Author's Note - What I have intended is a re-write of the One Tree Hill story utilizing the canon characters and doing my best to stay true to what originally drew me to them as characters, but changing some things, reinventing others and focusing on significant 'choice' points as I've come to call them as I've watched the series on Netflix. I hope if you're reading this, that you end up enjoying my work and my take on re-writing One Tree Hill. Yours, V Marron.

Disclaimer - I own nothing related to One Tree Hill. I have no money and if sued will simply fade into thin air. No canon characters belong to me, obviously, and I'm obviously taking liberty with them in order to write a fanfiction, with no intent of monetary gain, etc, ad nauseum. Again, I have no monies.

Chapter One

"Remember tonight, for it is the beginning of always."
 - Dante

He was a harmless enough kid, a little short maybe, overweight by some depending on which reference you consulted. He wore glasses, and his family wasn't rich so it was the same sets of clothes every couple of weeks. There wasn't anything that you'd think would scream out that he was someone to be bullied, but even if you couldn't see it or really put your finger on it, there it was.

Jimmy Edwards was in the middle of the E hallway at Tree Hill High School, and he was surrounded by the Ravens, basketball players, that is. Leading the pack was Nathan Scott, local sports hero and descended from the great Dan Scott. Of course, normally to a boy in Jimmy's situation, the stereotype would have us believe that he didn't care about sports, nor knew anything about them. The sad irony here was that along with his best friend, "Mouth" McFadden, Jimmy had big dreams of being a sports announcer someday.

Jimmy couldn't remember now, even just a few seconds later what he had done to warrant this round of abuse. He'd been walking with his eyes down, hadn't bumped into anyone, hadn't spoken up when he shouldn't have, so why were they tormenting him? He just wanted to go to English, his last class of the day before he could escape Tree Hill and go home for the day. He just wanted it to end.

"Loser!"

"Dweeb!"

"Fat ass." The insults kept coming. He could handle those, but it never seemed to stay at just that. With a crash the books and binder he'd been clutching like a shield to his chest were ripped from his hands and scattered across the floor in the hallway. They had become like a car accident in the middle of the road, with other students craning their necks to watch but just continuing on by, not a person intervening.

He tried to bend down and pick up his books. Nathan kicked the big white binder away from him again and as he lunged after it, his glasses fell to the ground and he heard a sickening crunch as another Raven stepped on them.

"Leave him alone." A curt, laced with venom voice cut through the commotion of the E hallway at Tree Hill High, and it all seemed to stop for a minute. Jimmy looked up from the floor, his vision blurry without his glasses and made out the wiry frame of Lucas Scott, Nathan Scott's illegitimate older brother. Nathan and the other basketball players standing around him stopped with Jimmy and paid attention to the new target, like a pack of animals that had just found bigger prey to bring down.

As if he'd been hiding just nearby, "Mouth" was next to Jimmy on the floor, helping him collect his books and binder. He softly grabbed his friend's glasses and extended them to Jimmy, who placed them on his face and sighed, ready to cry from anger and frustration as he got to one knee and then pushed himself up again as "Mouth" stood next to him.

"Yeah? And what are you going to do about it, Bastard?" Nathan took a menacing step forwards towards Lucas, letting his own backpack drop off to the side. He thought he wanted this fight, and in the middle of the school with everyone watching? What better venue to humiliate Lucas, who without ever trying, had become Nathan's one and only real rival.

"You ok Jimmy?" Lucas looked past Nathan and to his friends, Jimmy and "Mouth" who now stood behind the group of jocks, when Jimmy nodded and "Mouth" made to lead him away from scene, off to sixth period English, Lucas looked back to Nathan.

"Nothing." He shook his head and sighed and the scene was over, or it might have been had Lucas known what was coming next. One of the players, a senior, a starter by virtue of his about to graduate status and the kind of person who couldn't handle any kind of challenge to his authority took the three long steps between them as Lucas had made to turn away and raised back his right arm and crashed it across Lucas' face and sent the blonde young man careening to the floor with the sucker punch.

In a moment, Nathan was just watching as his teammates joined the fracas and were all over Lucas, punching and kicking and hitting as no one came to save Lucas as he had saved Jimmy, it only stopped when the thunderous voice of an old basketball coach boomed in the hallway and the four players looked up, a wild look in their eyes but stopped by the authority in the man's voice.

Coach "Whitey" Durham had always been a man's man, an old gritty basketball coach from a bygone age that had always only wanted to teach the boys more than just how to run a full court press and put a ball through a hoop. He'd always told his dearly departed Camilla that it was 'more than basketball'. More than basketball indeed; as he saw four of his seniors, three of them starters standing over one boy, beating him bloody.

"ALL OF YOU, IN THE GYM." He howled at Nathan and the other basketball players, who took off meekly at his barking. He walked over to Lucas, who was on his knees now, angrily putting his books back into his green book bag, wiping the dust and what other debris he could off of his clothes.

"Are you alright son?" He asked Lucas quietly, as the other students mingling in the hallway looked on. Lucas looked up at him, his face already showing where it would have bruises,

"I'm fine." He spat out, spit and blood coming out without thought. It wasn't that he was spitting at the coach, his lip was busted and split down the middle and he happened to have blood and spit in his mouth. The old coach shook his head, looked around at the crowd that was still present and noticed one of the girls he recognized as a cheerleader,

"You." He pointed at her, she looked around confused for a moment,

"Yes, you. Get him to the nurse's office." He reached for Lucas under one arm and helped the young man to his feet.

"I said I was fine coach." Lucas protested, re-shouldering his backpack and stepping back away from the old man. Whitey shook his head grimly, his jaw set firmly and a fierce grimace on his face.

"Listen, son, I wasn't asking her to take you. I was telling. And I'm telling you. I'll be along to talk to you once I'm done with those thugs." He reached out a put a hand on Lucas' shoulder,

"It was a good thing you did. Now don't be an idiot."

The four seniors and Nathan were waiting in the gym, Nathan was sitting on the first row of the bleachers, his head bowed and in his hands. This couldn't be good. He hadn't put a hand on Lucas, but he was sure he was going to go down all the same for this one. He didn't see how his father could get him out of this one, and honestly, he wasn't sure if he wanted him to.

It had been harmless. They had picked on Jimmy Edwards what must have been a million times. It didn't surprise him that Lucas had intervened; it did surprise him how his teammates had reacted. It was like something had snapped inside them, or maybe it had just come out, instead of being something that had to snap. The gym doors slammed home and Coach Durham came storming in, beside himself with rage.

"Coach, we just.."

"You shut the hell up and listen to me." He cut the first protest off at the head, glaring the indignant senior back into submission, cowing him to a place sitting next to Nathan on the bleachers. The coach stayed silent for what seemed like hours, but perhaps was only minutes, his hands in his pockets, his head down.

"You'll be lucky if you don't all go to jail, and I think you should. What are you doing? Who do you think you are?" The coach continued his diatribe, turning his back on the students and pacing away from them.

"Coach, I didn't do anything." Nathan got to his feet, his fear of Coach outweighing his fear of his teammates, his fear of his own image. That got Whitey to turn around slowly, bringing his iron stare onto Nathan Scott.

"You didn't do anything, Nathan? Or you didn't stop anything? Which one would you rather claim today?" Coach shook his head, completely beside himself with the situation. He looked at the other four boys,

"So you vagabonds know, the Principal will have already called the police. They'll be here shortly, and you'll be going with them. Before that, I need you to go clean out your lockers. You don't play for me anymore."

"Coach?" Nathan questioned him in a soft, scared voice.

"Not you, idiot. You didn't do anything and I saw ya just standing there. You're more like your father than I'd care to admit." He shook his head and walked away from the five young men, the gym door slamming shut behind him again.

Her name was Brooke Davis, and she was watching the blonde boy furtively from where she sat next to him in the small waiting room adjacent to the nurse's office. She had gone to the cafeteria to get ice to put on Lucas' face, and had left him alone with Brooke there. She knew who he was, but they had never really talked before and she felt that they were from different crowds of people entirely.

"I'm sorry." She said quietly, in a voice just above a whisper, not really sure what to say at all, feeling stupid as she said it, but she was more uncomfortable with the silence. The whole thing almost embarrassed her, as she went about worried about being popular and cool boys and their parties, and the cool boys had just tormented one person and brutalized another. It made her unsure about things.

He looked over at her then, his right eye nearly swollen shut, his lip split and his face turning different shades of black and blue already but he didn't say anything,

"I just, I just…" She continued trying to find something to say, something that would make this whole situation less uncomfortable. What was taking the nurse so long, or Coach? Why was she having to sit here with Lucas Scott after what just happened? She didn't even know him. He coughed then and she nearly jumped out of her seat, it was a ragged and then she realized that he was laughing, albeit painfully.

She watched him, silent and in a sort of horror at what she was a witness to.

"Why did you do it?" She asked.

"One man with courage is a majority."

"I don't, I don't understand." He sighed and breathed in deeply before he explained,

"Thomas Jefferson said that." He stopped, and turned his head looking at her with his intense blue eyes,

"It means that even if everyone else is doing something wrong, one person doing the right thing still matters. Jimmy is my friend." Brooke was silent for a few moments after that, looking down nervously at her hands and had looked up again and was about to say something to him when the nurse came back in with a bag filled with ice, a small white towel and went right to work placing it on the side of Lucas' face.

"Here, I've got him now Miss Davis. Thank you." The kind old nurse said quietly,

"You've got to hold this for twenty minutes, young man." She instructed Lucas, letting him take hold of the bag of ice. Without explanation, as Brooke got up from where she was sitting, she leaned over and kissed Lucas gently on his opposite cheek, before leaving without a word.

"Girlfriend?" The nurse asked with a gleam in her eyes, curious, to which Lucas only shook his head. The nurse nodded solemnly,

"Well, alright. I've called your mother and she's on her way to come get you. Coach caught me in the hallway and said that he wanted to come speak to you also, so if you'll just wait here. Do you want anything for the pain?"

The young man shook his head,

"No, that's okay Mrs. Strybos." The older woman nodded and turned to walk into her office to fill out some paperwork about the whole incident, but looked back over her shoulder before she stepped out of view,

"It was a good thing you did, Lucas Scott."

Outside the nurse's office Brooke saw the boy from the hallway and his friend, a short skinny boy with brown hair that stood nearly straight up. The skinnier one asked,

"Is he ok?" That took Brooke for a pause, her mind was somewhere else and she hadn't expected to talk to anyone else on her way to her last class of the day. She had actually already decided to skip it, as the day had gotten way too serious for her to handle well. She looked at the skinny young man blankly before he kept talking,

"Oh, I'm Mouth. Lucas's friend, this is Jimmy." He gestured to Jimmy with a shrug of his shoulder,

"I'm Brooke Davis..Mouth?" She glanced back over her shoulder towards the nurse's office.

"That's my nickname. Marvin McFadden, at your service." She managed a weak smile,

"That was my nickname at camp." He looked at her with his head cocked to the side for a moment,

"Because I slept with my mouth open." She elaborated.

"Ah." Mouth nodded, before gesturing with his head towards the nurse's office.

"So is Lucas ok?" Brooke nodded,

"Yeah, I think he's going to be ok." Mouth and Jimmy were about to make to go into the nurse's office after Lucas when Coach Durham came barreling down the hallway,

"He better be with the nurse young lady." Brooke nodded weakly in response to the Coach, before sighing heavily one time and then walking away from all of them down the hallway, her gaze cast down at the ground, deep in thought.

"How ya doing kid?" Coach asked as he stepped into the nurses office, having left Mouth and Jimmy waiting outside.

"Face hurts." Lucas answered briskly, barely looking up at Coach from the floor.

"I know how you must be feeling. Angry, mad, scared and upset. Your face and body hurt I'm sure, and maybe your pride a little.." At that Lucas looked up completely,

"Pride?" The coach nodded sagely to Lucas, as if he knew something as an old man that maybe the teen-ager couldn't grasp just yet, a kernel of wisdom about honesty and truth and yes, pride.

"Yes, pride son. You got beat up. It didn't look like a fair fight by any means, but that doesn't mean you got beat up any less. Everyone in school saw it happen, your friends, that pretty girl that was in here, and Nathan."

"And you're trying to help me feel better?" Lucas asked, incredulous, wondering how much worse this day could really get. The coach shook his head and chuckled in his aged, hearty manner.

"Yes. If you aren't honest about something, it can control you in ways that you don't understand. You tell a lie, you start telling more lies to control that one, and in the end you're just wrapped up in them. You call something a name that it isn't; you make it into something it isn't. To call this anything else, Lucas, gives it a power it shouldn't have." There was a silence between the two then for several long moments before the door knocked and Karen Roe, Lucas's mother stepped into the nurses' office. Coach looked up,

"Ah, Karen I was wondering when you'd get here. Sorry about all this. Good to see you." He said, before he slid sideways past her out of the nurse's office, leaving her alone with her son.

"Oh my God. Lucas, are you alright?" She exclaimed immediately, rushing to him and putting her arms around him. She clutched her tightly, not giving him the chance to answer for a few moments before she pulled back and took a nice long look at his face and bruises.

"They arrested the guys who did it Mom. I'm ok. Really, I'm ok. I don't want you to worry." He said quietly, grimacing as he spoke. The split lip was starting to harden and get stiff, making speech difficult again. She leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead,

"Ok. I'm going to take you home. The principal said it was alright if you didn't come back to school again, until Monday. So you can stay home tomorrow. I'll take the day off.." He interrupted her then,

"No Mom, I don't want to stay home." He protested, thinking about what the basketball coach had said. He didn't want to be just another victim of Nathan and his cronies, and if he stayed home, that's exactly what he would be. He wasn't going to call himself that and give him that kind of power. No, he'd walk around school, bruises and everything.

"But Lucas…" He shook his head again,

"No Mom, I'm not going to stay home after today." She sighed and nodded her head, a sad smile creasing her lips.

"You ready to go?" He nodded,

"Yeah."

The river court was a sort of pristine place to some in Tree Hill, a nondescript public basketball court on the edge of the river that gave it its name. A playground for the athletically inclined, with picnic tables on one side and open grass all around for people to pull their cars right up to courtside. Price of admission was simply getting there, and the requirements to play were simply to show up. It was the river court.

"Mouth" McFadden, Jimmy Edwards, "Junk" Moretti, Fergie Thompson and "Skills" Taylor were all at the river court later that day, after school, after that last period of English class. The bullying that Jimmy had been a victim of had been nearly completely overlooked by the school officials in light of what had happened to Lucas, and Jimmy wasn't sure how he felt about that. It almost seemed to him as if they were addressing the symptoms, not the cause. Or maybe Lucas was just a better victim to focus on.

Skills dribbled the ball twice between his legs, took a hard step to his right before pulling back and letting the ball flip off of his fingertips, settling into the basket with a gentle swoosh.

"And that's game! Skills takes it with a score of twenty one, to twelve to eight in our three way bonanza." Mouth announced, the microphone for his podcast recordings held up to his mouth. Jimmy sighed heavily next to him,

"Kind of hard to really care about basketball today, isn't it Mouth?" Skills and the other two playing had already started walking over when Jimmy spoke, and it was Skills who spoke up first,

"Yeah, has anyone seen or talked to Luke since school?" A round of uncomfortable silence followed as everyone looked at each-other. Jimmy shook his head and looked down and away from everyone, didn't anyone care about him? Sitting there on the small picnic bench next to Mouth and in the middle of everyone else, Jimmy had never felt so alone.

She had medium length curly blonde hair, the walls in her bedroom were covered with her drawings, some happy, some sad. Mostly sad, she was staring up at the wall when she heard footsteps coming from down the hallway. There was a knock at the door, and then Brooke was standing just inside her room. She took a few steps, and then flopped down on the bed next to her.

"Missed you after school today B Davis." Peyton Sawyer said quietly, turning her head to look at her friend for a moment before looking up at the ceiling again.

"Yeah, I skipped sixth period." Brooke explained quietly, playing uncomfortably with her hands on her stomach.

"Did you hear about what happened today? Nathan is crazy about it. Half the team pretty much got kicked out of school today." After Peyton's comment, Brooke nodded for a moment before whispering quietly.

"I was there." At that, Peyton rolled over and was nearly sitting and leaning over Brooke simultaneously,

"Oh my god Brooke, what happened?"

"I was just at my locker, Nathan and his loser friends were messing with some kid with glasses, I don't even know his name and then Nathan's brother comes up and tells them to stop and then just out of nowhere it's this big fight in the hallway,"

"Oh god." Peyton whispered before Brooke looked at her and shook her head,

"And oh no, it doesn't end there. So Coach Durham comes up and makes me take him to the nurse's office,"

"Coach had to go to the nurse's office?"

"No! He made me take Nathan's brother." Peyton sat back against the headboard and sunk back into then, folding her arms across her chest.

"Oh."

"Yeah, big oh. Does Nathan ever talk about him?" Brooke asked quietly, thinking about the boy with the bruised face and blonde hair, the boy with his quote about courage. If she was perfectly honest with herself, she'd been thinking about it and him ever since she had left school that day. Peyton shook her head,

"No, not really to me. I mean, it has deep dark family secret drama written all over it."

"He said something to me that's been bothering me." Peyton looked over again at Brooke at her quiet words,

"Yeah?"

"He said, one man with courage is a majority."

"He just said that?"

"Well, he said some important guy said it. He made this point about how even when everyone is doing something wrong, if one person does the right thing, then they're the majority or whatever." She took a deep breath in and then breathed it out forcefully,

"Got to you huh? You're getting deep on me Brooke Davis." She questioned softy, getting up from where she was on her bed and leaning over to the computer to switch off her webcam.

"It's just, we're popular right? And that's like the majority? And Nathan's popular, but he's a jerk. Lucas isn't popular, but was he right today? So that makes him the majority, but isn't what's popular the majority? So does that make us wrong?" Peyton moved back over to Brooke and leaned over the bed, putting her arms around her best friend of eight years and hugging her close, pressing Brooke's cheek up against the crook of her neck,

"He's just a stupid boy with a stupid quote, Brooke. You're amazing, and you know that." Brooke reached her hand up and patted and then took hold of Peyton's arm,

"Yeah, you're right. I am awesome. You're going with me to Wilmington to shop tomorrow, right?" She asked, changing the subject and getting up from the bed, meandering over to Peyton's closet.

Some hours later, Peyton was sitting in front of her computer, the webcam on, Disturbed playing in the background and doodling on a picture she had been drawing of herself for sometime, it was her curly blonde hair, her pretty smile, and a rectangular hole in her chest where her heart should be. Lucas was just a stupid boy with a quote, wasn't he?

In a world beyond controlling
Are you going to deny the savior
In front of your eyes
Stare into the night
Power beyond containing
Are you going to remain a slave for
The rest of your life
Give into the night