Blair couldn't move. She was crouched on the floor, leaning against the doorjamb, staring at the door that had shut behind Dan, his words echoing in her head.

...I'm done...

She remembered a day, what seemed like a long time ago, she and Dan were lying on a blanket in Central Park. Dorota had packed them a picnic lunch along with some champagne and Blair was feeling warm and bubbly and happy. Her head was resting on Dan's chest, tracing patterns across the soft fabric of his t-shirt. He was absorbed in his latest book, answering her occasional question with an absent, 'hmmmmm'.

"When did you first know you liked me?" Blair asked, feeling languid and warm from the afternoon summer sun.

"I've always liked you." Dan answered, his nose still stuck in his book.

Blair laughed a little. He had told her what he'd told Rufus all those years ago, something about her being a package of girly evil.

"Really?" Blair asked. Dan put his book down and peered down at her upturned face.

"Really," he answered. "I never hated you, Blair."

"Not once?" she asked, her fingers still tracing patterns, slowly going back and forth.

"No, not once," Dan said. "I found you annoying, and aggravating, elitist and stuck up at times, but I've always liked you."

She smiled at him and Dan smiled back.

"Um, I think elitist and stuck up could mean the same thing, Humphrey," Blair said, then continued on the same vein, "Even before all of...this, before us and all this?"

Blair gestured to him and back to herself, meaning all the hand holding and kissing and fucking, and she blushed a little when she thought about how he'd woken her that morning.

"Yes." Dan answered.

"Why?" Blair asked. It was an honest question. Blair Waldorf could be manipulative and play games, could verbally cut you to the quick, could scheme and didn't care how much destruction she left in her wake, and the person who knew this best was Blair Waldorf herself. She still didn't quite get what Dan could like about her, she wasn't always sure she liked herself, "You know how horrible I can be."

She'd used that word before, standing in the hallway of the hospital, feeling open and vulnerable and scared that she'd realized that what she'd thought would never happen had actually come true. She'd fallen for Dan Humphrey of Brooklyn and he'd gone from being someone she called names and mocked to being one of the most beautiful, wonderful, self-sacrificing people she'd ever known, and how could he ever want someone as horrible as she was.

"Blair," Dan sighed, as if had covered this ground before, "really, you're not horrible. You're actually pretty great."

"Really?" Blair wondered if he said it enough times she would start to believe it, and if she believed it, she might actually be able to become someone who wasn't horrible.

"Yeah, really."

They were quiet for a while longer, Dan back in his book, Blair watching people pass by; jogging, walking, families out for a walk, children dragging behind their tired parents, people walking their dogs, all out enjoying a sunny summer afternoon, her mind racing.

"So, when did you know?" Blair asked after a while.

"When what?" Dan asked, putting his book down again.

"You know, when did you know I wasn't all that bad?"

Dan started to sit up and Blair rolled over and pulled herself into a sitting position, until they were both sitting cross-legged, knees touching each other. She made note again that she liked his eyes, how they were warm and radiated something sweet and loving.

"Do you remember that big fight you and Serena had, a long, long time ago? Something about modeling and your mom choosing Serena over you?"

Blair nodded, "You came and talked to me afterward."

"I'll never forget you sitting in that hallway and you looked so sad, but you still managed to insult me."

Blair laughed. Of course she had managed. She wasn't going to let anyone see her that vulnerable, let alone the boy Serena was slumming with.

"I just realized that you could hurt like anyone else, and you weren't that bad after that. Then I got to know you more, and we had a lot in common, and then I realized that you were someone I really, really liked."

Dan had leaned forward and captured her mouth in a kiss, the kind you give your girlfriend on a summer day in the middle of Central Park, and Blair remembered that she had been happy.

There had been a lot of happiness with Dan, more than she'd known with anyone else.

Now, as she crouched on the floor, that day was the one memory that surfaced, and she remembered Dan telling her that everyone hurts, that pain is a universal condition that they all share, and that it can make a person more human. That it had made her more human for him.

If there was one thing Blair had learned in the past year and a half it was that she was human, a very flawed human.

As Blair thought about the last year and a half and how messed up everything had become, for the first time she was able to see the good. Dan waiting for her, never walking away, respecting her conditions of friendship. They had spent hours on their bench, coffee in hand, talking, debating and getting to know each other again. He always knew how to make her laugh and he was smart and there wasn't ever a moment that she found him tedious or boring, which was more than she could say for most other men she'd dated, even Chuck. Whatever it was that they had together, it was somehow more than they'd ever shared before he ran away to California and she followed him. They were bonded by tragedy, like two people who had survived a great catastrophe and they had ended up being the only two who really understood each other.

Now all of that was gone.

...I'm done...

Blair thought about Chuck and how he had told her that they were never done. His love had been oppressive and suffocating, and he had never allowed her to participate in their relationship, always dictating the terms, and suddenly Blair realized that she hadn't done anything different with Dan.

Now he was gone, and Blair realized that she was done too. Done making him pay, done extracting her pint of blood for his betrayal, and she saw his face as he told her that love was all that he had left to offer and she realized that it was all that she had too.

She loved him.

Blair had told herself that the game-playing Queen B of the upper east side had dissipated, that being with Dan had helped her grow up, that facing betrayal had made her mature, that being alone had made her an adult. But now she realized that she'd been playing her biggest game of all, keeping Dan at arms length, making him prove himself to her over and over when she'd never stopped loving him in the first place.

Sometime, she didn't really know when, couldn't say which day it was or any specific moment in time, something had shifted. Blair sat with the hardwood floor cold and hard underneath her, she realized that loved actually was enough, and that she loved Dan and that he'd walked out of her life.

She knew what she needed to do. She needed to find Dan. She needed to tell him taht she loved him.

The suddenness of this revelation jerked Blair to her feet and she grabbed the keys she'd thrown on the entryway table and pushed the apartment door open into the hallway. She scrambled down the marble staircase, her feet slipping a little, her hand on the railing to keep from falling.

...no no no no...

She willed her feet to go faster.

...hurry hurry...

Dan had said she would know where to find him, but she didn't. She had no idea where he was staying in Rome and if she didn't stop him, she didn't know how to figure out where he was staying, because Blair didn't want to spend another hour or even another minute without him.

Bursting through the door she stared frantically down the street, on direction then the other. Then she saw him.

He was walking up the hill, about three blocks away, his shoulders slumped, hands shoved into the pockets of his well-worn jeans, just about to round a corner and he'd be out of her sight. Blair took a deep breath and called out his name as loud as she could.

"DAN!"

People turned and looked at the woman standing in the doorway, her eyes wild, panting a little. Dan stopped, holding still, but he did not turn around, and later he would tell her he wasn't sure if he was hearing things, didn't know if her voice was his imagination playing tricks on him. Blair took a deep breath then willed her legs to start moving again, one foot after another, feet pounding the cobblestones.

...faster faster...

Dan turned around just in time to find Blair flying towards him, then she was leaping into his arms, her arms wrapping around his neck and her legs wrapping around his waist. Dan's hand came up to stabilize her as he stumbled backwards a little with the force of Blair's 95 pounds, and his mouth fell open but he was unable to speak due to Blair kissing him over and over, clumsy, urgent kisses, on his cheek, his nose, the corner of his eye, his jaw and finally on his mouth, and finally Dan broke away enough to look down at Blair and smiled.

"Blair," Dan said hoarsely.

"Shhhhhhhh..." Blair manage breathily and kissed him again. And again.

Blair dropped her legs down to the ground but she didn't let go of him, moving her hands from around his neck to his waist and she stared up at him, and she saw tears in his eyes and that's when she realized she was crying too, and she sputtered and gasped, trying to catch her breath and finally managed to spit out what she should have said a long time ago.

"I love you."

It wasn't enough, so she said it again, her voice filled with happiness and joy, that she had finally let go of everything. Then again, repeating it as if she could never say it enough.

...I love you I love you I love you...

Dan smiled again and crushed her to his chest and murmured in her hair, and despite having traveled all night from New York to Rome, he smelled good, and he let out a big sigh and relaxed a little against her.

"Finally."

They stood like that for a long time, swaying, wrapped around each other, unaware of the people who passed by the couple, smiling or whispering or just ignoring them. Dan's hand rubbed Blair's back over and over and she thought that she would never forget this moment as long as she would live. The afternoon light, the warm sun, and Dan in her arms and no more pain or complications, just a girl and a boy in love with each other.

Dan finally pulled back and grinned down at her and Blair could see that he was happy, and she felt happy and nothing else mattered at that moment.

"So what now," he asked.

Blair shrugged, her face smiling and she felt like she might never stop. "I don't know." she said. She was finally free of all agendas and concerns and the entire world had opened up in front on her. Anything was possible.

"We could go back to the apartment and..." Dan said, grinning wolfishly. Blair playfully socked him in the arm at this suggestion.

"Not a good idea, buddy. You'll fall asleep afterward and that won't help jet lag and we can do that pretty much anywhere. We're in Rome!" she squealed happily and let in go long enough to throw her arms out. "ROME!"

Dan wrapped one arm around her waist and pulled her close and she put her arm around his waist,hooking a finger in his belt loop and bent her head toward him. They started to walk, side by side, not particularly sure where they were heading, slowly making their way down the street, bumping hips softly as they made their way down the street.

"I know a great outdoor cafe," Blair suggested. "I found it earlier today."

"Mmmmm, that would be nice. I'm going to need coffee if I'm staying up."

"Or we could find a park and you could read me poetry in Italian and feed me grapes." Blair suggested, smiling at the image she conjured up in her head.

"Waldorf, you're ridiculous." Dan smiled, as if he couldn't stop smiling either.

"There's no way you're going to get way without reading me poetry in Italian, Humphrey. You might as well accept your fate. Rome is all about romance. You're going to have to kiss me at sunset as well."

"And after sunset." Dan's voice was suggestive and gravelly, as if he were imagining kissing her right at that moment. He looked at her with one eyebrow cocked, grinning again, "And the middle of the night."

Blair giggled. They turned the corner and headed down another narrow street. Dan continued.

"...and in the morning. I'll definitely need to kiss you in the morning. And on that balcony. Maybe in the shower. And for sure right now."

They stopped and Dan leaned down and kissed Blair and everything was right in the world.

~the end~

Author Note: if it wasn't obvious, the title is taken from the song Mad World, originally done by Tears for Fears and magnificently remade by Gary Jules. Thanks so much for reading - this has been a labor of love and I'm sad to see it done. I'm glad people appear to have enjoyed it. There will be no epilogue, but Dan and Blair are happy and I think they'll stay that way in my universe.