How to Disappear Completely, a gossip girl fanfic

Title: "How to Disappear Completely (Or Four Times Blair Didn't Pick Up the Phone and One Time She Did)

Author: Lila

Rating: PG-13

Character/Pairing: Blair

Spoiler: "The Serena Also Rises"

Length: one-shot

Summary: After Blair falls from grace all she can do is climb back to the top.

Disclaimer: Not mine, just borrowing them for a few paragraphs.

Author's Note: Just a little something to tide us over until a new episode. Title and cut courtesy of Radiohead. Enjoy.

I. Sunday

Blair wakes on Sunday morning with her phone lodged in the crease between her neck and her shoulder and hope tugging at her heart.

She's that kind of girl, the kind who waits, and she abandoned Capitale after that first agonizing toast to wait for Serena to mumble an apology and forgive (but never forget).

She waited and waited and drifted off sometime around 2:00 only to wake with a bruise and a cramp marring her throat and the anticipation of forgiveness making it hard to breathe.

She checks her call log and it's devastation that makes her chest hurt with each breath.

The call never came.

She watches "Two for the Road" until noon and it makes her head hurt trying to piece together where Mark and Jo went wrong; it hurts her head more trying to figure out when Serena reached the point of no return.

She takes a valium and hopes it was all a bad dream.

There's one new voicemail when Blair steps out of the shower at four in the afternoon, silk robe clinging to her skin and beads of water blurring the headline news sprawled across her vanity. She scans the front page and smiles, because the economy might be going to hell in a hand basket and the imminent threat of having to wear last season's shoes makes her gag, but Fashion Week and celebutantes aren't exactly the stuff of front page news.

She doesn't look at her call log as she cradles the phone between shoulder and ear, and she's having trouble breathing again at the anticipation of hearing Serena's voice.

It isn't Serena one the line.

"Blair, hi, it's Jenny…Jenny Humphrey. I know I'm probably the last person you want to hear from and I totally don't blame you, but I wanted to let you know that I meant what I said last night about being your friend. And, if you need anything, you can count on me." There's a long pause, and then a nervous laugh, and then a goodbye. "Hope you're feeling better. Um, bye."

Blair doesn't know if she should laugh or cry, that the girl who stole one crown is offering to help steal another back. She chooses to ignore it all and takes another nap.

She dreams of the year she turned thirteen and she began sharing coffee and croissants for breakfast with Serena.

By dinnertime she's bored and by 8:00 she's practically crawling out of her own skin. She needs to get out, creep out of her comfort zone, so she locates the phone that hasn't rung all evening (and morning and afternoon too), and calls Jenny Humphrey.

Her lame 90's dad is at the gallery with her lamer brother and Jenny's grounded so she invites Blair to Brooklyn to watch "The Cutting Edge" on the loft's flat screen.

Blair makes a halfhearted crack about slumming and asks if it's safe to wear her diamond studs, but Jenny only sighs and tells her she'll have popcorn and diet soda waiting.

Blair doesn't have the energy to say anything in return except, "I'll be there in an hour."

With the lights dimmed and the television screen casting a strange glow across their faces, Blair doesn't see Jenny sitting next to her. She sees blonde hair and blue eyes and Serena at fourteen, giggling uncontrollably while Blair tried to explain why "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is the best movie ever.

Jenny laughs at the right moments and sighs at the right times and whimpers a little when Doug and Kate kiss at the very end, and Blair's tempted to throw a pillow at her because it's her job to sob and sigh while Serena mocks and rolls her eyes. The blue glow fades and it's only Jenny Humphrey curled up on the other end of the couch.

"You know, this doesn't make us friends," Blair says as the movie ends and the credits roll and the lights come on to reveal blue eyes far too innocent and wide to belong to Serena.

"I never said it did," Jenny says as she pops the dvd out of the player. "I just figured you needed to get out of your house for a while."

Blair hates that Jenny Humphrey can read her mind as if she lives in it. "Why did you really invite me?"

Jenny stops gathering popcorn bowls and empty soda glasses and looks Blair right in the eye and they're suddenly far wiser than a minute earlier. "I thought for just a little while, it should be easy for you."

"Thank you," Blair says softly and means it, even though it's Jenny Humphrey, even if it's the last thing she wants.

She saves the message in her call log; sometimes she needs a reminder that someone is one her side.

II. Monday

Blair doesn't go to school on Monday. She fakes a migraine and Dorota dutifully brings her tea and toast and Eleanor makes a distant comment about checking in later from the atelier. When the phone never rings, Blair's sad to discover she's no longer surprised.

She spends the morning watching "Roman Holiday" and wondering if a commoner could make all her dreams come true when every prince of every possible variety has only broken her heart. She turns her phone off, because she'd rather remain oblivious to the quiet than confront the two silent days she's spent since Serena stopped being her friend.

When she gives up Audrey for choosing true love and abandoning everything she'd ever known, she decides to reacquaint herself with reality and the path she's carved out for herself. There's a single message blinking across the call screen, logged an hour earlier when anyone and everyone in her world were ensconced within Constance's walls.

She figures it's Eleanor (remembering what it means to be a mother) or her father (remembering he has more to his life than a lover) or maybe the family doctor diagnosing a migraine that never was. She's surprised (a feeling she wasn't sure she still possessed) when her voicemail automates the name Nate Archibald, and her stomach turns a bit as her eyes round on Audrey and her commoner paused onscreen while what used to pass for her prince beckons to her through the phone line.

She doesn't listen to the message, because Nate stopped saying anything that really mattered long before the betrayals and breakups and humiliation, and hates herself a little more because long after the betrayals and breakups and humiliation have passed he's still number one in her speed dial.

His voice is warm, like honey (the kind that traps flies, the way he trapped her) when he picks up, on the fourth ring, and there's a smile in his voice she's not sure she's ever heard before.

"Blair," he breathes and he sounds genuinely happy to hear from her; she'd forgotten the feeling.

"Nate," she returns and works to keep her voice calm and steady.

"You got my message?" he asks without skipping a beat, without asking how she is or what she's doing; she wishes she were more surprised.

"Of course," she responds and fights to keep the annoyance out of her voice because Nate's never been one for noticing the obvious, but she can't help but feel irked when he doesn't ask why she's home on a Monday morning rather than struggling to stay awake in French class. "What are you thinking?"

"Lunch, the Modern? Meet me in thirty?"

Onscreen, Audrey is laughing in widescreen, arms flung around the man of her dreams, and Blair wants nothing more than to sink into the feathertop of her bed and lose herself in someone else's true love. But fate is presenting her with an opportunity to fight her way back to the top, and she can't turn it down. "Make it forty and you have a date."

"Yeah, it's a date," he says and laughs his goodbye and the sound of it spreads through her chest and makes it hard to breathe; it feels too much like everything she always wanted not to ache.

Nate chooses a table by the window and the sunlight spills around him to pull the gold from his hair and bathe his skin in a warm glow. It's hard to believe something so perfect was once hers; it's easier to believe something so perfect chose (twice) to let her go.

He tells her they're celebrating and orders half the menu and she's progressively more confused as the meal wears on. They're midway through the rabbit terrine when she finally asks what's going on, and he pastes on another smile (but it isn't as warm and doesn't quite reach his eyes) and she regrets asking the question for fear she'll never see that smile again.

"I wanted to thank you," he says and reaches across the table to clasp her hand in his. It's something he's done before, when he confessed to sleeping with Serena or missing her birthday or any number of other occasions when he let her down, and she almost tells him to stop for fear he'll break her heart all over again. "I appreciate everything you did for me, about Catherine, and even though it didn't quite work out, it's the thought that counts, right?

She can't remember a time when he's been so complimentary to her, so appreciative and in awe, so she nods rather than break the spell. "My grandparents decided I don't have to suffer because of my parents' bad decisions. They're giving me a trust fund and my mom an allowance; our problems are solved."

"I'm happy for you," she says and mostly means it. She's glad Nate can still attend St. Jude's and keep his house, but the part of her that hates him a little for everything he put her through wishes he had to suffer a while longer.

He leans back in his chair, sips a spoonful of split pea soup, and tells her about his new life. He talks about having a credit card again and keeping the Hamptons house and scouting out USC now that his Dartmouth-touting father has been banished. He smiles and he laughs and his voice is breezy and light, like the bottom didn't drop out of his world less than a month earlier, and she starts to hate him more than a little.

As she listens to him drone on about Vanessa and her body of lies, she wishes (for a half second she'd never admit to anyone including herself) that Chuck were with her. She's tired of being the only fighter in the ring; she's tired of the golden twins always winning.

She deletes his voice message on the cab ride home. Nate could talk to her every day for the rest of her life but she doesn't think he'll ever say anything worth hearing.

III. Tuesday

She watches "Breakfast at Tiffany's" nine times over the course of three days and during her tenth viewing, some time around midnight (even though she has school in the morning), her phone vibrates against her nightstand.

She ignores it, a skill she added to her collection the first time she tumbled from her throne and keeps perfecting with each subsequent fall, and concentrates on the opening chords of "Moon River" to blot it all out. She hums along and tries to focus, but her eyes keep straying from Holly and Paul and locking on the blinking light a foot from her face. She turns her head, out of sight and out of mind, but the last six months of her life flash before her eyes and she knows she can't hide from what's waiting for her.

She presses the phone to her ear as she pauses the movie while Paul is clueless and Holly cries (again) and a tiny voice in her head asks how she could ever enjoy watching a film about such miserable people; she pretends she doesn't love the film because it makes two imperfect people seem perfectly right together.

"Blair?" a familiar voice asks. "It's Lily Bass." The voice continues and Blair ignores the way her heart skips a beat at that last name and wonders why the person who spawned her own source of misery is seeking her out.

"I know it's late, but I haven't heard from Serena all night. It's not like her not to call. If you hear from her, have her let me know she's all right."

There's no "please," no "thank you" in Lily's request, and Blair isn't sure if she should be impressed or disgusted that the Bass arrogance has claimed another victim.

She isn't impressed that Serena has hid their feud from her mother; she always was better at keeping secrets.

She doesn't call Lily but she calls Chuck and his voice sounds distant and far away as he purrs into the phone.

"Groveling isn't your style, Waldorf," he greets her. "Much as I do like you on your knees."

She holds in the retort and settles for a sigh. "This isn't about me, Chuck. It's about Serena." She's surprised at how tired she sounds, but it's exhausting to keep up appearances and she's halfway shocked she hasn't collapsed from the effort to pretend nothing is wrong when everything she's ever wanted has slipped from her fingertips and remains just out of reach.

There's a pause and then he speaks and she's equally surprised at the exhaustion in his voice until she remembers how well he knows how much effort it takes to be a Bass or Waldorf in a world full of Van der Woodsens and Archibalds. "How can I help?"

She tells him the whole story, how Serena is missing and Lily is freaking out and she needs to give her current/former best friend a heads up before his stepmother calls the police. "I'll take care of it," he says and his voice sounds strong and assured because she's given him a task he can complete.

"Thank you," she says softly and starts to say goodbye because there's nothing left to say to him. Serena was the last thread holding them together and that heartstring was snapped in two almost a week ago.

"Blair," he says right as she's about to hang up, and there's something fragile in his voice and it makes her heart clutch in her chest because it reminds her of that perfect week that she wished she never had because it hurt too much to bear (almost) in the aftermath. "Why are you doing this?"

It takes her a long while to answer but he doesn't hang up and she takes comfort in his breathing, slow and steady and constant through the phone line. "It's all I know," she manages to say and hangs up before he can respond. She thinks her heart has taken enough of a beating for one night.

Her legs wobble like they're about to give out from under her and she feels a little like she's just thrown up her breakfast (or lunch or dinner or midnight snack).

Old habits die hard.

IV. Wednesday

Eric waits five days before he seeks her out, in the middle of physics tutoring, and she feels her phone vibrate against her calf through her Marc Jacobs bag but pretends she's listening to whatever Nelly Yuki is trying to tell her.

"Vectors, Blair, it's all about vectors," Nelly Yuki says and she tries to concentrate on the perfect, straight lines drawn on her paper but her mind keeps slipping back to honors biology in ninth grade and a different kind of vectors, the kind that spread disease wherever they went. Her phone vibrates again, new message logged in the ever increasing space of the data bank, and she wonders if there's something hidden inside herself, a mystery pathogen or virus that drives everyone away as she tries to pull them close.

She feigns a headache and bags tutoring for the night and refrains from punching Nelly Yuki in the face when she meets her eyes and sees the sympathy lurking there.

She checks her messages on the way home, chilly fall air brushing briskly across her cheeks and the noise of the city filling the empty spaces of her life.

"Blair? It's Eric," a voice whispers in her ear and she can barely hear him over the passing cars and trucks, but recognizes the sadness to know it's really him. "Serena will probably kill me if she knows I'm calling you, but I can't take it anymore. This fight is stupid. Really, really stupid. Stupider than dating Asher and letting him talk me into keeping it a secret stupid. You guys are sisters. You have to make up. She misses you, you know. I know you miss her too."

He doesn't say goodbye and it's only when she trips on a broken slab of concrete that she realizes her feet are still moving.

Her chest hurts when she steps into the lobby of her building. She's Blair Waldorf and she's nothing if not a good actress, but even she knows she isn't having trouble breathing because of the walk.

She waits until she's home and in bed before she responds and she texts Eric rather than calling because she can't let him hear her voice break the way her heart already has. "She made her choice," she types out with wobbly fingers and within thirty seconds her phone is buzzing.

Her hands are shaking so much she has to wait three minutes before opening the phone and regrets the decision immediately. "I wish she chose you," glares at her in bright, angry digital and she sucks in a breath to combat the sudden clenching in her chest.

She cries herself to sleep because she wishes Serena had made that choice too.

V. Thursday

It's Dan Humphrey who actually gets through.

He calls around 9:00, when she's finishing her homework and preparing for bed because she'd rather cut her social life off at its knees than bow down to Serena.

Rufus has finally started to lay down the law and taken away his daughter's cellphone, so when the Humphrey's home number registers on her call screen, Blair picks up without missing a beat.

"Yes, Jenny?"

There's a pause and then a stutter, and Blair knows it isn't Jenny at the other end of the line. "Yeah, not Jenny," Dan says and Blair forces herself to repress a groan. "It's Dan," he continues, overstating the obvious.

"What do you want, Dan?"

"I know this is going to sound weird, but I'm worried about Chuck…"

"Dan, if you're asking me to run interference for your new bromance, than answer is no."

He laughs, an uncomfortable, reluctant sound she knows too well and it makes the conversation about a million times worse than it already is. "That's not exactly what I'm talking about. We hung out together last week and he told me this secret, something I don't think he's told anyone ever before, and I haven't seen him since. He hasn't been at school, he won't return my calls, and I'm starting to worry that tomorrow Gossip Girl will report him being found in a gutter somewhere and it will all be my fault. Whatever's going on between you two, he listens to you, and I was hoping you could go check on him for me, let me know that he's okay and help me – "

"If I do this, will you stop talking?" It's a little like being caught between a rock and a hard place, seeking out Chuck Bass or listening to Dan Humphrey feel sorry for himself in her ear, but she knows which side to choose.

There's a pause, and heavy breathing, and then he agrees. "I won't bother you again."

"Okay, then. It's a deal."

He says thank you before hanging up and he's Dan Humphrey and more irrelevant than the first version of Eleanor's finale dress, but it feels more authentic than anything anyone has ever said to her.

Serena isn't home when she strolls into the penthouse suite, but Eric is sprawled across the couch reading a comic book that slips from his fingers when he sees her stepping out of the elevator.

"I'm not here for Serena," she says in a preemptive strike and the smile falls from his face. "I wasn't lying last night, Eric. There's nothing more I can do."

"I know," he says and the sadness in his voice is harder to take in person. "I just wish things were different."

"Me too," she responds and the sadness in her own voices matches Eric's. She clears her throat, to remove all traces of what used to be, and smiles brightly. "Is Chuck home?"

"Upstairs," Eric says and turns back to the comic book. She catches the cover out of the corner of her eye, "who watches the watchmen?" and it's never felt more apropos.

Chuck's room is dark when she steps inside and he's sitting on the edge of the bed watching the night sky through an open window. The October air is cool and breezy, and occasionally drifts through his hair. He's wearing jeans and a v-necked t-shirt and his hair is messy and tousled while his feet are bare. She almost doesn't recognize him.

He hears her come in because he turns, and there are dark, ugly shadows under his eyes that stand out against his pale skin; she'd wince if she hadn't traced those same shadows on her own face for the past week.

"If you're here to mock, I don't have the energy today."

There's a comeback on the tip of her tongue, always is when it comes to him, but she doesn't have it in her today. Not when she's spent the week calling Jenny Humphrey her friend and fielding calls from her loser brother.

"I'm not here to fight, Chuck," she says and drops her purse on a chair and sits down beside him. There isn't much a view from this angle, just a couple office buildings and apartment towers, but she likes the familiarity of it.

He turns back the window. "So why are you here?"

"You don't even want to know. Just know this – I was wrong about what I said last week. You do have people who care about you and need to know that you're all right."

He turns to face her and smirks. "I'm fine," he says and she's tempted to believe him. She did her job; she can report to Humphrey that Chuck isn't dead somewhere along the Bowery and go home and pretend it never happened.

Except she sees too much she doesn't want to see in the haunted eyes staring back at her in the moonlight. The silvery glow softens his features and brings her back to another time and another life, before Serena and Nate consummated what shouldn't have been in the gilded confines of the Campbell Apartment; the ache in her chest no longer belongs to her.

She scoots across the bed on her knees and settles behind him, chin resting against his shoulder. "Why are you wearing these clothes? You look ridiculous."

He nods his head towards the empty American Apparel bag caught between the covers, the generic converse low-tops peeking out from under the bed. "I wanted something to be easy for one night."

"Yeah," she sighs against his skin. "I know the feeling." He doesn't move but he relaxes against her, his back settling against her breasts. "I get tired too, you know, but I'm a Waldorf and you're a Bass; we don't go down without a fight." She presses her lips to the bare skin of his shoulder. "You aren't alone, Chuck."

She leaves before he can say something, anything, and ruin the moment but there's a text waiting for her when she slips into the backseat of a waiting cab. "I'll have your back if you'll have mine."

She doesn't respond because she's still Blair Waldorf and she needs him to squirm a bit, but when she gets home she lays out her school uniform for the first time in nearly a week.

The next morning it takes her twice as long to walk the ten blocks to her personal hell. "I'm ready if you are," she texts on her way out the door and loses the spring in her step as she reaches the end of the journey and her call screen is painfully blank.

She turns the corner, feet dragging along the pavement, and he's there, scarf twisted around his neck and hand outstretched.

She wraps her fingers around his and squeezes, just once, to let him know it's time to fight.

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