garden, surrounded by trees heavy with snow. Around him, the ground was white. To the right was a frozen pond. She sat on the edge, with her boots gingerly treading on the thin ice. She edged forward, like she was testing her weight. He walked towards her slowly, close enough that he could see the puffs of air as she breathed.

Her gloves slid on the icy seat. He reached out quickly and grabbed her by the arms.

"Careful. You don't want to fall."

She closed her eyes, and let him pull her back up firmly on the seat. That was the first time he noticed that she delayed facing him. Finally, with snowdust on her lashes, she blinked up at him. "Carter?" she said in disbelief.

"Hello, beautiful."

tbc