La la la, only two chapters and an epilogue to go after this one! Hope you love it!

To my reviewers, CarolinaGirl21, LitPrincess2787, CrazyBitch10, LovelyLydia, SouthernBelle88, smartin555, ggff-fan, HnM skinnys, tvrox12, ThunderChild94, annablake, CBBW3words8letters, and GGfanficfan09 umm wow you guys are so amazing. Seriously you're the reason I update so quickly well you and my awesome beta ggff-fan (*hugs*)

Disclaimer: I don't own it, if I did I'd most likely fire Jessica S. (Vanessa) and have V move to Hati permanently.

Saturday, May 16, 2009 - Brooklyn, NYC

Blair sifted through the racks at the mall she'd had Dan take her to. It was a mall out in Brooklyn and she wouldn't normally be caught dead there, but desperate times called for desperate measures. She needed a dress for her outing with Marcus and Jocelyn but she didn't want to go back to 5th Avenue to buy something and risk getting seen when they were so close to getting this media nonsense over with. The mall did have a Nordstrom where she'd found several acceptable outfit options. Coming out of the dressing room to where Humphrey was sat, typing furiously on his lap top, she span around. "I think this is the one."

Dan looked up and the usual look of wonderment at Blair Waldorf's immaculate appearance rose to his face. She was wearing a strapless cornflower blue dress that nipped in at the waist before flaring. It was accentuated with appliqué flowers. "I'd never guess you were pregnant. And you look beautiful, yet classy. It's perfect." Dan said, sitting back from his laptop.

Blair smiled, who would have ever thought that one day she would be shopping with Dan Humphrey and not be miserable? "You know, I think I'm going to go ahead and get the others. It will give me something to wear before I have a chance to go shopping again." As Blair spoke, she felt a slight tingle up her spine and looked around warily; she knew that feeling, the feeling that there were extra pairs of eyes on her and she didn't like it one bit. She looked back at Humphrey. "Do you ever get the feeling that we're being watched? As in like right now?"

Dan looked at her surprised, he'd been thinking about the article and the pregnancy, not paying all that much attention to what was going on around them. "No, do you think we're being followed?" Something he had learned about Blair Waldorf early on was that when it came to her intuition, she was rarely, if ever wrong.

"Maybe." Blair spoke softly, looking around once more. "I just had this sudden feeling that there were eyes watching me. It's not the first time I've felt this way lately. It seems to happen every time I leave the Palace Suite. And then on our way here today, I thought that I saw a black car tailing us." Blair might have been speaking honestly but she could see that she was worrying Dan so she backtracked slightly. "I'm probably just being paranoid, worrying that the pregnancy will get outted or something."

Dan looked at her, his gaze now doubtful, perhaps Blair had a point. He'd noticed the black car this morning as well; but he didn't want to stress her out further so he made a point to return to their original conversation. "Remind me again why you can't be pregnant?" Dan asked shaking his head. He had a list of all of Blair's specifications for the story and that one was underlined several times.

Blair rolled her eyes. "Because if I'm pregnant than it should be Marcus's and that would be a world of complicated that I don't want to enter."

Dan ran a hand over his head, pausing to rub his eyes which were growing tired from staring at the computer screen for so long. "But what happens when you have a child? People can do math Blair."

"Hopefully, the media won't care anymore by the time I actually have the baby. They should be on to the next big story and I can go back to being just a regular girl." Blair said, smoothing the dress down in the mirror.

Dan gave her a look that almost made her laugh. It was a strange judgmental look that only Dan Humphrey would be capable of giving. "Blair, you were never a normal girl. Do you honestly think that gossip girl is just going to let this slide?"

Blair huffed. "I know, but I'm hoping I can keep this pregnancy concealed enough that when I do have the baby we can say that I was early. The date of conception isn't clear, we know it was sometime between Christmas and my mom's funeral, which is almost a three week time lapse. I'm really irregular so that's no help, the doctor thinks it might have been as late as January 11th, which means I was just over a month pregnant when Marcus and I split and since part of the official story is that we knew it was a mistake and that I was still in love with someone else it wouldn't be out of the question for me to become pregnant soon afterwards. So as long as the baby isn't really early, we can just say that it is."

"That sounds complicated." Dan sighed, looking back down at the words on the screen as he typed bits of his 'exclusive interview with Blair Waldorf.'

Blair turned to the sales lady and handed her the rest of her purchases as well as the tag off the dress she was wearing before responding to Dan. "It is. Life is complicated." Dan didn't have much of a response for that, so Blair asked another question. "So how did it go with the New Yorker when you called?"

At that, Dan smiled. "Better than I expected." Blair gave him a look that clearly meant 'go on' but he wasn't sure how happy she was going to be about what he had to say next. "When I first said I wanted to write a story to be released in Monday's issue they laughed, loudly. More because I was calling them one day before the magazine went to press to say I wanted story space with room for six color pictures than that I, Dan Humphrey, wanted to write something, I hope. When I told them I wanted it to be the cover story they laughed so hard I thought that they were going to hang up. When I said it was an exclusive with Prince Marcus and you it got so quiet on the other end that I thought they had hung up." Blair looked tense, as though she thought that the article wasn't going to happen, something that made Dan want to laugh out loud. "Then they told me they were going to connect me to higher management. That's how I ended up on the phone with S.I. Newhouse Jr.; the owner of Conde Nast Publications. If you don't know, Newhouse is a big fucking deal. . ."

Blair's eyes were wide. "I know who Newhouse is. Conde Nast owns Vogue and Vanity Fair." She waited with bated breath for Dan to continue.

Dan nodded. "Exactly and speaking of Vanity Fair, they have an issue coming out Monday and he wants to scrap the current cover article and give it to you."

Blair's jaw dropped, that was not what she had been expecting at all. "Why are you telling me this now, as opposed to I don't know, two hours ago?"

"I didn't think it mattered." Dan said with a slight shrug, even though he knew it did matter, he just hadn't known exactly how to breach the subject. "There is one thing though, since this will be a cover story in Vanity Fair, we'll need twelve photos instead of just five. They are actually blocking space for eighteen but I thought we could use wedding photos and some of the ones from last summer to take care of that." Blair nodded, doing her best not to hyperventilate as Dan continued. "There is some bad news though. They have already sold designer space for the cover so you have to wear some of these designers' clothes in some of the shots. You'll still use this dress for the meeting with Marcus and Joss but anything we shoot in studio has to be done in their clothes."

Blair nodded in shock as she felt her heart rate speed up. "Oh my God. Oh my God. This is so out of control Dan!"

Dan sighed. "I know and I tried to fight them on a lot of it. They are making compromises, they are going to let Aaron shoot all of the shots except the one for the cover which we'll do at their New York office this evening after everything else is taken care of."

"Okay." Blair said, breathing deeply as she began to pace. "This can still work, this can still work."

Bracing himself for Blair's reaction Dan opened his mouth once more. "There's more." When he knew Blair was giving him her undivided attention he spoke. "They don't just want to use it as the cover for Vanity Fair; they want to have it as the cover story for the U.K., Italy, and Spain additions as well."

Blair clenched her eyes shut, realizing that she was about to have a panic attack when suddenly a light bulb went off. Her eyes snapped back open, a smile forming. "Actually, that's fantastic." She spoke, her mood lifting immediately.

"It is?" Dan asked skeptically.

Blair nodded. "Yes, don't you see it's perfect! We wanted our side of the story to be what everyone heard and we wanted it to close off any loop holes so people would talk about it until it was talked out and they had no other stories to run on us. We thought that the New Yorker would have to be good enough to do this and then people would only have that story to report on but if our story is out internationally, people won't have anything else to comment on at all. Our story really will be what everyone hears."

Dan nodded, thinking that she actually did have a point, when something else from his conversation with Newhouse came to mind. "Would this be a good time to mention that Newhouse called me back and wants you and Jocelyn to do the cover for next month's vogue. It would be released next week while the hype is still big. He wants to play off the idea that the two of you have more in common than Marcus and focus on style." Blair looked hesitant at his suggestion so he spoke again. "Newhouse said it would be the perfect transition. This week they break the story that you and Marcus split two months ago and you introduced him to his new girlfriend. Then next week will be capitalizing on you while you are still a hot commodity and giving the people reason to transfer their attentions to her as she is the new girlfriend of the Prince."

Blair couldn't deny the logic behind the idea, it was actually perfect but there was something suspicious about it. "How much exactly does Newhouse know?"

Dan felt his cheeks redden at Blair's observation. "He doesn't know you are pregnant but he knows there is something fishy behind all of this, something that we aren't saying. He's agreed to go on contract with us that this is all he will run without our further consent if you'll do the Vogue cover."

Blair felt a thrill of excitement. Contracts were good, contracts were very good. If they had Newhouse on contract concerning this then they virtually had everything under lock and key. It was strange, she couldn't deny thinking that this sounded exactly like a plan Chuck would concoct; thorough and air tight, no mistakes. "I'll do the Vogue cover. Are we shooting it tonight as well?"

Dan nodded, feeling the relief wash over him. Blair actually seemed to be happy about all of this, so perhaps he hadn't screwed up too badly. "Yes. But while they've agreed to let Aaron do the shots for the Vanity Fair shoot, they want to see how they turn out before they agree to let him do the ones for Vogue."

Blair nodded understanding; that was of course practical. "And the writing?"

"It will be a joint article." Dan spoke matter-of-factly. "Someone else is going to be writing with me, she'll do the fashion stuff and I'll do the other. I'll have final say on everything though."

"Good." Blair said as the sales woman brought her back her shopping bags and her credit card. "Now what time are we meeting everyone?"

Dan looked down at his watch. "Tavern on the Green in exactly one hour."

"Then we'd better hurry." Blair said walking quickly from the store and hailing a cab.

Saturday, May 16, 2009 - The Palace Hotel, NYC

Walking into the suite, Chuck couldn't seem to hold back his excitement. Everything was exactly the same, only different in a way he couldn't identify. In his memory this room was practically the din of iniquity but that's not how it looked now. The alcohol was still there behind the bar, but it looked less like the bar was a main feature of the room. There were flowers on the table, pink peonies from the looks of it. The kitchen looked as though it had actually been used to cook something from time to. He walked over and opened the refrigerator, an aspect of the suite that he could only remember using for beer and the ingredients of his hangover cures. Now it contained groceries as well as take out food.

Walking over to the television he found Blair's personal DVD collection, all of the Audrey's and Grace Kelly's, along with a few other classics, Casablanca, All About Eve, An Affair to Remember, The African Queen, Singing in the Rain, The Graduate, It's A Wonderful Life, Wuthering Heights, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Titanic, Moulin Rouge, The Notebook, The Phantom of the Opera, and of course Gone With the Wind because if Blair wasn't Audrey Hepburn she was most certainly Scarlet O'Hara. Seeing that the shelf below was filled is well, he knew it likely held her Cary Grant Collection as well as her set of Disney movies. Fingering the Breakfast Club he couldn't help but think about Blair's pet name for their group, The Non-Judging Breakfast Club, and found himself removing the movie and placing it in the DVD player. It would make good background noise for his further examination of the apartment.

Standing, Chuck continued to look over the room. The feeling that it was the same but somehow different was back and he'd finally put his finger on it. It looked like it was lived in as opposed to a hotel suite. His first thought upon this realization was whether this change had occurred before or after he'd had his car accident. Finished with the living room, Chuck made his way through the French doors and into the bedroom. It looked exactly as it always had other than Blair's cell phone charger next to the bed and a photograph of them on the bedside table.

Chuck walked to the closet, unsurprised to find that even though Blair's clothes were occupying the front half of the closet, his had simplly been pushed back. He filtered through Blair's things, recognizing some of them, but not many. Near the front of his closet he spotted his scarf, it hadn't been pushed back with his array of multicolored suits. Almost nostalgically he wrapped it around his neck before exiting the closet, pulling the door closed behind him. The top of his dresser looked quite different now as several of Blair's things were placed across it. A hairbrush, a makeup set, and a jewelry box. He knew that the jewelry box was a family heirloom, he didn't know the complete history but he knew that it involved the Astor's, whose lineage was connected to the Waldorf's, and the Titanic. This particular antique was something that had always been off limits to all of them, even Nate; he didn't know if he'd ever earned access to the magnificent antique or not but no matter how much Blair might love him he felt as though it was unlikely.

Curiosity got the better of him and he found himself opening the elaborate box in front of him. There were so many compartments, some deploying from hidden locations. Sifting through the jewelry he found what he was looking for, a particular necklace that he'd been dying to see. It was a delicate piece of silver with several charms hanging from it. Chuck reached out and touched it, fingering the heart shaped charm in the center; there was no doubt in his mind that this was the Erikson Beamon necklace that he'd given Blair for her 17th Birthday. He'd hoped that seeing the necklace would have triggered something, but no matter how long he played with the charm in the middle, nothing happened. Reluctantly, Chuck placed the necklace back in the jewelry box and closed it. The only other pieces of jewelry he wanted to inspect weren't there, but he hadn't expected them to be. The first was Blair's ruby ring, something she never took off, and the second was the engagement ring, something else he knew she was wearing.

This time when he walked back into the living room, Chuck knew exactly where he was going. If there was anything else to see, he knew where it would be. Approaching the built in cabinet in the living area, Chuck lifted the smallest candle stick, looking for the key to the lockable drawer. His heart stopped when it wasn't there. Shit. Where the fuck was it? Think Chuck think, did you move the key before or after the memory loss. Suddenly it hit him, the lost weekend junior year. He'd locked the watch and Babe Ruth's called shot in there and Nate or Carter one had stolen them. He'd moved the key after that. He'd kept it on him for a long time but there was no way he'd planned to keep it on him forever, it had to be somewhere. He picked up the various items on the counter but found nothing. Would he have separated the key from the cabinet? An unlikely thought crossed his mind, but it was all he had to go on, so Chuck walked back into the bedroom to the photo frame he'd seen earlier that contained a picture of him and Blair. He opened the frame and sure enough there was the key; perchance he knew himself better than he thought.

Back in the living room Chuck inserted the key into the drawer and turned it. He had absolutely no idea what he might find and the thought was unnerving. Looking in, it seemed that the drawer contained more than he ever remembered placing there. There was a folder, what appeared to be a photo album, a stack of letters, a small box, an iPod, and on top of it all a note. He lifted the note first, surprised by what he read.

Jenny, If you're reading this it means you've done quite a bit more digging than I anticipated. Make sure everything in here goes where it belongs when the time is right.
C Bass

Chuck was puzzled, why had he written that note to Jenny rather than Blair. It took him a few minutes to remember that at the time he left he thought that Blair was moving on with Marcus for good, he'd had no idea that she was on her way back to New York. Placing the note on the counter he withdrew the photo album and the letters, saving them to look at later. Next he pulled out the iPod; turning it on he realized that it was a replica of the one he currently had in his possession, the one Blair had given him, only this one didn't have the songs that Blair had added near the end or her voice, it was just him. He set the iPod down with the note to Jenny and pulled out the folder, surprised at what he found inside. First there were college acceptance letters, not just for him but for Blair. For him there was one from Columbia and one from NYU, clearly he'd anticipated staying in the city. Yet there were also two for Blair, Columbia and Yale. It was strange as he could have sworn that Blair had said something about only having been accepted at Oxford. He must have applied for her; that was surprising, he had even been surprised that he had applied to college himself. Next he found a deed to a house, Blair's house. Once more Chuck knew that this shouldn't have been possible. Hadn't Blair sold her mother's house after the funeral? So not only had he applied to college for her, he'd also bought her house. The last set of papers in the folder were warranties for various items of jewelry, the Erikson Beamon necklace and matching pieces, a Tiffany headband, and Blair's engagement ring, as well as a certification of antique status for another ring that he recognized even better than the others, his mother's wedding ring.

He now knew exactly what was in the small box but he opened it anyway. He didn't know when or how it had happened but Chuck had indeed procured his mom's wedding ring. He could only assume that he'd done so with the intention of putting it on Blair's finger one day. Closing the box he put it and the papers back in the drawer but he kept the letters and the photo album, walking over to the couch where he sat, prepared to stay there for hours if he needed to in order to sort through these items. Even then, he couldn't deny that he felt a pang in his heart that he had yet to remember anything; though as he selected a letter from the top of the stack he reminded himself that there was still a chance that something might be triggered. He wasn't done here yet; not by a long shot.

Saturday, May 16, 2009 - Central Park, NYC

Walking through Central Park, Marcus and Jocelyn were careful not to touch. The likelihood of someone recognizing him here of all places was slim, especially with his shades on. He looked at her, the smile slipping off his face. "Now you're certain that you're okay with this?" He asked for probably the thousandth time.

Jocelyn sighed exasperated. "Yes Marcus, as I've told you over and over again, I am okay with this. In fact I'm more than okay with this. I want us to be able to be together in public and for that to happen something like this has to go down first." Besides, if I don't do this, Chuck Bass might have me murdered…she added silently to herself.

Marcus still wasn't smiling as he stopped on the sidewalk and turned to face her. "I know what you've said Joss but honestly this is rather major. Especially now that this isn't just for the New Yorker, this could turn your life into a media circus. We can find another way."

This time Jocelyn rolled her eyes. "My grandfather is Steve Forbes, CEO and Chairman of Forbes, consequently I am the great-great-granddaughter of BC Forbes, the man who founded the family business. The men of my family have spent their entire lives thrusting themselves into the media, they don't know any other way, which means I've become rather good at dealing with it. Everything will be fine."

"Okay." Marcus replied softly, always surprised by how quickly she could calm his nerves. "If we are going to go through with this there are a few guidelines we should stick to. First, don't ask Blair about the pregnancy, not in public at least, we need to keep that quiet. Second, don't ask Blair about college as that is a point of contention due to my interference in her life. Third, do not under any circumstance ask Blair about Chuck Bass."

Jocelyn huffed, blowing a piece of blonde hair away that had gotten caught in her gloss. It was as though Marcus was doing his best to make it difficult for her to do as Chuck had asked. He hadn't even told her about Blair's pregnancy until he'd told her not to ask about it earlier in the day. "Fine. Though I don't see why I can't ask about Chuck."

Marcus sighed. "Joss we've been over this; Chuck is currently missing in action, even after Blair did everything that she could to get him back. Asking her about him is only going to cause trouble."

Sighing, Jocelyn nodded in agreement, all the while wanting to scream that Chuck wasn't missing, he was in New York City being Chuck Bass and manipulating this entire operation. "Alright, well I suppose I'll go on to Tavern on the Green from here while you go meet Blair." When Marcus looked tense at the mention of her leaving she placed a hand on his arm. "Marcus baby, it will be fine; Blair and I are pros at this sort of thing, we have this all under control." As Marcus walked away, Jocelyn couldn't help but wonder if she had anything under control at all.

A/N: Hope you guys enjoyed my twists and turns. I know this chapter was a little short but the next one is super long and super special to make up for it. By the way, Blair's sundress is on my profile under The Games We Play Extras and I still have a poll up if you haven't voted.

Reviews are always appreciated.

xoxo
kate