Here is my attempt to repair the damage done to my 'Chair' at the conclusion to Season Three. If you haven't seen the finale of Season Three, I'd hold off on reading until you do – major spoilers alert if you decide to continue. You have been warned.

"It's my mom," Serena announced when her phone chirped to life as she and Blair sat in a sidewalk café along the Champs-Élyséees. It had been their first stop upon landing in Paris, and it was becoming their morning ritual since they arrived in Paris two days ago. "She must have finally gotten my message about ending up in Paris and wants me to pick her up some of her favorite scarves."

"Say hello to her for me," Blair stated as she sent a flirty wave towards the cute French boy that was eyeing her across the street. "I'm going to get on with my life." Blair pointed towards the boy as she stood up from the table.

"Go get him, B," Serena encouraged her best friend as she answered her phone. Her cheerful smile was immediately erased as her mother broke the horrible news.

"Serena, this is Pierre," Blair announced as Serena came over after her quick phone call.

"Hi," Serena rushed out, "Blair, I need to tell you something."

"Pierre, isn't that such a Parisian name. It's so much better than that Motherchucker," Blair continued on, "He doesn't speak any English. I'm so glad my mother insisted that I become fluent in French."

"B," Serena tried to cut her off.

Blair ignored Serena's attempt to get her attention as she turned to continue on with her conversation with Pierre.

"B!" Serena exclaimed. She could not put off her news any longer.

"S, you're being rude," Blair scowled at her best friend as Serena hauled her to her feet abruptly. "Whatever you need to tell me can surely wait until after I get Pierre's number."

"It's Chuck," Serena replied.

"That name is dead to me," Blair glared. Her best friend knew better than to bring up his name. She had spent too much time and energy putting that evil man out of her mind.

"He's been shot," Serena added as tears filled her eyes. It wasn't until she said the words out loud that it fully hit her.

"What?" Blair whispered as she collapsed into the chair again. Tears immediately sprung to her eyes as she began to choke for breath. Serena's words continued to echo in her ears. It seemed too impossible to be true. Either her dream had turned into a nightmare or her best friend was playing the cruelest of jokes on her.

"He was mugged in Prague. They took all his money. When he tried to fight back, they shot him," Serena explained in a rush.

"Is he okay?" Blair managed to choke out. She knew then that she wasn't dreaming because she would have woken up by now. Serena would have delivered the punch line by now, so it wasn't a cruel joke either. This was real.

"He's in stable condition, but it's very serious," Serena explained, "Mom is at the airport in New York. She's trying to find a way to get to Prague, but there are no flights out until tomorrow. She doesn't know anything more than he's in stable condition."

"I have to get to him," Blair told Serena with a desperation that surprised her best friend.

"But with everything that's happened?" Serena reminded her.

"It's irrelevant," Blair snapped, "Either come with me or get out of my way."

"I'm coming," Serena assured her. She was not going to let her friend face this alone.

There was a male voice calling out for Blair in French, the young man she only recently met. She didn't hear him. She didn't hear anything other that the words that continued to ring in her ears. "He's been shot."

"I'm looking for Chuck Bass," Blair announced as she pounded on the desk to get the receptionist's attention. The poor receptionist jumped a mile in fright at the noise.

The lady looked at Blair in confusion. She hadn't understood a word Blair had said. Why would she, it was in English.

"Chuck Bass," Blair repeated as she continued to slap at the desk with her hand. "Find him now."

"Blair, calm down," Serena instructed her as she rubbed Blair's shoulders in an effort to keep her from ripping the poor receptionist's head off.

"You've been telling me that for three hours," Blair snapped as she brushed Serena's hands away, "If you say that one more time, I'm going to pull out that blonde hair by the roots, strand by strand."

"Perhaps I can help," a young man that appeared to be in his early twenties stated as he approached. His accent was thick and made it difficult to understand, but he spoke English.

"I need Chuck Bass's room number right now," Blair demanded.

Serena opened her mouth to tell her friend to calm down once more, but quickly clamped her mouth shut as Blair's eyes challenged her.

After a rapid conversation between the young man and the receptionist, they found out that Chuck was in intensive care. The handy young man offered to show them the way as it would be difficult to explain the way as all signed in the hospital were in Czech. Had either been in the mood, surely they would have noticed the way their impromptu tour guide was drooling over Serena.

"Only Chuck Bass would have the nerve to end up in a hospital with no English subtitles," Blair stated in exasperation as they were lead through the hospital corridors.

"The nurse says that only family is allowed in," the young man explained after a brief conversation at the nurse's station at the entrance to the intensive care unit.

"I am family," Blair insisted as tears she was fighting to contain welled in her eyes. She was so close. She could feel his presence. She wasn't going to let some nurse with an authority complex stop her now.

The nurse seemed to understand as she stood up from her desk and placed a gentle hand on Blair's back as she ushered her to Chuck's bedside. Blair choked on a sob as she caught her first glimpse of him. He looked so pale and lifeless with a plethora of tubes and wires attached to various parts of his body. His eyes were closed and his face was contorted in what looked like pain. She felt physically ill as she took a few steps closer to him, tentatively reaching for his hand before pulling it away nervously before she touched him.

"Can he hear me?" Blair inquired as she looked hopefully at the nurse.

"Yes," the nurse nodded, her accent was as thick as the young man's from the lobby, but the message was clear. "He's not unconscious. He'll wake if he wants to."

"Chuck, can you hear me?" Blair inquired as she took a hold of his hand with greater determination this time, squeezing it gently. "It's me."

"Is this heaven?" Chuck asked as he opened his eyes slowly as her voice and then facial features registered in his mind.

"You're in the hospital," Blair told him as she sat down in the nearby chair as the nurse made a discreet exit. She'd been caring for Chuck since he arrived, and he'd been mumbling the same name over and over. She had a sneaking suspicion that the name belonged to the very distraught young brunette at his bedside.

"I thought I'd never see you again," he spoke weakly as he entwined his fingers through hers, slowly but deliberately.

"Don't talk like that," she told his as she wiped a tear out of her eyes with her free hand. "I'm here now. I'm not going anywhere."

"About Jenny," he began weakly.

"It doesn't matter," she told him as she pressed a finger to his lips, "Nothing matters to me but you. We'll figure it all out. You just need to get better."

"I thought I'd lost you," he continued on, "I was out of my mind with grief. I didn't know what I was doing until after it happened. Then you showed up. I knew I should have told you, but I knew you'd react like you did. You had every right to react like you did, but I couldn't take losing you for a second time in one night."

"Please stop," she told him as her tears fell harder.

"I never would have done it if I thought I had any shred of a chance with you," he told her as he licked his parched lips. "I'm so sorr. . ."

Blair put a finger to his lips again to silence his apology.

"I don't care about what between you and Humphrey. I know it didn't mean anything to you," she assured him. "We can talk about all of this later. Right now you need to focus on getting better, so I can take you home.

"I make a mess out of everything," he turned his head away to avert her gaze. He couldn't take the loving way that she was looking at him when he knew she was just going to leave if he got better.

"Life is messy, Chuck. We make mistakes. We learn from them. We move on," she told him. "I learned that no matter how much I want to walk away from you and forget all of the hurt and pain that you cause, I cannot do it because at the end of the day, I still love you and I still want a life with you. Our mistakes are part of who we are."

"Please don't say things to give me false hope," he hissed as he turned his head to her quickly, too quickly he realized as he pulled at his wound that had him groaning loudly in pain.

"Chuck," Blair exclaimed as his eyes rolled back in his head as he slumped back against the bed. If she couldn't hear his heart monitor beeping regularly, she would have thought he died right in that moment. She quickly began pushing the call button next to Chuck's hand to get the nurse in immediately.

"You should leave," the nurse told Blair.

"I'm not leaving," Blair responded forcefully as she caressed his hand, bringing the back of his hand to her face so she could feel the softness of his skin against hers. A tear fell down her cheek and onto his hand. "Listen to me, Chuck, I'm not leaving you."

"Blair, I found us a hotel room right across the street," Serena told Blair as she was able to talk her way into Chuck's room after the nurses had changed shifts. "We should go get some rest. The nurses told me that Chuck needs to get his rest. We can come back first thing in the morning."

"No," Blair shook her head as she kissed his hand for possibly the hundredth time that hour.

"B, you need your rest," Serena insisted as she tried to pry Blair's hand away from Chuck's. It was no use as Blair had a virtual death grip on his hand.

"No," Blair spoke again. "I will stay here for as long as it takes. He needs to know that I'm not leaving him again. He needs to know that I love him, and that I forg. . . forgive him."

"Hey, Sis," Chuck woke up groggily to see the blonde hovering over Blair's shoulder.

"Hey, Chuck, how are you feeling?" Serena inquired as her eyes softened as she stepped around his bed to take his other hand.

"A blonde and a brunette at my bedside, are you sure this isn't heaven," he tried to pull off with his trademark sarcasm, but the joke fell flat.

"Chuck," Blair scolded him as she playfully slapped his hand.

"You're still here," he replied as he gingerly pulled her adjoined hand to his lips so he could kiss her hand.

"I'm not leaving," she told him as she allowed her hand to linger against his lips.

"Your determination is impressive," he replied, again trying to find his sarcastic tone, but unable to do so. It was hard to find anything to be sarcastic about with her delicate skin still hovering next to his lips. He could smell her tantalizing perfume that she had no doubt applied to her wrists as she was getting dressed that morning.

"I'm not leaving," she repeated.

"Is there an echo in this room? Blair, I was shot in the stomach, not in the ears. My hearing is in perfect working order," he told her.

"As is your tongue I see," Blair replied sarcastically with a menacing stare.

"What happened away?" Serena inquired as she decided to pull up a chair. It was obvious they weren't going anywhere, and she wasn't leaving her best friend. She might as well get an explanation as to how he ended up in hospital.

"I was looking for a date for the evening in an alley," Chuck began.

"A date," Serena eyed him skeptically.

"He means prostitute," Blair amended.

"As I was saying, I was looking for a prostitute in an alley, two guys grabbed me and started going through my pockets. I told them I had enough money and that I'd give them as much as they wanted. They must not have heard of Chuck Bass in their little holes," he gritted his teeth as a wave of pain hit him. The medication they had given him earlier was starting to wear off.

Blair promptly pushed the call button for the nurse as Serena tried to distract him from the pain my saying, "Are there people in this world that don't know who Chuck Bass is?"

"A sad commentary of the times, I suppose," he continued on, "They found one thing that I desperately wanted to hang on to. They were going to take it, and I couldn't let them have it, so I tried to fight them for it. I didn't know they had a gun. The next thing I knew I was on the ground, bleeding. My life flashed before my eyes. It was only images of you, Blair."

The nurse came in to interrupt the moment as she administered more morphine for Chuck's pain. It knocked him right out, despite him wanting to fight through it.

"Are you and Chuck getting back together?" Serena inquired once Chuck began to breath heavily in his sleep. Blair had fresh tears in her eyes from his touching words. "After everything he's done. How can you even think about something like this?"

"Because I love him," Blair replied, "This isn't some silly high school crush or part of some fairytale inside my head. This is the kind of love that can overlook all his faults, all his mistakes, all the pain that he caused. I'll be miserable for the rest of my life without him, just like I know he will be without me. When we're together, and we work together as a team, we are electric. Nothing and nobody can tear us apart. We have things that we have to work through, but I'm not running anymore. I can't run anymore."

"I don't know if I can watch the two of you crash and burn again," Serena told her best friend.

"Then there is the door," Blair nodded towards the entrance to Chuck's room.

"You'd really choose him over me," Serena replied.

"I'm not choosing. You are," Blair told her simply.

"I don't want to see you hurt," Serena tried to explain.

"And I love you for that, S," Blair assured her, "If you don't want to see me get hurt, support me on this. It hurts too much to stay away. Like he's said, we're magnetic. Our pull is undeniable. I'll say it however many ways you want me to say it. I'm staying." She turned towards Chuck, and even though he was asleep she addressed him as if he was awake. "Do you hear me, Bass? Get it through that enormously large and stubbornly thick skull. I'm staying."

TBC . . .

A little background on this first chapter - I wrote this first chapter immediately after Season Three ended. I simply could not force myself to fall asleep until I fixed this, at least partially.