I don't own anything related to One Tree Hill, but I DO wish I owned two certain brothers.

Two days went by, and in between shifts at the hospital, Nathan and Haley took turns eating and sleeping. The slow, monotonous pace made Dillon restless, and with his agitation, Haley started getting agitated too. Instead of crying for her when he woke up in the middle of the nights, he had started crying for Nathan. Even more disturbing to her was the way he'd picked up the habit of calling him Dad. Nathan wasn't exactly discouraging him, either. Who the hell does he think he is? She had wondered more than once. It wasn't as if she was being hostile to him, but all of her emotions were piled up inside of her, and her fear of them overflowing deepened each time she looked over at him.

Nathan stood outside the hospital door, communicating with the nurse for the thousandth time, trying to understand why Dillon couldn't go back to the hotel. "The infection in his leg, it be bad.... Screws coming loose in his leg mean another surgery, not very priced." He felt like shouting at her broken English, but reminded himself that that probably wouldn't go over very well. "I don't think you understand," he said impatiently. "Another surgery is fine, but his mother needs to leave the country soon. It would help if he could be on the plane with her." He flinched at the sarcasm radiating through his voice, and only relaxed once he realized she was so busy concentrating on getting through the language barrier she didn't notice. "Oh, his mother is leaving with him after this? Tell them to visit Tower of Pisa first. Very, very nice, and not too expensive. Make sure their trip was pleasant." Her complacent expression drove him up the wall, and after twenty more minutes of the same awkward struggling, he finally waved goodbye and walked back to the room. The sight of Haley almost knocked the wind out of his lungs. She was wearing one of the same dresses she'd worn when she came by after school to drive him to chemotherapy. She had stayed with him through it all: the vomiting, his hair starting to fall out.... Those memories were surprisingly some of his best, simply because she'd been in them. Her hair was tucked behind one ear and spilled over on the other side, masking her face so Dillon couldn't see the many tears streaking down them. The only time he thought she had looked more beautiful was on their wedding day, and his whole being was screaming at him, telling him to take away all the hurts and make everything better. Without even realizing what was happening, he did exactly that.

When the strong arms had first enveloped her, Haley had rested her head into his neck for the smallest second before realizing what was happening and pushing him away. "What the heck do you think you're doing? Your son is laying here in the hospital, and you think that just because you gave some big Nathan Scott To The Rescue routine you can come back into our lives? Well guess again, because my son will never, ever be exposed to a monster like you. You lied to me, you deceived everyone who loved you, and you left us. I never asked for you to be the perfect father! I never asked for you to do everything and make all the bad things go away! All I wanted was for you to be there, to hold me close and make all my fears go away. Instead, you deserted me, you betrayed me, and you got the luxury of pretending all of this never even happened! If you want to come back into our lives now, you'll have to accept the fact that you frickin can't, because I'm not willing to let you do any of that again. Your money, your clothes, your profession, and your stupid, stupid one-liners aren't going to get you very far. I hate you, and I hope I never, ever have to see you again. If there really is a heaven, than it'll be the one place where I can get away from you. Leave now, and you better hope that I never run into you again, because if I do you won't survive it. I don't even trust myself to look at your picture any more. Do the thing you're best at Nathan Scott. Go ahead, and run away from everybody and everything that used to matter to you. We won't be disappointed this time though. This time we'll be cheering you on." Her words cut deeper than any knife could've, but he didn't seem to notice that. What he noticed was her vulnerability, her utter anger, and the fact that even though she meant every word she said, there was something inside of her that seemed to have wanted it as much as he did. He backed away towards Dillon, roughing his hair up and kissing his forehead before walking out of the hospital room, hoping she would ask him to wait. That was all it would take. She didn't have to make a long speech about how she was sorry for something that was really his fault, or start acting like a slut. All Haley Scott had to do was call his name one more time. She didn't, though.

The young woman crumpled in a heap onto the floor, laying there sobbing. She fell asleep in that position, and Lucas was the first person to find her. "Aw, Hales, it didn't have to go down like that," he said softly, understanding what had happened, and lifting her up gently. "Yes it did. I am so, so angry at him, but right now I'm too exhausted to care. I'd much rather just fall asleep than deal with anything of importance." Lucas treated her like a child, gently wiping away her tears with a wadded-up tissue and throwing it into the trash can, lifting her up onto the bed beside Dillon who was simply in a cast by that point, and tucking the covers around both of them, smoothing her damp, matted hair out of her forehead and tucking it behind her ears. "Thank you for being my big brother right now, Lucas," she said, smiling as the whimpers started subsiding and her tears fell less numerously and frequently. "I am your big brother, Haley, and you're my little sister. I'm gonna call Peyton and see if she can come over for awhile so I can get some stuff straightened out for you, okay?" She nodded silently and struggled against gravity as her eyelids drooped. She finally gave in, and Lucas smiled sadly and said, "Nate, I do everything I can, but I'm not her husband. We're not in love and I can't act like the kind of prince she wants me to be. I can protect your son, and I can try to protect her, but that in itself is dishonest and won't last much longer once Peyton finishes up with everything." "I know man, and that's okay. I just really wish you'd never had to in the first place," Nathan said from the doorway. Lucas whipped around, and as the last of his pride unraveled, Nathan started crying. His cries got louder, and his sobs were shaking his body so violently he looked like he was having a seizure. Lucas didn't care how wrong it looked, or that it might wake someone trying to take a nap up, he hugged his little brother and said in an almost paternal voice, "It's okay, man. It's okay."

Nathan shifted from foot to foot more than a little uncomfortably. He always ended up being the bearer of bad news, but this wasn't exactly your run-of-the-mill bad news. It was the last thing Haley needed, really, but they needed to get all this stuff cleared up before he started interviewing her for his questions about the lawsuit. Lucas had managed to calm her down to the point where she wasn't ready to shoot him every time she saw him, but she didn't do very well at masking her intentions towards him when he came to visit Dillon. Then again, she probably didn't even try. That in itself was kind of discouraging, but it was best not to dwell on the things he couldn't change. The matter at hand was a lot scarier than anything else he could've tried to face, he thought with a smirk, and he didn't even have Haley there to tell him "Oh, don't worry, I very much doubt she'll kill you when you lay it out like that." If she had been there and had known what he knew at the moment, she would probably be much more likely to have picked up the first object within reach and hurled it at him. Either way, he still had to tell her at some point, and hopefully the less disturbing part would make up for at least some of what he had done over the years.

Brooke rolled over and stretched, smiling at the sight of Jake laying there, his brown hair ruffled up just the way she liked it. The thought of giving him a nice little wake-up call was appealing, but she opted on just letting him sleep in for the day. Peyton and Lucas had taken their turns at the hospital yesterday, and since she was really looking forward to checking up on the Nathan and Haley drama, she'd better get a move on. That's not very nice, she told herself. You're visiting to provide support for Nathan and Haley to make sure they don't go through nervous breakdowns while their only son is in the hospital of a foreign country, awaiting his second surgery on a wicked broken leg. It still doesn't hurt to monitor the tension and see if those two are anywhere near getting back together, she though with a small, consoling smile. Even though she hadn't shown it, Nathan and Haley had really been her favorite couple in high school. It was more important to her for them to stay together than for anyone else. If they broke up, than what hope was there left for true love? Smiling again, she picked out a yellow halter top and a black skirt, relishing in the thought of getting to be a first-hand witness to a play any soap writer would envy.

Here he comes again, Haley thought with a shiver. Isn't it possible for him to just leave us alone? I want him out of my life. Okay, so maybe that's not entirely true, but that's what you need to keep telling yourself if you ever want to get anything accomplished here, she argued. "Hey. Look, I normally wouldn't be barging in on you like this when Dillon's sleeping, but..." "Will you just get to the point, Eric?" the brunette interrupted. Nathan flinched, taken aback at her pushy, rude attitude. "I need to ask you some questions for a lawsuit your school is making against the former music teacher." "Fine, ask away. How you managed to get so much power over my life is really tearing me up. I mean, now I either have to talk to you or lose my job." "Okay, I know you don't like this, but it's necessary. First off, can you tell me what a good music curriculum would include in your opinion?" "A solid music education needs five things: musical history, theory, application, composition, and performance. Without theory, you have no building blocks for composition or application. Without those three, you have no basis for good performance which is essential to growth, and without history, you have no model, no basic format to pursue." "So this is what happens when people start reciting random information out of textbooks," he smirked as he scribble a few things down. "Hey, if you want my cooperation you better shut up and get through this as quickly as possible," she snapped. "Okay, okay. Now, if you had to give us the ideal music system and compare it to the one you found when you began working, how would the two compare?" "Well, if you go strictly by the five points I talked about, he only had two: history and theory. The style he taught in was so incomplete, over seventy percent of his students failed the course. That's not even mentioning the fact that most of them had a very high musical aptitude when originally tested. He spent over $100,000 on equipment and textbooks that were very low in quality, most of them which he didn't even use. The way he treated the instruments and supplies was so clumsy and ignorant, most of them are damaged quite severely, if not ruined." "Please add a little personality to this! We're not the Brady Bunch and you don't have to pretend that everyone speaks word-perfect. If this was your testimony in court and I was part of the jury, I'd be taking a nap right now! You have to have passion, emotion, and you have to take some pride in the fact that you're the one who came in and cleaned all this up. Without that, this case won't get anywhere." He yelled, smacking the table with his fist for emphasis. "Fine, whatever it takes to get through this more quickly so I don't have to spend any more time than necessary with you," Haley muttered. "The feeling's mutual, believe me," he stated more loudly than needed.

They had gone through everything, but before he left, Nathan said quietly, "Hales, I'm sorry for everything, and I'd like to apologize for being so harsh with the questions and everything." "Fine. Just leave, please," his wife said, wearing an expression of exhaustion on her face. "I need to talk to you about something first. I was under the impression that we were divorced, and you were under the impression that I died. Well, as it turns out, we're still married. I drew up the divorce papers, and I hope you don't mind the way I split the property," he handed a stack of papers over to her. "Why couldn't you just leave? It's not like I'm planning on marrying anyone else any time soon," she snapped. Leafing through the papers, her face reflected disbelief, contrition, and the smallest hint of a smile. "Why, Nathan? I mean, I wouldn't blame you if you sent me to the cleaners after the way I've been treating you, and then took custody of Dillon on top of that. Instead, you give me dominant custody and 80 of our combined estate? I only owned about 15 of everything to begin with." "Well, to begin with, you're Dillon's mom. He deserves to be with the woman who's raised him, and as long as I get weekends steadily, and maybe a holiday here and there to get to know him, who am I to complain? Secondly, out of that estate, I only really use about $20,000 a year, and with a job that makes $150,000 a year, most of it just sits in the bank, so child support really shouldn't be a problem. You guys deserve to be happy and well-cared for, and if you don't want me in the picture, than I might as well throw in some behind-the-scenes magic," he responded, looking down at his briefcase when he got to the last part. "Nathan..." she started, but he cut her off. "I changed my name back, so I'm officially Nathan again, thank God. After I worked everything else out and cleared this with your lawyer, all that's left for us to do is sign. He pushed the sheet towards her, motioning to his already-signed on to show her where she needed to sign. Taking hold of the pen, the young mother looked hesitant. She moved to pen down towards the line, but dropped it at the last minute. "Can I have a couple minutes?" she whispered, trying to hold back the emotion. "I'd really like to get this done now. It hurts enough as it is, and if you have one shred of compassion left, than you'll just sign right now." Haley nodded slowly, and lightly scrawled her signature at the bottom. "There it is. You have what you wanted." "All I wanted was a second chance with you, Haley. That's obviously not going to happen, though, so maybe I should just leave before things get any worse." He grabbed the papers and shuffled out of the room, pausing at the doorway. "I'll wait until we get back to the states before I send them in or finalize everything. Hopefully you'll have enough time to think things through, and decide what days I'm allowed to have him and everything." "Bye," she called out weakly right before he left. Looking back, he gave the smallest and softest of smiles and said, "It's better this way, Hales. Those years were the best of my life, but sometimes a good thing has just been bad for too long for it to ever be good again. Bye."

Brooke came in to Haley sitting in the chair next to the window, looking out at everything. Fingering her material of her skirt uneasily, she chirped, "Hey tutor girl. I have a surprise for you and I bet you're just oh so eager to know what it is. Never fear, though, because tonight the three legendary girls form the good old days are going out to eat, just us." She was rewarded with the smallest of smiles from Haley when she said, "We better go shopping then, because I don't have anything to wear and being the third member of hoes over bros, I better scrounge up something." They laughed and waited until Dillon was awake and Jake and Jenny were there, then departed, determined to rip apart every store in Italy and then be joined by Peyton later on.

Hey, guys! Wow, I haven't updated in awhile! I know this is really kind of blah in parts and the ending is a little awkward, but I'm working on it here! Read, Review, Request! OnTheOutsideLookingIn