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Blair falls ill their first night in Rome. She is often ill, subject to cramps and migraines, minor ailments that require she retreat to the solitary comfort of her rooms. “My wife is delicate,” Louis says fondly to any who inquire. “Like a flower.”
He visits her in the morning, sitting at the edge of her bed and holding her hand as he expresses his sorrow that she’ll miss Rome, for they’re only staying one day - the latest stop in their summer long European tour.
She sighs and pouts her disappointment, says all this travel must have tired her, that a day in bed will do her good, that of course he mustn’t stay here with her, he has so many obligations that she couldn’t bear for him to miss on her behalf.
He kisses her forehead and hopes she feels better soon.
It had taken Blair a long time to admit to herself that she was unhappy. How could she be, when against all odds she’d gotten her fairytale ending? According to the stories, she shouldn’t ever have to be unhappy again.
She was quick to lay the blame on Chuck. He’d warned her on her wedding day that she wouldn’t be happy with Louis, that it should be them up there and she knew it. And she had known it. No matter how she’s fought it, she’s always known it would come back to Chuck in the end.
Only...it's hard to say that for sure anymore. The certainty that had always existed beneath her denials has finally deserted her and without it she feels more lost than ever. Far out of his reach in Monaco, without constant reminders of him dotting the skyline, she could think clearly enough to remember that she hadn’t been happy with Chuck either, not outside of those scattered, searingly blissful moments that had once made all the rest seem worth it. It was Louis who had first made her realize that, who reminded her what real happiness actually felt like. Or, somewhere in the period between meeting Louis and agreeing to marry him she had been reminded. She’s never cared to examine it too closely.
Her next thought was that it must be the baby. That was the conclusion Louis landed on, for even he noticed there was something wrong despite all the smiles she was faking. It would have been born by now. Blair would be a mother. She tries to picture it but her imagination is limited to still images, newspaper and magazine prints of her, youthful and glowing with a baby on her hip, like Princess Diana. She doesn’t know what one does with babies outside of that. Louis gently questions whether she’d like to try again and not for a moment does she consider saying yes.
Homesickness is an easy explanation with a simple solution, so that’s the one she settles on, despite liking to think herself too cosmopolitan to fall victim to such a thing. Hadn’t she always loved traveling in Europe? Hadn’t she always planned to live there one day? But of course, there had never then been any doubt that she’d one day go back. She dreams of walking along Central Park, coffee in hand, on her way to spend an afternoon wandering the MET. The thought of spring on Fifth Avenue makes her want to cry.
She’d confessed her weakness to Louis, who was as sympathetic as could be, even though she knows he blames New York for all the problems that plagued their engagement. He’d offered to bring her back there at once, for the whole summer if she’d like. She had rejected the idea immediately, absolutely loathed it. True New Yorkers left the city for the summer, anybody knows that. “I’d much rather travel in Europe,” she’d told him. “You know, Paris, Vienna, Rome.”
An hour after he leaves her, Blair is walking out of their hotel in a wide brimmed hat and sunglasses, hair uncurled, fingers bare. She could be anybody in her deceptively simple sundress and sandals, just another fashionable tourist exploring Rome. She’s Audrey Hepburn. She’s free, if only for a day.
She heads straight for her favorite cafe by the Piazza di Spagna, walking faster than she should given her shoes and the heat. Rome is almost unbearable in the summer, worse even than New York. It’s no wonder they aren’t staying long.
There are people everywhere, hoards of tourists, crowds of a type she hasn’t encountered since she became a princess. Ordinarily she would hate this but today she enjoys the anonymity of it. She doesn’t see her cafe until she’s already upon it, close enough to see individual patrons sitting outside. There’s a familiar face among them and just like that, Blair remembers what joy feels like.
Of course, he had told her he was going to be in Rome. He’d sent a rambling email updating her on his life, telling her all about the exclusive artist’s retreat he’d been invited to, asking her for recommendations on what to do once he was there. It was a trivial nothing of a missive, he’d probably sent the exact same one to Nate and Serena, and she’d replied with similar breezy casualness. She’d even recommended this very cafe. But how could she have been expected to remember that? It was months ago now and she has much more important concerns than what city Dan Humphrey happens to be occupying at any given time.
Plausible deniability: they just ran into each other.
“I heard you were in Rome,” he says, smiling up at her. She wonders how long he would have sat here, scribbling in his notebook and drinking his coffee.
“I’m taking a holiday,” she says lightly, gracefully slipping into the empty seat across from him at his tiny table for two.
His laughs, delighted. “Should I have rented a vespa?”
She doesn’t doubt for a moment that he’d considered it, despite his joking tone, but doesn’t mind that he didn’t. She never could pull off the windblown look like Serena could. She likes to think Audrey would have been similarly afflicted; she had after all been sure to get her gamine haircut before touching one of the things.
“I’ll settle for champagne,” she tells him and he obligingly flags down a waiter.
He’d finally cut his hair, she notes, bringing it back within the range of respectability. How infuriating of him to do it only after she was no longer there to see. He’d looked absolutely ridiculous the last time she saw him, his unruly mane at complete odds with his formalwear. She can’t stand the sight of him in her wedding photos, arm in arm with a beaming Serena.
He’s studying her as she studies him, still looking so terribly glad to see her.
“I’m going to miss you, Waldorf,” he’d told her as they danced at her wedding and she’d been so taken aback by the sadness of his smile that she hadn’t even corrected him. Her name isn’t Waldorf anymore but she doesn’t mind if he still thinks of her so.
“Have you missed me?” she asks him now, unable to resist.
“Yeah, I have,” he says, affecting surprise. “New York’s not the same without you.”
“I should hope not,” she says, pleased. He doesn’t ask if she missed him. Just as well, she only would have lied to him.
She sips her champagne and makes him tell her everything she’s missed in New York. Obviously she’s too distinguished now to be checking Gossip Girl like a teenager but even if she had cared to, there’d be nothing there. Gossip Girl’s retirement seems to have become permanent. Apparently it was Georgina who had taken up the mantle for a brief period around Blair’s wedding but she’d quickly gotten bored and abandoned it. Countless imitators have sprung up since, including Nate, who’s pushing to make The Spectator the city’s primary purveyor of gossip with middling success.
If Dan is to be believed, there isn’t much to report on anyway. Her engagement and wedding had been the talk of the city for months and now that she’s gone there seems to be something of a drought.
“I mean, Serena and I got back together for a few seconds but you probably already heard about that from her,” is his final meager offering.
Blair had indeed heard about that. She’d even gone so far as to ask about it once she'd settled in after her honeymoon. After all, she’d been the one to encourage Serena to confess her feelings at the wedding, it was only natural to want an update. Serena had been vague over the phone, brushing over first cautious optimism then disappointment. It wasn’t until she came to visit her in Monaco that Blair had been able to press for details.
“After I told him how I felt he was willing to give it a try but I think he was just humoring me,” Serena had admitted. “He just doesn’t feel that way about me any more.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Blair had tried to assure her. “He’s always loved you.”
And Serena had given her the oddest look. “No, not always.”
Despite Serena’s certainty that it was over, for good this time, Blair hadn’t believed her. Surely it was all some misunderstanding and Humphrey was back home pining over her just as he always had been. But seeing him now, she begins to doubt it. He’s entirely dismissive of their briefly rekindled relationship and speaks of how well Serena seems to be doing back in LA without a hint of wistful regret. You’d think he was speaking of a sister, which in a way he sort of is. Indeed, he transitions quite easily to the topic of his actual sister, who is apparently in New York for the summer doing some fabulous internship.
“We didn’t think you’d mind since you’re not even in the city any more,” he says. His tone is mild but she feels a twinge of guilt anyway.
“Of course not, she’s welcome back anytime” she says blithely. “I suppose I should have told her so but you know, out of sight out of mind. Anyway, I’m long over it.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
“I’m glad to hear she’s making something of herself,” she says diplomatically, though it was only inevitable. Jenny has drive to rival Blair’s and actual talent to back it up, it’s hardly a surprise she’s rising in the world.
The same cannot be said for her brother, who’s success Blair still can’t believe. He sheepishly tells her he made the New Yorker Approval Matrix under Highbrow Brilliant and she makes him prove it with a photo before deigning to congratulate him.
It’s strange seeing him in the summer, a holdover perhaps of the days when she considered him a creature that wasn’t supposed to exist outside of school. New York winters seem his natural habitat; he’s too pale for all this sun and heat.
He buys her gelato and they walk through the park, catching up on art and films. Dan knows all the latest up and comers; it seems he’s moved away from the Upper East Side and fallen into a more artistic, literary crowd since she left, and not the unwashed Brooklyn hipster kind either, but actual intellectual society. He recounts the salon he went to hosted by Julian Tepper and Jenna Gribbon and Blair is simply dying of jealousy. What fun they could have had there together.
She knows she could have called him. They could have been having these conversations for months now, could have watched movies together on the phone from continents away. She could have called him last summer too, when she’d been visiting Monaco after her engagement. “If the castle gets lonely...” he’d offered. But she never had been lonely that summer, just like she hadn’t been pregnant, or stifled, or unsure. Her life was perfect, then and now, and to suggest otherwise for even a moment would be to send it all crashing down.
She doesn’t talk about Monaco or Louis and Dan doesn’t ask, which is perfect, just as it should be. She is Princess Ann, pretending not to be a princess, and he is Joe Bradley, pretending not to know.
She certainly doesn’t feel like a princess as they wander through the Borghese Gallery together. She feels young. She’s always hated that, never outgrew the childish pleasure in feeling grown-up. But she is young, younger even than Audrey was when she shot Roman Holiday and became a star. She could still be in college, doing some prestigious summer program like Dan or Jenny. She’d planned to spend a semester abroad, once. She’d had so many plans that had all fallen by the wayside once Louis came along.
It had seemed only natural at the time. The end goal for all the girls she grew up with was an advantageous marriage so the fact that she’d married first, and to the most advantageous man of all, had felt like a victory. It was like graduating early: proof that she was better than her peers. They’d all been so deliciously jealous of her after her engagement and she’d delighted in it, lorded it over them at every opportunity no matter what troubles she was having in private. But now, seeing pictures online of her old friends and nemeses, all those girls she’d looked down on in high school going to college parties and making moves to start their careers, she doesn’t feel so superior. Perhaps she’d missed something in her race to the finish line.
She asks Dan about his work, still thinking it so strange that he has that: an agent and book deal and a promising future laid out before him. There’s been steady buzz around his next book for months now but he confesses it’s going nowhere. “I hoped coming here might help but it hasn’t so far.”
“At a loss now that your muse has moved away?”
He startles at the question but his expression soon clears. “Oh, you mean Serena. No, uh, this predates that.”
“Hm,” Blair remarks, the corners of her mouth curling up. “Well, maybe Rome will inspire you yet.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
She’d finally read Inside in Monaco, thinking perhaps that Humphrey’s warped version of her life, her city, and her friends, might make her miss it all a little less.
Blair had stated confidently when it came out that Dan had no imagination and so the book must be a mere transcription of all his skewed memories, then changed her tune to insist it was pure fiction once she’d found out about the romance he’d written between their two characters. It turns out her first assessment was the more accurate. Even in the sections that are obviously fictionalized, there are parts that ring uncomfortably true.
The sky is darkening, promising rain to break the increasingly oppressive humidity. They escape into the cool interior of a restaurant, another one of her favorites, for a light supper.
She can see Dan getting antsier as the day slips away from them, his silences growing longer under the weight of all that’s going unsaid. That’s the problem with Dan, he can only play pretend for so long before he wants to face reality. She chatters on about nothing, giving him unwanted advice about his writing, his clothes, where he should shop and who he should be networking with, while he simply looks at her. She recognizes that look - he’d had just the same one when they danced at her wedding.
It feels as though something’s about to break as they step outside the restaurant. She ignores nerves and excitement both, keeping her tone light as she asks “Where should we go next?”
He doesn’t have a chance to answer before she’s grabbed his arm in surprise. She’d seen Louis’ minder Lucien just before he sees them.
“Is that-?” Dan starts as she yanks him into a run.
“Keep up, Humphrey!” she cries, though he’s already at pace with her. The rain that’s been threatening begins to fall and suddenly they’re just one couple of many running for cover.
Hand in hand, they duck down a narrow side street, Blair breathless and laughing. She’d lost her hat somewhere and rain is running down her face and neck, delightfully cool. They take shelter under a doorway, a meager cover from the rain or Lucien if he manages to follow them, forcing them close.
“Did you mean what you wrote about me?” she asks abruptly.
She can see the rain in his eyelashes as he blinks in confusion. “Which part?”
“All of it. The book, everything.”
She’s not sure he understands what she’s really asking but he looks very serious as he nods. “Yeah. I meant it.”
She digs her hands into his shirt and pulls him into a kiss.
She hadn’t realized she knew Louis didn’t write his wedding vows until she figured out who did. Of course he hadn’t written them, she only ever could have believed it because she wanted to. He doesn’t know her at all. How could he when all she’s ever done is lie to him?
It was when she read Inside that she knew, not through any similarities in wording or style, but in the character of Dylan Hunter. Dan hadn’t been lying when he said he’d been harshest on himself - Dylan was cynical, self-absorbed, and judgemental to the end, but he was at his best when he was with Claire. With her, Dan actually seemed to like his fictional self. You have taught me how to live. It was the same love letter as the vows, stretched out over hundreds of pages.
Of course, it didn't mean anything. Perhaps Dan had more imagination than she gave him credit for and was simply writing from the perspective of someone who loved her. After all, he’d given her no reason to think otherwise. He’d been by her side throughout her engagement, helping her relationships with not only Louis but Chuck as well, and he’d never said a word. Though thinking back over everything he did for her, she admits there may have been some signs she’d ignored.
But what did it even matter whether Dan Humphrey was in love with her or not? It would have made no difference then and it couldn’t possibly make one now. Knowing one way or another wouldn’t change a thing.
And yet she couldn’t put the question out of her mind. For some reason, it mattered very much how Dan Humphrey felt about her. He sent her that email and she was furious at his failure to make things even the slightest bit clearer. He sent her that email and she decided to go to Rome.
“Blair,” he says as he pulls back, his hands at her waist, face still only inches away.
“Don’t ruin it,” she begs him.
“Ruin what? Blair, what are you doing here?”
She tries to smile. “I told you, I’m taking a holiday.”
His eyes search hers. “Then what, the movie ends, you go back to your real life, and I never see you again?”
It’s funny - despite the movie, and the rain, and the Audrey Hepburn of it all, she feels more real now than she has in a long time. It’s like she’s been in a dream since she got married, that’s what she says in all her interviews and it never fails to elicit wistful sighs. How romantic. But she thinks it's about time she woke up. “You’ll see me again,” she promises.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know if I can. Not like this.”
“Please, Dan,” she whispers, two words she almost never says to him.
He gives in and kisses her like she’s been wanting him too. It was always her kissing him those two, three now, times it's happened before and there was always something missing, making them easy to write off and forget about. He’d been holding back, she realizes now, because if he hadn’t she’d have known the truth. She’d never have been able to question how he felt about her.
Well, she knows now.
Hours later, after the rain has stopped, he walks her back to her hotel, pausing before they turn that last corner, her destination still out of sight.
“You don’t have to go back you know,” he tells her, though he must know it’s pointless.
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” she admonishes.
“Is it hard?” He looks almost surprised.
She kisses him in answer, trying to tell him everything she can’t yet risk saying out loud.
They linger there in the lamplit street, foreheads touching, not quite an embrace.
“I don’t know how to say goodbye,” he quotes wryly, though she knows he means it.
“Don’t try.”
Blair always thought that Roman Holiday had a perfect ending. Of course Ann had to leave, it would have made absolutely no sense for her to give up her life as a princess for some penniless reporter. She’d had a laughing argument with Serena about it once, insisting no matter how wonderful a time she’d had, it had still only been twenty four hours. You'd have to be a complete idiot to upend your whole life based on a single day.
But despite all that, every time she rewatches it the romantic in her always waits there with Joe, right to the very end, hoping against all reason that she'll come running back into his arms.
Louis is waiting for her in her hotel room, as she’d known he would be the moment she saw Lucien. It isn’t the first time he’s suspected her of having an affair with Dan, or the second, or even the third, but she’s always been able to talk him down and she knows she could do it again. She could tell him that she just wasn't able to resist the chance to live out one of her favorite movies, that running into Dan was merely a happy coincidence, that she had completely forgotten he was even in Rome. But she thinks the time for lying has passed. Even Louis must know, princesses don’t run away if they’re happy.
She returns to New York in the winter, ten days after what would have been her anniversary. The timing is not a coincidence, her prenup had made divorce practically impossible before a year was out and it had taken nearly that long to convince Louis she really meant it, that this wasn’t a problem they could fix. He had turned rather cold and unfeeling toward the end, but he’ll be alright, no doubt already finding comfort in the arms of his scheming social secretary Este, who’s certifiably obsessed with him. Blair suspects he’s long had feelings for her too, only never noticed because she’s a commoner. But perhaps she’s just projecting.
She already has a notebook full of plans for school and potential internships as well as ideas for Waldorf Designs she wants to talk over with her mother, who has been hoping to take a step back from the company as she heads toward retirement. For the past year Blair’s schedule has been arranged for her, staff always at hand to tell her what to do next, and she relishes the control she now has over her time. She intends to be very busy.
Yet despite her endless list of things she needs to do at once in order to get her life back on track from it’s royal detour, she’s barely been back in Manhattan for an hour before she’s leaving again, crossing the river to Brooklyn and knocking on Dan Humphrey's door.
The last time she’d returned from Monaco she’d taken much longer to do this, waited until she had the excuse of needing a getaway driver. Rome was hardly the first time she’d tried to use him to run away. When she'd walked away with Louis that night she’d been confused and furious, stubbornly refusing to understand what reason Dan possibly could have had to lie to her. But she knows now. If he still-
She pushes the door open before he has time to answer and he stops dead at the sight of her, only halfway across the room.
“Another holiday?” he asks cautiously, though hope is already breaking out across his face.
She can’t help smiling at the sight of it, can feel herself practically beaming at him as she shakes her head. “No.”
He's fighting a smile too as he walks towards her, closing the distance between them. "Fleeing the country and need a ride to JFK?"
He thinks he's so funny. "Dan," she complains.
She can feel his grin as he kisses her.
"Say it again."