Chapter 4: Fighting and Sneaking

I don't mention the pills to Chuck again. He's lied to me, and I know that it's for a reason. If he wants to tell me, he will. If not…well, that's why I write down the name of the pills. If I ever need it. Just in case.

"I brought lunch!" I say in greeting when I walk into Chuck's room.

"Blair, how many times do I have to tell you that I don't like meeting in my room?"

I ignore that and set the food down.

"Is it really that hard to call first, too? What if I was busy?"

"Well, you usually are," I point out, gesturing to the papers around him. "But you never seem to do anything but work, so a break never hurts you. You obviously agree, or you'd send me out."

"I try to," he says, but he doesn't try to kick me out.

He pauses.

"What if you show up one day and I'm not here?"

"Then I'll leave."

He looks a little suspicious, but drops the subject. The fact that he obviously feels pretty strongly about me not being here when he's gone makes me a little suspicious myself. I find myself wondering, once again, what he's hiding.

We start on the food and I catch Chuck staring at me. I blush and look down, putting my food back on the tray.

"What? Do I have something on my face?"

"No," he says, and quickly looks down.

"Look, Chuck, sooner or later, you're going to have to talk to Lily and Serena," I say, quickly changing the subject.

"There's nothing to talk about."

"Yes, there is. You used to be so close with both of them, especially Lily."

"They chose you over me. So I chose you over them too," Chuck shrugs.

"I'm touched," I say sarcastically, even though I'm secretly happy about what he said. "Really, though, I know that they didn't contact you, but you didn't exactly give them a chance to. You disappeared to Prague-doing who knows what…"

I wait but he doesn't try to explain. He's getting too used to my tactics for trying to break down the mask.

"…then you didn't come back to New York. How did you expect them to find you?"

"But they didn't even try. They could've found me easily. I'm pretty well-known, if you haven't noticed."

"But they're trying now. Come on. Give them a second chance."

"Why should I when they didn't give me one?"

"Chuck, you've had about a million second chances from both of them."

"And they've probably had more than their share from me too."

"But that was all in the past. All of us, we stick together. No matter what. Even if we forgot for a little bit."

"I wish I could say something to make you understand, Blair. I can't know them again. I shouldn't even know you…it's bad for both of us."

"You keep on saying that, yet you never have a good reason," I say, agitated.

"I do, I promise. I really just don't want you to get hurt. And I…I don't want to get too attached."

"Why not? Why is it so bad if we're friends?"

Chuck is silent for a long time. The mood in the room has changed, somehow.

"Friends…would be bad. But maybe it would be okay, maybe…"

"So, what's the problem? We're friends."

I know it's true, and so does Chuck.

"I know…"

"But?"

"I'm not too worried about us being friends, Blair…"

I'm silent for a moment, thinking about this.

"I don't know what you mean…" I say slowly.

He looks very uncomfortable. It strikes me that maybe I'm breaking through again, but I haven't done anything this time. It confuses me. One of my tactics was to get him to open up, but I really didn't try to this time. I'm excited at the revelation that he might not need my help to open up anymore, but this conversation is slowly, I can tell, getting into dangerous waters. I know what's coming next, and a part of me wishes I could turn around and run away before he tells me what we both know is true. But another part of me keeps me stuck where I'm sitting, forcing myself to hear this. I need to hear it, even if it will make me angry.

"We can never be just friends for too long. It's only a matter of time before…well, before we start the whole cycle again. And I don't think that we can handle going through it again."

I'm silent for a moment. "I see. So you just think that I'm weak then? That I'll come crawling back to you no matter what? I made a promise to you, Chuck, to stand by you, and I'm trying to. But that does not go so far as to love you again. Nothing can do that."

I think I see him flinch a little. "No, Blair, I just think that-"

"No, you think that I'll always be waiting for you, don't you? You just-"

"Blair, we're inevitable! When we're together, we have to be a couple. We can't help it!"

"We can. We didn't speak to each other for three years!" I try to argue.

"But we couldn't keep it up," he points out.

"I couldn't. That's what you're saying. I couldn't stay away." I say, quieter now.

And with these words, I'm blaming myself too. I'm mad at myself for coming here, suddenly. Why did I do it? I'm not accomplishing anything, and what is my goal? I finally manage to break the mask, and then what? I stay friends with Chuck? No, my goal is much bigger than that. In my heart, I know my goal is to get him back, somehow. Not just to break the mask, but to get the old Chuck completely back. To somehow go back in time and reverse what happened, and somehow have him again. To somehow be able to be with him again. Because maybe he's right, Chuck and Blair are inevitable. But this new Chuck, although he sometimes shows hints of it, is not the old Chuck. But sometimes I forget, and as always, I get lost in my fantasy. Chuck is not going to wake up back to what he used to be tomorrow. And even if he did, how would I believe him? Some version of Chuck has broken my trust, and now I cannot allow any form of him to get it back.

"No, Blair, it was me too. I promised myself I wouldn't speak to you again. And then you came back, and I did. I didn't just do that, either. I let you stay here. I let us become friends again."

Friends? Hardly! I want to yell at him, to tell him why I'm no frustrated with him. I'm saying the words aloud before I even realize I am.

"Not quite. You still have on that stupid mask, every time I talk to you! Even now, I still don't feel like I'm completely talking to you!"

"I'm only trying to protect you, Blair!"

"Protect me? From what?"

"From getting hurt," he says simply. "But what even makes you think I'm not me right now? What's different?"

"What's different is that you're still hiding something from me! I can just tell. And I saw the date on those pills."

Chuck looked shocked for a moment. "So?" he says after recovering.

"So I know they're recent. What are they for, Chuck?" I demand, my voice rising even more.

"Nothing."

"They're obviously for something, or you wouldn't have them!" I'm slightly hysterical now.

"Stop acting like you know me! Like you know my life! It's not your business what they're for! I never asked you to come here, Blair. And now I'm asking you to leave. Let's just try to go back to our lives. We have to stay apart."

"Chuck, I don't know what this…obsession with getting me away from you is-" I take a deep breath. I want to tell him that fine, I'll leave, but I'm never coming back. I never want to see you face again. But I do, I need to, and the desire to finally break the mask and really see his face again is what makes me say-

"-But I'm not leaving."

I turn on my heel and leave.

When I get outside, I think about how I may have broken the mask with the second option. That maybe there was never a mask at all. He may hide his emotions, but he's just told me exactly what he feels, and I could see it written all over his face anyways. The face that I keep telling myself is hidden by a mask. But the look on his face confused me. The look on his face was one of desperation. It was pleading. It was telling me that maybe it couldn't find the words right now but that I needed to trust it. It was telling me that maybe he still loved me, somehow, and that was the reason he needed me to stay away.

Or maybe it was the mask, and it was just telling me to go away. The mask matched the words better anyways.

Maybe I had broken the mask. But I can't let myself believe that. If I did, there would be nothing left to fight for. Because if I had, the old Chuck, the real one, wasn't underneath. The real Chuck wouldn't have been able to let me stay away. He wouldn't be able to.

So I hold onto the belief that the mask is still there, and I promise myself that I'll keep trying to break it, desperately hoping that there's something to break.

And this desperation brings me to a conclusion, a decision:

It's time to try the third option.

I need to get someone to distract Chuck.

Serena is probably my best bet. I could have Lily help, too. Maybe even Nate.

But I can't let them know that they're just a distraction. They won't go along with my plan.

I don't think I'll be able to convince Chuck to visit them, especially because we're not exactly on the best terms with each other right now. The only way to do this is to tell Serena to visit him. Hopefully he won't run away, like he did last time.

I call Serena, and she picks up right away.

"Hey, Blair."

"Serena, remember how you wanted to talk to Chuck?"

"Yeah…"

"Well, now is a good time."

"Really? He says it's okay?"

"He's fine with it," I lie. "Just don't push too hard, okay? He's not going to want to talk a lot about the past. Just tell him that you aren't here to talk about that, you just want to hang out. Don't let him change his mind about letting you talk to him. Don't let him run away again."

"Okay…should I take my mom? And Nate and Eric?"

"Sure," I say. The more people there are, the harder it will be for Chuck to get away.

"When should we meet up with him?"

"Tonight," I say. "Wait in the lobby of the empire around 9. I'm not sure when he'll get back, but it should be sometime around then."

"Alright, Blair. I'll let everyone know. Thank you. I'll let you know how it goes."

"Why don't you text me when you see him? And then when you leave. Just so that I know that you talked to him."

Serena sounds a little confused at this, but she agrees and hangs up.

I would just go into his room while he's at work, but I don't know if he'll stop there for anything during the day or arrive early that night. I need to know exactly when he's gone, and Serena has just provided the perfect distraction.

I sit in my hotel room and wait.

Serena texts me around 9:30 to tell me that they've just spotted him.

I rush out of my room and take the elevator up to his room. His room is empty, with no maids, thankfully.

I'm not quite sure what I'm looking for. But I know there must be something to find here.

I start at the medicine cabinet. I take some paper and a pen out of my purse and copy down the names of all of the medicines and all of the dates on the bottles.

I'm not really sure where to go next, so I just decide to look in his room. There are some drawers in there, and I can look for anything he's hiding.

There's nothing interesting in the first one, just some socks. I look in the next few, too, but I can't find anything. I'm careful to put everything back exactly where I found it. He can't know that I've been here.

I find a box that I can't open. There's no key that I can find, so I have no choice but to leave it. I want to take it and find a way to break it open, but Chuck would definitely notice if it was broken or missing.

Next I go into a sort of office he has. I look in the desk drawers, and I find a bunch of folders and paperwork. There's nothing interesting, just a bunch of business things I don't understand.

I'm about to put a folder back when something falls out and clatters to the floor. It's a key! It must be to that box I found.

I'm about to leave to go open the room when something on the desk catches my eye.

It's a hospital bill. I pick it up and examine it, and I can see that it's pretty expensive. Why has Chuck been in the hospital? This and the pills are making me very uneasy.

I copy down the amount on the bill and the name of the hospital and leave the room, going back into Chuck's bedroom.

I find the box again and open it.

I almost expect to see diamonds the size of my hand or secret FBI documents, but I'm disappointed when I just see paper. I want to just close the box, because after all, how could anything really interesting be on that paper? They're probably just the papers for the company or something like that.

But the fact that they were in a locked box intrigues me. I take the first one out. I notice that it's a letter, and then almost drop it in surprise.

It's addressed to me.

AN: And now the title will make sense. I just want to say thank you to all of those who told me that the OOC isn't bad and that I should continue writing, and to those who originally told me it was OOC. Thank you for your opinions, they really helped. I'm not really sure when the next chapter will be posted, but I get off for Christmas break Friday, so probably next weekend or that week. I'm actually really excited and really nervous to post that chapter! Once again, thanks for reviewing!

Oh and I'm really sorry I don't respond to reviews….I promise I read and appreciate every single one though! I'm going to try to get better about that and start responding more when I find the time…

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