A Heart-Shaped Bomb

Cut me out a golden heart and threw it in the sea;

"We have to stop at Nate's first—he has something of mine that I need," Blair announced to Serena, a victorious, vicious smile on her face. James might not have totally destroyed Chuck yet, but it was still early in the match and she knew just the move that would finish her adversary off.

"Blair," Serena asked while her best friend searched through Nate's closet, "are you sure this is a good idea? Isn't that pin Nate's?"

"It might have been, a long time ago," Blair said recklessly, "but it hasn't been his for awhile now. You know that. Besides, I think he'll appreciate the use it's being put to tonight."

"I doubt it." Serena sounded skeptical.

"If you're going to stand there and do nothing, at least don't attempt to undermine the plan," Blair said impatiently.

"You made Chuck jealous, which I didn't think was even possible. What's the point of continuing this, B?"

"This is why you didn't end up Queen of Constance," Blair said. "No commitment to total destruction of your enemies. Chuck's only momentarily sidelined. I need to strike the kill blow now."

"And you think that giving James the pin is going to do that?"

"Finally," Blair announced triumphantly, emerging from Nate's closet holding a tiny golden heart that had, when she'd been younger and not quite so wise, represented the heart she'd so eagerly bestowed on him. "I thought maybe he'd thrown it away."

"Apparently Nate has a sentimental streak," Serena huffed quietly. "Who knew?"

"I doubt it was sentimentality," Blair corrected, "probably more like forgetfulness. I'm sure he didn't even remember he had it." She glanced down at the pin, its golden finish slightly tarnished, and it seemed too small, too insignificant to play the part she needed it to, but she had no other choice. Chuck had come too close to the truth of James's presence by her side, and he couldn't be allowed to survive, because then he'd know how devastated she was.

During dinner, Blair kept herself together through the sheer will—the need to destroy her enemy stronger than any pain. She'd pinned the heart on James's sleeve, but she couldn't deny she hated herself for using such a once-precious object in this twisted, perverse way. If she'd been stronger, if she hadn't let Chuck in only to have him betray her, it never would have come to this.

But then Chuck had seen the heart, his face going hard and expressionless, and something ugly and terrifying had erupted in her chest, and no glue and no tape and no pins in the world could hold her together.

Without even realizing she was running, she'd left the table and followed him. In that moment, she didn't even know James's name. All she could see were Chuck's eyes, as dark as her own, and there was a familiar devastation mirrored there.

"I know what that pin means to you," Chuck said. "You gave it to Nate the first time you told him you loved him."

Blair didn't understand. She'd been certain that the reason Chuck had betrayed her was because he didn't care about her after all; she'd just been a game to him and she'd been played. But the way he was looking at her now, the way he had looked at the pin on James's sleeve, left her feeling confused.

"And do you really feel the same way about him that you did Nate?"

He was asking her something else, she could see it in the hopeful rise of his voice. How typical of Chuck-to mask what he really wanted to know by asking something else entirely.

"I do." She had to lie. To tell the truth would be to open up Pandora's box all over again. Chuck must never know that from the first kiss in the limo, the pin had always been his.

His to own, and his to throw away.

"I'll see you at school."

Blair lost the battle over her tears as he walked away and they welled in her eyes. How could she have known that the masterful kill stroke that she'd planned for Chuck would instead be the move that destroyed her instead? The pin was a bomb, imploding in on itself, dragging her down with it, pulling her under the waves in an ocean of her own making.

When Blair returned to the table, the sight of it innocuously pinned to James' sweater nearly made her physically sick, and she couldn't wrench it off fast enough.

"Oh my goodness, my pin must have gotten caught on your sweater by mistake," she said, surprising herself by how lighthearted she could sound when her insides were a barren wasteland carpet-bombed by Chuck's betrayal and her own idiocy.

"I didn't feel anything," James said wonderingly.

"Neither did I," Blair said, and it was by no means her first lie or her last—but it was perhaps the most willfully ignorant.

AN: Dialogue was taken from episode 2x01, "Summer Kind of Wonderful."