Hello, people!

Thanks for stopping by to read this!
And many many thanks for my fantastic reviewer, LeftWriter224. Thank you so much, it really makes my day when I receive your feedback! Yeah, I'm kinda Cyrus' fan in this story, and since Blair is totally out, he's gonna be the Chuck-saver this time) Well, Chuck and Nate obviously need to talk, but not yet. That'll come a bit later. Enjoy the upcoming piece!

That morning Chuck woke up with an especially heavy feeling. He opened his eyes slowly, wishing he could sleep for a couple of hours more, but he knew he couldn't. The day was Serena's funeral. He looked through the window. The weather matched his mood perfectly - the sky was deep dark gray and it was raining. Chuck didn't even feel the tiny bit of disappointment that usually comes with such weather. He somehow knew that that day couldn't be sunny. Serena had always been their sun, their own piece of sunshine no matter how dark it had been outside. Now all the sunshine was gone.

Trying to brace himself he went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Not really to his surprise, it didn't help. Sighing heavily, he took his clothes and got dressed quickly. He could honestly say that he detested the outfit. The black suite and shirt and tie. He had already worn it once and had hoped with his whole heart to never wear it again. Yet there he was, fixing the black tie in front of a huge mirror, noticing by the way how bad he looked. There were deep purple shadows under his slightly reddened eyes, numerous shaving cuts were visible on his cheeks and he even seemed to be several pounds thinner that usually. Making a mental notice to have a good dinner he went to the living room.
The first two things Chuck noticed when he opened the door to the living room were Nate and scotch. Nate was quite hard to miss - he was sitting in the chair, already dressed up, an absent look all over his face.

"'Morning, Nate" called out Chuck.
"'Morning, Chuck" answered Nate, looking up at Chuck, and by the grateful look in Nate's eyes Chuck knew that he had gotten the message. Chuck would only call Nate "Nate" instead of "Nathaniel" when he wanted to support him, to let in some feelings instead of cold mocking. So the "'morning"s that day meant quite a lot.
"Fancy some?" asked Chuck, pouring some scotch into his glass.
"Thanks" Nate shook his head. "How's Blair?" he tried to fill in silence.
"Better" lied Chuck instantly, not willing to make the atmosphere more tense than it already was. He took a huge sip of his scotch, enjoying the burning feeling down his throat. It seemed to numb the pain somehow.
"Good" nodded Nate, looking away. "Shall we go?" he asked in several seconds, standing up.
"Let's go" agreed Chuck, finishing his whisky.

Chuck looked around the church, merely listening to the service. The words didn't matter. The only thing that did was a long human-sized black box a few feet away from him. A grob. Chuck, as a family member, was sitting in the front row, on his left was Serena's dad, Mr. Vanderwoodsen. Next to him there were Lily and Rufus, Cece and Erick, Nate was sitting on Chuck's immediate right. The church was full of people, many of them were complete strangers from Chuck point of view, but he assumed that Lily knew better.

The service went on for something that felt like a year, an when it was over they were invited to "say goodbye" to Serena. He raised to his feet slowly, and suddenly realized that he was the first one to come to the grob. He approached it and casted a quick glance at Serena's dead body. For a second that contained an eternity, Chuck stared at her, at her closed forever eyes, at the blank and expressionless mask instead of her beautiful face, at her half open mouth, which looked slightly surprised. And then, without warning, it swept over him, the dreadful truth, more completely and undeniably than it had until now. Serena was dead, gone… he clutched his fists so tightly that it hurt, but he could not prevent hot tears spilling from his eyes: he looked away from Nate and the others and stared out over the church hall and through a huge window at the still very gray sky. Not fully aware of his actions, he started descending form the pomost, hurrying to get away.

"Charles" a soft voice called him and somebody put his arms around Chuck. He had no memory of ever being hugged like this, as though by a father. Bart would never hug him, especially not like that. The full weight of everything that had happened seemed to fall off his shoulders with the tears as Cyrus Rose held Chuck silently.

"Hey there, baby" Chuck entered the ward without minute's hesitation. He was eager to see Blair, partly because had told him she was probably getting better, partly because he felt guilty for abandoning her in the morning, partly because he just wanted to see her. There she was, on the huge bed. She looked tiny on it, half a meter of free space both on her left and right.

"Hello, beautiful" he repeated, sitting down. "You are getting better, aren't you? Good girl" he smiled, stroking her arm."I know it's hard, but you'll manage it, right? Blair Waldorf, the visible personification of absolute perfection" his voice sounded confident. He felt confident know, noticing that her hand was a grade warmer again.

"Today, well, wasn't my day really. We've been saying goodbye to Serena" Chuck's voice broke at her name, all his confidence and cheerfulness gone. "The last thing I expected is seeing her there" he managed in a whisper. "She'd always been so..lively, so full of energy, so.." he couldn't keep talking anymore. "Anyway, I brought her some flowers from the both of us. I though you would like her to have a bouquet from you" he said quietly. "I made it in yellow, I though it was right. Yellow is like sun, like Serena.." he felt a familiar burning down his throat. He took a deep, steadying breath, closing his eyes for a fraction of second.

"And guess what happened next?" he changed the subject quickly, realizing he couldn't stand talking about Serena's funeral any more. "I dined at your Mom's, Cyrus invited me" he half smiled. "It was nice" he admitted. "Warm and homely, like the good old times when you and I would dine together with Eleanor and Cyrus" he sighed. "And yeah, I wanted to tell you, your Mom's doing well, she's really holding up. If you can hear me than you obviously know that she's here all the time too, it's not like she doesn't care, I just wanted you to know that she's as fine as one could be in the given circumstances" finished Chuck.

"I'm doing alright too. I know I've been complaining a lot for the past few days, but I'm fine. I don't want you to worry about me. My business is going really well. Charles Place's opening was a huge success. It's been two weeks since than and I still get two or three congratulating letters a day. I had a meeting with the investors yesterday after I left you, and we discussed the possibility of expanding the business and, well, there might appear several more Chuck Bass' hotels in NY by Christmas" Chuck sounded proud of himself now. "Blair, I owe this all to you. To your belief in me. Thank you. Thank you, baby" he whispered, kissing her cheeks and forehead tenderly, finishing with a quick kiss on her lips.

"I must be going now" he said, raising to his feet. "You know I love you. More than anything. Get better, please. See you tomorrow, baby" he smiled. He felt much more at ease now, knowing that Blair was doing fine.

That's it for today, I hope you liked it and will leave a review, because when I don't receive feed-backs I can't be sure that you read it and I can't make it any better if you don't like it!

See you later)

xoxo :*