( rip 2 my youth! )

“I don’t know.” She says again, finally unable to meet his eyes. “I don’t know how to feel anything without them.”

Blair can see it now: all that pain, all that nothing that she had let loose inside of him. He was the best thing that had ever happened to her, and she’d helped break him. It should have hurt her, she should have felt pain or guilt, but there was something blocking it - some dam in the way of the emotions she was supposed to be feeling. “I’ve never been in one of these places before. Couldn’t afford it, so I never told Jackson how I was feeling.” She shrugs, not really sure why she’s saying any of this to him. “Maybe if I had, I wouldn’t be like this.”

This time she looks him right in the eyes, wanting to see whatever crosses his expression when she answers with complete honesty, “No.”

More than anything, Blair realized, she wanted Patrick to look at her. She wanted to see the pain in his eyes, knowing that she was a big part of the reason he was feeling it. She wanted the rolling waves of guilt, because it meant she was feeling something, other than this unquenchable apathy that she couldn’t shake. “Do you still want to?”

Blair doesn’t react outwardly when he winces, but something shuts down behind her eyes. “I don’t really know,” she says, shocked by her own honesty.

Blair nods, her expression oddly blank. Rather than linger on that topic, she finally meets his eyes, a morbidly curious glint in her own. “Were you really gonna jump?”

“How are you, big brother?”

“Really? Nothing? I figured there would be a lot more screaming.”

“Hi.”