A/N: Just to remind the people who haven't read the A/N-chapter before this one to do it. It will make some things clear for in the future. Much love ...

Thnks Fr Th Mmrs

Looking outside, watching the people wandering over a Chicago street, that was the way Peyton Sawyer was spending her morning, feeling the strays of a massive headache linger on her mind.

The morning had greeted along with a huge headache as punishment of her drinking in abundance last night. After a light breakfast and a much needed aspirin, Peyton decided that the best thing she probably could use now was some peace around her.

While her headache faded away to just light straws of annoyance, something else took in the unoccupied place. Very slowly but with much more impact than expected, last night came rushing back. Her and Lucas, the two of them together, the fun they had, their friendship … their love.

Love Peyton couldn't explain. And she also couldn't deny there wasn't any between them, their past had left too many reminders, what they had once shared would hang around in their souls for longer than even forever. It was something they couldn't erase.

But that never changing fact couldn't help her from struggling over what she had felt last night. This realisation, she didn't even know if she could call it that. It was like this sudden lightening or as a first raindrop of the first summer rain. All so unexpected but by nature so needed, so welcomed.

Watching people make their way over a Chicago street, alone or joined by others. Nameless and characterless, faces without any real emotions, like little puppets. That's how they entered Peyton's mind and most of them left the same way. Most of them, but not all of them.

While time moved the hands of the clocks all over the world, in every single place. Peyton studied the puppet like humans like actors, on the way they moved underneath her. The way they walked, the way they seemed to talk to each other, the way their being moved over this earth. From where she was, the ability to see there face only barely existed. The only way she could observe to learn from them was from reading their body language.

The surroundings around her seemed to blur, end up in the hodgepodge of her mind. There was no room around her anymore, nothing but just her, the window and the people outside.

There was no place for anything else than the ones named before. Only those, and the most important, her thoughts.

People went and go, they dived into her vision and dived out again, most of them not even getting a place in her mind to be remember for long. Quiet some time went by with people just walking in and out of her life, in her mind she couldn't describe it in any other way.

And all of a sudden, someone on the street caught her real attention, dragged her out of her trance, and made her mind go into overdrive in just seconds.

A curly blonde with long hair dressed in a 'tough' but girlish way. A tale dark-haired boy walking beside her, she was talking to him but he wasn't paying any attention to her. His attention wandered off to the cute and hot girls passing them by. A sudden punch of her arm into his chest. Even from metres above Peyton could see the girl's body tense up, ready for attack.

Unheard shouts escaped, ugly words he was the cause of flew around. Anger in its, maybe calmer forms while the furious attack of her words went on, steam coming off. But the boy didn't seem to be affected by her at all, only highly annoyed. The girl stiffened in awareness of what she did had no effect on him and she turned around, ready to leave him on the spot he stood. Not only four steps she had made on the grey concrete beneath her feet when she suddenly swung into the directions again where she had came from.

A forceful grip on her arm, face to face with the loved enemy, a threat of truth out of his mouth. And suddenly her defence broke, regret signed her face. Also the boy's features fell into the same emotion. Their hands found each other, entangled into one. They walked out of Peyton's view, relieved but not anywhere near happy.

And Peyton couldn't help but see Nathan's imagine appear in her head. This scene that had just taken place before her eyes, it could only remind her of her and Nathan. Of the way how their whole relationship had been. A constant fight and fear. Their relationship had been one big struggle. Her blind need to have someone beside her, even if that someone didn't treat her right. She just wanted him there, even he used her just for the sex and his precious reputation. And she had become Nathan in some way, a person who did not care too much about the others. Tough outside, broken inside. Definitely broken inside.

Looking back at what they had, the only thing she remembered what stood in the category 'good' was what their relationship was mostly based on. Sex. Nathan had been her first. She had given him her virginity, something that was a big deal for most girls, or at least for her. He had been the one who let her discover her body, had taught her what she liked, also what boys liked. With him she had taken the first steps in the love experience area, she couldn't just erase it. Those were important steps she had made while holding his hand. But they were so much better of with just being friends. Lovers hadn't been the best position for them at the time, they were too young, too selfish and too confused to understand that love is more than what they had. But who could blame them, they hadn't really grow up in circumstances where they had gotten the right imagine of love and they weren't really taught how they do it correctly.

Yes, friends and best friends where the best positions for them. They loved each other now on a different level, the level that was meant to be for them. Best friends love, now they had everything in their friendship what their relationship had allowed.

Peyton broke out of her thoughts when she saw other curly blonde walk gracefully over the street, also joined by a tall dark-haired boy. Only difference, a little girl walked in between them. The little child's hands holding the one of both adults for dear life. Her imagine looked happy, the one of the boy blissful, the one of the child like she didn't know any better. But something in the curly blonde's imagine didn't seem to be convinced of what she had. Her eyes kept roaming around the place, looking for something, someone. Looking for a way out it seemed. Memories of her and Jake sprung back into her mind. Jake, he had been her everything for a little while. He was good and sweet and loving. Jake's person was everything she needed, but the problems he dragged along with him were the fatal death of their young relationship. Jenny, she loved that little girl and she hated Nicki for all what she did to Jake and their daughter. But fate had Jenny made the problem why they couldn't work it out, Jenny's being and Nicki's selfish behaviour.

Their love had been genuine as far as you could call it that. They had shared something special, but not special enough to survive in this cruel world. And once she was passed all the hurt and sadness, she realised that maybe he had been a sort of Nathan for her. A substitute for the real thing, she had loved in him and Jake her in their own way, they had thought of each other as true love while they weren't and they both knew that deep down. But they rather made themselves blind then, because they wanted something real and lasting too much by the time.

A tear rolled down her cheek, dripped from her chin and she blinked with her eyes. And in just a second an extravagant couple, a blonde and a black-haired guy stood underneath the window. They looked heavenly happy, deeply in love. The guy kissed her and they looked like they lived in their own universe. But a sudden tap on the boy's shoulder dragged them out of it. A conversation started up between the black-haired boy and the stranger who wanted his attention. And the blonde was put into the background, alone, not getting any attention, she was forgotten.

Her and Pete.

Their relationship and marriage had been the best she had experienced yet. They had been in love and happy, inside in their world their lives had been perfect and nothing more she and he wanted. But in the outside world, their relationship had been nothing. It was just about Pete and what he did, she had just been there, just something he had, something extra but not needed. Just an enrichment of his success.

Peyton could live with it, she wasn't bothered by it, and consciously she had been blind for it, made herself blind and disregarded herself for him because she knew no better actually. Because if she would fight it, she would lose him and that would be the biggest disaster in her world. A life without him was no life to return to, because there was no life without him, she had giving everything up for him. Beyond the happiness she stayed with him out of fear of falling into a deep cliff of loneliness.

Out of the blue the street demanded her attention again. A blonde came running over the sidewalk. And Peyton felt her green eyes drawn to her. In the seconds the blonde made hurried steps, Peyton saw the last months pass at full speed before her eyes. Her realising slowly that there was a life beside this one, if she only wanted to try. Wanted to be herself again. To same old her that she was back in Tree Hill. The Peyton Sawyer with all the drama, all the hurt, all the sadness but with all the friends and people who loved her. The one with memories of good and bad times. The girl with everything and everyone in the way she knew, even it wasn't how she wanted things or them to be.

Just the Peyton she gave up when she felt Tree Hill more than two years ago. If she only wanted to be that Peyton again, that Peyton Elizabeth Sawyer that everyone in Tree Hill remember. If she only wanted that and made herself able to be her again … there would be a life for her. A life full of happiness and laughter, sadness and pain, but a life she would love, her own life.

The blonde underneath her on the street was stopped running by a blond boy who lifted her up in his strong arms. The boy twirled her around, made their universe spin. Kisses and caresses all over her shining face, a never-ending glow that arose with the help from the boy who hold her so close to himself. The boy putted her down and their eyes met just a moment before their lips. Love burst from them, made the world a better place. Their kiss was a promise of a life for forever. A life with each other, a life to open your eyes for and realise there isn't another life as blissful as the live where you are yourself without any withholding.

A spark of the blonds who were strangers for Peyton reached her. That loved ember buried itself into her, in her fast beating heart and the explosion of memories that overtook Peyton was of no account.

Flashes of blond, emerald green and crystal blue, of love, angst and friendship.

Flashes of the real Peyton Elizabeth Sawyer who loved Lucas Eugene Scott.