"The only appeal that Dan ever had to you was that he was mine."
Blair didn't even have to run Serena's bitter claim over in her mind to know that it was untrue. Why would she even dare attempt, when anything, anyone that was Serena van der Woodsen's, was unyieldingly firm in the golden girl's iron grip?
Serena's presence cast a celestial glow upon anyone who crossed her path, a sliver of sunlight seeping through a crack of the cloudiest skies. And Blair was sunburned. Ceaselessly eclipsed by her best friend's everlasting flame for as long as she could remember.
A flurry of silken blonde tresses and all-encompassing regal air was Serena van der Woodsen; her charismatic fluency attributed to her honeyed sweetness. Blair had been subjected to a life of keeping her glossed lips shut, a feigned contentment, maintaining her class as a mantra boomed in her head, scolding her to be grateful that she even had a place in the tiniest turret, while Serena sat primly in the tallest tower, overlooking the peasants down at her feet, awestruck and blissed by her mere existence.
Blair's seen it, whether it be the girls at Constance, desperately seeking a higher position somewhere along the social ladder, naturally gravitating to Manhattan royalty. (Blair offered them the most coveted front-row seats to her mother's shows, reserved for them the most lavish dinners at Butter, and lent them her most precious dresses, only to be discarded and left to wither when the first traces of Serena's return were uploaded to Gossip Girl. Against her will, cascades of envy left Blair reeling. Taking leveling breaths as Dorota always told her to in an attempt to calm her fury, she kept her eyes shut.)
Whether it be Nate - poor, sweet Nate, wearing Blair's heart sewn on his very sleeve, dreaming of velvety blonde, when the hair his fingers wove through fervently were her curls - chocolate-brown and sorely lackluster in contrast. (Pangs of disappointment surged through Nate when he blinked open his eyes. Sensing her boyfriend's sudden tension in their moment of sacred ecstasy, Blair kept her eyes shut.)
Whether it be her own mother, singing praises about her daughter's ever-so-lovely best friend, My, what a charming young lady! And that figure of hers! - I would've killed to be that slim at her age. (Just minutes later, Blair would lock the bathroom door and find herself hunched over the toilet, her knees scalding with newborn bruises from the fall from grace. Desperately, she shoved a manicured finger down her throat until her eyes watered and her carefully-applied mascara blotted from the welling tears and she gagged and gagged and gagged, only feeling the sickest sense of satisfaction when she felt her dinner come up. Retching into the toilet bowl, her hands clenched; her sharpened fingernails undoubtedly leaving bold indentations on the surface of her palms, stamping her of the cruelest shame she'd ever harbored - and Blair kept her eyes shut.)
Whether it be herself, her doe-eyes wide and inexplicably fed-up on the first day of kindergarten. Her favorite headband had been snapped into two sad pieces - a gift from her father for her fifth birthday. Blair was entertaining the thought of throwing the bits onto the pavement, sitting slumped on an otherwise deserted swing set. The other children avoided her like a plague, as she had been tagged "it," and all the excitement was suddenly siphoned out of her. Blair had been noticeably shorter than the other children, her stubby legs creating a disadvantage. She had failed to tag a single person.
That was when a little girl with a sleek blonde ponytail ran up to her, asking if Blair wanted to play with her. As if she were some lethal thing, Blair then informed her that she was "it," and therefore could not play.
"That's okay! You can tag me, and then I'll tag someone else, and then we can play - just us!" As if it was that simple. But Blair was growing restless staring blankly at her broken headband, and so she reluctantly touched the girl, who kept her word and returned to Blair, beaming, just minutes later. She introduced herself as Serena, and in her youth, Blair allowed herself to be lured into the whirlwind that was Serena van der Woodsen.
(Suh-ree-nuh.
Three syllables of a name that would pass through Blair's lips a multitude of times throughout her life. Blair was sure of it, as she ran the day's events to her mother and father. She was tucked into bed snugly that night, anticipation coursing through her veins, dreaming of the following day that awaited her with her new best friend, and Blair kept her eyes shut.)
Blair? She was the best friend, the prudish girlfriend, the self-effacing daughter whose troubles ran deep when her hardened exterior caused others to deem her shallow.
Where Serena was seamless, Blair was artificial and precise. Even her signature doe-eyes fell matte; hollow from years' worth of phony performance.
So yes, how could Blair even attempt, when all her life, she'd been scathed by her best friend's scorching existence? Serena had been born at the top, destined for all the greater things life had to offer, and being in her midst had wired Blair to believe that she had only been destined to reside in her shadow.
But Blair wasn't easily appeased. She fought the condemnation of her fate, she groveled and pushed and shoved and elbowed and worked. She worked for respect, she worked for prominence, she worked for anything that Serena was offered on the most silver of platters. But more importantly, she worked for control. Power made Blair froth, something that she could not earn by simply maintaining a happy-go-lucky mindset, or having her face plastered on the front page of the hottest new issue of a magazine. The headband perched atop her head stayed more for assurance than anything, creating the illusion that she wielded any sort of dominion. Her tiara provided some sense of stability.
A false notion when she lacked the strength to keep her first love's eyes from wandering. At the ripe age of fifteen, the epitome of love was supposed to be carefree and easy and riveting. But her relationship with Nate Archibald was nothing of the sort, with the lack of affection that was supposed to fill her stomach with flutters, her two fingers plunged farther and farther down her throat, trying to mold and reshape and sculpt herself into desirable. But she couldn't exactly bleach her hair blonde, or dance tipsily through the streets of Manhattan, or become fucking Sunshine Barbie overnight without mourning a shred of her dignity. Blair knew - she's known, that if given the chance, Nate would gladly choose Serena. Over and over and over again. No matter how many times you watched a film, it would always have the same ending. Loving Serena van der Woodsen was in his nature, and it consumed him wholly. He was never Blair's to begin with, and she found it silly that she ever tried to measure up. Blair was to the brim, and no one was there to tidy the teeming droplets when she spilled.
When she allowed herself to be whored out for a fucking hotel. At the ripe age of seventeen, she fell victim to Chuck Bass's sugarcoated promises and his million-dollar-gifts and his closet full of pristine suits. The notion that he could fill the void, that he could offer the love she craved - she could almost feel the ghost of its embrace, teasing and eliciting the most short-lived thrill before dwindling, left her with an even more prominent ache. The man had ridiculed her for living vicariously through old Hollywood films, yet it was he that could love her only in black and white, turning a blind eye to her underlying iridescence. Once the final gambit had been played and all the schemes had been executed and the remnants of sweetness turned bitter, Blair knew that standing firm by his side would be her condemnation.
When she permitted someone forgiveness as consistently as they hurt her. Blair resented Serena for sliding rose-colored glasses over everyone's starry eyes - not that any of them protested. When met with her alluring gaze, anyone in its midst was instantly spellbound. Whether it be by the sweet crinkle of her eyes, or the absentminded bite of her lip as she failed to contain a smile, a sudden warmth would be awakened in anyone's stomach by the sight - Blair would know. She could recall the event so vividly, yet it sat in the back of her mind collecting dust, and she was afraid to identify why the memory was so significant to her.
Around the conclusion of the tenth grade, Blair and Serena had been lazing around in a hot tub, celebrating the anticipated summer before the eleventh. Serena, ever the daredevil, had rummaged in her mother's liquor cabinet and obtained a bottle of the most sparkly champagne. Blair blamed the haziness that clouded her pristinely polished mind, but as the night progressed, the glasses emptied, and their fingers pruned, she found her lips colliding with her best friend's giggling ones. She couldn't tell if the warmth that invaded her trembling body was from the foaming heat of the tub or the rushing levels of unleashed dopamine. She soon found that it was unfair to have loathed the golden girl's admirers when she now understood their blood-thirsty hunger, and she continued to chase the high like she chased her best friend's smiles.
The realization dawned upon Blair that she was the most hypocritical girl on the Upper East Side.
Although all perfect summers have imperfect conclusions, and as hasty as the separation of their lips, Serena was gone without as much as a goodbye. There was no acknowledgment of what had occurred in the hot tub that one fateful summer. Just when Blair had begun to feel at ease, she was in shambles, picking up the pieces from her parents' divorce without a shoulder to lean on. There seemed to be a pattern in her life, and she wondered to herself if anyone would ever consider staying. Her chain of thoughts seeking an answer always came to a dead end. Despite her icy exterior, she knew that she amounted to a delicate flower - wilted and discarded.
When she had had her fifteen minutes of fame substituting her preppy headbands for shimmering tiaras, her treasured seat atop the steps of the Met for a bedazzled throne. Blair was blindsided by the luxury and the possibility that Louis proposed. She could've doused herself in the elegant ball gowns, the elevation to the highest pedestal, her face plastered on the front page of the hottest new issue of a magazine. For once, she felt like she finally had the harnesses clutched tightly in her grip. That was until she could feel control slipping through her fingertips; her grand carriage turned into a pumpkin and the weight of the tiara on her head fell onto her shoulders and she amounted to nothing. Perhaps it should've been a world-shattering revelation when Louis confirmed their relationship lacked structure, but Blair had once been taught that films never had alternate endings, and it was an endless cycle that she could never quite shake. Before long, she outgrew the title of Blair, Princess of Monaco.
It was in Blair's nature to be recycled, and she tossed and turned at night feeling like waste. She could change every aspect of herself to meet the standards of desirable, but even if she thought she was incapable of being loved, she knew she was incapable of change. The girls sitting below her on the dirtied Met steps could see her as rotten. Her past loves could see her as a bejeweled accessory, tragically tarnished and irreparable. All of Manhattan could see her as Queen B, with the unfaltering cold shoulder and even colder heart.
But at the end of the day, Blair Waldorf didn't want to be rotten - she didn't want to be rusted, or bitter. She had always classified herself as a hopeless romantic, and she no longer yearned for the comforting familiarity of her first love, the intoxication of the game, nor the studded diadem for show. Sometimes she even enjoyed the guilt of contentment that came with the absence of her best friend. But only sometimes.
She would always care for Serena; the lack of Serena in her life would feel almost foreign to her. Even when Serena was hurling everything back in Blair's face, acting out after getting the slightest taste of what had over time became Blair's diet. The unspoken feelings she once harbored for her best friend would remain a subject untouched. Maybe it was unfair - blasphemous that Serena dared to denounce Blair, when for the first time in her life, she felt truly, unconditionally loved.
When she had met him for the first (conscious) time, she had been acting out on bitterness, her intentions acidic and aiming to sting. Blair had learned long ago to cloak her deepest hurts underneath scathing words and petty schemes. It had merely been a ploy to get back at Serena for bearing Nate's infinite affections, that had brought Blair Dan Humphrey.
Bart Bass's brunch had started out tame and blandly extravagant, and it brought Blair a spark of a thrill when chaos unraveled.
This Brooklyn outsider - this absolute nobody had caused the most comical uproar. The look on Chuck's face upon realizing he had been humiliated at his own brunch, caused Blair to press a delicate hand to her twitching lips, smothering the stunned giggles that threatened to emerge.
Blair knew that this Humphrey boy's stay in the limelight was temporary, but he did make quite the impression during his fifteen minutes, she'd admit begrudgingly.
Immediately, Blair became uneasy when he grew to be a constant in her life, his presence automatically shrugged off as normal. Whether he was clung onto Serena's arm like a leech, his name plastered on the latest Gossip Girl blast, or materializing on the Upper East Side for some reason unbeknownst to her.
Out of all of Serena's boyfriends, it was ultimately beyond Blair how the most snooze-worthy one had achieved renown. He was distasteful. And not to mention the entourage that apparently came with him as a supposed package deal: the whiny, attention-whoring sister and… Vanessa Abrams. Enough said.
Sure, they had… collaborated scheme-wise, but those times were of the rare occurrences they happened to share common interests. Blair could play at callousness, but her friends remained her sweetest spot that she would go to great lengths for. Blair Waldorf had never undertaken a task halfway, after all.
Interestingly enough, her second remarkable interaction with Dan Humphrey had involved banishing Georgina Sparks from scandal-ridden Manhattan to Jesus' consecrated clutches in Bible camp. These ploys were merely child's play for Blair, but she knew an amateur like Dan would never manage to pull it off. Yet, she permitted generosity and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Blair's thin brows arched up in unconcealed astonishment when Dan played his part of the plan naturally. Effortless. He had actually lured Georgina, the calculating, bat-shit bitch that she was - right into Blair's palms. No bloodshed.
Dan Humphrey. Outcast. Pretentious. Mediocre. Conniving.
Huh.
"Humphrey, you're a born liar!"
It took one to know one.
There had always been little snippets of him in her life. Blended into the background, hidden in the delicate brushstrokes of the portrait while Blair stood far, far away.
Blair was classic; she preferred to envelope herself in the glitzed glamor of the Upper East Side. She viewed things primarily in black and white - much like her Audrey films.
Fed through silver-spoons her whole life; the coveted limelight, the meaningless sex, the endless money flow, the superficial love posing as the real thing.
How could she prefer one thing over the other, when she had never lived in technicolor?
Maybe, Dan Humphrey kept his childhood Cabbage Patch doll for sentimental value. And he had two left feet when it came to dancing. And he punched Chuck Bass at his brunch. And he kept countless journals with yellow-tinged pages, his thoughts permeated in ink. And he waited up for Jenny past her curfew. And he helped his retired-rockstar father hang up fliers in Brooklyn.
And he opened up to Blair when they were mere strangers about his absent mother. And he subjected himself to coffee and biscuits with her, her speech heavy with distaste at his tornado of a hairdo. He kept going out with her when she remarked about his resemblance to a Muppet; even when she was so shamelessly ashamed of being seen with him.
And still, when Blair was condemned by the tabloids throughout her time as Princess-to-be of Monaco, he was shamelessly unashamed of her.
As she and Dan strode through Central Park, Blair breathed in the cool, crisp air - reminiscent of autumn, and for once, did not long for social hierarchical thrones or makeshift tiaras. She knew the changing of the leaves was a seasonal affair, but she had found vibrancy elsewhere.
Maybe she wasn't inked-out Clair Carlyle, page-to-reality. A romanticization above all else.
But she was, in his words: fiercely strong, independent, outspoken, beautiful, capable of anything.
And Blair knew, when she looked in the mirror, enveloped in Dan Humphrey's arms, with pillow-like kisses pressed to her neck, that it was true.
She had found technicolor.
(And when Blair blinks open her eyes, she sees for the first time.)