Scratch Chapter 25, an one tree hill fanfic

Hellooo! I'm so happy that I am finally updating- I've actually been working on ch.25 and 26 at the same time, and while it sounded like a great idea at first, actually made this a lot more difficult to finish. I kept changing my mind, and although I'm not sure if I'm fully satisfied with the whole thing, I hope you enjoy it nonetheless! :)

Guess what, guys? I just started my senior year of high school! Yeah, yeah, you probably don't care, but it's incredibly exciting for me! :D hehehee. My reviewers, as always, you deserve so much more than my thanks :)

It was a calm August day. One of those days that's appreciated for being particularly mellow and relaxing, a day that's cleansing for the soul, a day that makes life seem a little more blissfully simple.

Lucas Scott woke up that morning feeling unusually hopeful. Maybe it was because he had finally finished his work on the Comet. Maybe it was because of the words that had Elle said to him earlier that week. Or perhaps it was merely the weather; the way the warm sun flooded his room as he awoke to a calm August day.

But, no matter the reason, Lucas Scott was feeling unusually hopeful, even though everything had seemed so dark and bleak for the last month. Despite every problem that had plagued him, every horrible, terrible thing that had caused him to become so broken, he felt hopeful today. The depression was gone; symptoms vanished as though he was recovering from nothing but a mere cold.

Lucas knew that his problems were still prominent. That pain in his heart and the pain he had inflicted on others- it was still there, still existing in this brighter, more possible world. But today, Lucas Scott was feeling unusually hopeful. He knew that today, things were going to progress. Today, he would fix his problems.

The little bell tinkled, like it always did, as Lucas stepped through the door of Clothes over Bros. Brooke stood behind the counter, glancing up at the sound of someone entering the store.

"Lucas," Brooke's face flashed with concern. "Is everything okay?"

A small pang of guilt radiated in his chest. Their friendship had fallen so far from what it once was; they had grown so distant that Brooke now thought that he would only drop by if something bad happened.

"Everything's fine," He quickly assured her, holding his hands up. "I'm, uh, I'm here to talk."

Brooke's expression immediately changed, a look of uneasiness filling her eyes. Lucas was reminded of Elle, the way she used to act around him right after Avery's accident. Brooke's hesitancy toward him was a result of her guilt, he realized, a guilt that she had carried around for eighteen years.

"Okay," she said quietly, biting her lip and gripping the counter with her hands. "Talk about what?"

"I've been in a dark place this summer. So many secrets were uncovered about the past, and they all hit me so hard that I wasn't able to handle it. And that wasn't my fault. I was kept in the dark and that was wrong." Lucas sighed, running a hand along the back of his neck. Brooke was wincing, as though bracing herself for him to start screaming at her. "But…even though I was wronged, I also handled it wrong. I let myself wallow in my misery, let myself stay broken, despite all of the efforts of the ones who needed me back in one piece."

Brooke, holding her breath, watched him with wide eyes as he stepped across the store and over to the counter, the slap of formica now the only thing between them.

"I yelled at you. I screamed at you. I was shocked by the betrayal of friendship." Lucas said. Brooke momentarily closed her eyes. "But…I've been buried so deep in this dark hole that I never really fully appreciated that Elle is in my life now. And even though it still kills me that I wasn't there to watch her grow up, I can't keep holding this grudge forever. I can't carry it around anymore. I can't keep feeling this miserable, and I can't keep bringing my family down because of it. I am finally ready to get passed it all."

"That's…that's wonderful, Lucas-," Brooke began, but Lucas kept speaking.

"I know that ever since I found out about Elle, and how you and Peyton lied to me, I've been distant from you. And I'll never fully understand why you two chose to do that," Lucas leaned in a little closer. "But when you came to see me at my house, you told me that she could heal me. You said that Elle could help heal that pain in my heart. And I may have scoffed at first, but you were right. It's working. I'm finally letting go of Peyton and that pain." Lucas grabbed Brooke's hand, looking her straight in the eyes. "Now I can see that things will be okay. And I can forgive you. I forgive you, Brooke."

Brooke gaped at him, her hand going slack in his. "I forgive you." He said again, a small smile playing his lips. She continued to stare at him for a moment before her face crumpled, tears rolling down her cheeks.

"I never…I never thought I'd hear you say that to me," Brooke whispered, a sob hitching in her throat. "And I still don't even know if I deserve it."

"You do. You deserve it, Brooke." Lucas said, "You brought my daughter and me together again. And even though I will always be hurt by what you and Peyton did, I can let it go now. I can let it go and appreciate my life."

"It was wrong. I was so wrong of us, Lucas, and it was wrong of me to let it stay hidden for so long." Brooke was still crying, her voice quiet and strained, "I made a promise to her, Luke, but I'm so sorry. I'm sorry for ever making it in the first place. It was so wrong."

Lucas stepped around the counter, enveloping the crying woman into a hug. "It was wrong. But I forgive you. You taught Elle so much about forgiveness by forgiving her after Avery's accident. You helped her grow so much. You helped her and she helped me. Let yourself be forgiven, Brooke."

Brooke let out a small sob and looked up at him, her puffy eyes meeting his. "Thank you."

As he left Brooke's store, Lucas smiled to himself. An incredible weight had been lifted from his shoulders as his heart slowly began to piece itself back together. He took off up the street, knowing that there was one more person he needed to see.

Her curls billowed behind her as she walked side by side with Matt up the dock at the Tree Hill Marina. The warm sun beat down on her shoulders as their footsteps echoed on the wooden planks.

Matt had woken her up that morning, bursting into her room and pulling the shades back. He cheerily told her that Jamie and Hannah were taking their parents' boat out on the river today, and invited them to come with.

Jamie waved to them as they approached a large white speedboat at the end of the dock. "Hey guys! Glad you could make it!"

Elle greeted him cheerfully as Matt clapped him on the shoulder. Looking into the boat, she saw Grace and Hannah were already bikini-clad and sunning themselves on the floor of the bow.

"Mind giving me a hand?" Jamie said, his hands working to unwrap the ropes that tied the boat to the dock. He gestured over at Grace and Hannah. "They're useless."

"We can hear you, you know!" Hannah called, without looking over or sitting up.

"Exactly. And I rest my case!" Jamie shot back. Matt snorted.

"Hi, Elle!" Grace chirped, from her spot in the boat. "And Matt!"

"Yeah, hey, guys!" Hannah added, "Don't let my idiot brother try and boss you around! You shouldn't have to do his job!"

With a small laugh, Elle knelt down next to Jamie, while Matt went to take care of the other rope. Once it was undone, Matt stepped off the dock and into the boat, helping Elle as she gingerly climbed in, Jamie close behind her.

"Alright! Let's get outta here!" Jamie started the motor before slowly backing the boat away from the dock.

She had never been on a boat before, and as they began to pick up speed, Elle found herself gripping the hand rail as tightly as she could. She glanced at Matt, who appeared at her side, giving him a shaky smile and hoping that it came off as excited, rather than nervous. Matt saw her nerves anyway, and with a reassuring laugh, he ran a comforting hand down her back. Elle leaned into him for a moment, a wordless thank-you for his extreme perception.

Her nerves were short lived, however, for as they continued to ride up the river, Elle began to enjoy the way the boat seemed to glide across the choppy water, the small bumps spraying water onto her warm skin.

There were quite a few boats on the river, all leaving streaming white wakes behind them. As they passed another large white speedboat, Jamie sharply cut to the right, driving straight into the passing boat's wake. Elle dug her nails into Matt's skin as she grabbed his forearm as their boat sailed into the air for a moment, before crashing back into the water with two high pitched shrieks from Grace and Hannah.

"Dude! Did you see that? We just got so much air!" Jamie cried, a huge grin spread across his face. He slowed the boat to a stop before raising his arms up in mock-victory, "Hell yeah! That was so awesome!"

"No it wasn't," Grace moaned, finally sitting up, "I think I bruised my tailbone."

"Yeah, Jamie," Hannah grumbled, "Use your head. We weren't holding on to anything! I could have broken something! I made varsity swim this year and I'd be really pissed off if I had to-,"

Jamie, with a smirk on his face, wordlessly grabbed Hannah around the waist, and before she could react, tossed her over the side. She gave a loud yelp before hitting the water with a magnificent smack. Shocked, Elle, Matt and Grace raced over to the side of the boat, peering over just in time to see Hannah break the surface, gasping and spluttering loudly.

"Jamie!" Hannah screeched, flopping her arms wildly, splashing water all around herself. "What the hell!"

Jamie grinned down at her. "You know…for a varsity swimmer, your form's a little off, Han."

Hannah scowled. "Yeah, you're hilarious, Jamie. Ha-ha-ha." She swam back to the side of the boat, reaching her arms toward them. "Now pull me back up! Get me out!"

"Drama queen." Jamie muttered, leaning over the side and grabbing his sister's hands, hoisting her back into the boat. Hannah made sure to ring her long dark hair out on top of Jamie's sheepskin moccasins.

Elle let out a happy sigh as she listened to her cousins bickering behind her, her elbows resting on the railing. There was something so serene about being out in the water like this; it was almost as though they were in another world, a world that was just close enough to reality but far enough away to forget her troubles.

She looked out to shore, faintly making out the tables and hoops of the rivercourt. It looked so much smaller from out here. The hoops that towered over her and the hill that took ages to walk up now looked miniature, so much more innocent and simple. Maybe it really was. Maybe she just needed to come out here and look at it from a different perspective-all together, the big picture- to see that life wasn't as enormous and vast as she thought.

"Elle, what are you doing?" Grace asked. Elle looked up, realizing that she was the only one still leaning over the side. "You want to get in the tube with me and Han?"

"Yeah, the water's great," Hannah shot a look at Jamie.

Elle shrugged. "Maybe in a minute."

"What are you looking at?" Grace was back at her side, gazing out into the water as well.

"Just…everything." Elle said, gesturing out at the horizon, "It's such a nice day. It's so beautiful and perfect in this very moment. I just wanted to appreciate that for once."

Matt appeared on her other side and gave her arm a light squeeze as Jamie and Hannah joined them again as well. They all stared out into the river for a few moments, the only sounds coming from the small, choppy waves hitting the side of the boat.

"Look at us." Grace spoke up. She pointed a nimble finger down into the water at the five distorted figures reflecting off the surface. "Our parents all created a beautiful story for themselves; five teenagers trying to find their way. Five teenagers who came together through all the pain and confusion in their lives, helping each other overcome everything. That was their story. I think it's kind of ours, too."

Elle looked down at her reflection in the water. It was smiling.

"Lindsey,"

He found her curled like a cat on the couch, watching TV with a bowl of instant noodles sitting on the coffee table beside her. She hadn't touched them.

Lindsey looked up as he entered the room, her eyes darkening. "Yes?"

Lucas glanced at the television. "Gone with the Wind. I remember the first time we watched this together, when Grace was a baby. She had a cold, remember? The only way we got her to stop crying was to hold her between us. We sat here, on the couch, with Grace sleeping in our arms, watching Gone with the Wind. It was one of the most clear, peaceful moments of my life."

Lindsey let out a long slow breath. "I remember that too."

"Where's Grace?"

"She went out with Jamie and Hannah." Lindsey's eyes were back on the TV, trying to shut him out. Lucas's chest filled with regret, noticing for the first time how truly broken his wife looked. How broken she looked because of him.

"Lindsey," He said again, sitting down next to her.

Her eyes snapped in his direction, a look of exasperation on her face. "What? What do you want, Lucas?"

"I—I'm sorry. I need to tell you that I'm sorry." Lucas said, as Lindsey's expression softened slightly. "I need you to know how sorry I am for treating you the way I have."

"That's great that you're sorry, Luke. But I've spent the last month waiting around for you to say that to me. Why now? Why are you sorry now?" Lindsey's tone was not accusatory or angry, but flat and exhausted, as though she was tired of speaking about the matter.

"I really don't know, Linds. I don't know why it's taken me this long to come around. And I hate myself for it. I hate that I was so selfish in the way I was acting, the way I shut you out and hid away with my past. I didn't think about how much that would affect you and Grace." Lucas paused. "I was wrong. I was so wrong to you. And I'm sorry. Can you ever find it in your heart to forgive me?"

"I love you, Lucas. I'll do anything for us to go back to the way we were." Lindsey shook her head sadly. "But it's not that easy. You know that. You know that it's going to take time for us to heal."

"I know that you're still mad at me," Lucas grabbed her hand, "but I am willing to do anything and everything to make it up to you. I will do all I can to prove to you that I am still the man you married."

"I don't want to keep being mad at you." Lindsey said softly. All the flatness had left her now quivering voice. "Actually, I wasn't ever mad at all. Just hurt, and sad, and I wish I was mad at you. It'd be easier that way. It's easier to get over anger than to get over this kind of sadness." Her voice broke, "How can we ever go back to the way we were knowing that you are still in love with Peyton? It won't ever be the same, Lucas; I can't ever feel the same about this marriage knowing that your heart is with someone else!"

Lucas reached up and cupped her face with his free hand and rubbed a thumb across her cheek, brushing away a stray tear. "Yes, I'll always love Peyton. But not in the way I love you. I chose you. My heart isn't with anyone else but you." Lucas brought his other hand to her cheek, his fingers brushing against her beautiful skin. "Whenever I think of Peyton, I'm overwhelmed by grief. But when I think of you, my whole world seems brighter and more clear. You are the one that makes my life as great as it is. You have never once brought me sadness."

More tears fell from Lindsey's eyes as he continued on, "I hurt you. I hurt you because I was hurting, and I am so sorry for that. But I believe that we can get back to the way we used to be because you are my wife, and I love you. I am letting go of Peyton. I'm letting go of my sadness and pain. But I can never let go of you. I love you, and we can get passed this."

"I love you too." Lindsey choked back a sob as Lucas kissed her fiercely, their lips pressing together desperately, hungrily. And then she broke away from him, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her face into his chest.

"Thank you." She whispered.

"For what?"

"For being the man I love. I missed him."

"I missed him too."

With the tan from a day in the sun on her shoulders, Elle gave a satisfied sigh as she retrieved a box from her closet, the sunset basking her room in a sleepy, comfortable hue that complimented her newly red walls. Placing the box on her bed, Elle settled down next to it, retrieving a black, spiral-bound sketchbook from inside.

It was something she had been doing every evening since she arrived back in Tree Hill. Her mother had a ridiculous amount of them, varying from ones roughly the size of printer paper to ones that were small enough to keep in a jacket pocket. Every night, Elle took one from the box and studied it, running her fingers along the cover before slowly opening it up, revealing Peyton's innermost thoughts and feelings.

Many of them were dated, and Elle noticed a pattern of regression in her mother's artwork as the dates grew more and more recent. Most of the sketchbooks were dated to back before Elle was born, filled with drawings that portrayed incredible angst, emotion and surrealism, many pertaining to whatever was happening to Peyton at the time. But the few more recent sketchbooks, the ones Peyton filled during her sickly adult life, were surprisingly dull; the insightful abstractions replaced with still life drawings of things around the house, such as a leg of a chair, the staircase, the television set. Peyton had often drawn the same subject numerous times in a row, as though she wasn't satisfied with the previous observation.

This sketchbook looked a little different than most of the others, the pages between the black hard covers seemed to be much thinner than the paper filling many of the other sketchbooks, and it did not look as though it had gotten much use.

Elle continued to study the outside for a few more moments before she took a deep breath and slowly opened the front cover, curiosity beating hard in her ears. But a wave of unexpected shock hit her hard as she glanced down at the first page, memories flooding into her mind faster than a dam breaking. Her hands trembled slightly as the surprise of this discovery caused all else in the world to stop.

Roughly a year after Brooke left, Larry had made Peyton start seeing Dr. Asher, a psychologist at the Family Counseling Center who specialized in mood and anxiety disorders. Peyton went in to see Dr. Asher twice a week—once by herself, and once with both Larry and Elle. Elle remembered how much her mother had loathed attending these therapy sessions, eventually refusing to go to them at all.

Elle could barely recall the things that went on during those family sessions with Dr. Asher, and never knew what kind of things Peyton had talked about with him when she met with him alone. It all happened so long ago…memories of that time further stifled by Elle's previous desire to forget her past. But now, as she held the black book in her hands, Elle remembered something else, something that had not once crossed her mind in eight years.

Dr. Asher had insisted that Peyton keep a journal to track mood progressions. It was not a sketchbook that Elle held in her shaking hands, but a diary; A diary in her mother's words, her handwriting. This was her mother's diary.

There weren't very many entries; probably ten or so, but it was insight, insight at last into the mind of a woman Elle had never been able to understand. She exhaled slowly, realizing that she'd been holding her breath for several moments.

As her heart raced rapidly, Elle rested her back against the pillows and began to read.

But it's days like those that can cause a sudden, unexpected surprise to hit with the greatest impact.

Heh, are you curious? TOO BAD! Just kidding, I'm already halfway done with ch26, so my next update should be a lot sooner :) IN THE MEANTIME...care to tell me what you thought? :) Lucas and Brooke finally reconciled, as did Lucas and Lindsey, and Elle's fun day ended in a very big surprise. This story is beginning to wrap up...I only have two more chapters after this one. AH, I can hardly believe that I've made it this far! Until next time, take care :)

Love, Brennan