Hey everybody. I know it's been a while, and I'm beyond sorry for that, but unforeseen circumstances got in the way. I may not have captured the flow of the story again yet, but I hope you don't hate this chapter too much.

Pathetically Poetic

Chapter Four: Pain

Her head hurts like hell, and her vision is blurry. She isn't exactly sure where she is, but it doesn't really matter. It doesn't feel any more or less like home than her own bed does. There's a hard wooden chair pressing against her at the strangest of angles, and she can feel the lace of her bra scratching against her skin. Brooke never slept with her bra on when she was in her own house. She'd always felt more comfortable without. There were two people in the entire world that knew that about her, and the fact wasn't lost on her in the moment.

She shook her head to clear the thoughts, regretting the movement deeply. Using her immaculately manicured hands to hold her head in place, she waited for the room to stop spinning. Deep brown strands of hair shielded her face. Brooke attempted to blow them out of the way, but they were matted, and wreaked of something awful. Disgusted, she whipped her head back, ignoring the way the blood pounded.

Stumbling off the stool, she noticed that her right heel was a good three inches higher than the left one. Laughing to herself, she wondered exactly how wasted she was that she could lose her shoe. Mentally, she pats herself on the back for finding it funny instead of pathetic.

"Okay Davis… let's get out of here," she murmured softly to herself, gently weaving her way through the bodies sprawled across the floor. A closer inspection of the place proved it to be a frat house she used to frequent. She and Peyton would come here whenever they felt like letting loose, back in the days of Hoes over Bros. Before him.

Before she can stop it, the room spins on her again. Bile rises in her throat as her mind conjures up images of his golden hair and his gorgeous smile. Sometimes in her flashbacks, she can see herself too, starry-eyed and mindless. She had to be, to miss what had been right in front of her. Their secret glances, the small smiles, all hints she should have seen from the very beginning. Stupid, stupid, stupid Brooke. And the next thing she knows, she's thrown up on someone's discarded pleather pants. Eyeing them distastefully, she wishes she could regret what she'd just done, but it was an honest improvement on the tacky things. They remind her of Peyton and Lucas. They appeared like they were genuine, but closer inspection would always prove it wrong.

"Hey Davis, where ya goin'?" someone slurs from a few feet back, and she swivels toward him, wavering slightly.

"Sorry boys, I've gotta get going. I've got, uh, class in a few hours," Brooke pasted the biggest, fakest smile she could muster across her face, her dimples growing to the size of coins. Inclining her chin the slightest bit, she could catch the breaking daylight with her bright green eyes, making them look sparkly and enticing. It was her age-old trick, the patented move that had men and boys alike falling at her feet. Only now, with her pounding headache, did she realize how much the act cost her.

"That's never stopped you before," another answered, with a grin that looked oddly threatening in the dim room. Crossing her arms in front of her chest, she felt too naked in a shirt that was one of her more conservative. Their eyes seemed to burn through the fabric, exposing her. She felt dirty. She felt dizzy. She wanted out.

"C'mon David, stay with us," the first drawled, stepping towards her. She, in turn, stepped back. She looked around at faces she barely recognized, none of them wearing the happy, stupid smiles that came with peaceful rest. Instead, their faces were blank, and her mind went the same way, inadvertently swinging to Erica Marsh. The student body president, surprisingly unpopular given her looks, but unsurprising given her personality. She was so scared of the real world, she hid behind her desk and her grades. Brooke wished she'd told her then that there was nothing to be scared of. Nothing in the real world was real.

More specifically, she could remember how thrilled the girl was when a pack of stoners at a party had called her "Marsh". She took it as being accepted, something she'd longed for dearly. She was in the same situation now, a group of lazily attractive boys calling her by her last name and begging her to play with them. For the first time in a long time, she wished someone would just look her in the eye and call her "Brooke", with the softness that affection always added to words. She didn't miss the people in her life, just the tone they'd once used.

Or so she tried to tell herself.

Either way, the wild glint in Erica's eyes or the tipsy sway of her step distracted Brooke from the present, until she felt a clammy hand closing in on her upper arm. The stubble on his chin was prominent, more than a day old, but she found the scuff bizarrely appealing. The alcohol on his breath mingled with that on hers as he got in far closer than he should have.

"Come on Davis. Let's go hang out upstairs."

She could do it. She could do it easily. She could walk, or tip, as her condition would permit, upstairs after the alcoholic in training. She could fuck him, hard, in bed or up against a wall or in a shower. And then she could sober up and walk away like it didn't mean a thing. It didn't, not really. Yet clear blue eyes shot rays through her memory, and a soft voice whispering Brooke echoed through her head. She wanted him to shut up, to go away, to get the hell out of her head. Instead, it returned, ever stronger. It refused to vanish. He refused to go away.

And that's how she ended up on the porch to his bedroom door. It creaks slightly under her shifting weight, little of it as there may be. His side of town was nothing like hers, and she remembered that that was exactly what she'd loved about it. Glancing around at the lush trees and the chipping paint, she tries to summon up the fondness she'd once felt. Instead, all she felt was the consuming emptiness she'd been living with for so long. She was so tired of it, of him and her and everything in between. Sometimes she thought it would just be easier to let it go and let everyone move on with their lives. Then she would think of him and her together, finding out through a lame cry-for-help webcam. She thought of the searing pain she'd felt in the spot where her heart should've been. And then she'd think of the way she'd felt ever since.

The door swung open, Lucas Scott emerging in his infamous gray hoodie, iPod headphones planted firmly in his ears. There was something so perfect about him in that moment that she could almost forget what he'd done. Then he blinked at her, surprise and awe registering in his features, and something dark began to grow inside her. It twisted and burned, suffocating the hope that had bubbled up. As if he could see the difference, which he always could, his shoulders slumped.

"Do you want to come inside?" he asked.

Wearily, she shook her head no.

Then she stepped inside anyway.

Lucas Scott decided in a split second that he would skip his morning run when a beautiful brunette showed up on his doorstep at five A.M. Granted, the brunette was both intoxicated, and his bitter ex-girlfriend, but in his mind, that was all the more reason to spend as much time around her as he could. Even when she was scowling at him, and shifting away from his touch, at least she was there.

He sat perched on his computer chair, eyeing her subtly, but she felt his stare. From beneath her cocoon of blankets, she faced him unblinkingly. He realized, with a pang, that the bedspread provided her with covering. It was armor, and it was what she needed to be around him. The heavy makeup she'd worn the night before had long since begun to run, leaving dark circles around her eyes. He was amused by the thought that she vaguely resembled a nocturnal creature, with her bright eyes and big black rings around them. She stared at his smirk, registering no change of emotion. There wasn't one to be found.

"What are you doing, Brooke?" Lucas sighed. The eyes he loved so dearly didn't change a bit. They had once been so vulnerable, so open.

"Lying down," she answered in the same smart-alecky voice she used whenever a teacher asked her a question, or if she were on the phone with her parents. The latter was an occasion that proved few and far between as the mystery that was Brooke Davis deepened. Now, he had loved and lost the head cheerleader, and still felt like he didn't know a damn thing where she was concerned. Where did she go when she wasn't at school or a party? What did she watch late at night? Where was she, who was she with? Did she ever miss her parents?

Did she ever miss him?

"I mean what are you doing here?"

Both their eyes widen at the question. It was one that had hung in the air for weeks, but neither could bring themselves to contemplate. Her pale, almost bloodless, lips parted over and over again, but she couldn't bring the words to form.

"I don't know," she stuttered, and he could feel her withdrawing into herself. It was so obvious, the awkwardness hanging between them, the discomfort radiating from both sides.

"I think you do," he tried another tack, a cockier one.

"Do you?" her thin, dark eyebrow rose in challenge. She was damn interested in hearing what he had to say about it, because she herself had no idea what propelled her towards the little house so far from her own.

"You love me," he nodded decisively. Instead of making her laugh, or scowl, it had a reverse reaction. He had wanted to spark some sort of reaction from her. He wanted anything but the deadness he could see lingering behind her green eyes.

"Between the lying, the cheating, the dishonesty, and the betrayal, there sure is a whole lot to love," she answered with a grim smile. She began to rise, slowly and gracefully and evenly, from the bed.

"I love you," he called over to her, desperation evident in his tone. His words stopped her in her tracks, but she didn't look at him, just stared at the door.

"You know when a really good time to show that would've been? Before you fucked my best friend!" she screeched in his direction, feeling emotion well within her chest. It was hot and fierce, welcome in the empty void.

"I didn't sleep with Peyton," Lucas shook his head sadly.

"You didn't sleep with anybody, Lucas. Fucked her, fucked me, fucked Nikki. You fucked us all over Lucas. Now you can just continue your marvelous streak and go fuck yourself," she snarled. Her skin paled, her nostrils flared, her skin crawled. She couldn't be around him, not anymore, not right now. Without looking back once, she across the room, flinging the door open with a tremendous rage.

She felt anger.

She felt pain.

She felt alive.