"Or the spell wears off and two lovers realize they are better off as... well, whatever they are." Blair sits in her bedroom, being sad, and Chuck enters. "Are you here to gloat?" He asks what she means. "Well, you won. Pop the champagne." I gave up ground and you didn't. I wept and you didn't. I told you about the White Party and I cried on the roof, and you told me I lost. "I didn't win," he says. I just believed you every time you pretended you were unbreakable. "Then why does it feel like I lost?" That excruciating pleasure. How did things get to this place?

"The reason we can't say those three words to each other isn't because they aren't true." Case closed. Blair, unaware that she actually just won, is like, "Then how come?" Like, "Honestly tell me because I am straight-up outside my wheelhouse and all the furniture's getting moved around. "I think we both know that the moment we do, it won't be the start of something... It'll be the end." They are almost crying and he's not even said it all yet. "Think about it. Chuck and Blair going to the movies? Chuck and Blair holding hands?" She edges closer to tears, almost begging: "We don't have to do those things. We can do the things that we like!" We can make up the rules. Serena showed me how. Dan showed us both. "What we like is this," Chuck says, and she agrees, horribly sad: "The game."

"Without it, I'm not sure how long we'd last. It'd just be a matter of time before we messed it all up..." She almost speaks; he gets on his knees and gazes up at her. "Look, I'd rather wait. Maybe in the future...?" Blair's voice is completely different, just deeply sad and grown up, like something died: "I suppose there could be some excruciating pleasure in that." A tear rolls down her cheek as she smiles at him sweetly. He kisses her goodbye, and can barely let her hand go as he is leaving. She is crying in front of him. Chuck Bass. Again. There's excruciating pleasure in knowing that the world didn't end, after all.

It sounds tacky, but I'm hopeful/ There's a reason that the world turns round/ Through silent sound/
Set the dark on fire

When I was young and I almost drowned/ I was found
Set the dark on fire...