You May Hate Charade, But You Still Play The Game

Chapter Five: A Slight Tickling Sensation On The Back Of The Neck

Summary: Post-season 3 finale. Blair is trying to get over Chuck in Paris, while Chuck is finding it too easy to get over Blair in Prague.
Author's Note: The show is doing the opposite of inspiring me, but I thought I'd give my bbs some love, since I think they transcend what I'm getting onscreen. Special thanks to Katie for helping me get back on track with this, by the way!
Disclaimer: Don't want to own GG anymore, don't own Charade.

When Chuck returned to his room, demoralized by his fight with the mysterious Blair, he was unsurprised to find Eva waiting for him. What did surprise him, however, was the stern look on her face. She was usually a serious person, sure, but he didn't think he'd ever seen her look so unhappy. And, of course, he was the cause of it. Could he ever do anything right, in any incarnation of himself?

"What's wrong?" He asked, approaching her cautiously and reaching out to hold her hand. She didn't take his bait, though, and continued to keep her hands at her sides without moving towards him.

"Don't you think it is better we wait to go back, chéri?" She evaded his question stiffly, taking him aback with her abruptness. "These people, I do not know that you should trust them so easily. They say they know you and are your friends, and that is all? You just go with them? What if they are using you?"

Chuck stared at her like a deer in headlights for a brief moment, trying to piece together where she was coming from. "I don't understand…" he began slowly, stalling in order to avoid having to say anything concrete. "I thought you wanted me to go back, to figure out who I am." He paused before continuing, unsure of how much he wanted to say his next sentence. "I thought you wanted to come with me."

Eva's eyes bore into his own, and he felt like she could see every part he was trying to hide – every part he didn't know he was trying to hide. The realization shamed him. "Do you want me to come with you? You seem quick to run off with your new…friends."

Her look more than her words made him stop for a moment and think over the events of the day. Was he being too hasty in agreeing to drop everything and go back to the US? He didn't know these people, as connected as he may or may not feel to some of them. And Eva had been there for him all summer when no one else even seemed to notice he was missing. The right thing to do was probably to stay here with her and work on himself and his memory without the expectant faces of his past life surrounding him, and a small part of his brain wanted him to do just that. The problem was he couldn't get the rest of him to agree.

"What is this really about, Eva?" Chuck smiled slowly, trying not to seem too amused by her antics. "I know you don't think these people are out to rob me of the money I don't even remember having."

Her eyes shifted involuntarily, and Chuck felt a surge of sympathy for her, suddenly starting to understand why she had changed her mind about New York. He waited patiently for her to gather her thoughts and, meanwhile, tried to formulate what his own response would be. He wanted to convince her to come along with him no matter what, but he knew it was unfair. She deserved better than being his crutch.

"I saw you," she admitted softly. "I saw you … with her." She didn't need to give any further explanation, and they both knew it.

Once the time came to leave to go to the helipad, Chuck came out of his room alone and dragged his luggage out to the front before anyone else in order to avoid unnecessary conversation. After a few minutes, the others came out, and the four best friends – or what was left of them – piled into the waiting town car without a single word between them. After trying too hard to strategically place themselves, Nate and Serena ended up overshooting and leaving Chuck and Blair nowhere to sit but next to one another, at which point it was too awkward for either of them to suggest a change in seating. It wasn't until the car actually began the trek to the airport that anyone noticed an element was missing.

"Where is Eva? Is she meeting us later?" Serena wondered aloud, looking around the back of the town car as if the French girl might magically pop out from under the seats.

"She's not coming," Chuck replied simply, not looking at anyone but taking note of Blair's sudden stiffness beside him. Silently, he tried to convince himself that Eva just wasn't ready for the kind of life he was about to return to, but all the while he knew it was futile to pretend like there was any reason other than the one looming next to him. He only wished he could understand it as much as everyone around him seemed to.

Lily had made sure the private jet was there to take the wanderers home as soon as possible, indirectly making up for being clueless as to her stepson's whereabouts for so many months, but that didn't mean the journey itself could be made any shorter. Chuck became all too aware of that painful fact when he absent-mindedly (but then again, when was his mind not absent nowadays?) sat down next to Blair and had to face the consequences. Despite the obstacle of Eva being removed from their midst, the fierce girl he knew but didn't remember still didn't seem to want to let bygones be bygones, and so she shot up out of her seat and moved clear across the length of the jet. But not before shooting him a dirty look so he knew not to come near her again, of course.

Over on the other side of paradise, Serena had seated herself next to Nate, who also attempted his own version of a death glare but fell short. He still wasn't comfortable being near her after the events of earlier that summer, but he had never been comfortable saying no to her, either. He opened his mouth to make some catty comment about how she better not fall asleep on him if she still smelled of Humphrey, but decided he wouldn't be able to pull it off the way Chuck would. Not that Chuck could necessarily pull it off anymore. That dark thought brought him back to the reality of the situation, and he put aside his betrayed-ex-boyfriend feelings to listen to what Serena might be saying.

"…But I don't know how we're going to tell him," Serena continued quietly, doing her best to keep their other brunette halves from overhearing. "How do you think he'll react?"

Nate immediately felt guilty for being so out of the loop on matters that were much more important than his wounded ego and Serena's wishy-washy need to 'find herself.' He tried to attune his thoughts to what Serena might be talking about, and decided that it was probably about everyone's favorite non-couple. "I've already told him that it's best he talk to Blair about it," he informed her, proud of being one step ahead.

"You really think so?" She replied skeptically, searching his face in earnest and seemingly failing to find what she was looking for. "I mean, I know she's the one that's always helped him through this stuff, but the way they are right now… I think it's too much to put on her shoulders too soon."

He just stared, running through list of all the possible things to which she could be referring. It occurred to him that he should just ask her to repeat her previous statement, because it was clearly an important conversation for her, but the stubborn part of him didn't want to ask her for anything. He certainly didn't want her to keep talking about Chuck and Blair while avoiding talking about Nate and Serena. "…I don't really think we need to be talking about this now," he said, a little more harshly than he intended. Her shocked expression egged him on a bit, and he continued. "Or about anything at all, really."

Serena rolled her eyes in half-hearted disgust. "I don't know why I even bother," she muttered under her breath. She began getting up to go join Blair in the land of the sullen ladies, but Nate grabbed her arm suddenly and pulled her back down. "What are you doing?" She hissed a little too loudly, causing Chuck and Blair to turn to them curiously.

"Hey," he shot right back, although he lowered his voice. "You don't get to be mad at me, okay?" His tone was level, but his eyes were more deadly serious than she had ever seen them. "I'm mad at you."

Serena took a deep breath and was about to protest, but he cut her off with a shake of his head.

"I know I'm being unfair, and I know this something huge we're all going through right now, but I still need to be mad. So, please, just sit here with me and let me be mad. Can you do that?"

She almost smiled at the childish way he was acting, but she knew that he probably wouldn't appreciate her laughing at him in the state he was in. There was a lot they had to talk about, a lot she had to apologize for and a lot she refused to apologize for, but now was not the time for that. So instead she simply nodded and took his hand in her own. "Okay," she answered him kindly. "Be mad. Just be mad while still being my friend. Okay?"

He looked down at their hands for a moment before replying. "Okay," he agreed.

Upon arriving at the van der Woodsen penthouse, Serena, Nate and Blair all seemed to hang back and push Chuck ahead of them to the couch where Lily was sitting beside Rufus and Eric, Unsure of who as who, Chuck stood in front of them awkwardly and waited for someone else to make the first move. Lily broke the ice by greeting Chuck with an affectionate hug and kiss that he wasn't expecting but still felt compelled to reciprocate.

"I'm so happy to see you, Charles," she whispered in his ear, so calmly that one would think she didn't mean it. One look at her face told Chuck that she was totally sincere, however, and he felt a sense of belonging for the first time since he could remember. Maybe it was just the fact that she called him Charles, which felt so much more familiar to him than the 'Chuck' he was going to have to start using from now on.

"We were all worried sick about you," she continued after looking him over for a beat. "At first I thought you were just licking your wounds, so I figured it was best to leave you be. I truly regret that choice now, and I hope you can forgive me."

Chuck nodded along, pretty sure that he could forgive this woman anything, but his eyes were caught by the dark-haired older man shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other as he waited for Lily to finish her exchange. He thought he'd feel some kind of jolt of recognition when he saw his father, but this man didn't do anything for him at all.

Lily had begun prattling on about doctors' appointments and how he'd start to recover his memories in no time, so Chuck put up a soft hand to stop her. "Aren't you going to introduce me to the rest of the family?" He asked with a smirk, pointing to the two people who had yet to welcome him back into the fold. They seemed even less inclined to come forward after he acknowledged their existence, and he started to get a sick sensation in his stomach that this was where more of his misdeeds would come to light. What was so wrong with him that his own family (or step-family?) wasn't thrilled that he was alive and well?

"Oh, of course, I'm so silly," Lily jumped in. "Charles, this is my son, Eric. And Rufus is—"

"Rufus?" Chuck asked, holding back a laugh. "Do I really call my dad Rufus?"

The room seemed to freeze at his statement, and the simultaneous sound of everyone sucking in their breath terrified him. What was going on? A few seconds passed by in what felt like an eternity, and out of nowhere he felt Blair walk up behind him and link her hand in his. The gesture should have made him tenser than before, but instead he felt oddly reassured. When he looked into her face, however, there was such a mixture of pain and compassion there that he suddenly knew what had happened.

"He's not my dad, is he?" He asked Blair, as if she were the only one he could trust to tell him the truth. She shook her head slowly; the same tears forming behind her eyes that he imagined were forming behind his. He couldn't tell if he felt angry or betrayed or depressed – mostly he just felt numb.

"So, my dad's dead." It wasn't really a question, so he didn't wait for anyone to answer before extracting himself from Blair's grasp, walking to the elevator and seeing himself out.