You May Hate Charade, But You Still Play The Game
Chapter Three: Do You Know What's Wrong With You?
Summary: Post-season 3 finale. This isn't actually how I think it will go, just a possibility I'm attempting to explore. Blair is trying to get over Chuck in Paris, while Chuck is finding it too easy to get over Blair in Prague.
Disclaimer: Don't own GG, don't own Charade. Don't own much of anything, actually, aside from this laptop.
"Blair, where are you going?" Serena asked timidly as Blair marched upstairs mere seconds after Nate dropped a huge bomb on them. The criminals who had been caught with Chuck's ring – which was already insane in and of itself – hadn't confessed to doing anything to him, but… How else would they have gotten it? Her head was swimming with all sort of possibilities – none of them pretty – and she didn't even want to imagine what Blair might be thinking right then.
"Don't you think we should talk about this?" Serena tried again, silently motioning for Nate to follow her in making sure she didn't do anything…crazy.
"What is there to talk about?" Blair called back from her room in the château. She was not going to get into a deep conversation about you-know-what right then. It didn't mean anything, other than that Chuck had gotten himself into some trouble an she was going to get him out. And maybe that he had once again been planning to prey on her weakness for weddings. But that was it. She didn't even have time to ponder whether or not it would have worked. She had to focus, and Serena's psychobabble would just get in the way.
Nate and Serena rushed up the stairs to find her haphazardly throwing articles of clothing into a suitcase. "Obviously Nate missed something."
Nate reached out a hand to stop her, but her manic movements were too strong for even him to control. "Blair, I asked the cops, I went to hospitals… I was there for a week!" He seemed to want to say something else, but kept quiet.
Blair seemed to think about his words for about half a second before deciding that they would not deter her. "Forgive me if I don't place much stock in your subpar sleuthing skills, Nate. How many hospitals did you check, anyway? Did you figure out the date of … whatever happened? Did you go to the places you know Chuck would frequent while in Prague and ask around?"
Nate's face went so red at the last option that Serena had to physically stop herself from laughing. She couldn't even picture Nate at a brothel. He'd probably ask the prostitutes if he could take them out to dinner first. The next words out of his mouth cleared her mind of any happy thoughts, though.
"You don't think I would be thorough when searching for my best friend? I know mocking my intelligence is one of your favorite pastimes, but it's not like I just asked the airline if he arrived in the country and then went to go chill by the pool." His voice was getting dangerously close to showing real emotion, so Serena felt it was best to step in.
"We're just stressed, guys. Don't turn against each other." She took a deep breath before taking her best friends' hands. "We need to stick together no matter what. I mean, if Chuck is –"
"Don't you dare," Blair warned, yanking her hand away and resuming her packing. "Chuck is out there somewhere, and we are going to find him and drag him back home no matter how many drugs or women he has in his system."
Nate and Serena looked at each other and smiled. Blair really is the boss of us all, he thought, thankful at least one of them hadn't lost hope.
Charles stared at a web page of baby names and let each one roll off his tongue, testing them out. He had gotten to the Rs, but none of them seemed to fit and he was just about ready to give up. He figured that a lot of people didn't really know who they were, but he didn't even know his name. He was a non-entity, quite literally. He had been watching a lot of amnesia-related television and tried out every trick in the book, but to no avail. So far, all he had figured out was that he really liked rooftops and the color purple. But even a baby could discover likes and dislikes – like mommy's milk; don't like touching the stove when it's on. He was starting to feel pretty useless, seeing as he couldn't even hold decent conversations with people around him. Someone asked him if he had a twitter, and he started freaking out that he might be having some post-shooting after-effects.
Eva had told him to focus on the 'Blair' angle of it, but it turned out that typing "brunettes named Blair" into Google – another useful tool he had to learn about the hard way – didn't actually yield as many results as it should. He had gotten 'introduced' to a girl named Natalie Blair on .net (he figured out that he thought looking at porn online seemed rather classless. It would be much better to have the real thing), but made little progress in the way of finding his dream girl.
Speaking of dreams, they had gotten a little more… vivid recently. He felt guilty on two counts: he couldn't tell Eva about them, since some (admittedly understandable) jealousy might sprout, and he was dreaming about a girl he didn't actually know to whom something terrible might have happened. It was rather disconcerting, going to screaming "Blair!" in distress and desolation one night to screaming it in a whole other, far more pleasurable way the next.
He felt like the worst boyfriend ever. He had the sweetest girlfriend ever (not that he had any tangible girlfriend experience against which to compare her, but he was pretty sure she would still win), and yet here he was thinking about some girl he had technically never met. Was her name even Blair? What if she was actually, like, his sister and he was just some really fucked up dude? What if she was currently his girlfriend – not that that would explain why he was picking up prostitutes the night he got shot – and now he was leading a double life and cheating on both her and Eva? What if she was a prostitute and he was heroically saving her from her pimp and that's why he got shot? He kind of liked that one. Except that this Blair didn't seem like a prostitute. She was definitely a very classy lady with what appeared to be an impeccable taste in clothes and probably lingerie…not that he had dreamt of her in any, mind you.
Shut up, his brain urged him as he struggled to focus on what Eva was saying as she walked into the room.
"Your doctor say he want follow-up, so we go to Prague tomorrow, yes?" She informed him as she put her phone away. He found it adorable that she always asked "yes?" at the end of all her statements – as if she were actually giving him a choice in the matter.
"I'll have to call in sick to work, then." The truth was he didn't want to get any follow-ups. He was tired of being poked and prodded and asked how he was 'dealing' with things. He was starting to get the feeling that he had never been a guy who dealt well with anything. But he was determined to change all that and face his fears head-on, even if…
"Your doctor very angry you pretend to remember things. Lots of tests when we get there, okay?"
Yeah, that.
Nate scolded himself for the tenth time in the security line, biting his tongue to keep from uttering the petty words that he knows will ruin the bond that had reformed between him and his ex-girlfriends. He had wanted to ask, how's Dan approximately 3 times, did you hear that Dan's a daddy about 2, and can you still make out with Dan while he's holding Georgie's baby in his arms another 5. He knew it was wrong of him to be thinking about something so freaking stupid when Chuck could be—well, Chuck would certainly give him an earful when he found out, anyway.
Nate didn't like to think of himself as a quitter, but that was what he was. He had quit every relationship he'd ever been in when the going got tough (except Serena, but that ended up being for nothing), he had quit being friends with Chuck more times than he could count, he had quit fighting against his family's manic pull, and he had quit searching for his best friend because he was afraid of the answer he might find. He was sincerely glad that Blair and Serena were with him; whatever they found out, at least they wouldn't be doing it alone. The problem was that their 'togetherness' was currently very thin. Serena was on her phone constantly, updating Lily on their every step. It was for the best, since he didn't really know how to talk to her right then, anyway. And Blair wasn't saying anything at all.
Blair had been uncharacteristically silent after her initial adrenaline high, not even commenting on the many faux-pas of the very obvious American tourists that surrounded them at the Charles de Gaulle airport. Instead, she concentrated her efforts on mentally checking off the places they would have to go to find Chuck. And on trying to find ways to ask Nate if he had the ring without sounding… What? Superficial? Angry? Still in love with Chuck? All of the above?
She desperately wanted to know what it looked like, because she knew Chuck would pick out the perfect one. But, at the same time, she was afraid that seeing it would make it all the more real, and she couldn't take that. She had to be the leader, to pick up the pieces – she certainly couldn't be breaking down over missing ex-boyfriends who sold her to their uncles over hotels and then tried to propose to her after sleeping with social climbers from Brooklyn. No, she had to be strong and find Nate's best friend, Serena's stepbrother, and her oldest scheming partner.
Putting the morbid thoughts of her relationship with Chuck out of her mind, Blair went back over the list of possibilities in her head. She knew there was some brothel in Prague where the sex was free as long as you agreed to be filmed for some live stream on the web. Knowing Chuck Bass, he would totally be up for that. Or maybe…Maybe he would be up for standing in front of her in the security line and making his way towards gate C16, because that was exactly what he was doing.
Blair wildly grabbed her shoes and luggage off the belt without bothering to inform Nate and Serena, who were currently going through the metal detector, and chased after his disappearing back.
"Chuck!" She yelled, out of breath from a mixture of excitement and outrage. Was he seriously just walking around Paris, perfectly at ease, and not even caring what he was doing to his nearest and dearest? That Basstard!
"Chuck!" Charles heard a female voice yelling frantically behind him and couldn't shake off the distinct sensation that she was talking to him. If so, then he was obviously a genius for getting his name so close to correct. "Get back here right now! Don't you dare run away from me, Bass!"
At the sound of the name Bass, he immediately stopped in his tracks and turned around. Just as he was wondering if that might really be his name – hoping against hope that he really didn't have the last name of a fish – he found himself face to face with the most gorgeous petite brunette he had ever seen. Her eyes were flashing angrily, but he thought that her rage only served to make her look more adorable. She didn't look like she could do much damage – she looked like a porcelain doll, in fact. Her skin was white as snow; her lips as red as blood. She would have looked like a princess out of a fairy tale, if he in fact knew any fairy tales. She was the girl of his dreams. No, literally. She was actually the girl he had seen in his dreams. He suddenly felt like he might be in a lot of trouble. Before he could stop himself, his mouth opened against his will.
"Blair, is that you?" He nearly whispered, his throat drying up from disbelief.
Apparently that was the wrong thing to say. The next thing he knew, he was getting smacked across the face so hard that it felt like he might be dying all over again.
She ignored his howl of pain and pulled him towards her by the bowtie. "How dare you?" She seethed, the corners of her eyes prickling with unshed tears. "Do you know what we've been going through? Do you know how I felt, thinking you might be—" She cut herself off just then, disgusted by everything that had been going through her head previously, but more than anything disgusted by him.
"I'm sorry," he replied, with so much feeling that he was sure it was for more than just the present misunderstand. "I didn't know… I mean, I don't know who…" He had literally no idea what to say next. What kind of an excuse was I'm sorry I didn't call, I forgot your phone number and also my name?
He was saved from having to mumble a million more words for the time being because, just then, two blonde heads bobbed up to them.
"Oh, my God, Chuck!" The tall girl squealed, practically jumping into his arms and giving him a huge hug. Thank goodness someone out there didn't want to bludgeon him to death with her hands. "I'm so glad you're okay! Why didn't you tell us where you were? When Mom called about your disappearing act, I seriously started freaking out."
Mom? Chuck eyes almost bugged out when he heard the word. Was this ball of effervescence his sister? That was almost as surprising as the notion that he even had a mother to begin with. He felt very sorry for having made her worry. Before he responded to his apparent relative – because, again, what would he say? – his eyes landed on the athletic boy who was hanging back from the scene. His expression was dazed and confused, seemingly unable to process what was going on or his own emotions regarding it.
Unsure of how to greet him, Chuck took a step towards the boy. He was fully aware that the two girls were staring at him like he was some sort of alien, which probably meant he was usually a little chattier than this. "Are you…" Chuck began addressing the blond boy. "…My brother?" He figured that was as good a shot as any, although once the words were out he recognized that they sounded very stupid indeed.
Blair's mouth dropped open in shock and the blonde girl burst out laughing. The boy, meanwhile, seemed even more perplexed by this statement and took his time formulating a reply.
"I don't know if that's a joke, man, but…" Nate took a deep breath, torn between chiding Chuck for not coming home and being relieved that he was even alive. The latter won out in a heartbeat. "I'm glad you're okay. You had me going there for a bit."
Chuck nodded slowly, a warm feeling entering him. These three people, in their very different ways, had cared enough about his existence to travel around the world looking for him. That was a start, indeed. Now he just needed to explain to them that he had no idea who they were.
"I'm sorry I haven't called any of you, but the truth is…" He pondered over how to make his story sound something other than insane, but realized that was impossible. "The truth is that I got mugged and shot, so I didn't have any ID when I woke up, and I couldn't remember who I was. And, for some reason, I tried to act like I did know because I didn't want the doctors to keep me. So I've just been—"
"Cut the crap, Chuck," Blair interrupted sharply, shocking the other two out of their gaping expressions. "You turned around when I called your name, and you knew my name. Obviously, you're fine."
Chuck turned to look at the beautiful brunette for the first time since the slap. He found himself smiling at her despite the situation, which he could tell she found very unsettling. "I turned around because… Well, because it felt like my name. And I didn't actually know your name. I called you Blair because—"
He was cut off a second time by Eva's return from the ladies' room. "Oh, who are you?" She wondered pleasantly as she approached the group of people. "You are traveling to Prague also?"
The blond people awkwardly introduced themselves as Nate and Serena, respectively, and Chuck realized he could have saved himself the embarrassing confession if he had just stalled a few minutes in the first place.
When Eva saw Blair, she excitedly interrupted Serena's rambling introduction to exclaim, "Oh, you are her!"
"I am who?" Blair asked, raising a suspicious eyebrow at Chuck, as if this proved her right about his desperate lies.
"You are the girl. Charles only remembers dark-hair girl named Blair. That is you, yes? Doctors will be so glad we finally find contact for him."
As she spoke, she intertwined her hand with Chuck's. He wondered to himself if Eva might be marking her territory. Judging from the scandalized look on Blair's face as her eyes locked onto their hands, she most certainly was.