The Road Not Taken

And I tried asking for time for the healing

but you and I could never see past the pain.

They were always waiting.

Blair sometimes thought it was interminable, this waiting, the postponing of their inevitable reunion.

The first time, it had been because of Chuck.

"I'd rather wait, and maybe in the future . . ."

She hadn't understood what he'd meant then, and she didn't understand it now. Couldn't possibly comprehend that delaying meant anything other than rejecting the desire to have and to hold something that you couldn't even enclose in your hand. She knew because she'd tried, and all she'd gotten for her trouble was pain.

Or perhaps it was excruciating pleasure instead. Blair was never quite sure. Maybe identifying the emotion went hand in hand with understanding it, because when he'd leaned against the doorjamb, the evening a wreck from the moment he'd appeared on the rooftop, and told her they needed to wait, she hadn't understood.

"What we like is the game. Without it, I'm not sure how long we'd last."

He stood there, so earnestly serious, as sober and contemplative as Chuck Bass ever was, and she'd known that he'd meant what he'd said first.

"Just because we can't say those three words doesn't mean they aren't true."

What he didn't understand was that she could say them, she was desperate, dying, nearly tripping over her feet to say three words, eight letters, and only to him—to finally declare to the world that she, Blair Waldorf, had made her choice and she wasn't ever going back. What she thought when she heard him say that they'd be boring, commonplace, mediocre was that he hadn't made his decision yet. Blair understood this—if only because she herself had gone through the exact same thing after realizing that for her, the train stopped at the tip of Chuck Bass' perfectly shined Gucci loafers.

She had agonized the first night she had understood what it would mean to truly love a man like Chuck. To truly love Chuck.

The world and Nate had only just found out their secret, and she'd spent the day running from the pain and the humiliation of her hidden love revealed. She'd thought, naively perhaps, that he'd be thrilled to see her schooled—but not as thrilled as the fact that she and Nate were done for good and he'd be able to have her back.

And she'd be able to have him back, which was a prospect she'd never anticipated but could not longer deny. He loved her, she'd thought as she'd opened the glass door into the bar where he sat, alone, with only a tumbler of scotch in front of him. He had to love her. Loved her in a way that Nate Archibald never had. Nothing else made sense. Not his jealousy of Nate and Carter. Not his studied nonchalance that burned to ash the moment their eyes met. Not the fact that he'd allowed her to keep their entire association secret, when she'd knew how much he'd normally boast about it.

Blair had sat down, cautiously, not wanting to spook the horse before it got out of the stable, but her butt had barely brushed the barstool before she'd realized that the horse was long gone.

Or maybe it was that she'd realized the horse wasn't him, but her instead.

"I'll try to be more succinct," he'd said with relish, nearly savoring the cruel, cold way he broke her, demolished her hopes and her dreams and all the pretty rainbows she'd painted in the sky when she'd finally admitted to herself that as humiliated as she was that the world knew her secret, it didn't compare to the freedom to finally allow herself to be who she wanted, "you held a certain fascination for me once, when you were beautiful, delicate, untouched. But now you're like one of the Arabians my father used to own. Rode hard and put away wet. I don't want you anymore and I don't see why anyone would."

He might have loved her once, but she'd been so certain that he didn't any longer.

That night was only one of a long line of nights—and days, and even afternoons—when he'd asserted that he was ready for her, ready for what could happen between them, only for Blair to discover that he'd lied. Either to her, or to himself, she wasn't sure, and she couldn't decide if the distinction even mattered. In the end, the story always ended the same way.

Her. Crying in the bathroom, on the floor. Sometimes followed by a tray of desserts, followed by an after-dinner aperitif over the toilet.

Blair had never thought until this moment, when he reached down, decision made that he couldn't make a decision, his fingers lacing so sadly with hers, the tears she could nearly taste in his final kiss, that he truly regretted his ability to give her what she needed. And that's when she understood, comprehended entirely, that he did in fact love her.

Though without a commitment or even the hint of one, Blair honestly wasn't sure that mattered. Love was only love, after all. If he couldn't show her, then what was the point?

All through that difficult winter, and then the even more difficult spring, she had wondered. Why, if faced with the prospect of something so deliriously wonderful, would you make the choice to wait?

She understood now. Understood in a way she never had before when she was young. Sometimes you waited, paused in the reckless pursuit of something flawless, something that nearly made your heart stop beating, and then made it start again, because you knew if you kept going, it would only end in disaster.

Sometimes, you made a decision to postpone heaven so you could be sure you could get there first.

The silk of her slip felt icy cold against her skin and she shivered in the late fall air, the hint of rain or maybe even snow on the breeze.

"I'm sorry, but I have to be Blair Waldorf before I can be Chuck Bass' girlfriend." The undeniable truth hit her as she said it, and though she couldn't be sure, Blair wondered if this was how he'd felt when he'd told her so long ago that they had to wait, when she'd looked up at him with teary eyes, begging him to reconsider.

He was doing it now—she could see the love for her all over his face, nearly seeping out of his pores. But she couldn't stop. She wouldn't. Because if she didn't walk away now, there was no hope for them. The tantalizing promise of so much utter bliss would be destroyed before it could ever be achieved.

"I love you." At least, Blair thought as he willed her to change her mind, they'd gotten past the agony of actually saying the three words, eight letters, but just as before, love was still only love.

"I love you too." But she said it anyway, because she couldn't leave him wondering the same he'd left her so many times before. It might not help the pain, but there was some comfort in those words they'd struggled to find for so long. "I don't expect you to wait," she added, but hoping against hope that he would. She'd waited for him, and it hadn't been easy. But she was Blair Waldorf and he was Chuck Bass. They were brave, fearless. They did the hard thing that nobody else could do.

"Sometimes, if two people are meant to be together, eventually they'll find their way back.

They always had. Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck. Like two magnets, drawn together by the forces of nature, even when such attraction made no logical sense. When there was no reason on earth for it to still be true.

"Do you really believe that?"

"I do." He sounded so unbearably certain, and Blair fought a sudden urge to argue with him, to insist that it was nearly suicide for him to believe in her so completely. To hold on, despite all odds, but then she remembered all those hopeless moments that she'd waited for him despite her better judgment and what everyone in her life told her was logical.

She'd waited once. Now it was his turn.

"I do."

Someday, far in a future that she couldn't see, but could only imagine because nothing else could be at the end of this interminable road, they'd stand in front of another church and say those same vows.

But that was someday, and this was today, so she turned and left him at the altar, praying for her safe return.

AN: Dialogue taken from 1x13, "A Thin Line Between Chuck and Nate," 2x08, "Pret-a-Poor-J," and 4x09, "The Witches of Bushwick."