AN: Thank you for reading and supporting the part I posted after the ordeal. Lol. I am mostly recovered now, because I can remember C's face looking all victim-like at the locker. Hehe. And yes, thank you for the comments about the different characters in this fic and how they are portrayed. Sometimes you will not agree with them. And you will get more idea about their flaws and what they've done in the past and what they're doing in the present. Most of the things that happen of course may not endear them to you. But hopefully it would give you more insight to their motivations.

Part 6

If they had not loved each other so, once upon a time, a stranger would believe them to be they abhorred each other.

Chuck and Blair. Blair and Chuck.

No one ever hurt one more than the other.

And this. This is what they called love.

When she fell asleep, it was to a world that had ended. Her baby was dead, and she had lost the man who swore she made him who he was.

When she woke, it was to a world that was dark. The drapes were drawn, and the lights were off. She turned to the light streaming from the open door and caught her breath at the silhouette of him.

He was not gone.

Not yet.

He had not abandoned her.

Not yet.

She reached out a hand, because what she had lost, only Chuck would understand. And yet, she said, "You killed my baby." But her hand was open, reaching for him, pleading with him to take it. "You killed my baby, Chuck." They were the only words she could say, when she wanted so much to apologize.

And even while her words ripped his heart to shreds he still strode to her. He grasped her hand and raised it to his mouth, his kisses open mouthed, almost like he was devouring her in his apology. And then he leaned over her bead and captured her lips, plunged his tongue inside her mouth. He swallowed her sobs and squeezed his eyes tightly shut.

"I hate you!" she whispered.

And she hated herself because she was sure he hated her too.

"I'm sorry," he choked out.

Maybe someday she would believe him. If they could work through everything that had come before, maybe they could work through this.

"I'll be gone by tomorrow," he told her. "You can keep the suite."

Serena regarded her friend with her brows drawn together, studying her as if she was some specimen under a microscope, and they were still in school. Blair met Serena's eyes, her jaw set as she kept her gaze on her friend's face. Serena's hand idly touched her abdomen, and Blair's eyes flickered to the swell, then snapped back to her face.

Six months.

"B," she said gently, "it's been a long time."

Blair nodded. "It seems like a lifetime ago."

Then why was the hurt so fresh in her eyes, like it was yesterday?

Serena walked over to her, with her arms outstretched, anxious to wrap her arms around Blair. When they were young it was Blair who took care of her, Blair who kept her head on her shoulders so that Serena would make it home. And Blair almost seemed lost.

"How are you, Blair?"

When she drew closer, Blair flinched away from her, almost like she did not want to brush against her belly.

"I've got everything I wanted," Blair told her.

Serena bit her lip. "I'm going to have a baby, B. You'll be godmother, like we always planned."

Blair avoided her eyes.

"I'm sorry," Serena offered, "if this just dredges up old feelings."

"It was so long ago," Blair cut in. "I barely remember it."

Liar.

She knew Blair Waldorf, knew even without her or Carter telling her that Blair still woke up crying about it, running to the bathroom and throwing up everything she had lost.

"Carter is everything I could have wanted," Blair insisted. Serena was tempted, by her fierce loyalty to her stepbrother, to spill everything she knew about Carter Baizen. But there was a small smile on Blair's lips that kept her from speaking. "He was a revelation."

Diamonds gleamed on Blair's throat, more glittering than the necklace Chuck had given her on her seventeenth birthday, louder, more impressive. Carter Baizen lived as far away from the lifestyle of his parents as he could, so far that he had become a no-good swindler for the most part. Yet here he was, after years of his father calling him back to slowly learn to take the reins of their family fortune, clean, prepared, showering her best friend with the wealth that Carter had sworn off by principle.

Blair reached up to touch the diamonds on her throat, conscious of Serena's attention. "He's trying to be better."

Serena remembered Carter's words. Reformed. That's what Blair saw.

"He tries," Blair continued. "He won't sink back into a hole and drag me with him if it becomes difficult."

Unlike Chuck, thought Serena. They would never tell her, or anyone else, but she had suspected. One difficult problem, one challenge, one obstacle. There had to have been something that made him snap, that crumbled the castle they had built in the clouds.

"How do you know that?" Serena demanded. Because Blair could build fantasies out of thin air and eventually believe they were real.

"Because I've given him difficult," Blair answered.

Serena's eyes widened, then grabbed her friend's wrist, where sparkling diamonds glittered. Carter dressed her like a queen. "Blair, what is this?"

"Isn't it beautiful?" A pause. "We bought it in Florence."

In Florence there was a bridge that was lined with jewelers, dating back from the Renaissance and still in business to this day. Of course Carter would bring her to Florence. Of course Blair would wear a reminder that she had finally made it to Tuscany, with someone who adored her.

"We've been all over the world."

But Serena's attention was not on the diamonds, or the pale white gold. Serena pushed the bracelet up and revealed the dark line of a healing wound. Blair snatched her hand back. But Serena was quicker, always been better at sports to make up for being weaker in academics. Blair yelped when Serena's twisted her arm quickly and glared at the scar on her wrist.

Serena's eyes rose to Blair's face, while the other woman stared at her wrist. Blair tugged down at her bracelet to cover the discoloration.

"Are you happy?"

Because really, when Serena told Chuck that Blair's happiness was what mattered, she was telling the truth. She would step aside and keep Santorini a secret, be her maid of honor even, as long as Blair was happy.

"Yes!" Blair exclaimed.

"You're still so good at lying," Serena told her.

He dragged her up, back up, out of the beautiful pink water where she rested. It had been warm, almost hot, and from the bottom of the tub it was almost like she was floating.

And he forced her. Forced her to throw up the water, to breathe in air instead.

Beautiful water. So pink because of her. Tendrils of red blood curled in the water and he abused her, slapping her cheeks and she sputtered and cursed.

She was almost asleep, almost finally happy.

He gripped her wrist and wrapped a towel around the bleeding cut. He yelled into the phone that he had clutched between his shoulder and his ear.

"How many times, Blair?" he had yelled at her when he hung up the phone.

"I hate you!" she screamed, as much as she could scream with her blood gushing. "I hate you."

But he pulled her tightly to him, whispered into her sodden hair. "Stop doing this. Please."

"I gave him hell. So much hell," Blair shared.

For a heartbeat she could not tell if they were talking about Chuck, or about Carter. But it held true for both.

"And he's still here."

Carter.

Serena pushed, "He can give you everything you think you want, and you still end up like this."

Wanting to die every moment she had a chance.

Blair drew her wrist to her chest. Her diamonds hid the scars, and everyone else could only look at the frosted jewelry.

"He abandoned me," Blair told Serena. "I made one mistake, Serena. Do you know how many mistakes he's made?"

"You," Serena whispered in confusion. "It was your fault?"

"I stayed with him. I fought for him. One mistake and he was gone."

And her baby was a casualty to her one sin.

It was the end.

A thousand nights of passion, a million kisses, boundless skies clouded by the smoke of their rapid and explosive fireworks.

She was too proud to beg, but once she found out she swore she would get him to marry her. No child of hers would be illegitimate, subject to scandal and to the complicated process of inheritance should anything untoward happen before Chuck married her.

They had no plans, and it was what they loved. No Yale, no job, nothing in front of her now.

Except for this.

"Let's get married," she suggested at the dinner table.

His eyebrows flew to up, and he smirked at her. "I thought we were going to live with no plans, no shackles, no nothing."

"I want to know that it's going somewhere," she confessed.

"Fuck. This is what Nate always harped on about you." He pulled her chair towards him, the noise grating as it scraped the floor. "So you're already reneging on the deal?"

He grabbed her arms and drew her against him, kissing her lips.

"Chuck, I want to get married," Blair emphasized as she pulled away. She frowned. "What else am I supposed to do?"

His face was flushed. "Is this an ultimatum?" Blair pursed her lips, then stuck out her chin. Chuck's eyes narrowed and he stalked out of the room. "I don't do arm twisting, Blair. If you're bored, find a hobby."

She had growled, thrown a pillow at his head. Blair locked the door of the bedroom and turned a deaf ear to his rapping on the door.

At one, he had stopped checking up on her. Blair gingerly made her way out of the room with a blanket in hand, ready to throw it over her arrogant boyfriend, whom she had supposed was asleep on the couch. Instead she found an empty living room. Her phone lit and vibrated on the coffee table.

Spotted.

Of course, Chuck Bass would do what he does best. Blair deleted the message and the picture of Chuck surrounding himself with whores in Victrola.

Blair stalked back inside the bedroom and tossed a few dresses on the bed before picking the one she wanted. She put on her short dress and called Serena.

"Come on, S. Just a week left of your single life. We're going out."

"Can I bring Dan?" she heard Serena yell into the phone.

"Of course not," Blair snapped. "It's for singles only."

"Nate?"

"Why not."

It was the end.

Anticlimactic, given the fireworks with which it began, The night was full of laughter, old friends, and dancing, and the one thing Chuck wanted most of all—freedom. The night had it all.

She should have known it was going to be the end.

tbc