A/N: I'm not sure how many chapters this fic will have, but there won't be too many. The chapters will also not be very long, 'cause I don't like writing long chapters, so please don't ask me to make them longer.

I would also like to apologize before hand for any kind of spelling mistakes – English isn't my first language.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the story, and reviews are always very, very much appreciated.

It wasn't supposed to end this way.

They weren't supposed to be standing here today. They weren't ever supposed to be standing here.

"It's gone now, isn't it?"

"What is?" Karen looks at her.

"Everything."

She hasn't laid her eyes on them in six years. Not any of them. Contacts were broken on purpose by herself. She wasn't sure if it was because she wanted to start over, or if it was because of Peyton.

Her's best friend died one month after starting college. It was unfair and uncalled for. She didn't want it, she didn't deserve it and it couldn't have destroyed more people.

She died in an airplane crash.

She wishes Peyton would leave her thoughts. If only for a day. But she never does. She feels her in her heart, her body, her soul. Every day.

Her death tore them all apart. Their friendship died, it was no longer existent. They got themselves careers, they created a life for ourselves. They were able to forget. They could climb into their own world, forget about the past and only look ahead. Never look back. i Don't ever /i .

And now Haley's the one who has brought them all together. It's ironic, really. She was the one who brought them all together in the first place.

Oh god. Haley. The kindness itself. The selflessness itself. If anyone, she didn't deserve this. She didn't deserve death.

They weren't supposed to be standing here today.

"Is there anything you would like to say, Brooke?" she looks up from the cold, hard ground into the warm eyes of Karen. "Would you like to say something about Haley?"

In front of everyone. A speech. She hasn't given a speech since their wedding years ago. And that was a speech she had been preparing for weeks. Stealing quotes from Shakespeare, getting help from Lucas, making herself seem smart, memorizing it.

"No." Is her simple answer, and Karen doesn't take it any further. Instead, Lucas steps forward. The wind starts to blow even harder and Brooke feels a small rain drop on her shoulder.

He gives the brilliant speech everyone expected of him. He spoke of her so lovingly, so softly and with so many words, words Brooke never would've thought of.

Before she realizes, people are starting to walk away. It's finished now. She's gone, people have grieved, it's time to move on.

She wants to leave, but she can't feel her legs moving.

It's only the three of them left now. The three of them plus one. Who would've thought, that in the end, there would only be the Scott brothers and the biggest slut of Tree Hill High left. And a kid.

Everyone's gone. Everyone and everything that kept them sane. It's gone.

"Daddy." A voice interrupts the silence so cruelly. An innocent voice, from a boy that still has his soul and love left in him. "I want to go home."

Home? Where was home now, to Nathan? He had no home. Haley was his home. He had nothing to go back to. All he had was his son.

Nathan's eyes meets Brooke, and they understand each other. For the first time in their lives, they understand each other just perfectly.

She won't hug him. She won't hug either of them. She won't, because there is no possibility that will make them feel any less worse. She won't, because she feels just as horrible as they are. There is nothing in her to use as a comfort.

She looks at Lucas, but he refuses to meet her eyes. She understands this too. He has his hands in his pockets, and his eyes are focused on the coffin in front of them. On Haley.

He always loved her, she knows. It doesn't matter in what way – she doesn't know, and perhaps not even he did - but it didn't matter. Because he loved her. Every part of her. And he's one of the few people in the world that actually means it when he says he would've died for her.

"I'm going." She turns around, breaths in the air, taking it all in, as she prepares to leave for the last time.

Then he calls for her. Lucas. It was unexpected, which is why she stops in a heart beat.

"Stay." He looks at her with begging eyes and she wonders why. She wonders why he broke this silent rule between them.

"No." She replies without hesitating. It's not her home anymore. It's not for her.

"Just for a few days." He says. "We need you here. We all do."

She wants to say no. She wants to remind him that she isn't a part of them anymore, and that they aren't a part of her anymore. But she can't resist. She's never resisted those eyes, and those words of need. And to her disappointment, she hasn't changed as much as she had hoped she had.

"A few days." She says. A few days is all she's going to kill herself with.