AN: You guys never cease to amaze me by how nice you have been. It makes it worth it that during writing, emotions overwhelm me and I need to stop to collect myself. Here's Blair's POV, including some memories.

Part 2

She leaned her forehead against the dark tinted windows of the limo, her shoulders slumped, her fingers scratching gently on the top of Baby's head on her lap. Inside their apartment, inside their limo, it was an entirely different world where Blair Waldorf Bass did not need to be perfect. There was no need to hide, and she did not need the calm smile that constantly graced her lips on the society pages.

When she fell in love with Chuck Bass… Blair shook her head. It was impossible to tell when she loved him, so she amended. When she first said it out loud, to him, he had refused to acknowledge that he felt it too. And she was masochist because it did not break her. When she fell in love with Chuck Bass she knew the road would not be easy. He had refused her and pushed her away, stuck a dagger in her gut every time he told her he did not love her. And she had stayed.

But this was not the payment she wanted—this life she seemed to have cursed him with.

Anyone who ever said, all those years ago, when they were teenagers in the Upper East Side, that she could do so much better. They were insane. And so so very wrong.

If she did not think he was perfect, she would not have agreed when on her last year of college, he came to her with one request. To break the standing engagement they had for the last four years, and cut it short by two—to get married before she finished, even if the deal was that she had to graduate first, work at least two years.

"I'm an ass," he had declared, his voice so deep and smooth the way she loved it that she didn't even care too much that he was putting himself down. "I fully acknowledge that this is such an asshole thing for me to do."

But she loved him, and he kissed her hand so wonderfully butterflies burst fluttering in her stomach until she felt they would spill flying out of her mouth. And so she said the only thing she could. "If you admit you lose this deal."

He had broken into grateful relief, and pressed a kiss on her nose. "I forfeit." Her eyes had rolled back in her head in the sheer pleasure of the sound, and he had laughed softly. "You like that, don't you?"

And she had given him a saucy smirk and warned, "You do know you would be saying that every day of your life when we do this."

He told her exactly that he did, and Blair Waldorf became, out of schedule, a Bass. And finally, the entire world knew she was his family.

She was in senior year when she married Chuck Bass. She was a college celebrity. She was Blair Waldorf Bass and still she stayed in her little apartment, walked to her classes and aced her courses. When the limo rolled to the front of the building where she had been sitting on the steps, people turned and craned their necks to see.

It had been his birthday then and Chuck stopped by to take her to dinner for their private celebration. Afterwards, he took her back to her apartment. He had sprung it at her as if she didn't expect it. But she did. They had been so happy and it had only a matter of time when he put his finger on the only thing missing from their lives.

"I want a baby," he had choked into her ear, when he spent himself inside her late that night, in her twin bed. He gripped tightly to her hips, and she had thrown her head back to cry out her release.

And afterwards, she had laid her cheek against his moist shoulder, then nuzzled her nose against his neck. "You didn't need to ask," she had said, the same way she responded to his proposal two years before.

She drew in a sharp breath, straightened in her seat. Baby jerked up his head and blinked up at her in his silent question. She smiled at the dog and shook her head. "It's okay, Baby. There's nothing wrong."

Not even if the six months afterwards had been a living hell of uncertainty and pain. Dark circular spots had appeared on her satin skirt when she hung her head, and the doctor told them that the hormone therapy did not work.

She had not apologized to him. Instead, she looked down at her fisted hands and willed her palms to bleed, told her nails to cut through skin and punish muscle until the only pain she would feel was the one she caused herself. She was a Waldorf and then she was a Bass. No one could hurt her except herself. And then he was there before her, prying her hands open so he could intertwine their fingers.

"Blair," he had said in that voice she loved so much.

But she had not looked, had not met his eyes. He loved her, and she would remember when he loved her. The sooner she looked at him, the sooner she would see.

She didn't want to see.

"Look at me," he had demanded. And she had shaken her head so fiercely she could swear her teardrops landed so far apart from each other.

She had squeezed her eyes even tighter. There was no way she was prepared to lose the love in his eyes. She wished, she prayed, he would leave her then. She wished he would leave the way he did when he found out she wanted to terminate the pregnancy she had in high school. If he left, she would not need to see what would be missing.

And then he was kissing her, and a soft sob escaped her lips. Right there, in the doctor's office, Chuck Bass was kissing her, and his lips were hard and searching and anxious.

"This is not what will tear us apart," he had said into her hair.

His words gave her the strength to open her eyes. And there had been no judgment, no anger, no regret in the way he looked at her. And she loved him and she would make him happy. Whatever it took.

"I'll fix it," she had promised him. "I'll find a way. I'll make you happy."

And she did. Every day, he had told her. But her mind had closed off the words of reassurance.

Blair released a shuddering breath. The Labrador retriever barked at her. She spotted the black stretch towncar stop in front of the clinic. Nate stepped off the car and slid on his sunglasses, then held out his hand to Vanessa. Her friends entered the clinic, with Nate's arm around his girlfriend's waist.

Blair turned her face away and told the driver to take her home.

Her phone rang when she pushed the door open. Baby ran into the apartment before she could even enter. Blair held the brown paper bag close to her chest and she walked to twins' bedroom, then placed her purchases inside the small drawer that Chuck never checked. She tore open one box and drew out the needle and syringe.

She hastily wiped at her tears. Blair winced as the needle disappeared under her skin, and she pushed the liquid into her vein. Carefully, she drew out the needle and hissed. She dropped the discarded applicator into its box, then with one hand tore a piece of cotton ball and pressed it on the wound.

Miracles were well and good, but after two years of nothingness, Blair would not leave their happiness to chance.

Chuck had been too quick to shoot down the idea of the stronger batch, the experimental hormone therapy. When she had gotten sick from the pills, he had demanded she stop. But it was her body that had the problem, not his. It was hers to fix, not his to decide.

Blair trembled at the initial surge of nausea that came almost instantaneously. She lay down on her back on the small pink bed, then closed her eyes. Her phone rang. She forced her knees to cooperate as she reached for her bag. She broke into cold sweat, and she felt a hot flush go through her body.

"Chuck," she breathed.

"How are you doing, Waldorf?"

And she knew he wasn't calling for her. He knew when Nate would do it. He was calling because he was upset, and when he was bothered he reached out to her. "I'm fine. Nothing to do here."

"Why don't I pick you up? I'm ten minutes away," he suggested, and she knew he needed her.

"Sure," she answered. "I'll go and change right now." Blair needed to wear one of her mother's long sleeved original creations.

Blair hung up the phone and dropped it inside her bag. The phone clattered to the floor, dislodging the battery. She blinked at it in confusion. She looked up at the mirror and then grasped for the wall, losing her balance. She looked down at the floor and frowned. She had lost her depth perception, for a moment, and it left her cold with panic.

The hormone pills had given her nausea and dizziness, but never to the extent of this. Her world whirled around her.

She had only been taking the injections for two weeks.

Blair pulled herself up towards the bathroom and fumbled with the doorknob. She felt the touch of cold metal under her skin, and she released a breath of relief. She tried to close her hand around the knob but failed to grasp it. Her hand slipped. When the bathroom door did not open, she stumbled towards the one she shared with Chuck.

The door was not closed and she felt the bile rising in her throat. Blair rested her arms on the marble sink, then leaned over and heaved.

The sound brought back her nightmares, and she wept as she heaved again.

The landline was ringing now, and she suspected he had tried to call her cell and found it dead. The ringing was insistent, and she wanted to answer it. She wanted to take his call, if only to tell him to come. Blair pushed away from the sink and made her way out of the bathroom.

And she found herself falling down to the tiles.

Blair wanted to pull herself up, to crawl, but her muscles were liquid and her limbs were limp. She rolled to her side and found herself getting sick on the bathroom floor. She gagged at the scent of her own vomit.

"Blair?" she heard his voice when the machine picked up. "I'm outside."

Her eyes fluttered closed.

"Blair!"

She opened her eyes, with no idea how much time had passed. It could not have been long. Chuck was not a guy to wait. The door of their apartment shut.

"Blair, where are you?"

And then he was beside her, and he was pulling her up off the floor, her hair out of the congealed vomit that she could not roll away from.

"I'm sorry," she choked. "I wasn't trying. I swear," she said, afraid that he would think that even after everything he had done, she was uncontrollable enough that she sank back into her bulimia.

"I know."

He lifted her up into his arms and she closed her eyes as the movement made her dizzier. He had half run to the elevator and she knew that she would be fine. Chuck was here, and he found her, and she would be okay.

When she woke up, he sat beside her tracing the puncture wound on her arm. She jerked her arm away, but he caught her wrist. And then gently, Chuck pressed a kiss on the mark.

She held her breath, savoring the feel of his lips where she had hurt just a few hours ago. He looked up at her, and she could see the pain in his eyes. "Don't keep doing this to us," he pleaded.

"I'm trying to fix it," she rasped.

"I don't know what else I can do to show you we don't need a baby to be happy."

"Stop lying," came her firm response. Blair turned her back on him. "Just stop."

He would be thirsty. He would be so thirsty for scotch now, and four years ago she would have been afraid. Chuck would be thirsty and she would have panicked that she had pushed him one too many times.

But right then, she just could not bring herself to be afraid.

"I love you," he said, as if it was accusation.

She closed her eyes.

"I love you too."

There was no sense denying it. This was how marriages ended.

tbc