A/N: Sorry this took a while... I dawdled about posting it because I wasn't exactly sure of it. But someone said something at work today that made me think...I decided to throw this out there anyway! Enjoy!

I don't own OTH or it's characters, simply the journey I choose to take them on.

Ch. title comes from a lyric in "To The Moon And Back" by Savage Garden.

Ch. 2 - A Journey I Just Don't Have A Map For

Her name falls from his lips in a strangled gasp.

Peyton's eyes widen as his face turns ashen; he stumbles back and leans against the door, still gawking at her.

"H-h…wha…I don't…I…" He clutches at the back of his head, mind unable to form any coherent thoughts. This isn't possible. It can't be happening.

She leans forward in surprise, "You can see me?"

It's almost not a question because it's asked so quietly and intended more for her than for him. But it booms around the room all the same to cause the boy's body to jerk again.

Peyton stands and takes a step toward him, but stops when he flinches. His gaze darts between the her standing in front of him and the her laying unconscious in bed.

"What the hell is going on?"

Peyton shrugs. She almost can't believe he's talking to her. Actually, she can't believe that's the part she finds unbelievable. But she's had six days to process it. He's only had six seconds.

"How…?" He trails off, obviously not certain of the intended question.

"I'm not really sure. One moment I remember being in the library with you, then the next time I open my eyes, I'm sitting right next to myself!" Peyton exclaims, pacing in the space between the bed and the wall. She glances at the hospital bed with a grimace, "and I have no idea about anything!"

Lucas takes an instinctive step forward, reaching out his hand to try and calm her. It passes right through her arm; he yanks it back, startled, a gargle of sound escaping his throat. But she's not really surprised.

"Yeah. I know. It's like something out of a bad movie or a creepy, moral, ghost-of-Christmas-past type thing." She then smiles at him, "I must have tried to get my dad's attention a dozen times in the first five minutes before I seriously started freaking out."

He opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again, clearly at a loss for words and not sure what to think. She's relieved to see some color seep back in his cheeks. For a moment there, he looked like he might pass out.

"I just…this is…"

"Weird?" Peyton supplies helpfully. "Yeah."

Lucas collapses into one of the chairs beside the bed. With his eyes on the unconscious Peyton, he mutters under his breath, "I must be dreaming. I'll wake up soon."

She simply laughs.

He turns to the chair next to him, where she's now sitting, and quirks an eyebrow in question.

She wrinkles her nose and motions towards the bed, "Me too. I'm hoping."

Lucas sends her a look so fierce, she's taken aback. And kind of frightened of him, which is new.

"That's an insensitive thing to joke about." He practically growls. "I can't believe—" He snaps his jaw shut with an audible click of teeth. She knows it's tightly clenched since she can actually see the muscles twitch. He's angry and Peyton can't help feeling guilty for making him feel that way, especially since—right now—he's all she has.

"Luke, I'm sorry. It's just…easier…to deal with that way, I guess."

He gives a curt nod and sighs. "Makes sense, in a way. Just…don't though. It just…but, none of the rest of this does. Makes sense, I mean."

"I know." And she does. If it did, she'd be worried about their mental health.

They sit in a few minutes of silence, but Peyton notices that it's not totally uncomfortable, like she would have expected. Actually, it's somewhat comforting to her, because it's familiar; the two of them have always been able to exist in silence together.

Peyton breaks the quiet. "My dad…he talked about Keith's funeral yesterday. I'm really sorry I couldn't be there for you and your mom; I feel like a terrible friend for not. I wanted to, but—"

"Thanks." Lucas interrupts, tone colder than she anticipated. "But you have no reason to apologize. You're in a coma. Of course you wouldn't be there! I'm the one who's sorry. I promised nothing would happen and…well, look!" He motions furiously to the unconscious Peyton.

"No. You cannot blame yourself for this!" She turns on him, her fierce attitude practically forcing him to look at her. "You got me out of that school. If it hadn't been for you, I probably wouldn't be alive at all right now. Don't you dare demean that or yourself like that again, understand?"

He stares at her, stony faced, biting out, "I promised. And I failed."

"You're an idiot!" Peyton throws her hands up in annoyance. "I think, if I had to choose, I'd rather be in a coma right now than dead. You didn't fail anything."

Disgusted, Peyton rises from her chair to pace across the room. She can't understand his guilt towards her at all. He ran back into a school not knowing a thing about anything and somehow managed to find her in the library. He had stayed and he had taken her out when things got too bad for them to remain. And the tragedy from that day was the fact that she heard Keith did the same thing, but never walked back out of the school.

Realization dawns and Peyton stops directly in front of Lucas. She can't touch him, so she does the next best thing; kneels down in order to bring them eye to eye.

"'You know how proud of you Keith must be right now?'"

He looks up, startled. "'I don't know if that's true.'"

"'He is.'" She smiles gently at him. "And so am I. You're a good guy, Luke. Not many people would've done what you did."

"Keith was a good guy. He went back to help me…and Jimmy. I went back to stop Nathan from doing something stupid. That doesn't make me selfless or a hero or…anything. But Keith was all of those things. And more."

Peyton shrugs lightly. "So? Just because you went in for one reason, doesn't mean you didn't stay for another. I was scared. Actually, I was terrified and alone. But you stayed with me, because I asked."

"I stayed because you're my friend and I care about you." Lucas corrects, with a firm nod of his head. "I wasn't just going to leave you there by yourself."

"Someone else might have."

It's a simple enough statement, but Peyton watches as it seems to hit him harder than anything else she's said thus far. She's not sure why. She just really hopes something gets through to him and banishes the guilt. In her eyes, he has not one thing to be guilty of. He's a hero, even if he doesn't see it that way.

"Someone else might have seen the bloody trail and ignored it." She pushes just a little further.

Lucas averts his eyes while he admits something that has bothered him for the past few days, "I almost did. I was going to go with Nathan to find Haley, but when I saw the blood by the library, I thought it might be you. So I went to make sure. I don't know if I would've gone in there at all if Brooke hadn't said she lost you by the library after the gun went off. I probably would've gone with Nathan."

Peyton's not sure what to say to that. It's all the same really. "I don't see why that matters. Nathan went in specifically for Haley…it doesn't make him any more or less selfless than what you did. Whether it was Nathan, Haley, me, or anyone else, you still went to help. Just like Keith."

She watches as he seems to think about it before lightly shaking his head. Lucas slouches down into his chair and sighs, leaning his head back.

Peyton sighs as well, moving to reclaim her seat. As soon as she does, Lucas abruptly stands and moves to the hospital bed. She glances at him curiously, but he's seemingly ignoring her for now. She figures it has something to do with what she's just said; he's a little stubborn about facing difficult truths when he wants to wallow in what went wrong. She would know; she does that, too.

Lucas gazes down at an unconscious Peyton; Peyton wants to ask what he's thinking, but she's nervous about what the answer might be. Plus, as much as they've been ignoring it, she does remember what happened in the library before she passed out. It's a little embarrassing.

"Why do you think you're…disconnected, for lack of a better word?"

The change in subject is slightly jarring, so it takes a moment for Peyton to gather her thoughts. "I don't know." She shrugs. "It's not like I haven't tried to…well, reconnect."

He squints his eyes at her, a small quirk to his lips. "What?"

"Well, yeah." Peyton scrunches her nose. "You know I watch all kinds of off-the-wall movies. They do these kinds of things in those."

"Movies were your inspiration?"

She nods sheepishly. She also notices the tiny smile on his face and the humor dancing in his eyes. The first time she's seen either of those since he walked into the room.

"Okay." He makes a face to try to disguise his urge to laugh. She notices anyway. "Okay. Like what?"

Peyton sighs. "I tried laying down on…me. It was just a whacked out experience. I didn't exactly go through me, but I didn't not go through me."

He shoots her an incredulous look. "I don't…what?"

She rolls her eyes. "Dude, don't be dense, okay!" She stands again, walking over to the rolling lunch table on the other side of her hospital bed. "As you probably noticed, I can sit in chairs, I don't go through the floor. That's solid stuff for me. But for some reason…"

Trailing off, she simply demonstrates, walking right through the rolling table. "But some things…aren't."

She chances a look at his face, only to see a dropped jaw and blue eyes wider than she's ever seen them. She honestly hadn't known his eyes could open that much.

He shakes his head dazedly and opens his mouth, but doesn't say anything. His eyes fly between the two Peyton's, before scrubbing a hand over his face and groaning softly.

"I think I was still hoping all of this was a dream or something." He murmurs, turning to face her. "Things like this just don't happen in real life."

"You're telling me." She can feel the frustration bubbling up and over. "I don't get this! I don't know what I'm supposed to do! One minute I'm a relatively normal person, the next, I'm something out of a sci-fi film. And not something cool either, like a punk rock zombie. No, I'm just me, the lite version!"

He watches quietly as she storms past him towards the wall and kicks it.

"The wall is solid, like a wall should be." She turns abruptly, marching right up to his face.

"Um, Peyt—"

He's interrupted when she walks right through him. Startled, he whirls around to meet her defiant green eyes, his face draining of all color once again.

"But you are not."

"Yeah I am." He argues automatically. "You're not."

"Not the point, Lucas." Peyton says dryly. But that rather inane comment calms her down. He's too confused to argue with at the moment.

He gives her a small boyish grin tinged with disbelief. "I guess not, right? Well, what else?"

"What do you mean?"

"What else can you do or not do that's different from normal."

"Oh. Well, I haven't been hungry or thirsty since I…woke up, I guess. I almost wanted to cry when I saw my dad do it, but I just couldn't. I don't think I sleep, but there are times that are blanks."

"Blanks? Like you're unconscious?" He motions her to the chair as he leans against the hospital bed absently. Probably propping himself up so he doesn't pass out from the weirdness of this conversation.

"Kinda. I'll be sitting here, you know, then just get really bored and…blank out. When I'm aware again, time has passed." A smirk graces her lips. "I'm a little boring to watch unconscious."

He rolls his eyes and glances away for a moment. Her smirk widens into a grin. Over the past summer, sometimes they'd fall asleep together. A couple of times, she had woken up to his eyes watching her. He'd told her that she mumbles stuff and moves around a lot; it kept him entertained until she woke up. Peyton had just shoved him and told him he was a creepy weirdo, but had laughed too.

She kinda likes that teasing him about things from their summer still puts the slight blush on his face. He's adorable when he's flustered.

She shakes that thought out of her head. He's also very much taken by her best friend, and she's very much still not over Jake. Mostly. Okay, she is. Whatever.

Lucas studies her contemplatively. "So, you either do sleep, but just don't know it, or those blanks could be when you're…connected to yourself. So it's a blank 'cause you're in a coma."

She looks up in surprise. "Maybe. I just don't know." She laughs softly. "You know, I saw a show once, where a person was on life support, brain dead. Basically like a ghost, you know? Anyway, there was a medium there who could communicate and tell the person's family anything the ghost wanted to share. The ghost told the medium that he could feel his friends and family hold his hand and he could feel all the machines working in his body."

She falls silent for a moment, collecting her thoughts.

"You thought…" Lucas asks, turning his head to the unconscious girl lying behind him before giving her a look of understanding.

"Yeah." She looks up at him with a half smile. "I did. But I can't feel anything when people touch me. Either me's. I can't physically feel anything at all. And I really, really wanted to, you know? Like, if my dad could just hold my hand, I'd be okay. But I can't feel it when he does."

"Peyton. I'm sorry." His voice is whisper soft and laced with compassion.

"Me, too." She exhales loudly. "Anyway, my biggest problem is trying to find a way back to being one person."

"I can do some thinking," He offers. "Maybe a little research. Who knows, there may even be a few movie tricks you can still try."

His gentle teasing brings a smile to her face, an expression he mimics.

"Thanks, Lucas."

"For what?"

"Being my friend."

They simply stare at each other for a moment, before she voices a rather frightening thought. "What if I can't come back?"

He looks startled. His expression hardens, a look of determination coming into his eyes. "That's not an option. You will and I'll help. I promise."

She nods jerkily. She really hopes that he's right, but she can't shake the fear he's wrong. That this is how she'll spend her last days on earth; disconnected from everyone, including herself.

She's so lost in her thoughts that she doesn't notice he's moved until a very faint tingle glides near her forehead.

Her hand instinctively covers the sensation. The first actual sensation she's felt since she passed out in the library.

Lucas tracks her movement in amazement. "You felt that?"

"What?" Her breaths becoming shallow as her thoughts scatter. "Did you…I just…I felt something on my forehead."

"I moved your hair back a little." He puffs out a soundless laugh and orders "close your eyes for a second."

She obeys. Her eyes fly open when she feels the sensation of someone holding her hand. Her hand, not the unconscious Peyton's hand. A quick glance show both of her hands still sitting on her lap, not even touching each other. She's almost scared to look over at the hospital bed.

But she does, to see Lucas grinning…and holding her hand.

She laughs. A weird combination of sound that resembles laughing through tears, even though she can't cry. But she can feel Lucas holding her hand.

"Well, that's…that's really something, isn't it?" He manages to say, still grinning.

"Yeah. It is. God, thank you Lucas!" She squeals on another laugh. "I really do feel a little better."

"I'm glad."

A silence descends as he just holds her hand via her unconscious self, Peyton savoring the feeling of it, both physically and emotionally.

The moment is interrupted by a soft knock on the door right before it opens. Lucas has just enough time to move from against the bed into a chair, still holding onto her hand. Both teens turn their heads to the person entering the room.

"Lucas."

"Mr. Sawyer." He gives him a tight smile. Peyton briefly wonders where his real smile suddenly disappeared to.

"Any change? Did the doctors say anything?"

"No. No one's been in here since I got here."

"Okay." Larry shifts awkwardly. "Um, did you still want time to visit privately?"

Peyton catches Lucas' eyes. "See? He can't see or hear me here. It's frustrating."

An infinitesimal nod is his answer to her, while giving a verbal response to her father. "No, it's okay. I was just holding her hand, hoping she could feel it."

She smiles because she can feel it. It's comforting.

Larry nods. "I do that too."

Her smile slips a little, at the sadness in his voice. And the fact that she's been unable to feel him doing that.

Lucas nods his head at the older man. Peyton can tell he's not sure what to say in this situation. He's the only person so far who knows what's going on.

Her eyes widen and she gives a little shriek, darting off the chair right before her dad lowers into it. She knows he wouldn't feel her, or her him, but the thought of being sat on is still weird. She also catches the tiny quirk to Lucas' lips at her actions. If she could blush, she probably would.

"Lucas," Larry starts, facing the boy straight on. "I wanted to apologize for this morning—"

"No," Lucas interrupts. "I should be the one apologizing. I just didn't deal well with the thought of her being alone. Mostly because I felt guilty for not coming to see her myself."

Peyton turns her attention onto his face, but he ignores her and stays focused on Larry.

Larry smiles and nods his head. "I get that. But you don't have to feel guilty; you've been going through a lot. Peyton would understand."

"I do understand. You're being dumb. You can't be everywhere all the time, and taking the time to deal with your own things shouldn't make you feel guilty. You're a good guy, but you can also be an idiot." She says it with exasperated fondness, because that combination can make a girl feel like she's banging her head against a brick wall. But his heart is usually in the right place.

He continues to ignore her. "Thanks, Mr. Sawyer."

"Call me Larry."

"Okay." He agrees. "Um, I guess I'll give you some time alone with Peyton. I should go check on my mom."

"Thanks for visiting. You're a good friend to her."

Peyton bites her lip, suddenly feeling unsure. "Will you be back?"

"I hope so." Lucas addresses Larry's comment. "I just want to be better than I've been lately. Is it okay if I stop by more often?"

Larry looks a little shocked. "Of course you can! You don't have to ask. And anytime you feel like some alone time with her…I don't mind. She needs people. Probably tired of listening to her old man ramble anyway." He smiles wearily with that last comment.

Peyton waggles her eyebrows jokingly at Lucas, trying to ignore the painful dart she feels at her dad's sadness, "You hear that? Alone time."

He covers his laugh with a cough, causing Larry to offer him some water.

"It's okay, I'm fine. Just a tickle or something." Lucas assures her dad, keeping his eyes away from the other blonde teen. She wonders if that's his way to control his need to laugh. In the beginning, she'd given in to that urge, until it became hysterical, turning into dry heaves in a parody of sobbing. That was day one; any laughter since then has been almost non-existent.

The boy gives one last squeeze to the hand he's holding, and moves towards the doorway, turning for a final look at the occupants.

"Bye Mr. Saw—Larry." He corrects with a hesitant smile.

The older man returns the smile. "Bye Lucas. You take care of yourself, you hear?"

He nods, moving his glance to Peyton, who's standing next to her unconscious self. "Bye, Peyton. I'll see ya."

She acknowledges the many layers of that comment with a tilt of her head.

"I'll see ya."

A/N: Sooo, what did you think? I'm curious to know if anyone saw that coming, or finds it way too weird... and yeah, Luke's reaction. I kind of based it on that episode after his heart attack where he talks to Keith...he was weirded out, asked questions, but still took it on faith. If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask! I'll answer what I can without giving away the rest of the story...