Taxi back to Chez Waldorf, and then to a helipad, where Blair is standing in a riding helmet, getting ready to fly. "What," Blair says hilariously. "You want a lift to JFK?" Eleanor told Serena about France, the sudden-death extraction they have planned, and Blair sticks out her lip. "She has a big mouth." I love Blair through this whole scene, because every single thing Serena says is another Jenga block on this very dramatic and ever-so-Blair scheme of fleeing the country under cover of night. "B, I'm your best friend. She was shocked I didn't know." And now you do, Blair snits. "What I know is how you felt when I left without telling you." Can't really fight that, doesn't really try. "...Is there a reason you're here?" Not the words but the act, of love. Running from the DUMBO recitation of love, its symmetries and stories, headlong into the arms of what it looks like when nobody's looking.

"Stay. Don't let some stupid scandal make you run away like it did me, like it does everyone in our world." Blair cracks, a bit: "Everything's horrible. My whole life is falling apart." This is free-fall. Don't make me stay here to see it happen. "So rebuild it! You're a Waldorf, remember? People don't tell you who you are, you tell them! Stay and fight. I'll fight with you!" The first time this show ever made me cry, when Blair was a bookcase, remember that? "You're doing so good! You got it! Look how good you are!" Oh, that still kills me. And all she's saying is that there's a story Blair doesn't know, because it hasn't been written yet, and Gossip Girl never heard this story. The only person that knows this story is Serena van der Woodsen, and it ripped out chunks of her heart every day she was telling it: that if you can't fix the world -- and you can't -- then you're better off fixing your little part of it, by stretching and learning to love stories besides your own. There are days when she still cribs from Dan's notes to help her remember the story, but it gives her strength. And this story -- Serena's life, now -- is the last gift she can give her friend. She begs her to take it.