Author’s Note: Alright, back to square one with BN! I wanted to get the first few chapters out before the new episodes just to set a plot and not have people say “Hey, what about the thing that happened in the fourteenth episode?”. To put it simply, the only past events that have occurred are what has been seen from 1x1-1x13 and anything I may add myself.

Chapter 1

Don’t Stop Breathing

Blair refused to look at it like it as an ‘accident’.

The last thing she remembered was riding in a taxi she had finally hailed at the curb on 5th Avenue and Lexington to take to Serena’s condominium on Central Park West.

And now?

Her head throbbed furiously; her lips felt numb and swollen; and there was something sticking into her arm.

Oh right. It was the IV.

IV?!

Blair’s eyes flew open as she strained to look around her rather ‘bright’ surroundings. She was in a white room, lying stiffly on a bed. Correction: hospital bed. There were a few monitors quietly beeping around her reading thin, neon coloured lights that travelled in a zigzag pattern. The IV stand was on her right and just when Blair snapped her head towards the other side, her confusion doubled over as she saw her best friend, Serena Van Der Woodsen with puffy red eyes looking at her as if she was witnessing a miraculous miracle.

“Blair!” Serena managed to merriment through her obvious hurt as she leaned forward and firmly squeezed the brunette within her arms. “Thank god.”

“What happened?” Blair breathed, her voice hoarse as if she hadn’t talked in months. Her throat sprung with pain, making her cough out loudly.

“You were in a car accident.” the blonde stated as a fresh batch of tears began forming in her eyes.

Ah, that’s right.

Blair refused to look at the whole situation as an ‘accident’.

Near death experience didn’t quite suit the occasion either.

She decided that second to go with ‘unintentional suicide attempt’. But she would never tell anyone.

Blair Waldorf didn’t hate her life. She used to though. If she closed her eyes real tight, Blair could still remember what it was to hate her life, and hate herself. She could remember senior year, how not only did she lose her throne to her best friend’s boyfriend’s freshman sister but she lost him; Nate Archibald.

The crust of her rotten pie; the apple of her colourless eye; the flame of her dull fire; the…-you get the point. Because Blair sure as hell did.

She had to go through her entire life trying to get through it. And just when she thought that it would be impossible, she woke up and realized one thing. She didn’t need Nate. How could she when he had been out of her life for so long?

The last year of high school flew by day after day. Before long, it was all a blur and everything meshed together. Inhale, breakfast, exhale, school, inhale, Serena and Dan, exhale, lunch, inhale, puke guts out in washroom toilet, exhale, avoid Jenny and drones, inhale and so forth. Blair even had to remember to breathe because there were those times when she would just forget. Like that time when she was climbing down the Constance stairs and she would catch eyes with Chuck who would also be exiting school grounds. Or that one day, when she had just left school but realized she had forgotten one of her books in her locker. And as she entered the gates again, Blair accidentally banged shoulders with someone.

Anger had flared through her arm. She wasn’t having one of her normal ‘blend into the crowd’ days that day. It started off pretty decent until she ended up dashing towards English class. Then, Hazel smacked her notebooks from her hands and tossed them down the staircase. Not only did Blair end up being late for class, but had faced further humiliation after someone snapped a photo of the incident.

Blair was about to knock some sense into the person that hadn’t even apologized yet for bumping into her, when she noticed exactly who that person was: Nate Archibald.

Before she could let him speak she hastily walked inside. She didn’t want to speak. She wasn’t ready to speak. And she never got her chance to shout at his face to what she had been building up inside of her since they broke up.

Blair never got the opportunity to tell Nate how angry she was for him leaving. Leaving her to pick up the pieces. She never got the opportunity to tell him how devastated she was that he wouldn’t let her explain. And he had just walked out of the room. Blair never got the opportunity to tell Nate how she loved him, not Chuck. That it was him she was with, not his best friend. She never got to tell him that she was sorry, though it wasn’t her entire fault. But she didn’t say any of those things. Blair didn’t want to suffer the consequences of being broken again.

So she stuck with her prompt decision: breakfast, school, Serena and Dan, lunch, puke guts out in washroom toiler, avoid Jenny and drones and so forth. Oh, right, and breathing. That was all Blair needed.

Graduation rolled around, and Blair had the rest of her summer set in motion. She’d spend the first month with her father and Roman in their vineyard in France. Blair would then meet Serena in Italy where she was vacationing for a week before heading back to France to spend the remainder of the break. And before long, the memories of the school year disappeared as Blair left the Upper East Side.

When summer vacation was just about finished, Blair came back to Manhattan to pack up her things and go to Yale. She was going to follow through with her new plan. Serena went to Brown, and Dan went to Dartmouth, still able to keep up with their long distance relationship. Blair wondered how much trust could be built in an affiliation developed in senior year that it lasted through their far-flung post-secondary schools. Blair wished she knew. Maybe then her life wouldn’t have been such a wreck when it came to boys.

Blair stayed in the dorms, even though she’d sworn she wouldn’t. She had always wanted to get her own place. But without Serena, or Dan, or anybody else with her for that matter, Blair had to find someone. Her roommate Bernice was a social disaster. She liked to be on her own and not really being acknowledged by anyone. All five feet, six inches and red hair of her. For the first semester, Blair was okay with it, but by the time Thanksgiving approached, she decided to get Bernice out of the slump and into broad daylight. Blair wouldn’t normally do anything so considerate for anyone but it was a start for her new image. Blair ‘the great’ Waldorf.

She convinced Bernice to come to the Upper East Side with her for the Van Der Woodsen-Bass Thanksgiving dinner. Blair needed all the support she could get. Serena was her brightest as usual, and Dan quirkily boasted about a novel he was almost finished writing in between classes at Dartmouth and soon he’d send it out for publishing. However, seeing Serena and Dan wasn’t nearly enough when Blair learned that Chuck and Nate had reconciled and were friends again. It was difficult to believe at first, but Serena was persistent about it and all Blair did was smile and laugh it off saying that she wasn’t worth ruining a friendship and that she was glad with them not trying to kill each other anymore.

That was the same day she saw Chuck Bass again. And Blair wanted to spring up from her feet to leap away. If she had successfully managed not to utter a word to him in high school after what had happened, what made anyone think she was going to talk to him then? However, it wasn’t that easy. Chuck was smarter, faster and devilishly handsome and he knew his way around whatever Blair was thinking. He caught up to her. They exchanged an awkward hug with normal conversation about how school was going and any future plans. Blair didn’t respond to hers of course in fear she would jinx them.

Nate didn’t come to the dinner because he was visiting family in Maine. Blair was so thankful, because if he was there, she wouldn’t know what to do.

Thanksgiving weekend ended and she and Bernice headed back to Yale. And it may have not been much of a difference to her roommate’s ‘MIA’ personality, but Blair was easily able to get her to hang out once in a while. And Blair was happy she could make someone happy. It had been a long time since she was a reason for someone to smile.

The first year of Yale was over and Blair couldn’t be happier. She gathered up her bags, hugged Bernice goodbye for the summer and took a plane to France to visit her father and Roman once again. That summer, Serena stopped by the vineyard for a few weeks.

Sophomore year started and Blair, Bernice and the rest of their class were no longer ‘freshman’. She smiled knowing that nothing had control over her life now and she could be whoever she wanted to be. Blair made up her mind that it was time she get herself a boyfriend. His name was Rick; he was in her journalism class and on the Yale football team. When he was going away on his weekend game at Princeton, she tagged along not for the sport, but to get to know him better.

The last thing she expected to see was Chuck Bass on the top row of the bleachers.

Blair sat next to him watching the game. Halfway through she bet that Yale would kick Princeton’s ass. He had chuckled saying that if Yale won he’d give her the hundred dollar bill sitting in his back pocket if she gave him a kiss if Princeton dominated. Blair laughed in his face in agreement. Yale won. Chuck graciously handed the note to her and was surprised when she gently kissed his cheek. They stayed in touch and Blair couldn’t help but feel guilty at first. She had a plan to stick to, and Chuck wasn’t in it. Nevertheless, she scratched a few lines and wrote him in. And Blair was ecstatic that she had someone other than Serena, Dan and Bernice to rely on.

She broke up with Rick by the time the year was over. He was too busy in football and it wouldn’t work. Blair knew that it wasn’t such a close relationship so he wouldn’t be hurt. She spent the rest of the summer in France, jumping back and forth from her father and Roman and her mother in Paris.

Junior year was the year that changed everything. Just when Blair thought that she couldn’t careless about the ‘less than perfect’ things in her life life, he came back into it. It was Christmas Holidays. Bernice was spending it with her family in Arizona. She had offered Blair to join her, but she refused. She hadn’t seen the Upper East Side in a long time. When Blair arrived, she learned from Dan that though Jenny was a senior in high school then, she hadn’t been able to maintain her strength on the social ladder after the other girls graduated. The little Humphrey was below Blair’s previous level. Blair didn’t even bother empathizing.

Eleanor Waldorf decided that the annual holiday party be held at her penthouse that year. The guest list was the only thing unknown to Blair. It didn’t matter, because everything was going fine. It was Christmas Eve and the guests were enjoying it. Serena and Dan were somewhere upstairs, probably making out like they haven’t seen each other in years, Lily and Bart were in a cavalier manner drinking champagne, Chuck was mingling with someone, stopping to chat with her every now and then. Indeed, everything was fine up until Blair saw the face of Howie and Anne Archibald coming in direction of the elevator.

Blair prepared to meet her doom.

Because after a few steps Nate walked into the lit room casually dressed in a grey suit with a purple tie hung loosely around his neck. He looked about the same but grew a few inches and his jaw was more defined. Blair had to mentally slap herself for looking at him for too long. That’s when she realized she couldn’t let him see her. Everything she had done. Every plan she had created. Every part that she had forced herself to forget about him instantly failed. Kazaam! Gone.

She turned in direction of the stairs hoping to god that her beaded Dolce & Gabbana dress didn’t stand out anymore. And it seemed that her wish was going to be granted up until she heard Nate call her name at the bottom of the stairs. She sighed, dropping her hand from the banister and turning to look at him, barely faking a smile. It had been so long. The same guilty feeling Blair had when she was starting out to be friends with Chuck again arose as she avoided eye contact with Nate. He noticed and began climbing towards her. With every single step he took, Blair’s heartbeat grew so fast she was afraid it would burst inside her chest. And it almost did when she could feel Nate’s warmth breath tickle the skin on her neck as he stood two steps below her. Something in Blair caused her to smile when she noticed that for once, she was by an inch or so taller than him, even though they weren’t on the same level…and she was wearing three inch heels. He looked at her with his baby blue eyes that Blair thought she could forget with Yale and everything else on her mind. She couldn’t. And as soon as the chance came for her to spill everything that had been growing in her all that time, it was gone as Eleanor called everyone together.

As guests started to leave one by one that night, Blair couldn’t find herself to be hopeful of what tomorrow had to bring. It scared her. Everything with Nate frightened her. After hugging Serena goodbye she walked determinedly towards the elevator with the last remaining guests. She smiled at the Captain widely, showing him how proud she was of herself, though it didn’t seem that far from how dreadful she was really feeling. Blair tenderly wrapped her arms around Nate’s mother before letting her go and telling her that it was great for her to come. And finally, -finally it caught her by sudden surprise that Nate enveloped her with his strong arms, fixating her nostrils with his cologne before stepping into the elevator giving her a small smile.

They hadn’t even said a word to each other and Blair knew that the rest of her life’s plan was forever changed.

She bombarded up the stairs that night and searched through her drawers for one thing. That one thing that she refused to take with her to Yale, yet throw away in the trash because it kept too many memories of the things that could’ve been. Memories of her failed relationship with Nate. His ‘love’ letter from senior year. Blair stashed it into her duffel bag.

Summer arrived. And ever since Christmas the only thing Blair could think of was Nate. She had been called on during class because her mind kept day dreaming on what it would be like to see him again. How she’d be able to tell him everything and they’d be together like it should have been from the start. Her notebooks were filled with hearts and ‘Mrs. Nate Archibald’ scribbled on every empty, white, unoccupied space. Bernice even teased her that if she liked Nate so much, she should have called him. But Blair never did. She was going to do this the ‘right’ way. The ‘romantic’ way. She would show up from the middle of nowhere, confess her feelings and all would be right. It always worked.

But it didn’t. When Blair got back to Manhattan the day after school let out, Nate was gone. Gone as in went sailing for the entire summer. Blair took it as a sign. She ripped all of her doodled pages wherever a heart, or Nate or Archibald was drawn. Blair crashed and she burned and she gave up. It wasn’t going to work. None of it was. Who was she kidding?

So she spent her summer with Chuck. Dan’s novel, which he had been working on was published, and was at the time gradually climbing the nation’s bestseller list. Serena decided to accompany him on his book tour that also lasted the entire vacation.

Blair and Chuck. Chuck and Blair. She never looked at it that way. But she had to have someone in her life when everyone else wasn’t. When she told Chuck about her school year after seeing Nate, his facial expression sympathized her. But it looked like he was hiding something. So she pestered him into telling her what he really was thinking. Chuck refused, shrugging it off. But Blair knew something was up, and she wasn’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer. She offered him a date. Chuck was sneaky though, so he smirked and weaseled his way through the offer and into another topic. Blair eventually decided it was best to leave it alone. It was probably nothing anyway.

Senior year was the hardest. She had no time for fun and games like she did previously. Blair had to get hard into work. She was so consumed in it that even Bernice seemed more fun than her. Blair would have taken it as an insult if she wasn’t too busy fretting over exams. Her mind no longer lingered to Nate, or what was going on the Upper East Side. And it wasn’t going to anytime soon. Blair spent Thanksgiving at Bernice’s because she kept bugging Blair about joining her. When Christmas came, she hatched a lame excuse not to come home and went to Vermont with a couple of her classmates instead.

Everything had changed about Blair.

She would begin an apprenticeship at the New York Post, working under the head Entertainment of Fashion/Style editor, Sandra Vexon for some part of the summer. As Blair gave Bernice a teary goodbye and a ‘good luck’ to her future, she took her bags and left the Yale dorm.

Eleanor had departed to Paris for the summer to work on her new line. She needed inspiration and New York just wasn’t giving it. So Blair decided she’d stay in her old home, the penthouse, until she could find a place to live. As she got off the train at Grand Central, Blair felt a sense of relief. She was home. And she wasn’t expected to be somewhere else after summer. There wasn’t anything in particular bothering Blair. Everyone was going to be the city. Serena and Dan, who had bought a condo. Chuck, who would be coming back from Toronto next week and…Blair’s heart sank. Nate was probably somewhere in the city if he hadn’t already left on his stupid boat.

Indeed, things had changed.