AN: Thank you for all your thoughts on the last part. Much appreciated. As always, I value your comments.

Part 8

When Carter found her in South Korea, the entire world was an unbroken paleness of snow white and gentle flesh. The trees surrounding them had been heavy with ice, and even the pond was hard like a rock. Huddled under her white coat, her skin had been paler than usual, with a tinge of blue. And he had worn a cream coat, his neck wrapped in a flesh scarf. His hair was matted down with the cold, and flakes of snow threaded in and out of the strands.

In the night, pitch black but glowing with the winter snow, Blair stared at the still pond. It was not nearly as frozen as the pond in Oedo, where she had first discovered some desire inside her to break the surface and die. Still, the pond was cold enough that there were no ducks in sight. The ducks must be sleeping.

She should be sleeping. It was late, and the park was unsafe in the morning let alone at night.

She should be sleeping, but Carter was in the bed they shared.

Since she left the Baizen home, Blair had the strange feeling of someone watching her. She glanced around her, fearful of a stranger who wanted money, or jewelry. She could give away anything really, except, she wondered if she was held up could she surrender her bracelet. Then the stranger could see her scars she made.

When she looked behind her, she saw several feet away, Chuck Bass stood—a sharp contrast of color against the backdrop of snow. He stood in his black coat, with a red and yellow scarf hugging his neck. His head was low, but he watched her with intent, focused eyes. His hands were in his pockets. His breathing made clouds of vapor in the air around him.

Immediately, she stood, straightened her stance. "Have you been following me?"

He did not answer, merely watched her move. Blair wrapped her arms around herself.

"Of course," she said. "Once a stalker—"

He held up his hand, a signal for silence. Chuck walked over towards her and stopped when he was close enough to be heard. "I know that Carter finally told you about Santorini."

Her eyes narrowed; her lips thinned. "What, Chuck? Did you blackmail him into telling me?"

Chuck shook his head, drew closer. His proximity was uncomfortable to her. It was terrifying. She stepped back once. "But I wanted to make sure you'll be alright." He sighed. "Come on. You can't stay in Central Park this late."

He laid a gloved hand on her arm. Blair held her breath, shuddered at the cold leather on her skin. Even then, it was the warmest she had felt against her body. "Please don't touch me."

Reluctantly, he drew his hand away. "Let me take you to Serena's."

She shook her head. "She and Carter—"

"Then let me take you to the penthouse," Chuck offered.

Abandoned when Eleanor and Cyrus moved away. The same bedroom where once she had slept with Nate, and several times with Chuck Bass. It was the last place she needed.

"Then my suite," he said last.

Blair turned on her heel and stalked away from him. She heard him follow closely behind her.

"Blair," Chuck called out. In the silence of the night the homeless turned and watched curiously. They created enough noise to call attention. "Don't run away. It's not safe."

She slowed her pace, allowed him to catch up. No one chased after her, Carter had teased her once. There was no need to escape so fast.

"You're not in any state to stay in a hotel room by yourself," Chuck told her quietly.

She stopped, turned to him. Her eyes rested on the snow on his shoulders. He had been standing outside so long. She followed his fingers with her eyes as he reached out to brush the snow from her hair. Chuck removed his coat and offered it to her.

"Then I'll go home to Carter," she said, her jaw set.

"You can go home to him?"

It was difficult to keep her eyes on him, difficult and unsettling. She turned her attention to the skyline, to trace with her gaze the lit corners of the building. "I won't give up. He made one mistake, and it was stupid and awful. It makes my stomach turn," she confessed. "But I can't just give up. That's what relationships entail."

'You gave up,' she wanted to scream. 'One mistake and you gave up.'

Her fingers were trembling now, and she did not notice until she followed his gaze, saw his gloved hands reach for her hands. He moved to grasp her hand, and she immediately drew them away.

"I'm still in love with you," he said.

She closed her eyes, hung her head, allowed the words to wash over her. She wanted to hear the words for so long, imagined that when she heard them she would disintegrate into a puddle of relief.

"I dreamed you would say that. And I thought it would matter to me," she admitted. "You're not what I need, Chuck. Not anymore." Blair took a deep breath. "I think you never were."

The look in his eyes would haunt her the way their faceless child did. "Do you love me?"

And as honestly as she could, she answered, "Sometimes I hate you."

As much as she hated herself for starting it all. Right before the blade cut through her skin. That split second she hated him most of all. That split second she hated herself enough to let herself remember just how much she loved him.

Chuck nodded curtly. "I'll take you home," he told her.

"I told you, Chuck—"

"To Carter," he added.

Quietly, they made their way out of the park, walking side by side with an immeasurable distance between them. Between Chuck and Blair, it was colder than snow, yet even then their fingers brushed—his gloved hand and her bare ones covered by the too-long sleeves of his coat. The limo pulled up as they emerged into the street.

He opened the door for her. When she moved to climb in, he pulled her hand and drew her close. And she allowed him, even took a deep breath to smell the scent still so familiar. He laid his forehead on hers, pulled her hand to his lips to lay and kiss in her palm.

She closed her eyes.

A hundred breaths. Just like this.

His breath warm on her cheeks. Her breath cold and shallow, making his scarf move like it were living.

One hundred full breaths, one after the other. All silence except for the air and their heartbeats.

"Don't turn me into a cheater," she whispered on the one hundred first. "That's what you hated me for."

And he nodded, without words, climbed after her into the backseat of the limo. He did not say them, but Blair could recount in her head all the times they had been there together. The limo stopped, as he had promised, outside Carter's. She did not turn to thank him, did not say goodbye. She climbed out of the vehicle and entered the building.

The limo did not leave at once. Blair stood outside the doors and waited. When it did not roll away, she walked back towards the street. Chuck rolled down the window and said, "Get in."

The limo.

Carter's house.

Blair lowered her lashes and turned her back on Chuck. She paused, then slowly removed his coat.

"Keep it."

But she thrust the coat to him. "We don't need this right now." He took the coat and held it up to his nose. Blair fled towards the building.

She entered the bedroom, expecting Carter to be out like the light. Instead she found him sitting on the edge of the bed, his eyes bloodshot. He looked up at her apprehensively when she stepped inside. His hands fisted and unfisted on his thighs. When she took another step inside, he let out a shuddering breath.

Blair made her way to him, then knelt in front of him. His face was questioning. She looped her arms around his neck and pulled him down for a kiss.

Carter's lips opened, gently caressed hers as he returned her kiss. And then his fingers buried in her hair. "You're cold," he whispered.

He drew them both up to their feet. His hands moved to hemline of her dress and started to pull it off her. Blair arched her back when his hot lips moved to her neck. She waited patiently when he started divesting himself of his clothes. Blair lay back in bed, opened her legs so that Carter could lay between them. He kept his eyes on hers. He hooked his arms under her knees, opened her to him and thrust inside. Blair gasped, clutched at his shoulders and moaned out loud.

"Tell me what to do. I'll make it better."

Deeper, he thrust, and her head hit the headboard. He muttered an apology, then flexed his hips to push further, reach farther.

She screamed.

"Faster?" he gasped.

Blair bit her lower lip, nodded her head. She grasped the headboard to take him in with more control. Carter latched his lips on her breast. Sweat blossomed on his forehead, and Blair could see the tension coiling in his back with his effort.

"Deeper? Tell me," he pleaded. "I'll do it."

She gasped, taking him inside her. He was more tonight, bigger, better, harder. He overwhelmed her senses. Blair drew closer, and he changed his pace, drew it out for longer.

In, out. Over and over. And she exploded once, but he did not stop, drove her to the edge and back before slowing and taking her on the same ride again. She was hoarse from crying, her body limp, trembling from her climax. Carter pulled out of her and moved down her body, kissing a trail over her moist stomach, dipping his tongue in her navel.

She stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her, and all she could see in his eyes was a request. Finally, she nodded.

And she was on her, lapping up himself and her. She twisted on the bed, her hips rising and falling as his tongue soothed her. Her fingers dug into the sheets as he did everything she could want, moved by feel, based his ministrations on each gasp, and cry. And she came, from his kisses alone.

She was still trembling when he finished. Blair turned on her side with her back to him. She felt his arms wrap around hers, his hardness still full and tight against her.

She closed her eyes. Sleep should come. She was exhausted, from the party, from the first sight of Chuck Bass, from a foray into the park, from sex.

A half hour later, even with the lulling kisses that Carter pressed on her nape, she was wide awake.

"It's not going to work," she said. Carter stiffened behind her. "I can picture you with that girl crying for you to stop."

His arms tightened around her. "She wasn't crying."

Out loud, she thought.

And then, finally. "I can picture a baby in a jar."

"Don't," he pleaded.

"Carter," Blair said gently, "I tried. It's over."

"I'll do anything you ask," he assured her, his voice frantic, and she wanted to turn around and hold him. Because everything he had said was right. Everything was bound by logic, and even then, she could not deny what she felt. "Blair, I've done everything right. It can't be my past that breaks us up. That's not fair."

Things of the past should never affect their present. That was his defense. Much good that did her then.

"Life hasn't ever been fair, has it?"

One week to stew over the horrifying sensation of another man on her. He had almost poured acid over his fingers. The nightmares came and went, and he found himself still crying out in the morning when he woke. She had fucked someone else, the moment they faced a challenge.

She wanted marriage, and he had gone out to prove he did not need it. Alcohol and women. But watching strangers gyrate to the addictive rhythm of burlesque music had only made him remember a sixteen turning on seventeen girl whose honey hips still made up his dreams.

When his usual fare stuck their tongues down his throat, it had terrified him. When he closed his eyes, he pictured Blair angry, or sad, or even exasperated at the sight.

Bachelor trapped. He needed to make it up to her, make the night as unforgettable as the movies she watched over and over again.

He had the dinner prepared, swung by his father's office for the most valuable heirloom he ever received.

If he was going to be imprisoned, then he would surround himself with a gilded cage. His mother's ring belonged to no one else—only Blair.

And she had fucked another man, came home with the evidence. Even then, in the week apart, while he cursed her to hell, he knew. By the end of the wedding, she would wear his mother's ring. And then they could spend a lifetime making up for the week she ripped him apart.

She looked at him longingly, from the distance between them in the ceremony. She stood beside Serena, in the cream gown that was all fluff and lace and taffeta. Blair Waldorf looked almost like a bride. And he hated her so much he swore he loved her, just because hate came threaded in with love.

They were at the reception when Chuck decided to confront her. He left the reception for a smoke. Chuck made his way to the smoking lounge of the Palace. He stumbled across Jack with one of Bass' more powerful board members. Chuck snarled, "Trying again?"

Jack smirked at his nephew, then laid a hand on his shoulder. "I never quit until I get what I want, you know."

"What does that mean?"

Jack grinned, glanced behind Chuck. "You're alone. I'm disappointed." The older man arched an eyebrow. "How's the tight little number that hung around you like a nagging wife? Ask her."

"Blair would never touch you," Chuck drawled. But she fucked someone else. Just the week before.

"On the contrary," Jack answered. "She touched me so well I get hard every time I remember."

"Liar."

Jack shook his head, then patted his nephew. "Here's a tip, little Bass. When you want a girl, you don't do—" Jack searched for words. When he could find none, he shrugged. "—Everything you did the last time I was here. She was delicious. Every bit of her. I can't wait to try it again."

Chuck drew back his fist and slammed it into his uncle's gut.

tbc