A/N: Yay! Longest chapter yet! So, there isn't much action in this one, but it's a necessary set-up chapter for the action that's going to happen at Insomniac. If you love the D/S/N triangle, then hopefully the upcoming drama will make you very happy.
Also, I forgot that Juliet is a character prior to 4x04, so let's just pretend she doesn't exist, because I don't want to make up a storyline for her. Personally, I found her largely irrelevant and overwhelmingly obnoxious anyway, and her arc stretched for waaaay too long. So, yeah. No Juliet.
Chapter 9: Carry On
But I like to think I can cheat it all
To make up for the times I've been cheated on
And it's nice to know when I was left for dead
I was found and now I don't roam these streets
I am not the ghost you want of me
If you're lost and alone
Or you're sinking like a stone
Carry on
May your past be the sound
Of your feet upon the ground
Carry on
-"Carry On" Fun.
"Blair?" Blair felt two reluctant, gentle pokes in the side of her stomach and she groaned in response. "Uh, Blair? It's me, Nate. I just got back from London, and I wanted to see you." This time, Blair enthusiastically responded to the words, throwing off her duvet and wrapping her arms around her friend's neck.
"Natie! I'm so glad you're back!" She smiled fondly at her blond, blue-eyed companion, noting that his skin looked paler from weeks spent in the cloudy London weather, where when it wasn't pouring, there was more often than not a constant drizzle or mist.
"You know, maybe my internal clock is just wacked out, but last time I checked, it's not normal to sleep until two o'clock in the afternoon in New York." He grinned at Blair, flashing his signature megawatt smile that had no doubt melted the hearts of many a British woman on his business trip for the Spectator, the newspaper he had began working for after deciding to leave Columbia. Columbia was a place where he had never found his niche, but luckily, he seemed to be extremely happy with his job and had gone to London to scout investors as well as follow a story chronicling the international embezzlement scheme of a high-profile CEO of an investment firm, his first major assignment.
"Well, last night turned out to be a very…trying time for a couple of your friends," Blair admitted slowly, looking periodically at Nate's very concerned and sympathetic face. "How much has Chuck told you?" Even uttering his name was causing her insides to twist in knots, and she had no idea how long it would take to untangle them or if she could even do it at all.
"Actually, I haven't seen him yet," Nate confessed sheepishly. "I, uh, came when I saw that Serena had been spotted at that fancy hair place she goes to." He ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head. "I just…wasn't ready to see her I guess, after she, you know…" He couldn't bring himself to say the words "cheated," "Dan," or anything else to do with what actually happened to cause the dissolution of their relationship. But if he was being honest with himself, he wasn't quite sure that their relationship had completely dissipated. Apparently, Gossip Girl was under the impression that Serena was going to choose who she wanted to be with, as if both Dan and Nate were lounging around desperately waiting for her all summer, lame, ugly ducklings waiting for their chance to turn into the swan… Ugh, what was he thinking? He blamed Blair for his tendency to revert to fairy tales whenever his mind was jumbled. Growing up, she had frequently used them to parallel events of her life, and he supposed it had rubbed off on him over the years.
"Well, I can understand not being ready to see someone after something like that," Blair said quietly, rubbing his arm in a comforting way. "But you should know she feels really awful about everything that happened. She told me about it this summer, and she – "
"Blair," Nate interjected, slightly wincing. "I'd really rather not talk about it. I wanted to hear about how you're doing. The last time I talked to Chuck, his girlfriend, Eva, had just left town, and he didn't say it, but I have a feeling you had something to do with that. Am I right?" His voice wasn't at all judgmental, one of the things Blair loved most about Nate and the reason she had always felt that he and Serena were good for each other. Unlike Heinous Humdrum Humphrey, Nate never assumed the worst of her best friend, and even if the worst turned out to be the truth, instead of criticizing and then abandoning her, he would hold on to her even tighter, shielding her from whatever pain she had caused.
"Well," Blair said, prepared to tread lightly on the issues but not sure where to start or end her synopsis of the past few days. Nate had never understood the complicated nature of Chuck and Blair's relationship; he believed that two people who loved each other should be together, no questions asked. Love was simple, in Nate's opinion, and that made everything else simple too. But Blair knew better. There was a thin line between love and hate, and when teetering on the tightrope, you could so easily fall onto either side. The night she confessed to getting Eva to leave town, she had been awake for hours, wobbling along the tightrope full of fear, wondering whether her fall to the ground would lead her to heaven or hell, because in the case of her and Chuck, there was no purgatory. "Well," she said again, knitting her brows. "Yes, that was me, and he was angry about it at first…" she continued her candid retelling of the night, editing where she saw fit, but unlike usual, she did not embellish it a bit, as she realized that it was already dramatic enough without the addition of false details.
"Wow," Nate said, feeling as if he was getting a recap of a soap opera rather than an update of his best friends' lives. "So did he say anything after that?"
"No," Blair answered, "not a word. But, then Serena talked to him, and they decided to send me peonies – Serena ordered a hundred, and then Chuck changed the order to 730 to symbolize the two years I spent trying to make him happy."
"You're kidding," said Nate, already knowing that she was entirely serious. Chuck had proved himself to be quite the romantic during his relationship with Blair, and he loved making grand gestures, which of course, had been the cause of the disaster that was the Empire State Building ultimatum.
"Nope." Nate had always been astounded at Chuck's ability to read what Blair was thinking, because the only way he had ever been able to get insight into her thoughts is if he asked her for it. Right now, she seemed stoic, disconnected from everything she was saying. Even her eyes appeared…empty, so unlike the Blair he was familiar with. But he because he had no idea as to the foundation of their emptiness, he needed to hear the rest of the recounting of everything he had missed at home.
"So then what happened?" Blair looked shocked by his voice, as if he was pulling her out of a dream by speaking.
"Oh, um, then we ran into each other at the opera last night." Blair consciously attempted to keep Serena out of the story as much as possible, noticing the weary expression on Nate's face whenever her name was mentioned. She folded her arms tightly across her chest as she spoke, pretending that by doing so, she would be able to block the emotion out of her voice and out of her thoughts; yet by the end of the narrative, she felt the familiar knots in her stomach, the lump in her throat that constricted her breathing, and the burning sensation in her eyes as they failed her. Her voice broke into a million pieces when she repeated Chuck's words "If two people are meant to be together, eventually they'll find their way back," and not even Nate could put the pieces back together again. Loving, caring, sweet Nate couldn't deal with a broken Blair, which was why she had shown him that side of her as infrequently as possible for the first seventeen years of her life. That side of Blair scared him even more than the bitchiest, angriest, most intimidating version of herself she could muster, because Blair was the one who had always been counted on to carry everyone else. If she broke, then everyone else did too – Nate, Serena, Chuck… She was the glue that held them together, the one who kept the pieces of each of them not only in place, but also alphabetized, categorized, organized… Everything that needed to be done, she did. But when she began to let Chuck carry her, things were bound to fall apart eventually, not because Chuck didn't love her or couldn't handle taking care of her, but because it just wasn't Blair to let someone else take care of her, even someone who loved her as much as Chuck did.
"So, what does all of this mean?" Nate asked her finally, after he had let her cry into his pinstriped dress shirt for a few minutes until she gathered herself, putting her own pieces back together. The way it was supposed to be, Nate added internally. Though he was glad Chuck and Blair had seemingly worked things out, he still harbored a shadow of resentment in his heart for what Chuck had done last spring. While he had always known they weren't right for each other romantically, Nate had constantly been protective of Blair and in the course of their relationship, short-lived as it was, he also grew to be defensive of Jenny Humphrey as well. It was in his nature, he supposed, to be protective of the women he cared about – his mother, Blair, Jenny, Serena… Serena, perhaps, not so much at the moment, or at least he liked to imagine that was the case. But deep down, he knew he would still do anything for her.
"Exactly what he said," Blair said quietly, wiping her eyes one last time. "We find ourselves, and then, we'll find our way back to each other."
"How are you going to do that? Find yourselves?"
"I – I don't know yet." Blair glanced around her room as if it was hiding the answer from her. "Nate!" she suddenly shrieked as her eyes landed on the clock by her bed. "Serena is going to be home any minute. If you're really serious about avoiding her, then you'd better go." Nate was torn. He wanted to see her so badly, just so that he could know for sure whether she would have picked him, or if she would have, as usual, reverted to her default setting of Dan Humphrey, but he also knew that he was done being her second choice, and because Dan was currently with Vanessa, as Blair had informed him distractedly during her tale, that's all it would feel like if Serena chose to be with him now.
"I guess I'll leave," he said, a heart-wrenching look on his face. "Bye Blair."
"Natie?"
"Yes?"
"Thank you. For letting me ruin your shirt, I mean." Blair granted him a grateful grin.
"Anytime," he finished, flashing her one last smile in return, one that would have no doubt caused her to swoon a few years ago. Now she just felt a warm fondness for Nate Archibald, a man she once assumed to be her Prince Charming. He would sweep her off her feet like Cinderella (not that she would have ever gone through the poverty stricken, manual labor part of the story) and they would live happily ever after in a fancy castle in the Hamptons. The perfect fairytale. But now Blair wondered if there was such a thing. She and Chuck had hurt each other so many times on both sides. Were they too damaged to get a happily ever after, and if not, did they even deserve one?
Gossip Girl: Tonight's the night! Anyone who's anyone is getting an invite, so you can be sure I'll be among the revelers at Insomniac. And just a few words of advice for my fellow attendees: when you do decide to finally go to sleep, make sure it's with someone you won't mind everyone knowing about. You know you love me.
A few hours later, Dan Humphrey was preparing to enter Insomniac, feeling completely ridiculous but oddly excited at the prospect. His skinny necktie felt a little too prim and proper for the occasion of a club opening, but the invitation had said that it was a formal event. Earlier that day, he had informed Vanessa that he wasn't ready to be in a relationship with her again, and it had not gone well to say the least.
"You mean you're not ready to be in a relationship with me, because you're ready to be in one with Serena!"
"Of course not!"
"God, Dan, you must be delusional if you think that by now I can't tell when you're lying!"
"I'm really sorry, Vanessa, I just –"
"Used me? Let me believe that you wanted to be with me, just so you'd have someone to help you take care of Milo? And then, when you figured out that he wasn't actually your son, you decide – hey, now's a good time to go back to Serena like you always do when you're in a good place in your life?"
"Vanessa, come on – "
"I'm not done, Dan! As I was saying, you've decided to go back to Serena, and then when you guys end oh-so-tragically, like you inevitably do every time, you'll come back to me, because you assume I'll be there waiting patiently for you."
"Please, just let me – "
"Explain? No, Dan, I'd rather not hear whatever lame excuse you're about to pull out of your ass. You know, I would have been okay if you'd said up front that you just wanted to be friends, but no, you couldn't do that, could you? Because you love being loved too much to care about anyone else's feelings but yours. Well, you know what? It's time for me to start caring about my own feelings, because I've been putting yours in front of them for way too long."
"Vanessa…"
"I figured we'd come to a point where you didn't want me romantically anymore, not this soon, obviously, but eventually, it would come. And I threw myself at you anyway, because of the pesky little shred of hope I had that you would grow to love me as much as I love you. But I never in a million years did I think that we wouldn't even be friends anymore by the end of it."
"Wait, you don't even want to be friends?"
"No, Dan, I don't. Because we can't just be friends without me pining over you while you thoughtlessly talk about Serena for hours on end. So I'm done, Dan. I can't do this anymore, and I don't think you should ask me to. I know you're pretty selfish, but that would be low, even for you."
Dan winced at the memory, still fresh in his mind. Was he really selfish? Was he a bad friend, a bad person? He had looked at it as figuring out what (well, who) he really wanted, and that was Serena. He assumed that there would be collateral damage and that Vanessa would be pretty pissed, but he wasn't expecting a full-on rampage during which her eyes were practically shooting flames at him, incinerating him until all that was left was a pile of Dan Humphrey dust. But he couldn't let Vanessa's words bring him down tonight. Tonight, he was going to lay it all on the line with Serena, and he was confident that she would reciprocate his feelings. He and Serena had always held each other in their hearts, even when they were with other people. First loves could never completely be shaken, and this time, he wanted to do things right so that there would be no more regrets for either of them.
My head is on fire but my legs are fine
Cause after all they are mine
Lay your clothes down on the floor
Close the door, hold the phone
Show me how
No one's ever gonna stop us now
Cause we are
We are shining stars
We are invincible
We are who we are on our darkest day
When we're miles away
So we'll come
We will find our way home
Until next time – xoxo