A/N: A billion and one thank-you's to everyone who reviewed, even if it was just a word or two. You guys are seriously the reason I'm continuing with this. I hope you like it!

Always falling into you.

I wish that we could give it a go,
See if we could be something.
I wish you'd hold my hand when I was upset.
- Kate Nash

Everything Blair knew had dissolved into little more than a discarded wish by Monday. Her minions easily taking on a new queen without so much as a backward glance.

The shape of Nate's shoulders as he had walked away from her was imprinted on her eyelids. The melody of Serena's voice as she cooed some bullshit about everything turning out just fine

To Blair everything was indecipherable, like a foreign language barely translated.

When she wasn't in class she escaped to the bathroom. She ate her lunch there, like one of the social rejects whose last season Prada left them condemned to the solidarity of a bathroom stall in the girls' lavatory.

She kept her head low, barely speaking when spoken to. By the end of the day it was lesser than difficult to avoid the gaze of every person who snickered when she walked past, whispering quickly behind cupped hands.

Chuck was leaning against the limo as she skipped down the front steps, his expression unreadable. He was a blank slate, the broken toy she wanted anyway.

Nate's honest actions had always been pinned like badges across his breast and she had been under the spell of her fairytale then, drunk with it, lusting. She hadn't even noticed when her dreams took on new shapes, directed solely by what others wanted, complying because she had been born to do so.

With Chuck however, the darkness of his movements as he guided her into the car, she could just be ... Blair. Whatever that meant.

There were still so many layers of conditioning she needed to scrub away, pick off the impressions of compliance her mother had pressed on her from birth, but no longer was she simply what the Waldorf name stood for. There was a girl behind there somewhere. He had told her that, or at least helped her to show herself that night at Victrola.

The silence was louder than the rain as it thrashed against the windows, His arm stretched across her back as she curled into his chest. He smelt of after-shave and alcohol, the most unassuming prince charming.

Tears began to slide down her cheeks, wetting her eyelashes and causing her mascara to stick. It was ridiculous to cry over spilled milk, her mother had always said, but she would anyway. The spoonful of yogurt little J had poured into her chestnut curls, Nate's smug grin as he watched, telling her without moving that she deserved it.

Chuck's thumb paused on her cheek, after her sobs quieted, wiping at the subsiding tears. She bent her chin towards his hand with a heavy sigh. He didn't patronize her, offer false comfort; he was simply there, able-bodied and observant but not pushy.

All the unheard gossip drifting in the air, bits and pieces of the truth stacked into piles, the idea alone causing her head to throb. What had she been thinking? Grasping the edges of her past by letting the familiarities of Nate's face guide her between the bed sheets. It had been done to forget that she wanted more, to convince herself that she wasn't yearning for someone else. She had prayed to feel what Chuck provoked in her as Nate's tongue dipped into her mouth, but she hadn't. Still, the resistance to her feelings had been just as strong, sleeping with him anyway. If only to spite the brooding brunette, to show him that she wasn't enticed or as lost in him as she truly was.

It hadn't worked.

"I'm so sorry Chuck," She knew he was still hurting. "I was -- I was just trying to forget."

"About?" He was so close, his lips in the folds of her curls, she could barely focus.

"Us. I thought, I don't know, I always thought it was Nate. Always Nate." She laughed dryly. How stupid she had been, naive. "I couldn't let it go easily."

Honesty. He needed to know the truth, the reality of her actions. It wouldn't erase them but it was better to try and explain than leave the freedom of silence to pour salt on open wounds.

"And now?" It was barely audible, rough words pressed through cracked lips.

"Now," She snuggled into his side, "I know that it's you. Always you."

Chuck bent forward, his breath hot on her ear, encircling her entire body in his arms. Solid. "I forgive you."

Ever since Blair could remember she had been fractured, pieces of herself threatening to fall off but with his arms around her she was whole in a new way. Flawed but not broken.

The mid-afternoon traffic was a gentle melody as the limo glided down the street. Chuck Bass, the man whose lips fell against hers in fluid motions, decidedly much more than any other boy she knew. Much, much more.