One Tree Hill Finding Home

**Finding Home**

I've been working on this for weeks and I'm relieved to finally have it finished. I took some extreme liberties with this fic, but I hope you enjoy it.

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On the way to the hospital she slips in and out of consciousness, calling his name while they poke and prod her with needles and pump her full of drugs that are supposed to dull the pain. She undergoes emergency surgery to repair the damage to her leg and wakes twenty-six hours later alone in a stuffy hospital room with her left leg heavily bandaged.

Only Haley and Nathan come to see her, Peyton stops expecting Lucas to come by after they tell her about Keith. Brooke calls once to check on her, she sounds upset and admits that Lucas has broken up with her. Peyton doesn't ask why.

Haley drives her home from the hospital three days later. Bad weather stranded her father on his way home and he doesn't know when he'll make it back. She's surprised by how much she doesn't care, it's just another thing she'll have to go through without him. She wishes Ellie was still alive, then she takes a painkiller and turns up her stereo.

He shows up at her bedroom door a day later, she hasn't seen him since two police officers pulled her from his arms and loaded her into the back of an ambulance. He looks like hell even from across the room and the crisp black suit he's wearing hangs loosely from his weary shoulders.

She carefully slides herself over on the bed in a silent invitation and he crosses the room to sit on the edge of her bed, when he gets closer she can see that his eyes are rimmed red. He looks like hell and probably hasn't eaten or slept much since… since that day. She pieces together the red eyes and the black suit and realizes that he's come from Keith's funeral.

They sit in silence for what seems like hours, the gentle ticking from her alarm clock is the only noise to break the stillness. She wants to say that she's sorry for what happened to Keith, but it doesn't seem like the right thing to say, she doesn't even know what is the right thing to say. She just asks if he's okay.

"I'm fine. My mom, she just wanted to be alone." He says quietly, nodding his head in hopes that he'll come off more convincing. It doesn't work. "I'm not fine."

She nods her head. "I know."

He doesn't want to talk about what happened. She understands and doesn't pry any more; it's not really her business.

"How's your leg?" He looks over at her bandaged leg and his gaze becomes fixed on the mess of white, stringy gauze that covers all of her shin. She feels like he's boring a hole into her skin as he stares at the reminder of what has happened to them.

She shifts her leg to divert his gaze and his eyes fly back up to hers, it's the first time he's looked at her all day.

"It hurt like hell for the first few days, now it's just a constant dull ache. The painkillers are good though."

"I broke up with Brooke." There isn't a hint of emotion behind his voice, he states it like it's just another fact, like it has no significance to either of them.

"I know." He's surprised so she tries to explain. "Brooke called me while I was in the hospital. Was it because of me, because of what I said to you?"

"It was part of the reason." He quietly admits.

"When I said that stuff to you, it was because I thought it was going to be the last time I'd ever have the chance to tell you how I felt, how I've always felt. It wasn't supposed to break you and Brooke up."

"What did you expect Peyton, you'd tell me that you love me and I'd just go back to Brooke like nothing had changed? Well guess what? Everything did change." She's surprised by his sudden outburst. "Keith is dead and Jimmy Edwards is dead and I almost lost you too and Brooke, she just doesn't understand what it was like to be in that school not knowing if someone was going to storm in and kill us. She doesn't know what it's like to watch someone almost bleed to death while you watch completely helpless."

"So what does this mean? We should be together because I almost bled to death and you had to watch? That's a pretty shitty reason to break up with the girl you supposedly love."

"You know exactly what I'm talking about Peyton. We're always going to share this horrible experience and no matter how many shrinks or support groups we talk to only you and I are ever going to know what it was like to be in that library. The first two days after the shooting I was dealing with what happened to us and to Keith and Brooke kept asking me questions. She wanted to know what it was like and what I was thinking. She just wanted to understand what happened but she can't, she'll never be able to."

For the first time since she woke up in that hospital bed Peyton knows exactly what she's feeling. She didn't feel like herself, she hadn't since the shooting and no amount of visits from Haley or her father coming home was ever going to change that. She and Lucas were different now, two kids jaded by a gunman and the reality of death.

"I'm leaving town, I don't know for how long but I just can't stay here and go through another memorial, or listen to one more person telling me how sorry they are. And I sure as hell don't want to spend my time sitting in a support group full of people who only have death and grief in common."

It should all sound completely irrational to her, Lucas leaving town in the middle of the school year and asking the best friend of his ex-girlfriend to come along for the ride. But Lucas is the only connection she has to the new world she's living in, and without him she feels like she'd be lost.

It only takes forty minutes for her to pack a suitcase and write an appropriate note to her father explaining why she isn't home when he arrives. She could call him and let him know but she just doesn't want to, he's always been gone and if the fact that she was shot and in the hospital couldn't bring him home than she really didn't care to see him anyway.

They cross two county lines without speaking a word to each other, letting Johnny Cash do the talking for them but by the time Johnny sings about his ring of burning fire for the fourth cycle Lucas can't stand the silence anymore. He pulls the car off to the side of the road and the back tires slip on the loose dirt and kick up a plume of dust. The old car comes to an awkward lurching stop and when he turns to look at her she's clenching the dashboard so hard he expects to see indents from her fingers.

He grips the steering wheel tightly in his hands and tries to calm his rapid breathing. Peyton hasn't said anything and she's still holding onto the dashboard when she starts to scream at him for driving like a maniac. He lets her yell and curse for an appropriate amount of time before he releases the steering wheel and stares out at the dusty road before them.

"My mom, she blames me for what happened to Keith. I told her that I went back into the school and she screamed at me for being stupid and she hasn't said a word to me since. I'm alone." His voice is cracking and tears start at the corners of his eyes. "I've lost so much since the shooting Peyton, but through all the darkness and all the crap I found you again, and you're all I've got now. I know what I would asking you to give up, Brooke would never forgive either of us, but I love you Peyton and that's never going to go away."

Before she realizes what she's doing her lips are on his and she's kissing him. There are a lot of things she doesn't know, like where they're headed or what they'll do once they get there, but she does know that kissing him makes her feel like she's going to be okay and she knows that she loves this boy.

He turns on the blinker even though they are the only ones on the road and they drive off while she fixes her smudged lip-gloss in the rearview mirror. She almost doesn't recognize her own reflection; it's the smile that throws her off.

They drive without a map or a hint of an idea as to where they are headed, his mantra is just drive straight. When the sun slips away they drive until they come upon a tiny town, the lights of which glow brightly against the dark backdrop of night.

They eat dinner at a greasy diner across the street from their hotel. She orders chili fries and a milkshake but ignores her plate of food to pick at Lucas' pancakes. When he gets tired of her fork invading his space he flicks a wad of syrupy mess at her with the tip of his knife and he laughs for the first time in days when she picks the mess of her shirt and flings it back at him.

It starts to rain when they leave the diner and by the time they make it across the street they're completely drenched. They dry off with cheap motel towels that smell like too much bleach. She heads to the bathroom to change her clothes and before she can remember to lock the door Lucas barges in while she stands half-naked in front of a mirror. She hastily covers her mid-section with her damp hotel towel but it isn't enough to drive him away.

His eyes never leave hers as he crosses the bathroom to stand in front of her. His hands are cold as ice when they touch her bare shoulders and trace up her neck so he can cup her face. Everything happens in impossibly slow motion when he leans in and presses his lips to his.

She doesn't realize they're moving until she feels the back of her knees hit the mattress, they fall backwards together just like in the movies and she catches a giggle in her throat. He brushes a damp piece of hair from her face and kisses her sweetly on the mouth.

They don't have sex, they're both too tired, mentally, physically, for anything to happen. He just kisses her until they both fall asleep, sprawled out on top of the sheets with the tv playing softly in the background.

She wakes up to his gentle snoring and his arm draped heavily across her back. She wriggles out from underneath him and changes into a pair of dry pajama pants and slips back under the covers. He wakes a few minutes later and they both stare at each other before she pulls closer to him.

"It isn't your fault." She says staring into his tired eyes. "Keith didn't die because of you Lucas, he would have gone into that building to talk Jimmy down even if you weren't in there. You can't keep blaming yourself, I won't let you."

He doesn't say anything. So much has gone unspoken between them but they understand each other's silence, it's probably the reason why they work so well together.

They lie in bed and watch the static-filled television set, subconsciously skipping any show with the potential for gunfire because they already know what the real thing is like. Her cell phone beeps on the nightstand, she has unheard messages and no desire to listen to them. She turns off the phone and goes back to watching a cooking show with an obnoxiously perky host who seems to really love giggling while she chops.

They check out the next morning and while he's dumping their bags into the trunk a car backfires across the parking lot and he flinches hard at the sound. Peyton doesn't flinch, she just stands frozen in her spot near the front of the car. She wants the sound to make her jump or fall to the ground with her arms covering her head, those would be normal reactions to a noise that sounds like a gunshot. But she's frozen in place and flashing back to the school hallway and remembering what the gun sounded like when it went off, the noise ricocheting violently off of lockers full of textbooks and innocence. She remembers the way the shattered glass felt when it rained down in sharp little drops on top of her skin and the unbearable pain that coursed through her leg as she clumsily climbed the stairs toward the safety of the library.

His gentle hand on her arm pulls her away from the violent memory and she looks down and notices that her hands are shaking. He helps her into the car and whispers that everything is going to be okay before he closes the door. It's the first time she's actually believed it.

They drive for another day down the coast and end up in a small beach town somewhere in South Carolina. Their plan to stay for a few days turns into a few weeks, and when money starts to run low they both get jobs working near the shore. They come home every night to a tiny motel room and they're both happier than they've been in months. His mom calls him once, she doesn't ask him to come home, he's found a new home anyway. Peyton's dad isn't so understanding but she won't go back, she won't leave him.

They both still carry the pain and the memories with them. She joked that day in the library that he was always saving her, and it was true but now they're saving each other. She falls asleep every night with his arm protectively draped around her shoulders and feeling like the world isn't as completely fucked up, as they both know it is. What they have isn't perfect, it might not ever be, but it's enough from them.

They don't know if they'll ever go back to Tree Hill, it no longer feels like home. For now home is room eight of an old motel near the South Carolina shore, home is with each other.


End file.
