The dark of nightfall comes alive, electrified with bolts of lightning that create jagged paths across an everlasting darkness. Pain and anguish – regret and suffering – torture his aching, dying soul. It is insufferable to imagine, to comprehend, the faith he had placed in another; the one who had bruised his heart. He had loved her, he had given himself fully – in utmost devotion to her. He was the beast – the one who could not love, the one with a stony heart. He was everything cold, everything forsaken, everything evil.

For one being, he had given up the world of lavish desire.
For his trouble, he had lost his life.

A crepuscular haze lingers over the sand, hanging low above the topography that shifts and is shaped by the wind. Through the mists that swirl comes forth darkness – a storm empowered by the goddess Calypso – a storm that rides on the waves and unleashes its fury upon the shores. The goddess, the she-devil, beckons to him in his hour of weakness, enticing him, begging him to fall into her arms of feigned love – the arms that wish to smother him, murder him, choke his emotion.

She wishes for his death.

Entranced by her calling, the harpy cries of sea birds resonating on angry winds that whip across the desolate beach, he moves closer, enticed. Her waves rise and fall, cresting to their peaks in a flourish of white foam – the tides rising higher as the pending storm unfolds. As though in a daze he moves forward, dark eyes glazed over as though in sleep; but he is awake, aware of his potential doom that awaits within her churning seas.

But who is Chuck Bass?
Surely not one to deny any woman of his touch.

Engrossed, captivated by her calling for him, she whispers on the wind – whispers his name. She moves closer, her tidepools gathering at his feet as he crosses the dunes. Bare feet sink into the sands of time, enveloping the tender skin with their grainy embrace. The first touch of cold water is brisk, abrupt. He jolts slightly, panic clutching his heart as reality settles within his mind, laden with angst. But she, the enticing whore – the harlot sea that cries for him – she beckons, and he obliges. Knee-deep in her pools of icy water, silhouetted against a night sky decorated with brilliantly fading stars and yet clouded by the pending storm, his mind loses reality.

Deeper he travels, numbness settling over him.

Lower limbs lose sensation first, tingling then cutting themselves off. Soon follows his torso – his hips (how good it felt for her to grasp them in their last embrace), his stomach, his chest and arms follow as he wanders into the depths. Eyes close as his lips purse, kissing the sea, kissing her tenderly (as he once kissed his beloved, but only in dreams?) before he falls to his knees to be swallowed by her.

- - -

Cold sweat, sticky lather that clings to every inch of his skin, covers Chuck as he shudders awake from the nightmare that had tortured his mind. Gasping for breath, he clutches the satin sheets upon which he had been lying – tugging them to his chest in a moment of anguished torment. Dark eyes are wide – fear-filled and desperate – as he lets their gaze dart to and fro across the room. The pounding of his heart, his blood rising in his veins, echoes within his mind.

Nothing but a dream.
But this is not the first he's had.

Since arriving to the Hamptons with the van der Bass/Humphrey family but one week prior, nightmares haunted his every moment's rest. Vaguely, he could remember the past weeks – prom, Blair Waldorf, graduation, Blair Waldorf, misery, Blair Waldorf. The thought, mere mention of her name within the chasms of his mind, brings his knees to weaken – though he sits upon his bed. The insufferable name, the unbearable notion of losing her (Nathaniel, Nathaniel, how has time found it appropriate to bless you?); it has become too much for his young mind to handle.

He came here to escape – but he will never be free from the haunting of his heart's desire.

Lying back against the bed, breathing slowly returning to normal, Chuck closes his eyes. He tries to settle himself – tries to relieve the tension from his every limb. His skin is chilled as a gentle night zephyr filters through his open window, caressing his skin. As he listens, the sounds of the sea – only yards from his window of his vacation retreat – welcome his ears. Gentle purrs of the waves, lapping peacefully at the shores. No gulls cry, for night overpowers their will to wake. Only silence – silence intermingled with the soft, near inaudible sobbing of a mourning soul.

Recognition settles over him and he slowly sits upright, reaching for his robe before silently retreating from his room – in search of the creator of the sound he has learned to recognize so well…