Title: Paper Hearts

Summary: Hearts are like paper, Henry. You know, like those little valentines we made as kids. It's easy to let someone rip it, but it's harder to let someone mend it. And you're the only one with the tape to mend mine. With each and every Valentine's Day brings new knowledge and understanding. The chronicles of each Valentine's Day, through the eyes of Henry Bass.

Dedication: Agustina (hope this doesn't make you cry too hard).

Prompt: Chair week / Valentine's Day. Happy belated V-Day!

On his first Valentine's Day, his mother showers him with kisses and red onesies. He can't remember it, as expected, but there's a whole album of pictures to show. He knows that there is no other mother in the world that is like his. Her love for him stretches beyond the holiday. It is Valentine's Day every day, minus the chocolates and messily glued cards.

On his fourth Valentine's Day, he practically runs home in glee, toting his leather backpack and red bag of treats. He is greeted by his mother, cradling his new baby sister on their blue couch. He presents them each with both a kiss on the cheek and one of the Hershey variety. Then he gives his mother her valentine: a pink heart laced with white, glistening sparkles, and a drawing of her and him in the middle. It makes her eyes fill up with crocodile tears and smile wider than the pacific. He'll never forget that smile.

On this seventh Valentine's Day, he shares his first kiss. Unfortunately, with Dorota's Ana, who is much older than he. In return, he gets a slap and a good Polish reprimanding. Trzymaj usta do siebie, Henry Bass! Keep your lips to yourself! At first, he is completely stunned by it all but after a few minutes, a smirk forms on his face. He watches as Ana tells his parents about his tryst with a smug look. His mother, of course, pretends to be horrified and chastises his father for passing down his girl attitudes to his son, but his father gives him a look only Bass men can understand. It was a look of warning for the future, but also a look of admiration for the present. He smiles coyly and goes back to flattening cookie dough with his roller in the kitchen.

On his twelfth Valentine's Day, he goes to a party. It's lavish and beautiful, as are all of the parties he attends. But something about this one is different. It's the atmosphere. As he looks around at his various family members, he feels their love. His Aunt Serena sits on his Uncle Dan's lap holding a glass of bubbling champagne, her warm laughs filling up the room as her husband whispers something in her ear. Beneath their feet sits their eight year-old daughter, making a goofy face at her best friend and confidante, his sister. He doesn't need to look at her to know she is shaking her head while trying to hold back a grin. Being the next Queen B has already started to weigh down on her, even at the mere age of eight. He knows his world comes with many expectations and hates them to the core, but he wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Because as his gaze goes to the left, he sees through the expectations and weight, true love blooms. Nobody has a love like Chuck and Blair Bass. It makes him smile and shudder with warmth. Still to this day.

On the night before his fifteenth Valentine's Day, he can't stop thinking about her. Visions of her were running ramped in his head, so much so he decides to take a walk. He was amazed about how lively the streets could be at two in the morning. Various shops were still open and men ran into them hurriedly, some even in their nightclothes. His Uncle Nate was right: Valentine's Day was truly created for the stores. He stops in front of Tiffany's and thinks of his mother. He already had gotten her Valentine's Day gift, at the suggestion of his father, of course. But something in the window across the street catches his eye, something that screams her. Before he can even think, he's already through the doors and pulling the "I'm Henry Bass" line to keep them open long enough for he to buy it. And on the day of his fifteenth Valentine's Day, he tells her he's in love with her, Erickson Beamon necklace in hand. Because unlike his father, he refuses to be a coward.

On his seventeenth Valentine's Day, he sits by the fireplace in his room alone. He's tried everything: reading, studying, playing on his iPhone, hanging up-si-down but as always, he can't stop thinking about her: why she ran away without telling him, why their last fight was so vicious. He pulls out a box from underneath his bed and opens the lid with caution. He shakily pulls out a picture of them. She is in a fiery red dress, he in a matching outfit of sorts. They're lying in fresh green grass in the Hamptons and smiling giddily. As he remembers the day, he starts to form thick creases in the photo. His anger starts to take over and he tosses the picture in the flames without remorse. He watches at the picture sizzles and crackles with a deep satisfaction he cannot describe. As Nathaniel Hawthorne once said, "There is a thin line between love and hate." It all equals the same amount of passion. As his mother watches from the doorway, she is reminded of that quote and her youth. She walks in and takes a seat next to her son, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. Within seconds, he is sobbing in her arms, his walls collapsing to the nothingness that consumes him on a daily basis. She does what any mother would and rubs his back in a soothing motion, letting him get all of his feelings out. With the knowledge of her youth in hand, she tells him something he'll also never forget. For two people in love, eventually they'll find their way back. He asks her if she really believes in that and she chuckles softly. Well you're here, aren't you?

By his twentieth Valentine's Day, she's made her way back to him. He takes her to his favorite restaurant, they walk arm and arm through Central Park, and he does everything cliché he can think of. Although she had wronged him, they were past that. She had defeated her inner demons as has he, and they're ready to move into the future now. As he walks her back to her grandmother's apartment in the Upper West Side, he asks her a question that's been burning in him ever since she came back. What did you do on Valentine's Day without me? The silence seems to invite the possibility of another lover, another celebration, another life. After a few moments, she tells him something he'll never forget. Hearts are like paper, Henry. You know, like those little valentines we made as kids. It's easy to let someone rip it, but it's harder to let someone mend it. And you're the only one with the tape to mend mine. He smiles widely and kisses her deeply as they stand in the middle of a cobblestone alleyway. She attempts to deepen the kiss, but he pulls away. With a goofy smile, he repeats the original question. She laughs and rolls her eyes. I don't know…cried, watched goofy soap operas, hung up-si-down. Anything to get you out of my mind.

Years later, it's his sixty-first Valentine's Day. Usually, it would be like the rest of them: filled with chocolate, love, family, and cheesy cards. But this one is the first one he spends without his mother. It's been two hard months since her passing. He can't quite create her spirit at Christmastime and he's quite certain that he will really fail at creating her spirit on Valentine's Day. As he walks up the gravel path to her grave, he hears a familiar voice. He stops dead in his tracks and listens carefully.

I love you to the moon and back Blair Bass. Valentine's Day isn't the same without you. It's just a flurry of cheap teddy bears and overly-soppy relationships. Now I'm starting to see why Nate always criticized it so much. He didn't have you to make it so special. I was so happy to have you in my life and I never regret any moment shared with you. We shared over sixty Valentine's Days, maybe even more than that. You know I've always been poor at math. He hears a slight, quivery chuckle. Anyway, I miss you my queen and I hope that you can admire these peonies from heaven. I'm just not the same without you. You're the only person that can mend my broken heart. So when it is my time, I will join you in heaven and I will be whole again. I know I say I'm an atheist, but I would like to believe that somewhere beyond here, we can spend more Valentine's Days together. In fact, I'm going to make every day I spend in heaven with you Valentine's Day. Nate was right in one regard: there shouldn't be one day where I express my love to you more. It should be every day. He hears what sounds to be the start of a sob, but knowing the speaker he knows he'll be able to hold it back. I love you Blair Cornelia Waldorf-Bass, each and every day. There's not a day where you don't plague my thoughts. Please enjoy my peonies and I hope to see you soon. He starts to hear the man sob, which draws him towards him. He sets a hand on his father's back and starts to rub soothing circles.

For two people in love, eventually they'll find their way back, he quotes. Chuck smiles through his tears.

I'll never stop believing in that, my son. Neither should you.

By the next Valentine's Day, he is gone too. But Henry finds great comfort in knowing that his parents had found their way back and knows that they are celebrating somewhere beyond him, with two glasses of wine and Moon River flowing sweetly throughout their room.

If I'm going to be honest, I am sitting on my bathroom floor writing this in tears. Yes, the last paragraph did draw me to tears. If you guys think that you're pained to read this as a reader, imagine how hard it is to write it haha. Anyways, hope you enjoyed it and please drop a review. I'm hoping to update my other stories too.

XOXO, Becca

P.S: Just read this and realized I really have been watching too much Downton Abbey. Drop a review? Pained to read? Draw me to tears? Oh lord I'm turning British help.