Blair feels her world start to come crumbling down and in a split second she realizes that she's been waiting for this moment. She's been waiting for everything to crack open. Dan's words ring in her head.

I can't do this.

He is looking at her, his face a mask of pain, and Blair feels like it's fifteen years ago and she can't stop the feelings of shame that flood through her. She realizes this has been lurking in the back of her mind, that her life, that Dan, it's all some sort of dream and she's going to wake up and be all alone. Or he's going to realize that what she did fifteen years ago, turning her back on him, choosing Chuck, was unforgiveable. She realizes that she's never really forgiven herself, and if she can't forgive herself, how can she expect any forgiveness from anyone else.

She wants to run to him, to tell him that she's sorry, that she lives with her guilt and pain. But she can't. Blair stands, frozen, and she thinks that this is it. It's over.

Why now. Why here, in the middle of the night, in Rome. Things are supposed to be perfect. They are finally on vacation, finally away from all the distractions, finally able to focus on each other. It's like Dan is reading her thoughts, and he opens his mouth and answers her question.

"This...being here." Dan continues. "I thought I could do it, that it would be okay, but it's not."

Blair feels like she might faint as she listens to his words.

"I keep thinking if I can live in the present, only look at the here and now, I can keep the past at bay, but this, coming here, it was a mistake."

Rome.

It was his escape, his escape from her. Rome is romantic for Blair, full of art and culture and history. Rome is heartbreak for Dan.

"I didn't realize..." Blair whispers.

"Neither did I," Dan answers. He looks away again.

She had read the book.

It had been published a year after she left New York and at first Blair felt some excitement when she heard that Dan Humphrey had made the New York Times bestseller list again, as if his success might erase some of what she'd done. Then her mom had sent her an email and told her she probably shouldn't read it, that the whole Upper East Side was in an uproar over Outside, and Blair was about to marry Chuck anyway, so she never picked it up. The last thing Blair needed was to have Dan's heartbreak shoved in her face.

After her divorce had gone through Blair found herself on the coast of Portugal, crushed and feeling like a failure. She'd decided a solo vacation might be what she needed to recharge, to get back to Waldorf Designs re-inspired, but it turned out to make her feel even more lonely. She ate by herself in restaurants and spent her days wandering around the coastal town, her nights staring into the darkness, wishing she could sleep. Then, for some reason, she saw a copy of Dan's book in a bookstore run by an American ex-pat who sang its praises, and she suddenly missed Dan and the rest of her friends. If she was back in New York she wouldn't be going through this heart break alone. She'd have Serena. She might even still have Dan, who had always been such a good friend to her. She missed them and thought that maybe Dan's book would bring them back in some form. So she picked it up and took it back to her seaside vacation home.

That was a mistake, or maybe it was just what she needed to gain some clarity and context. It certainly didn't bring back happy memories.

If she thought her heart had broken over Chuck, as she turned the pages and read line after line, ugly truth after ugly truth, his words ripped her heart out and tore it into small pieces. Dan spared no one, and she recognized how much he had fictionalized the truth with Inside. He especially didn't spare Blair, and as much as she wanted to pick up the phone and inform in of her displeasure in no uncertain terms, Blair mostly felt her heart sliced open.

It was the first time she understood clearly what she'd done. She'd lost him.

Dan's heartbreak and anger poured out from the book, and Blair found herself consumed by sadness but unable to stop reading, hoping for something happy, some sliver of hope, but in the end Dan was alone and everyone else was messed up and Blair was portrayed as a wishy-washy conniving bitch whose indecision created pain for everyone around her. Even Chuck.

Sadly, Dan wasn't wrong.

Blair was glad she'd read the book five years after it was published. There was no way she could have handled reading it when she was still tangled up in Chuck, but now she could step back from those events five years ago and see that she did hurt the people around her. Dan was right.

Blair had cried herself to sleep that night, and the night after, and she woke with puffy eyes and a runny nose, and cried periodically through the day as well. She cried for the pain she'd caused, for Dan's heartbreak, for her own actions, for wasted years, and somewhere in the middle of all that she realized that she loved Dan. That she always had. That she'd never stopped. She also realized that no matter how she felt, it meant nothing. She'd made her decision that night on top of the Empire. Five years later the only thing she had left was the knowledge that now she had to live with her choices and it was going to hurt.

She had read the book but she'd never made the connection to Rome, that the book was written in this city, and now as she stands staring at her husband, the man she loves with all her heart and soul, she sees that coming here is hurting him. That hurts her and she feels his pain stabbing through her.

"I'm sorry," Blair says, finally finding the strength to step towards him. Dan looks at her plaintively and she wants to beg him to tell her what she can do to take his anguish away.

"I thought this...this pain...I thought it was all over. That having you could heal it, but it's still there, and being here, it makes me feel the pain like it happened yesterday."

"I love you." Blair says, taking another step forward, reaching her hand out. She doesn't know what else to say, doesn't even know if her words count.

"I love you too, Blair," Dan answers softly. "and I thought it was enough, but now...now I'm not so sure."

Blair wants to run to him and throw herself into his arms, to beg him to forgive her, to love her and to find a way to move forward, but she doesn't. How can she ask him to forgive her when she can't forgive herself?

"Don't leave me."

Blair rips the words from the very core of her heart, and she feels sick as she says them out loud, her deepest fears exposed. She wants to say so much more.

Don't walk away from me the way I walked away from you. Don't abandon me like I abandoned you. Please don't.

Please.

Dan looks at her.

"I can't." he says plainly. "I love you too much."

Blair is standing in front of him now and Dan reaches up and takes her hands then pulls her into his lap, wrapping his arms around her. Blair feels her body sink into his, a great sense of relief running through her.

I love you too much.

"If I had known," Blair mumbles, her face buried in his chest, his skin warm against her cheek. "I just didn't know. I didn't know for a long time."

Blair had dreamed of fairytales and princes and high school romance. That had been Chuck, standing on the rooftop of the Empire, his face twisted in disdain, telling her that he didn't want what she offered, that he wouldn't be part of her world if it meant he had to share her business, that in his eyes she would never be his equal. She should have known then, but Blair couldn't let go of all those immature notions of love and forever. She chased Chuck, gave herself to him, lost herself to the entity that was Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck. She couldn't let go until she had tried and failed with Chuck. Not until she lay curled on the bed in the villa on the Portuguese coast, her body aching with regret. Then she had let it all go, let it flow out with her tears, and when she was able to move again, when she felt her heartache dull a little, Blair knew she'd lost the most important thing in her life.

Now she sat curled in his lap, listening to his heartbeat, and she realized that all their perfection was a sort of lie, glossing over of the pain. Being here, in Rome was bringing it all to the surface, shoving it in their faces and they couldn't pretend their past had never happened anymore. Dan's hand strokes her hair and he's kissing her head, and the sun starts to come up over the edge of the city. Blair doesn't know how long they've been sitting there, arms wrapped around each other, not wanting to move because everything around them has suddenly become ugly.

"I saw you once," Blair says against his chest.

"Really?" Dan says, looking down at her. Blair's eyes are shining with tears.

"It was a couple years after my divorce. I was in New York for some business. It was a book signing in Tribeca. My mom had said something about your latest book coming out and I wanted to see you."

She had stood in the back of the room, shirking next to a tall shelf full of self-help books, positioning that Blair found mildly ironic. It was one of those independent bookstores, run by some eccentric neighborhood type, smelling of dusty paper, with a coffee shop in the corner where people spent all day caffeinating and debating the latest in politics and literary theory. Dan was seated at a long table covered in a tablecloth, a pile of books next to him, a pen in one hand, smiling as people came up and spoke with him, nodding a little, signing book after book.

"I think I remember that signing." Dan says quietly. "Why did you go?"

Blair sighs.

"I don't know. To make sure you were okay, to see that you had moved on. Because I missed you."

"Hmmmmm." Dan's hand is stroking her arm, back and forth, and the motion mesmerizes Blair. "Why didn't you say anything to me."

Blair feels the tears start again.

"How could I have said anything?" she asks. "I had lost you. I never even said goodbye. I thought you must of hated me, that you would tell me to go to hell. I'd read Outside. I knew you were angry."

Dan is silent for a few minutes and she can tell he's thinking about what she said. Then he speaks again, his voice tense and sad at the same time.

"You're right. I was angry. For a long time. I thought you were happily married to Chuck and I was nothing to you, but I could never get you out of my head."

"And now," Blair asks, not knowing if she wants to hear the answer.

"I'm still angry, Blair. I'm still hurt that you never even said goodbye, that you didn't even break up with me. I loved you and I've never loved anyone like that since, and I will love you the rest of my life, but loving you hurts so much sometimes."

Blair winces because his words are true. Loving Dan doesn't hurt. Loving Dan is like waking up to a beautiful sunrise, like a lovely summer day. Loving Dan is easy. There is nothing hard about it, and she's filled with regret that it's not the same for him. He deserves so much more. He deserves everything.

Blair tilts her head up and looks at Dan, looking for something in his eyes, something to tell her that they'll be okay. She sees that something, but she sees a lot of agony as well. He dips his head and captures her mouth in a single sweet kiss and Blair sighs. She loves this man so much. When their lips break apart they stay still, eyes locked, until finally Blair finds the courage to ask the question that has been plaguing her.

"So, where does this leave us?"

Dan sighs.

"I don't know, Blair. I just don't know."

TBC