A/N: it's a longer then usual and somewhat disjointed chapter, and I apologize in advance before you bother reading. I could keep agonizing over it (and this fic is incredibly hard to write), but I've been keeping you waiting long enough, so here it is. I can not express how much I love all of the reviews I got on this story. There are few, but every single one is precious. I know this story is progressively dark so far, but I can promise it'll get better. I know that the whole Peyton/Julian thing seems random and OOC now (not to me, but to you maybe), but I promise there is a very good and solid explanation to everything and everyone and we'll get to it if you're patient with me and I'm actually able to write. Thank you again, and apologies for winded and poorly phrased introspections Brooke and Lucas have in this chapter. Next one, I'll proofread more. This one, I've already given up on.

Chapter 3. Plaster Dented From Your Fist

We've been running round in our present state
Hoping help would come from above
But even angels there make the same mistakes in love

/Roxy Music/

…x…

In the morning, he brings Mouth to the dispensary with him, to interpret. The place is run by some sort of WHO agency. At first the head nurse doesn't want to give out much information about Brooke. Lucas says, "Tell her I'm her husband," slipping his ringless hand into a pocket, reeling because of the shiver that still runs through the already tanned – barely ever white – circle there. It's not much of a lie, though. He could have been, they have been engaged, however falsely or temporarily. The nurse, who beneath a tight wimple has one of those inexorable, humorless faces, gives him a severe looking over, but finally she gives Mouth some directions. Turns out he really doesn't know much about Brooke, he's never been to her office.

Lucas woke up at seven and spent two hours talking to hotel staff. In a town as small, it wasn't hard to find people who know about Brooke. It was harder to find someone English-speaking, but he managed that. He managed to corner Mouth into going with him. He hasn't figured out, though, what the hell is Brooke doing having the office in a cardiology and pulmonary dispensary.

"By the way, you're Mr. Davis now, so smile and nod when she calls you that." Lucas nods, even though no one actually called him that yet, but he can't pull a smile on. It never really suited his face all that well.

"Apparently, she goes by Madame, not Mademoiselle. And not by Brooke. She maybe uses her middle name?" Mouth turns this into a question in the last possible moment, and his voice sounds squeaky from the abrupt change of cadence.

"Maybe, but I never knew it." He never asked. It seems absurd to him now that he never had. No wonder she never believed him or trusted him when they were together, when he told her he loved her. He hadn't behaved like a man in love. His and Peyton's and Nathan's and Haley's worlds being constantly on the cusp of ending was no excuse, really. He just haven't been able to bring himself to unbend that much, and he'd assumed somehow that it wouldn't matter, because Brooke had always accepted him — needed him — just as he was. That she might like to be needed a little in return haven't occurred to him back then. Hindsight is seriously a bitch.

Finally they are crossing the courtyard again. Lucas tries to dodge the puddles, but his Chuck's are already soaked. The rain has stopped sometime during breakfast, but the sky is low and steely, and there is an ominous stillness to the heavy air.

"I didn't want to tell you myself, but I think you should know," Mouth starts talking unexpectedly. "The nurse said that if you really were her husband, you'd take her home to America."

"If I was?" Huh. Smart nurse.

"She said Brooke has an uncanny strength to get better. That she should have died a few months ago, when Tan Guan Heng brought her in. They all thought she'd die. She said the Lord spared her."

"The Lord wouldn't know what to do with her," Lucas definitely doesn't, "I'm sure He's in no hurry to take on that responsibility."

The rain starts again. There is no preliminary pattering, it's like a sluice opening. They are both drenched at once, and run for the building where Brooke allegedly works.

"The nurse said there must be something wrong with her heart," Mouth continues dully, and Lucas just shrugs, because he knows. Something is wrong with her heart because she broke it for him. For Peyton, and Haley, and Nathan, and Jamie, but mostly for him.

Hell, if he's not in that same position himself.

There, by her door, sheltered from the pouring wall, Mouth tells him that unless Lucas wants him to stay, he's going to move on. There is someone waiting for him in Taipei.

"Someone you're in love with?"

Mouth's face lights up a little, for the first time.

"That's really good, I'm happy for you," Lucas says, and thanks him, and feels a tiny sting of jealousy reverberating through his limbs. But he is.

Happy, that is, for his friend.

This time they hug; Lucas is glad they haven't before, because now it means something. They aren't really friends again just yet, and he might never see Mouth again, but he's been acting like they are good friends still, and Lucas makes sure he knows it's appreciated. He doesn't promise to write or call, neither does Mouth, and maybe that's what adulthood feels like, but Lucas is convinced he'll come through should Marvin McFadden ever need him again. This mum promise is equal parts who he was and who Lucas wants to be again.

He jogs up the worn, slippery stairs and enters the shabby door with a '17' on it, without knocking this time. Helloes her awkwardly.

Brooke doesn't answer, not that he expects her to, but at least nods. Today she seems more accepting of his presence. She is, once again, sitting up in the rattan chair, although a different one, reading something that appears to be important, wearing nothing but a white tank top and the thin peasant trousers he could mistake for tight pajama bottoms. Of course Brooke would never actually wear a pair of pajamas in public. He can bet she doesn't even own a pair of pajamas.

Lucas can see sinews in her hands he's sure haven't been there before, and he can feel his heart tighten a little at the sight. There's history there, one he doesn't even know of, let alone a book he can just read. He's missed on so many chapters now, and not just from the past ten months, he can't conceive catching up, can't be sure his heart will continue beating through it.

He holds a hand out, then, after a few more seconds, snaps his fingers.

Brooke holds her own hand up, fingers asking for two minutes. After she's done reading, she brings her gaze reluctantly to his face.

"So, Lucas." She pauses. "I figured you won't rid me of your heroism quite that easily." Is he supposed to answer to that, now?

"Sounds damn snooty when you say that." At least she's talking to him, but he doesn't say it out loud.

"I don't mean to." She sighs dolefully. "Why won't you leave? Why do you insist on putting me through it and through it and through it again?" And Lucas can't really pretend he doesn't know what she's talking about.

She isn't shouting — her voice is almost a croon. She seems to shrink into the chair, to become smaller and frailer. Curling away from him. He recons he'd prefer it if she threw a hysterical fit.

"Brooke… you know if things were the other way, and tables were turned... if it was me who was putting myself in situations like these... you wouldn't leave me." He hopes… no, he trusts her not to leave him. And it kills him that this trust not reciprocated.

"Please." It's barely a whisper caressing his ear.

One word, so full of pleading it's almost a sob. Lucas blushes, for himself as well as for her. She's pale, exhausted, and probably doesn't want him to see her this way.

But he still can't force himself to leave. He knows he'll stay here as long as it takes to either see her better, or see her return to the States, preferably Tree Hill where he and Haley and hell, even Peyton can cuddle her into submission.

Madame Davis.

"Did you get married?"

She raises her face, squinting, hairs sticking to her cheeks. There's a mysterious smile rearranging her face into a visage that's heartbreakingly familiar.

"What's your middle name?" He tries again, desperate for any scrap of information that will chip the palpable wall between them.

But she just shakes her head, amused, her weak moment forgotten.

"Fine, I don't care!" Except he does, really. "But you can't hold out on me, Brooke! How did you survive the storm in Singapore?"

"Just didn't die." Her amusement grows proportionally to his exasperation.

"OK... then why are you here now?"

"Wouldn't you like to know." Which comes out downright bitchy, yet feels completely deserved because Lucas is attacking her and he knows it. He doesn't really mean to, even, but there aren't many other options available to him at the moment.

He takes a deep breath and exhales all the fight out, forcefully relaxing his posture. "Brooke, I would. I really would." And he tries to sound as sincere as he feels, but remembers at least a dozen occasions when he gave her his most sincere promises that turned out a fraud. A whole memoire of a book is testament to that shameful fact.

Her snort is full of disdain, but after a second she seems to copy his purging breathing exercise. "They're all dead, you know."

"Who is?" He is a little bit afraid of the clarification. There's already a visual in his over-imaginative brain, mostly of Vietnam war footages from before either of them were born, terrifying nonetheless.

"People, Luke. They all went down fighting for their lives. Thousands of them. I think I saw at least that many. What was it your fiancée slash wife slash my backstabbing friend Peyton used to say? People always leave? Screw the emo whining, people hold on till it bleeds them to death." It's a random remark, one that would lead them into a disjointed conversation, but all he can hear is Peyton's name.

It is as if she's struck him in the chest suddenly with a club. His breath hitches, and fails him. He can't even begin to hide his reaction, and knows she is watching him, watching him with a greedy kind of satisfied anger. To his own embarrassment, she gets what she expects. Instead of grieving for the deaths she's seen, he grieves his love for Peyton, and it only takes Brooke mentioning her name for Lucas to crack. Despite all that, he manages to talk, to insist on the point he's been fruitlessly trying to make.

"You gotta come back to you life, Brooke, and this isn't it. You live in some shithole, probably with rats, and roaches and their creepy little antlers, and you're obviously sick! The nurse said you almost died a few months ago, for Pete's sake. That there's something wrong with your heart." Right, he broke it. "I'm not leaving you. This isn't about Peyton, or even me. This is about you." And somehow, he doesn't choke on the name when he speaks it himself, it slips out smoother then it ever had in the past five months.

"I'm 24, Luke, and I've taken care of myself since I was 12. If you're so desperate for that information, I'm healthy enough as is my heart. It's probably in better condition then yours. So piss off. You can give me money if ya like, I don't refuse donations, hell, I am here to get donations, but don't martyr me and teach me how to live my life. You're not allowed to start caring now. You have a family to meet those heroic needs of yours now." He feels the weight of her gaze even in the midst of the torrent of hurt and anger that rises up to engulf him. Spots dance in front of his eyes as they argue pointlessly back and forth for another ten minutes, unknowingly jumping up and getting in each other's faces, noses and tempers almost bumping, and this time words blur into an almost indecipherable background noise where she claims to be too strong to need help.

To need him.

"I need to work." She turns away eventually, as if this is a resume of a business meeting, and Lucas feels disappointment and helplessness flood into the stream of emotions that already engulfed him.

Somehow he gets himself up, and out. Contemplates her from his spot by the door. Sighs. "And we need to talk. I'll be at your place for dinner." She rolls her eyes.

Okay, so far, this isn't going well. Every encounter ends with her throwing him out, hurling something at him verbally, something that hurts.

And it also hurts to see her obviously in so much pain. Wanting to live punishing herself. Brooke never was much of a masochist. He'd seen her at some low ebbs in the past, but she'd always clung to her sense of bubbly, confident self.

But what hurts the most is that Peyton and Brooke are so intertwined in his heart now, apparently, that Brooke can turn the sound of his wife's name into a weeping wound as easily as make him not think about her.

He hasn't a slightest idea what he's going to do back there with her tonight, can't find the words, any words, and that's pretty shitty for a bestselling author. What can turn this situation around? Walking back to the hotel in the relentless rain, his head aching, Lucas looks for some idea, some angelic intervention, maybe some epiphany. Just something.

In the downpour, he turns his face up. Every edge between them is sharp right now, cutting deep, drawing blood. Peyton would have cried right now. This new Brooke 2.0 is singular, driven, changed. But she's probably crying, too.

…x…

The sky above is the color of television, tuned to a dead channel, Brooke thinks, unable to not stare through the window in fear of looking into Lucas' eyes. It's not the looking she's afraid of, she contemplates, but what she might see there. It's so easy to drown in those eyes, yet nearly impossible to actually sink.

At some point in this stupid fight she's initiated to avoid explaining herself, before he can promise to save her, again, she cups his chin jerking his face down, forcing him to read the truth in her eyes. She refuses to be saved by Lucas Scott.

She gives him moments of retribution in their confrontation. She understands and loves the boy he once was enough to allow him a tiny victory. But she will fight him every step of the way to retain the life she's so carefully and meticulously build for herself. She tells herself she doesn't really care if Lucas still likes her life or not, tells herself she's not that girl anymore.

But she can't control the hot scrape of her own anger – and tenderness – at his visits, because her fingertips seem to remember the feel of his face and itch with it, and because she never loved anyone except Lucas Scott, as much as Lucas Scott.

Not really.

And at the thought, the bile rises at the back of her throat like the shores of the Styx and she doesn't resist it. God, she hates that she can still smell his old hoodie when she's this close to him.

And he can't even remember her middle name.

Pushing his face away, she backs off furiously running her fingers through her hair, tugging at the roots hoping it will all come off in her hands so that she can start over.

She chokes back the laugh when he promises, swears that he's doing something for her, and she remembers when she still believed in those infamous promises of his. It was before her eighteen's birthday, before she believed the lie that she was something special.

If only she'd stayed suspended between her best friend and her boyfriend and remained true to herself. Followed her natural avarice for riches and fame instead of pretending she was something else – someone more... She wouldn't be this shell – gutted, boneless – dry on the inside. The last year's events leaving nothing but an itch for death that she is too cowardly to scratch.

And Lucas promises her dinner also, and that's his only promise she can somewhat trust.

She doesn't really know why she agrees to it, wouldn't be able to provide an answer should someone actually ask. It might be just a legit excuse to be in the same room as him without having to call an ambulance as a result of the meeting, although God knows she was never that violent before the Peyton/Lucas/herself noxious love triangle.

Brooke tries in futile to work for ten minutes after Lucas leaves, then gives up, dropping her head on her hands, crossed over the tabletop. There is a weight there, a cross she almost can't bare.

"Let's talk." Brooke doesn't sense Mouth before he's behind her, his hands gentle and warm on her shoulders. He smells of dark woods and deep pools, and part of her wants to sink into him and disappear. The thought doesn't bother her like it should which makes her even more sure she's fucked up.

"Why won't you let at least him help you?" He asks.

"You need to get over your crap quick, buddy. I don't need help, and I've got more important things to deal with then Luke." Brooke's not even sure what comes easier now, lying or breathing, because Lord knows she exerts tremendous effort for a supposedly effortless inhale/exhale operation.

Her eyes rise to stare into Lucas's wake, body still reels from his leftover smell. "My crap is fine, thank you." He turns her and her chair, exhibiting more strength then she thought him capable of. "How's yours?"

Brooke thinks he's better at denial since he left Tree Hill. And different. He's definitely less funny.

"We could stand here and out bitch each other until you grow enough facial hair to play both Tubbs and Crocket, or you could just tell me what you came here to tell." She mumbles, mostly just for the reason that he expects an answer, and there's still confrontation coursing through her.

"Right. Back to normal Brooke the bitch it is then."

Normal? He's right. This is normal now.

"Mouth," she conveys her impatience with one word.

She knows, despite how much he's changed, he misses the old Brooke. They all probably do. And, there's a small part of her brain that feels guilty for not bouncing back like she did the last few times she was stripped of all control and left broken.

This is different. This has changed her at a cellular level, her blood running thick and cold in stiff veins.

"I want you to come home with him." Yet that word, home, doesn't sound remotely warm in his, ironically, mouth, and Brooke wonders just how much he believes in that town anymore, one that's not even on the North Carolina maps.

Mouth thinks it's the storm and the deaths and her past illness (which she's almost recovered from, thank you very much) that keep her at a distance from Tree Hill. That she doesn't call them, or hug them or laugh with them because she still remembers nature defiling the world, stripping people of their lives.

What he doesn't realize is that storm is not… has nothing to do with her hometown, although it is something that keeps her bawling into her salty pillow. He does know that what keeps her up most nights are thoughts of the storm. That the nightmares that wake her with shivers and sweat when she does manage to sleep are images of last breaths. But she won't ever come home because she was desecrated there, and because of all of their betrayal and the consequent bone-wracking loneliness.

She has lost her family when she so dreadfully needed them, and she can't tell them that they sliced and bled her more effectively than a tsunami ever could. Brooke had faith in them – a brighter, truer faith than she had in God, in her goddamn parents, and even in herself.

They were her religion and her God left her behind to elope to Vegas, or just cuddle with their son.

Lucas – her body shakes just thinking his name – was the ultimate treachery. He betrayed her with a kiss. Took her heart and her friends and her substitute mother and her home and her trust and her hope. Took all of his promises back. And had the audacity to smile lazily at her after that, hugging his new fiancée with one idle hand. Brooke knows she still loves Lucas more than life. But she also knows that love is what finally destroyed her.

…x…

The rain is a fine mist that barely seems worth repelling.

Lucas's wasting his time walking around. Literally, too. It was mid-morning when he's gone to Brooke's office with Mouth, and it is late afternoon now. His eyes, normally narrow, feel shrunken in their sockets, his whole body aches dully, and he can't account for all of his movements. Can't account for the incredible sadness that comes up and up in relentless slow bubbles that burst painfully in his chest, over and over. And it doesn't stop raining.

He hasn't felt like this for a while, this helpless and juvenile and utterly crushed. Hasn't lost control of himself this way at all since his biological father shot his real one. Felt that everything was shit, that there was no place to go, no home anymore. Felt the indestructible nothingness ringing in his ears. Since that one funeral, he's locked himself in some sort of impenetrable capsule and hasn't allowed himself to feel pain, to care at all. But Vietnamese rain (or Brooke Davis, probably) is scorching acid, disintegrating whatever defensive mechanisms he's been capable of conjuring.

He's already wrote an autobiography, back when memories of having true emotions were vivid. But if he wants to be honest with himself, which he rarely does, he's to start again, with brief curriculum vitae of a sketchy introspection. Since Keith, nothing really startled him anymore; nothing was really able to penetrate the daze he was in. Not when Brooke decided he didn't love her, not when Peyton decided he did, not when his mom turned out pregnant, or sold the café, not when his brother was incapacitated or his best friend sexually harassed, not even when he identified Keith's murderer as his own fucking father, not when he was left at the alter or his nephew kidnapped or even when he found his wife in bed with another man three months into their marriage. Yes, this capsule of his faltered, shimmered, but never shattered. He just went with the flow, half drowning but not really fighting to stay afloat. Yet somehow, Lucas still remembers that mute incredulity of discovery, how it seeps and then crashes over him and then seeps again and crashes again, remembers it's repetitive cruelty, how it can come back and still not be any less. How he grieves.

He wasn't prepared for Peyton to betray him and leave him with no one. And he wasn't prepared for Brooke to die and live him this void. And today, when suddenly resurrected Brooke mentioned the third angle to the damned geometry shape of his mess of a love life, he wasn't prepared for how much he still feels it is not over, how much he still loves Peyton and Brooke, both, even though he doesn't want to, hates it, hates himself for it. Lucas thinks he ought to be disgusted with himself, but he revels in the new-found ability to be surprised again. Celebrates the collapse of his numbness. Even though mostly, he just feels how excruciating it is to know neither woman is his anymore.

He's in the café, a different one from where he met Mouth on that first day, rain crashing against the glass façade. A policeman has brought him here. He found Lucas wandering in the depths of the slums, by the river. A lost tourist. He didn't really understand a word the guy said, but he let the official herd him back to the semi-civilized French streets, and put him in a chair here, just two blocks away from his hotel. He nodded as he was lectured on incomprehensibly, and then he offered some money, which were first refused, but promptly accepted anyway. The policemen said something to the barmen, and nodded before leaving.

The beers keep coming, and he's on his third bottle. The thirst is sudden and terrible. He stares at patterns the rain draws on windows, and they remind him vaguely of Klimt and long breathless nights of lazy, drawn-out sex. While he waits on hour to turn decent for the pledged dinner, he feels unconsciously at his shoulder, at the intricate tattoo there. A Chinese symbol, another tribute to Brooke's love of all things Asia. For a while there – for eight torturous months – he thought that was all that remained of Brooke, the only bit of proof left that she's ever existed.

There are no physical brands by Peyton on his body, except that sudden random itch of his ring finger, but his relationship with Peyton wasn't really ever about physical at all. And he thinks that maybe that's a good thing – the lack of marks. Maybe, it would have been wise to remove the tattoo as well. He doesn't know. Not that his life now would be any easier to bear if that is the truth.

Besides, Lucas just knows how excruciatingly bad removing it would hurt.

Both physically and not.

His cell phone is slick and warm in his hand – everything here is slick and warm, there is nothing that could possibly feel refreshing to the touch. He wants to talk to Nathan, but doesn't really know what to say and breathing in the phone isn't his cup of tea, or bottle of beer for that matter.

He puts the phone back in his pocket. Because if he talks to Nate, he'll have to answer some of his brother's questions, like why hadn't he gone to Tree Hill to see them and finally forgive Peyton and get back with her, like why hasn't he been to the States for almost half a year now. And he's OK with telling all that to Nathan. He's just not willing to allow any of those answers to form for himself. Brooke's alive, and it just tears at him so much, that on top of everything else, he's not sure he'll be able to salvage his safety stupor capsule that's been damaged enough today. And he doesn't really know how to survive without it.

He can't really label these past months as hell. If he were still one to quote, Anton Chekhov once said that you can "cut a good story anywhere, and it'll bleed". And there are many bad things one can say about Lucas Scott, but he writes damn good fiction, autobiography or not. And all of them bleed. He wrote a book about high school that's screaming teenage angst from every other page. He hopes he's matured since then.

The first year after graduation, he's concentrated on getting settled in college, on getting to know Lily and James, on helping Karen and Haley and Nate. On keeping his relationship alive through distance. On getting the book published. Next year, he didn't really care quite as much. He's just concentrated on doing all the things he's felt deprived of all his life, because he was the bastard son with not much money to spare. He learned to ski at Kurshavel, and to do deep-sea diving in Curacao. He's met attractive new people, screwed good-looking model-like girls, and drank, partied and not written a single word. Money was no longer a worry — the publisher gave him a lump sum, he, with the help of Andy Hargrove, carefully invested to yield a nice income. But this rampage wasn't really in direct consequence to finally getting money. Peyton said she wanted to follow her dream rather then become his family when Karen and Lily didn't really need him anymore. Well, she said she wanted them both to follow their dreams, but, when he thinks about it, if she meant it, she'd know that having a family was the only dream of his truly worth pursuing. Then after about nine months of doing nothing in particular, he got involved with Lindsay, an all-around nice girl, and sort of settled. Few words were left in the wake of the delete button, so he didn't bother writing. There was no need to, or so he told her, and so he told himself. He was free then, financially independent, his life expectancy was that of most after he quit basketball and drama-filled romance, and he could do anything he liked, heart medication or not. Many ideas occurred to him, as he flitted around, and he meant to look into them very seriously. Doing some legitimate volunteer work, like maybe building houses for homeless families of Katrina victims. Joining the Peace Corps. Coaching a high school basketball team. He planned to decide on something, once the novelty of all the freedom wore off a little. He missed his mom like crazy, Haley was working hard in Tree Hill High School, Nate was struggling through depression Lucas couldn't quite understand. Not when his brother had everything he himself ever dreamed of. He wasn't at the center of his family and friends' lives anymore. There was nothing to be the center of.

But then Peyton decided to return to Tree Hill, acting as if she never rejected him and then ignored him for months, years even, refusing to see him or talk to him. Actually acting as if she was entitled to just demand him back because her own dreams disappointed her.

With Lindsay getting jealous and insecure and abandoning him in true Dan Scott manner, Peyton stepping beyond the borders within which he was comfortable, him longing for something new and getting a weird tight feeling of being trapped in his chest, and Brooke just being there, Lucas packed a bag, bought two tickets and flew the supposed love of his life to Vegas. For no particular reason except that Vegas was the destination of the flight about to depart, and eloping sounded like a brilliant idea and a need for a family and a love for Peyton were both shaped within him, clutching on his insides.

Five months and a week, a death of Brooke Davis and Peyton not even having sex, but making love to her all-around perfect ex Julian Baker, later, he found himself across the globe in Goa.

He came across a love of moving water in India, and wrote seventeen decent chapters in there in just the first two weeks. Chapters that Lindsay loved. Lucas Scott could suddenly write again. He could write anywhere but his hometown. He returned once for Jamie's birthday, only to be disappointed in general, and a little pathetic around his blonde wife in particular, trembling with repressed emotions. He filed for divorce the next day.

The next month, he still hasn't made his mind up about anything except Peyton, he was still flitting around, changing exotic locations in some twisted attempt to do what Peyton ordered him to do a very long time ago and chase what she believed was his dream. In true Peyton fashion, she wasn't satisfied whatever he did. She left winded messages on his voicemail and cried whenever he bothered to pick up the phone. She pleaded the mistake excuse, and never meaning to hurt him, and all he heard was 'karma' and figured that he knows how much of actual feeling went into such mistakes and not really meaning to hurt anyone. So he decided on not thinking and having fun.

But unlike college, the fun was less fun.

He's walked away from home before, at least he tried, but something always came up to pull him back in. For the last month, he's wondered once in a while what it would be this time, and how soon. But nothing ever came up, until Brooke Davis came back to life through Mouth's phone call. Until now, when he found her gloriously alive, even if bitter and angry.

For the longest time after graduating from high school, and then after returning from New York that one day so long ago, he didn't think about Brooke at all, and Lucas thinks of this now as ironic. His mind just closed up shop on the whole relationship, and she wasn't in the vicinity as a constant reminder either. Everything was as far away and unrecalled as his time in first grade, back when he didn't know Nate was his brother and was actually best friends with him for five whole weeks until they fought over a toy truck. Once in a while she'd turn up in a dream, but the details melted away as soon as he awoke.

It was Karen who brought that to an end. About the time of the four year reunion no one showed up for, weeks before she left home, she started wanting to talk about high school, talk about the last few years. She was troubled a little, but that might have been the inside mother talking. She worried that she hasn't cared enough about her children. Himself. Lily. Haley.

"You were never uncaring towards Haley. I never heard you be unkind to any of us. I don't know what you're talking about. You're just inventing things to feel bad about."

"Brooke. I haven't even talked to Brooke after you broke up with her."

Somehow, hearing her name pass his mother's lips shocked Lucas down to the ground in that moment. He stiffened all over, was on the verge of rapping out an order to be quiet about her.

And he couldn't grasp his own reasoning. Why shouldn't Karen talk about Brooke? Talk about anything she needed to talk about? So he could only focus on one misconception everyone seemed to have about him and Brooke and their demise.

"She broke up with me, mom," and Lucas was feeling insulted that he had to remind his mother of the fact, not really understanding where the feeling came from, or why.

"Whatever you choose to believe, honey."

And he didn't have any answer to his mother.

"I never even asked her if she were OK. I meant to, in my heart, but I never asked. I should have offered her to move in when she gave up her apartment for Haley. We were such good friends, she was like my daughter, and then we weren't anymore, and then she must have thought I hated her." His mom paused, pensive and gloomy. "She thought we all hated her, I guess. No wonder she left first chance she got."

"I didn't hate her. She knew that." Lucas said that with such conviction back then. Now, he isn't so sure. Not sure at all, after she left Tree Hill that second time, with a single voice message that wasn't even addressed to him (yet forwarded and listened to and overanalyzed until he was braindead).

But that day, Karen just looked startled. Then she said, "... I didn't know you were on speaking terms," and walked out of the room. And he spent hours trying to figure it out. Did he talk to Brooke after the break up? Did she talk to him? And he couldn't remember.

And he didn't have any similar talks with anybody when Brooke up and left Tree Hill weeks after his engagement, but he rewound those short weeks in his hard drive of a memory over and over again, and he can't recall a single conversation with her either.

Recently, Brooke appears in his dreams more. Now that he is celibate again and Peyton was forcefully exiled from his mind, some of those dreams are rather X-rated. He thinks about her, because somehow she is just who he pictures when he feels sexy, when he imagines himself having sex. He thought about Brooke, but not too often. Mostly because to the best of his knowledge she died, and besides his heart literally breaking every time he was forced to recognize that fact, fantasizing that way about someone who was dead is a little too morbid. Not that he can help his dreams and their content or rating.

Then some nights he remembers waking up gasping, in tears. He cried for hours, a deluge of weeping that seemed bottomless. Those nights, he understood, in a deep physical way that made it hard to draw breath, that Brooke was dead and Peyton was a liar and a cheater and not just with him, but to him. His body ached with missing them. Lucas suddenly didn't feel finished with Brooke anymore; he was far, far from finished. He thought Brooke died misunderstanding him, and there would never be a chance to put that right.

Now, he barely knows what to think any longer, and Brooke doesn't seem like the person he imagined all this time.

He never discussed this with his friends, not that he discusses much with them anymore, but these last few months when he turned down women who were interested in him, he gave this belated mourning of his as an excuse, not his still official marriage. He just gave the impression that there had been a fiancé or a soulmate whom he could not betray by moving on. It didn't hurt that this made him seem rather alluring even as he was saying no.

He doesn't know what to do now, what can come of the dinner with Brooke. They always were either lovers or they were wanting to be lovers or they were trying not to be lovers so that they can be friends, but any way you look at it, love is always looming in the picture like a shadow, like an undertow. Like rain.

…x…