Author's Note: so I completely respect your opinions to not like Vanessa but please, if you don't like her then please don't open my stories. There isn't going to be anything you like in them at all. Please, it's spring break for me but I've had a very bad weekends… a very bad past week. Between visiting my mom at the hospital and re watching tonight tonight's GG once it's on over and over I should be able to update some more this week. YOB is coming, it just needs a little more work. So enjoy and leave me your thoughts.

-i think i've re written this twenty times, but, i'm gonna stick with this one. hope it's ok

(:

Xoxo

Manda

"Isn't there a strip club or something you can go terrorize? I'm sure the call girls on eighth are just dying for your arrival by now. Go bother them and leave me alone. Please, I'm begging now."

He could hear the old Vanessa, something he hadn't heard in days as he brought her another pillow and walked around the apartment observing things as though he was a five year old at a museum. He'd been doing it for the past half hour since they'd gotten back to the apartment, asking her questions about this that and the other thing, picking up pictures that lay scattered around the house. Much as she wasn't in the mood for company it was nice to not be left alone in her thoughts, she just wouldn't go around admitting it.

"I told you, if your sister was here to watch you then I'd leave. But I'm not going to leave you here all by yourself. Vanessa, you're a total masochist who just put yourself through an ab… that with hardly any drugs. Any woman in their right mind I'm pretty sure would have begged to be out cold. Morphine can be fun when it's given in such high doses like that. Just ask Blair, eating disorders have their perks. You have an entire bottle of vicoden you haven't bothered to touch. You're far tougher then I took you for Abrams."

Groaning in reaction to his statement she pulled the warn out orange quilt up over her head. The last thing she wanted was to even so much as think of what had gone on just hours ago. A thing her mind was doing its best to pretend had never happened. As for the pill bottle, she didn't trust drugs and herself alone. She'd had far too many nights of dragging Ruby's nearly comatose ass to the ER. Why else had she come to New York just herself and Ruby? To make sure her sister didn't die in her sleep. The story she'd composed had been just to make Dan feel special. Ruby's problems were some she'd only ever confessed to one person.

"Ok ok, I'll shut up. I'm going to raid that poor excuse of a kitchen for anything that will make these surroundings a little more livable. You know, you could always take those pills and a few swigs of liquor, I'm sure you'd be in the mood to party my way then. You just have to put on something sexy… that's if you own anything sex… I'm going to get myself a drink, and you some water."

The reaction that he'd wanted he wasn't getting from her, not even the slightest crack of a smile. All Vanessa had done was pulled down the quilt just enough to glare at him as he turned around to head to the kitchen. Soon as he was out of sight she sat up a little bit more, her mind was erratic, more so then it had been the prior two days. Her mind was stuck in the exam room, stuck on the fact that she'd given up a piece of herself. No matter what she did or what way she turned she couldn't get her thoughts out of her head. She'd made the most difficult decision she was sure she'd ever make in her life. As difficult as it had been she'd done what she thought was right for everyone involved.

She'd been threatened, threatened that if her relationship with Nate prevailed he'd lose everything. His grandfather didn't approve of her. He didn't approve of anything about her. Vanessa knew she couldn't have been the reason that both Nate and Anne lost everything they'd worked so hard to get back after all the trouble with the captain. If she ever wanted to actually get along with Anne she couldn't be the reason they lost everything. Then there'd been Serena and the damn director of the stupid school play he was in. Serena had asked her to find out more information on him, she'd been generally curious about what it was really like to pull things that were more then amateur. So she'd talked to him, just simple conversation with the guy. God forbid, she never would have pegged him for being the insecure or jealous type. He should have known that she loved him more then she'd thought love was possible, hadn't she proved that to him enough. Then there was the case of Blair, he'd skipped right to pleasing his grandfather. Blair was the one that the Vanderbilt's approved of. Rich, smart, quiet in front of a crowd, the girl that did everything she could do to please people to the face and talk behind their backs.

The case of herself, she didn't put herself first for anything. She hadn't even been the one to fill out or send her own college applications. When acceptance letters had started to come in she'd known exactly who she'd needed to yell at. NYU, School of the Arts Institute of Chicago, Hampshire College, and of course USC's film program. He'd stolen a documentary, and a few other things she'd filmed, had them copied (she hoped not a video or two that he'd stolen) and sent them out along with applications and half assed essay's she'd done for her GED. He'd wanted her to have a chance and options.

Somehow she'd found herself backed up to a corner, she could let him escape and she could have run back to her parents for help ultimately leaving Ruby to drink and use herself into not being around anymore. She could have gone straight to him with it all, let him lose everything and hope that in the end he wouldn't have resented her for it. Life wasn't a bowl of ice cream; things didn't work out for the best was something she'd learned. She could have debited her life to Dan and begged him to cover for her, to help her with a story that she'd been cheating on Nate all along, shattering his heart into pieces along with her own. Then there was the decision she'd gone with. The decision to try and move on with her life, to try out college, put him first and herself second.

She'd completely detached herself from things that were progressing in her mind and body, swallowed her pride and the sudden dreams that had popped up over night. They had to go their separate ways, their separate ways that didn't include being attached by anything. There wasn't anything she could do about it. It was the first time Vanessa looked at the future and saw nothing but fuzz and grey. Lifting her head just a little she laid it back off the side of the couch, letting the top half of her body practically hang off of the couch as she let the blood rush to her head.

Then there was Chuck, she'd never seen the side of Chuck that she had for the past few days. He was still same old asshole Chuck of course, but he'd taken care of her. Letting her drone on and on about choices and decisions, mistakes and boundaries, most of which she was sure had been practically incoherent. He didn't judge her, only when she'd rejected the drugs to sleep. He'd held headphones to her ears, letting the loud music blast in her ears rather than the vacuum like sound. He'd done it all without her asking, without her suggestions, just knowing that the slow dripping tears falling from her eyes meant that she'd need something to distract her. He'd been good all and all, bringing her blankets and trying to get her to stay hydrated; she hadn't expected him to be nice about any of it. It wasn't the lightest of subjects, one that most people would have pitched a fit over.

Letting all of the animosity and hurt be blocked from her mind for a second she put her hands over her already closed eyes, the tips of her hair still touching the floor, she threw herself back into the world she wanted to be in. She could feel his lips, his lips on her collar bone, up her neck, her cheek, her lips. His hands as he knelt down beside her touched the exposed flesh of her side and slowly slid across under her shirt till he was holding her hip and pressing his chest into her, it felt almost real, so real. She let herself into her daydreams, she let her dream self relax and proceed and deepen the kiss, and it felt so real. Hazel eyes flickered open and she felt herself jump nearly out of her skin.

His eyes too were shut until her side of the kiss had run dead. Hazel and sapphire met in disaster, frailty, nerves, compassion, every emotion was held between the two for a near moment before Vanessa's walls cluttered themselves back up and she clustered back to her silent ball of pain and the screaming of betrayal she felt.

"V, please don't pull away. I need you, I can't be me without you, and you're the only one Vanessa, the one that taught me how to live and breathe for myself. I just needed them to go away, I couldn't subject you to their shit more then I had to. Blair was a cover Vanessa, she doesn't come close to us… this. Please baby, please just give me a chance to prove it to you Vanessa."

Looking into his deep blue eyes she couldn't help but shutter. She could still feel his kiss on her lips, his arm was still clutched around her waist, all of it making her sick. Guilt creeped up and washed over her. Regardless of the things he'd done and the ways he'd hurt her he was right there like he would have been any other day. With his perfect eyes lingering on her she didn't have the strength to stray from him. It was to comforting, his touch, too much of what she needed. His words lingered in her head, her eyes were cold as she stared ahead into nothing. He was waiting for her to look at him, to turn her head and affirm that everything was alright.

"Vanessa, come on baby, please just talk to me. I know I screwed up."

His hand placement was starting to get to her, the pleading needs to both his voice and eyes were reverberating in her brain. Never had Vanessa been more thankful for Chuck Bass's existence. She should have known he'd been listening in the doorway. Footsteps made Nate tear his eyes from hers. She knew he had to have been expecting Ruby and some slurred comment on something. She knew he was confused as soon as his eyes fell on Chuck, he withdrew his hand from her body.

"I'd be careful with the words you choose Nathaniel. You might just make her break. Not that I think that would be a bad thing. I'm starting to worry about her turning to complete prudent stone."

Chuck mocked as he walked further in without a care, a bottle of Ruby's brandy in one hand, a glass of cool tap water with the pill bottle floating on the top so that Chuck could manage without dropping anything. He placed the cup down and the pill bottle beside it in an arrogant Chuck Bass manner. One that didn't surprise her what so ever, some things didn't change about him ever.

"Drink and swallow"

It was a clear command without a question as he pushed it forward to her only glancing quickly at Nate for a moment before he took a swing of his own poison and headed to lean against the wall.

"Chuck? Why the hell are you here?"

Nate's bewildered voice finally found it's way out of his throat as his head turned back and forth from the people in the surrounding room. Then, he looked his eyes on Vanessa, Vanessa who was struggling to get her thoughts together to even so much as form a sentence. Nate's mind started to freak out, had he pushed another one into the arms of Chuck Bass? Vanessa, the last person he'd ever expected it to happen to. For her to get caught in the middle of Chuck Bass's games lies. The only one he'd actually truly fallen in love with.

"I was at the clinic with her Nate, didn't think you'd want her to be all alone while she was having an abortion. She was a wreck as it was. Regardless of the uppity smirks on both yours and Blair's faces, didn't think you'd want her to go through all of that alone. I figured she meant a little more to you than that."

As Chuck spoke his piece Nate's brain attempted to process the words from his mouth. Abortion, clinic, he looked at Vanessa, the guilt in her eyes confirmed it. Never in the year he'd known her, or in the months they'd been together had he seen her look so fragile, torn apart, or hurt. She had color in her cheeks and water in her eyes. She looked on the brink of losing it.

"She needs to sleep for a while, it's been almost three days since she's so much as shut her eyes. She's tough, makes me wonder how she is in bed."

He'd been dying to throw in some smart assed comment all day, he wouldn't have been Chuck Bass if he didn't. the comment was more than enough for Nate, he was on his feet pacing back and forth. His mind working against him, telling him he should have been flipping out on her. He was hurt, more hurt then he'd ever been by anyone.

"Chuck that's enough. Thanks for coming with me, I'm grateful and all, but, I can't take you being here anymore. You're driving me crazy. I'm used to being alone, I'm just fine alo…"

As she went to finish her sentence Nate turned around from the window, confusion and fierce tempers flickering in his eyes as he looked at Chuck and only Chuck.

"She's not going to be alone, I'm not leaving."

His tone was harsh, enough to make her jump. Her eyes were completely glued to him. Stuck on every tense muscle in his shoulders, every hurt look in his eyes, he was disappointed in her, he had every reason to be. Her and her snap decisions that had showed him that he hadn't meant anything to her, now that she thought about it that was exactly how it sounded, but, there was still the other voice in her head. The voice that told her that she couldn't have done anything else, she was in no way inclined to raise a child all by herself. The part of her that was still so pissed off at him for hurting her again the way he had was fiercely telling her she'd done the right thing. Would he ever learn not to do things that way?

"Nate, you really don't have to…"

Starting to protest on the fact that he didn't need to stay with her she was automatically shut up when his eyes turned into an icy glare directed directly at her. She shut her mouth then, shut her mouth and pulled the quilt back up to her face. Chuck was back against the wall then, silently observing as Nate stood directly in front of her. She could tell just by his mannerisms that Chuck was there to step in if things got heated. On either behalf he was ready to jump in if he was called for.

"I don't understand how you could do this. How you could do that without saying anything to me about it in the first place. You made it so that I had no say in this Vanessa. Damn it Vanessa, you were… we were… you didn't even tell me before you did anything. I would have liked to be a part of this. Regardless of the decision Vanessa, you weren't ever alone in any of this. I would have been there."

Anger and frustration were written all across his face, every bit of hurt was there. It was as bad as the guilt that was reflected in her own face. Looking at his perfect eyes so filled up with hurt that she'd caused hurt her. She was supposed to be the reason he could relax, not one of the people that disappointed him like the people around him. The people he'd grown up with. She was different from them; she'd been so sure of that.

"I know, and I'm not going to try to defend myself by saying that it's my body my choice. Because in all honesty Nate, that's not how I feel. I know what I did… It wasn't fair to you. You deserved to know just as much as I knew, this shouldn't have been a choice I made without talking to you first. I snapped Nate, I'm not saying I wouldn't have gone through with it if you'd been there, I'm just saying that you not knowing until now, it's my fault"

She was doing everything she could to hold it together and not cry in front of him. Not to show all of the despair and regrets she felt as the most dominant emotions running though her veins. She'd made the right choice, in most ways she knew that. There wasn't another way they could have handled it. Not without destroying themselves and one another in the process. She'd been wrong to not tell him, that much she'd admit. Vanessa also knew that had he been there instead of Chuck and he'd seen the image on the screen, emotions in the room would have been a lot stronger then they were.

"Cut her some slack Nate. She was thinking of what your grandfather would do to you if he found out you knocked her up. She was just trying to once again save your ass. She seems to try and do that a lot if you ask me."

Chuck's talking was adding to the increased pressure in Nate's already filled mind. In frustration he put his hand over his face and took a deep breath attempting to calm himself. It was a lot of information for him to process. More information then he'd of liked to handle.

"Seriously Chuck? I think we need you to go. Thank you for staying with her, I'm glad she wasn't alone and all, but, right now I think she and I need a while alone. I'll call you later."

He never took his head out of his hands, not to look at Vanessa or Chuck. He stayed simply station, sorting out his own thoughts as she watched him, her own eyes filling with tears. She gave a slight nod to Chuck telling him it was fine. To assure him that anything Nate had to say she deserved more than anyone could even imagine.

"If one of you kills the other don't look for me any help when it comes to a judge. Because I'm not giving it."

He swallowed the last of his glass before putting it down on the table. She watched Chuck as he picked up his jacket, fixed his color and left with only a slight glance back that the both of them.

"Nate…"

Shaking his head as she started she silenced herself right away knowing what he meant. Biting her lip she watched him lift his head and walk around the table before sitting down beside her. Vanessa coiled herself up to the side of the couch giving him room. She was only like that for a moment before he reached out and put his arm around her. She was careful as she leaned into him, cautious not to get to close.

"Are you ok?"

His voice was soft, her always gentle and careful Nate. It was only then that she allowed him to pull her into his lap and hug his arms around her more tightly then he'd ever done in the past. Holding her like it was the last moment they'd have together. She knew that wasn't the case, he just needed to feel, as much as she did. to know that everything between them was still there.

"No, I hurt… mentally. And, I'm so sorry, Nate, so sorry."

She whispered with her face against his chest as she breathed in his scent, she intended to hold onto every second of him being there with her. The one feeling she'd needed for the past few days. The one thing that nearly erased everything that had happened earlier in the day, not that anything could really erase it from her mind.

"Shh, let's not talk about it now, ok?"

He whispered as he kissed the side of her head running his hand up and down her back to comfort her. Sure, she'd done something he wasn't happy about, but, regardless he couldn't switch off how much he loved her. It was obvious in her eyes that she knew that everything had been so much more than just simple words expressed. They both had deep wounds from what had been done. They needed one another to really get through it, even if it would take a lot to get through.

"Can I do anything for you right now? Maybe you should get some sleep like Chuck said you needed. You can sleep, it's ok I'm not going to let you go."

He whispered in her ear as she etched herself free from his grasp enough to reach on the table allowing her fingers to brush the pill bottle Chuck had placed down. Being safe in his arms she knew he wouldn't let anything happen to her and she could actually take the pills to sleep. It was the only way she was going to sleep. Knowing what she wanted he reached over her to pick it up. They didn't talk as caps were opened and one of the pills were swallowed before she re adjusted herself to cuddling close to him.

"I love you Vanessa"

Vanessa who hadn't opted to requite a kiss yet lifted her head then; she pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth before nestling herself back against his chest and yawning. Any anger and hurt Nate felt he'd put on hold to take care of her for the night. At least he had her in his arms, it would take a while to regain trust but she was worth it to work at, he'd wronged her more than enough. They'd have another chance at it all, when they were more mature and ready to take on the world rather than just the Upper East Side.

"I love you too Nate"