A/N: rated M just for some mentions of nudity.
Disclaimer: I do not own the character, I make no money off of this, etc etc

...

Far away from here.

Whenever anyone asked her where home was, that was always the answer that resounded in her mind. Not Tree Hill. Not Austin, where she had spent the first 4 years of her life. Just somewhere far away.

By all standards, Tree Hill should have felt like home. Her friends, her school, her house (and her father on the rare occasions when he was in it). Lucas. All reasons for the average person to feel like they had roots and a reason to stay. Yet Peyton had never felt settled. It seemed that just when life was starting to feel safe, everything was always turned upside down by the proverbial curveball. Some days it felt like that's all life was – just curveballs and stale hotdogs.

When she had applied for the internship at Sire records, she really didn't have much to stay for. The person who had known her the longest and been there when everything and everyone else wasn't, was currently not speaking to her, their relationship in pieces for the second time in 2 years. Two times too many, but somehow here they were again.

And Lucas? As much as she loved him, she wasn't sure she could wait around forever, hoping that one day he'd wake up and feel the same about her. To be honest, it was too hard being friends with him when all she wanted was to be able to entwine him in every aspect of her life. If she was being honest with herself, he almost was. For some reason he couldn't see that. Even worse for Peyton, he didn't understand what it meant that she had allowed him to be so, that she had even wanted him that close to begin with.

So LA had seemed like a pretty perfect solution at the time. Far away from Tree Hill and the weight of all the history that went along with it. But as Peyton had learned, the universe has a pretty sick sense of humour, and the life she had when she applied was not the life she had when she was accepted. Deciding whether to take it had become a whole lot harder.

It wasn't Lucas and Brooke that made things harder - they were both happy for her and insisted that she went, Brooke even suggesting that she joined her in LA for the summer. It was her. Her own doubts and guilt, creeping their way into her thoughts and trying to drown out the voice inside her which told her that she needed to do this. She needed to leave, whether they had been happy for her or not. Somehow knowing that she would have left them either way, made it harder to do so.

Peyton never would have admitted it at the time, but if it hadn't have been LA it would have been somewhere else. Record label intern in LA or waitress in Seattle, it all would have meant the same, because in the end either of them would have allowed her to follow the instinct to escape. The internship simply gave her a legitimate excuse to do so. She loved Lucas with all her heart, and he was the one person for which she would have ignored that instinct. But she knew that eventually, despite all attempts to find a place for herself in Tree Hill, to carve out a path for the future, she would have needed to leave. She needed to make a life that, in some way, had nothing to do with her past. A life that didn't have dead mothers and psycho stalkers lingering over her shoulder, causing people to speak her name with just a little more weight than usual. In Tree Hill she'd always be Peyton Sawyer - The Girl Who Lost Her Mother. Twice…or Peyton Sawyer - The Girl Who Got Attacked By A Psycho. Twice. She needed to build a life where there was no suffix after her name, and part of her knew that she couldn't do that around the people who had been there when it all happened.

The day she left Tree Hill, it was that knowledge which terrified her. Hers and Brooke's bags were wedged carefully into the backseat of Peyton's car, Brooke already waiting in the passenger seat and reminding her every 2 minutes that they should really leave for the airport. She stood on the curb, Lucas' arms wrapped around, his nose buried in the hair that fell around her neck, still damp from the shower they had taken together earlier. It was meant to be one last frisky shower together before she left, but when they had set the water running she had been unable to stop crying. They simply stood there with warm water cascading over them both, skin on skin, her sobbing in his arms. He couldn't quite understand why she was so emotional. He was going to miss her like crazy too, but it was only 3 months, right? In the end he figured that after everything that had happened over the past few months, she was allowed to be a little over-emotional, and he just held her until the water began to go cold. In all honesty, he hadn't really wanted to let go either.

The early morning sun beat down on them, warming the parts of them that weren't already intertwined with one another.

"I'm gonna miss you so much." His voice was soft and muffled, but she heard him.
"I'm gonna miss you too, Luke. More than you know."

She took in the smell of his soft cotton tshirt, a cross between his soap and 2 days' worth of being against his skin. His hair smelled like her shampoo.

"Hey, it's only the summer, and I promise I'll be here when you get back, okay? I want you to enjoy this Peyton, you deserve it. I know I'm the best boyfriend ever, but promise me you won't spend the whole time missing me?" he joked, flashing her a cheeky smile.
All she could do to respond was give him a small smile and a nod, trying to fake reassurance through the tears that were threatening to spill from her eyes at any moment.

"Come on, lovebirds, time to get this show on the road!" shouted Brooke, already a quarter of the way through the magazine that was supposedly bought to entertain her during the flight. "We're going to be back for Mouth's birthday in August anyway, you can have as much long-distance-relationships-suck sex as you want then, but right now there is a complementary glass of champagne with my name on it."
"Brooke, just cause your parents sprang for first class tickets for us, it doesn't mean they're going to give us alcohol."
"Haven't you ever seen a movie? We're first class, and first class gets champagne."
"Yeah, but we're first class minors," she laughed, softly.

The smile fell from Brooke's face, but only temporarily.

"Well then there is a hot male flight attendant with my name on him, just waiting to join the Mile High Club," she replied, triumphant with an evil grin. "And if that's not enough to convince you, how about the fact that if we don't leave now they're not going to let us on the stupid plane! Come on, you can call Lucas from the airport and continue this display of joint broodiness once we've already checked in," she whined, primping her hair in the rear vision mirror. "Wait a minute, why isn't he driving us? What's going to happen to your car?" she said, suddenly struck by confusion.
"Nathan's coming by later to pick it up from the airport valet thing. He and Haley are going to use it while I'm gone..I figured they could use the extra transportation now they have a whole car full of baby gear to take with them wherever they go."
"And she wouldn't let me drive you both," interjected Lucas, obviously still a little offended.
"P. Sawyer, why not? Give the poor boy a complex, why don't you!"
"Because, B. Davis, if I had to say goodbye at the airport there's very little chance I'd actually get on the damn plane," she replied, answering Brooke but directing it to him. "..and then you'd have far more flight attendants than you knew what to do with. So really, I was thinking of you," she joked, grateful for the company of her best friend to get her through one of the hardest moments of her life.
"So selfless, what would I do without you, etc etc, but we have to go," she moaned, turning 'go' into a two syllable word.

After a final kiss, Peyton picked up her handbag and made her way around to the driver's side. She felt sick. Her stomach churned, and she probably could have thrown up if she'd have indulged the urge, but instead she chose to focus on, you know, not throwing up. Well, that and trying to find a good cd for the trip. In the end she just let Brooke put on a top 40 radio station. She decided it was probably better anyway – she didn't want to associate any of the songs she loved with this moment. She never would have been able to listen to them again.

Her heart began to pound when she started the ignition, and she could barely choke back a sob as she put the car in gear. She quickly wiped away the tears that had escaped and turned around to say goodbye to the only person she had ever wanted included in every aspect of her life. The person she was about to exclude from most of them. Brooke joined her, giving him a quick wave and a "Bye Broody, see you in August!"

As they drove away, Peyton forced herself not to look back at him. She couldn't. When she quickly glanced in her rear view mirror she saw him mouth the words 'I love you' as he waved, and a quiet sob escaped. When Brooke saw the tears that were still pouring out onto her cheeks, she threw her arm around her best friend's shoulder.

"Aw, come on Peyton, I know it's hard, but this is overdramatic even for you!" she teased. "And if you keep crying like that your eyes will be so puffy that they won't recognise your passport photo and they'll strip search you or something." Seeing that Peyton was past the point of being cheered up by jokes, she took a more serious approach.

"You want me to drive? I'm not sure that you can see the road properly if you keep crying, honey," she asked, rubbing Peyton's shoulder in small circles.
"No, I'm fine. I'm stopping now, I swear," she promised, doing her best to look like a person who wasn't going to keep crying for the next hour..or ten.

Brooke wasn't convinced, but simply offered to take over the driving half way through. She kept rubbing Peyton's shoulder in small circles, then tried to cheer her up by singing along and car dancing to Justin Timberlake. This did manage to elicit a laugh from Peyton, though only because Brooke, as usual, got the words wrong and ended up serenading the passing traffic with the lyrics "I'm gonna rock your body, Labour Day". Reassured that she had helped, if only a little, Brooke rested her arm on the seat behind her best friend.

"It's only for the summer, hun."
"I know."

Peyton Sawyer could pretend to everyone else that it was just for the summer, but she couldn't fool herself, despite her best attempts. No matter how the internship went, she would not be coming back to Tree Hill at the end of the summer. And she knew it.