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1
When she gets to know what’s happened, Blair feels like she’s been suddenly immersed in a pool of freezing water. She doesn’t know what to do with it, with her grief, and does what she does best: buy flowers and do her make-up, offer condolences to his family – well, his parents. There’s something angry yet tried in Jenny’s expression, something that says, clearly, stay away, you’re one more thing I cannot handle.
She knows she’s earned that.
Afterwards, at home, she writes letter after letter, letters to him, that she cannot send, as candid as she would be if she could talk to Dan, to tell him how she feels. Her letters go from, Humphrey, you insufferable jerk, why would you do this, don’t you realise how many people love you, how many of us would’ve helped you, gradually shifting into, Dan, I’m sorry, so sorry, sorry you were suffering all this while and I wasn’t there for you, that I couldn’t help you through the darkest times of your life, the way you did for me.
She writes twelve letters and realises, almost as an afterthought, that she’s crying.
She burns the angry letters. She sits there with the apologetic ones, holding them a little too tight.
Dan is the only person she’s ever known who could help her, when she felt despair this deep, this strong, this immense. Dan is the only person who’s ever really seen and understood her grief, and been there for her through it all.
She wishes with firm remorse that she could’ve repaid the act, been there for him in the same way.
2
She spends a day not doing anything. Just looking at pictures of the two of them, pictures from the months they’d been together, the way Dan smiled at her, his hair which she’d insisted he cut, because it was too unwieldy at the length it was, too short for man-buns but long enough that it blew around like some sort of ghastly lion’s mane, but she’d loved it too, loved him, messy hair inclusive. If she had him back – if there was a way, to undo what he’d done, to have him there with the rest of the world, alive, she thinks she’d take any of him, all of him, the worst of him. The spite, the bitterness, the tragedy, the hurt parts of him. All the parts of Dan Humphrey he’d swept under the carpet, the bits of Dan Humphrey he hadn’t wanted anyone to see.
If she had a second chance, she would’ve done that differently – she would’ve shown him that she loved the parts of him that he hated, the way he had done with her.
She sits there on the floor, holding the tiara he’s gotten her. It’s tacky, and the colour’s tarnished over time. Still, holding it feels almost like holding an engagement ring, looking at a future she never got to have.
She decides that inaction isn’t going to help anything, that she needs to at least try for closure. Reminds herself that she is Blair Waldorf, that she is brave, that there are things she needs to do; for the memory of Dan Humphrey, for herself.
3
She steels her nerves and goes to the loft the next day.
She isn’t sure what she expects when she enters, but it’s definitely not Jenny and Nate, riffling through one of the drawers on the table in the living room, pulling out notebooks and paper. Nate’s holding a joint that he passes to Jenny, casually, and she takes a puff of it, nonchalant, and hands it back to him.
Neither of them have noticed her yet.
“This is from an essay competition when he was nine,” Jenny says, handing Nate a paper. “He came second, and he was pissed off that he hadn’t got first place. Classic Dan, really.”
“How’d you all resolve that?” Nate asks, softly.
“Blah, blah, family of artists, art is subjective and open to interpretation, our parents told him not to take it to heart,” Jenny says. “Me, on the other hand? I just told him silver was a prettier colour. I mean, clouds don’t have gold lining, right?”
Blair feels like she’s intruding, and she knocks on the door, standing there awkwardly.
Jenny and Nate swivel, turning to face her in a way that would be hilarious in any other context.
“Hey,” Nate says, softly, walking up to Blair. “How’re you holding up?”
Blair considers snatching the joint from him, taking a puff. She blinks, swallows, holds her head up high. “I’ve been better,” she says.
Jenny’s watching them curiously, but then says, “Hey, Blair?”
“Yeah?”
“Come with me,” Jenny beckons, walking over to Dan’s bedroom. “There’s something I want to give you, that I think Dan would want you to have.”
Blair marvels a little at it, at how Jenny is able to talk about him with such steadiness, despite everything, despite how painful this must be for her.
Jenny reaches out, taking Dan’s cabbage patch kid down from his bookshelf, handing it to Blair.
“You’re giving Cedric to me?” Blair asks, shocked.
Jenny shrugs. “It feels like the right thing to do.”
“Jenny…” Blair is at a loss for words. She just sinks down on Dan’s bed instead.
Nate walks into the room with a photograph of a very small Dan holding baby Jenny on his lap. Dan is smiling in the picture, and he looks all of four years old. Jenny is wearing a bonnet.
“Yeah, I know,” Jenny says, taking the photo from Nate. Her voice sounds unsteady, Blair notes. “He was the best brother I could’ve ever asked for. I’m going to make us all some tea, okay?”
Blair nods, and thinks of the amount of time she’s spent in the loft, in his room, even, drinking tea that Dan had made for her. It feels odd that Jenny’s making them tea now. Somehow simultaneously comforting and unsettling.
A role she’s filling without even realising she’s doing it.
Kindness Blair didn’t expect to receive; didn’t think she deserves. And yet, given so freely.
4
She asks Jenny about it, while they’re sitting there with their tea.
“I’m surprised you’re being so nice to me.”
Jenny just looks at Blair, her expression unreadable. “If you really love Dan, truly and sincerely, then I think there’s nothing to be gained from petty squabbling or past grudges, anymore. We’re all we have left, after all.”
Blair swallows past the lump in her throat. “Cheers,” she says, gloomily.
Nate makes a face at her. For a few seconds, it’s almost normal.
5
Once all of them have had their tea, Nate and Jenny resume what they’d been doing before, while Blair watches. They’re currently in the process of opening Dan’s cupboard. Jenny is carefully handing some of Dan’s shirts to Nate, who seems subdued in a much deeper way than Blair had expected from him.
“You don’t think this is weird?” Blair asks Jenny, after a minute.
“What, Nate wearing Dan’s shirts?” Jenny rolls her eyes, squeezes Nate’s shoulder. “The two of them have been sharing clothes for years, I think at this point Nate has more of a claim to these than I do.”
“No, see, that’s what I mean,” Blair says. “Haggling over Dan’s stuff like we’re divvying up property, isn’t that weird?”
“Not really,” Jenny says. “It’s not like we’re trying to get monetary gain or assets from it. We all loved him, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong in wanting something tangible, something physical, to remind us of him.”
Blair swallows. “I never even said the words to him,” she says, quietly. “I never told him that I love him.”
“There’s more than one way of expressing love,” Jenny says, just as quietly. “I’m sure he knew.”
Nate’s hand jolts, and hits Dan’s sock drawer. Clothes fall haphazardly, and along with the clothes, some envelopes fall out, too. Nate bends over, picking them up, and then swallows audibly. He hands Jenny one with her name on it, gives Blair one with her name on it, pockets the one with his name on it. There are still more, just names and monikers. Dad. Lily. Mom. Vanessa. Eric. Serena.
“We’ve got to get these to them somehow,” Jenny says.
“We’ll figure it out,” Nate promises. He sits down on the floor, leaning against the bed. “Do you think we could just sit here for a minute?”
6
Forty-five minutes later, Blair has officially said fuck it, taken a joint from Nate, and now she’s just as sober as Jenny and Nate are, which is not very. It doesn’t help with anything, not really, but she tries to take some comfort in knowing that the three of them are in the same space, feeling the same pain.
“If he’d only extended the sort of kindness that he gives other people to himself,” Jenny muses, sadly. “He’d still be here with us today.”
"I just keep thinking about how Gossip Girl always called him Lonely Boy," Blair says softly. "It feels so wrong, knowing what we do now."
"It's always felt wrong," Nate says, a hint of bitterness to it that Blair only picks up on because she knows him. "All of us were lonely, it wasn't just him. Yet by singling him out...she made his loneliness bigger than everything else about him. Like, he was always defined by his loneliness. And I think that's a tragedy, too."
“Do you know why he did it?” Blair asks, quiet.
When Jenny responds, Blair can practically hear the frown in her voice. “I think it was building up, in some ways, maybe even a long time coming. I don’t think it was one thing specifically. Dan’s never been hasty or impulsive when it comes to big decisions. He wouldn’t have – I mean – it was deliberate, I know that much.”
“He didn’t need to go through it alone,” Nate murmurs. “I wish he’d known that, however alone he felt, he did have us.”
“I think he knew, in his own way,” Jenny says, quietly. “He’s just always been bad at letting people help him. It doesn’t come naturally to him. And he’s always been really good at pretending things are okay, when they’re not.”
Blair exhales, pressing her face against Cedric, inhaling. She thinks she can still smell Dan, but she isn’t sure how much of that is wishful thinking. Most of it is, probably.
Nate seems to be doing something similar, pressing his face against one of Dan’s flannels. He’s never been the sort of person who cries frequently or easily, Blair knows, but he looks close to it now, as close as it gets for him, that she’s seen, anyway.
Jenny gives them both a look, and then gets up, grabbing the letter that has Eric’s name on it. “Okay, I’m going to leave you to it, I need a change of scenery,” she says. She kisses Nate’s cheek, pats the top of his head, and to Blair’s surprise, gives her a quick hug. “Take care of yourselves, okay?”
“You take care too, Jenny,” Blair says, gently. She is surprised by how deeply she means it.
There’s the sound of Jenny’s boots tapping against the floor, and then the soft slam of the loft door swinging shut. Blair gets down from the bed, sits next to Nate, puts her head on his shoulder. His arm comes to wrap around her, and he leans against her carefully.
“What do we do now, Nate?” Blair asks softly.
Nate exhales. “I don’t know,” he says.