Disclaimer: I don't own Gossip Girl.

Summary: He finds himself writing: "Did I ever mean anything to you? Anything at all?" DanBlair, set after the S5 finale, oneshot

Because I have so, so many issues with the last few seasons, and this is my way of being able to correct some things. I might be a delusional shipper, but I love Dair so much that I honestly don't care how delusional I get. Anyway! Please enjoy this little snippet of angst. Haha.

Knockout

There are many things Dan Humphrey wants to say.

He writes them over and over in his notebook, opting to use actual pen-and-paper instead of his laptop. He likes the feel of the pen swooping across the clean white sheet of paper, likes it when he messes up so he can scratch through things. It is this, the physical act of writing, that he has missed. Typing on a computer can only capture so much. And now, even as he looks at the piece of paper before him, he sees all he needs to see in his scrawling, messy writing.

The feeling hasn't left him. Not since he found out that she left him for him. It's been like this for weeks, it seems. Staying with Georgina in Rome and plotting revenge does nothing for the bubbling rage in his heart. The thirst for revenge. The need to be vindicated.

Most of the things he writes are seemingly unrelated to one another. Sentences flow into one another without much preamble; the morph from talking about her and how much he loved her, and then talking about him and how he doesn't deserve her. Not after everything he's put her through.

There's a lot of underlining. A lot of capital letters. There are adjectives on both edges of extreme - bastard and beautiful, dastardly and delightful, fearful and feminine.

There are sentences that could used to describe just him: The dark prince, plagued by all his demons, is more intriguing, of course... If he loved her so much, why would he treat her so poorly... Everyone loves a villain...

And then ones to describe just her: The Queen B, whose carefully crafted veneer hides someone so vulnerable... How can she just go back to him like that, without a second thought... There is so much to her, and sometimes I feel like I'm the only one to see it...

And those that describe the both of them: Schemes and competition, fighting for one another's love and attention... One seems to always be in a different place than the other... Self-destructive, combustible, the most volatile of elements mingling together as if it were impossible for them to bring the world to its knees...

Dan seems to spend hours, writing his innermost thoughts in this notebook. He should be writing the sequel to Inside, of course, but he just can't bring himself to do it. At least, not quite yet. Not now. Not when the wounds are so fresh, not when he tries to write Charlie or Sabrina or Claire all he can picture are the muses for the characters.

Georgina comes by a few times, looks unimpressed, makes a sexual comment or two, badgers him about writing. There are some times that Dan thinks she actually might look a bit sorry for him. Dan's not sure what to feel about that particular, strange almost-nicety, so he doesn't think on it much.

Pages and pages and pages of notes. Of comments and observations. The fictional, embellished writing he is used to melds together with the sentences of someone's diary. It is a strange amalgamation, one that he ponders over as he switches back and forth, flipping to blank pages like a madman and rapidly filling them to the brim with his thoughts.

He finds himself writing: Did I ever mean anything to you? Anything at all?

Those are sound questions, he finds. Questions that deserve some kind of answer. And through all the rage and hurt, Dan wants to seek these answers. It may be kind of masochistic, but he's hurt himself before. What's a little more pain in comparison?

The pen flits across the paper again. His hand is cramping up, but he is unperturbed. The pain is welcome. Pain he can deal with. Pain is simple, whereas what he's feeling in this moment is anything and everything but.

The thoughts come out without any problem. He knows that this is not being productive in the slightest, but he can't find it in him to care. Dan needs to do this, needs to write in this notebook, needs to fill the pages with his thoughts and his worries and his hopes and his failures. He writes until he can't feel his fingers, writes as he hears her voice in his hear, soft and sweet and sentimental.

He is losing his mind, he knows he is losing his mind. He must be. That is the logical solution to this.

What else could it be?

Love is a kind of madness, he writes. Love will consume. Love will ruin.

The people around him go about their lives, going to markets and shopping for clothes and talking to one another in hushed tones that he does not understand. They watch the boy with the notebook and wonder.

Dan is oblivious to them all, enraptured as he is with his frivolous project - if one could even call it that. Life after line after line, page after page after page. He is determined to get to the end of the notebook, as if finishing a book filled with the ramblings of a lovesick fool would be enough to drain the love for her out of his blood.

Days pass. Georgina calls and calls, but he doesn't answer. He doesn't answer to anyone, only leaving his perch to eat - or, try to, anyway, he can't seem to force anything down nowadays - and get a cup of coffee to keep him awake.

His pen runs out of ink on the last page of the notebook.

Dan sits back, uncurling his spine from where he had leaned over the notebook so intently that he was certain he might have had a permanent hunch from it. He stares at the book in front of him, his eyes lingering on the last words he wrote. They were the words scattered about the notebook, in many different forms, but the central meaning behind them had been apparent. Those words seem to glare at him from the page; he almost has the state of mind to turn away from them, embarrassed. But he doesn't.

I love her.

The last word had faded a bit from where the pen had started to run out of ink. It looks almost ghostly, as if it had been written long ago and was just now starting to fade.

Dan stares at the words, and idly wonders if the feeling itself will ever fade.

No, a voice at the back of his mind answers. No, it won't.

So, without any feeling of closure whatsoever, he shuts the notebook, which seems infinitely easier than shutting out his thoughts of Blair Waldorf.

End.