Let's see whether we can't save those Scott brothers...

"Haley?"

Clutching her cell to her ear, Peyton walked straight up to where the other girl awkwardly leaned into the car's window, and lightly touched her shoulder. "Haley?" she said again and frowned in concern. She couldn't quite see past Haley and therefore didn't see much of Lucas either. She didn't even know if he was still alive until Haley finally turned around to face her and said,

"He lost consciousness, Peyton, I—I don't know what to do…I can't get him out! His left leg is somehow stuck in place underneath the steering wheel. We'd have to cut through the metal to get him out, I think. We can't do anything without help…"

Peyton saw tears fill Haley's eyes and felt her own face scrunch up in sympathy. "That's okay, Haley, the guy from the 911 says the ambulance should be here any minute now, okay?" she cajoled, never once lowering the cell phone that she was pressing to her ear with desperate force. She listened to everything Haley could tell her about the state Lucas was in and simultaneously gave the guy on the other end a full account of what she was told, adding her own two cents worth of information to Haley's survey.

"Oh god, Luke. Lucas," whined Haley, and yet she surprised Peyton with the amount of calm care she displayed toward the unconscious kid hanging from his seat. He looked so lifeless… Peyton nearly lost it when her brain suddenly seemed to focus on that single thought—Lucas, lifeless, on the verge of dying—and she was gladder than ever to have that soothing voice on the other end tell her exactly what to do: stay calm, make sure Lucas was not bleeding out anywhere, check that his airways were clear, and wait for the medics.

"I'm right here, Luke, you hear me?" whispered Haley, while the two girls were checking the limp body for any other, hidden injuries.

Peyton, who had climbed into the car to be able to reach Lucas' other side, felt a strange excitement when she ran her hands up and down Lucas' right leg, then up his torso, his right arm, his neck. She felt the light flutter of his weak pulse, felt the warmth emanating from his body, smelled a faint waft of his cologne, tinged with another, less appealing smell. Blood. But she didn't find any other wounds, and luckily, neither did Haley.

Haley's eyes met hers once their hands reached the crown of Lucas' head at the same time, and Peyton, always wary, backed away instantly and fumbled for the momentarily discarded phone again.

"Aside from his leg he seems to be okay," she recounted their findings and made her way out of the car, brushing off a few shards of glass as soon as she could stand again. "Yes, okay—okay," she said, barely listening to the strangers' repeated assurance that the ambulance was not far now, when suddenly she noticed traces of blood on her pants' legs. She was sure, though, that she hadn't cut herself going in and out of the car. And she was sure she had quite successfully avoided the place where Lucas' blood had pooled into an ominous sea of red, so how…

"Hold on," she said to the guy, already lowering her cell as she went up to face Lucas' best friend again. "Haley," she then said, as apprehension made her skin crawl uncomfortably. "Didn't you say something about Luke bringing Nathan home?"

The look Haley gave her, so full of shock and horror, was more telling, more frightening than any other one Peyton had ever seen directed at her.

Haley's hand flew up to cover her mouth in some gesture of desperation as she cried out Nathan's name and jumped to her feet, torn between remaining by Lucas' side and doing God knew what, Peyton didn't know.

"Oh God, Peyton. Nathan was in the car! How could I forget that? I was the one who asked Lucas to bring him home; it was I! Oh God, how could I forget—Lucas even told me Nathan has gone to get help, he TOLD me! Peyton—"

"Ssh," made Peyton at the other's outburst and pulled the near hysterical girl into a tight hug, trying to console both Haley and herself.

"Oh God, we gotta find him! What if he passes out? One of us should stay here with Lucas, wait for the ambulance, and the other…"

Peyton couldn't help tuning everything out right then. It reminded her so much of the helpless shock she always felt when thinking of her mom's accident, her death. And now two of her friends, one her ex-boyfriend and the other…, these two people were in such grave danger, and she couldn't do anything about it. This was not supposed to happen. It was not supposed to happen. It was not at all the cool night she had been looking forward to for ages. It was not a cool night at all. It hadn't even been that great of a party to begin with, what with her and Brooke having had this really stupid argument halfway through, resulting in Brooke's and her own rather early departure. They had been arguing about Lucas of all things, the same Lucas that was hanging in his seat now, not two feet from where she was standing, holding a girl she hardly knew. Lucas might die. They didn't know what had happened to Nathan. And Peyton didn't even dare think of what she and Haley had seen in that other car, which was positioned so close by that she could all too clearly see its dreaded outline over Haley's shoulder…

"Peyton?" Haley eventually whispered her name, sounding weirdly uncertain.

And then, they both turned as from nowhere headlights suddenly illumined the road in front of them.

-o0o-

"Oh shit! Shit shit shit!" Greg cursed as he saw what obstructed the road in front of them: the wreck of a car. No, worse still, two cars, one lying on its side and the other positioned as if merely parked there. If it weren't for its completely smashed front and side.

"What?" asked Brooke, trying to see something from her seat in the back, where she sat cradling Nathan's head in her lap. She didn't once stop exerting firm, yet careful pressure to the towel Paul had wrapped around her friend's injured arm, although Greg's apparent horror distracted Brooke a little.

Lucas…

She was scared for him, so scared. If Nathan was in such a bad state already, she didn't dare imagine what might have happened to the other Scott brother. What if he—No. Brooke wouldn't go there, she couldn't. And there she and Peyton had argued about who had more of a right to be with Lucas, they had argued about him like he were some kind of thing, no more than a few hours ago. Brooke felt sick at the mere thought. Could this crappy night really have gotten that much worse?

"There's another car." Paul pointed a finger into the darkness ahead of them, but Brooke couldn't see much back where she sat, and she didn't want to shift her position much, too worried was she about jostling Nathan unnecessarily. With a glance down into his troubled looking face she reassured herself that he was still with her, still hanging on. If only he were awake, though, and would tell her that he was alright. And that his brother was alright, too…

"Yeah, you're right. Not an ambulance or anything, though. Dang!" Greg punched the steering wheel hard in frustration. There they were trying to get the victim of a severe accident to a hospital, and what of all things did they drive into? The friggin' site where it all had happened, complete with added victims and whatever the hell else. Fantastic.

"What other car?" Brooked wanted to know now, too, dreadful apprehension nearly killing her.

"Must have gotten here not long ago. After the accident, anway," Paul mused while Greg was slowing down already, deciding whether the injured kid would be better off if they stopped here to wait for the ambulance, or if they just drove on after a short stop, assuring themselves that the others had been able to inform the cops and call an ambulance as well.

"Oh. My. God. Oh God," it escaped Brooke when finally she was able to take a glance at what the two guys had been talking about. This looked even worse than what she had imagined, and when the truth of that realization sank in, Brooke's heart sank alongside it. This couldn't mean anything good…

The road lay in darkness, except for the light coming from the truck's headlights. Everything looked strangely peaceful, the two cars in their somewhat staged positions, one on its side, the other vehicle a few feet off to its side. Two cars facing each other, their fronts smashed in, all windows cracked and broken. Brooke could make out millions of tiny shards, lying strewn on the ground, little greenish diamonds flickering as their headlights touched them briefly. A sea of fallen stars. And somewhere in their middle, so close and yet invisible, Brooke knew that Lucas was probably fighting for his life.

Lucas Scott.

And wasn't that Peyton's car?

"Oh God!" she cried out and tightened her hold onto Nathan just as Greg was hitting the breaks. As soon as he had parked his pickup truck, she gently lowered Nathan's head to the seat in order to be able to get out of the car and run toward her other friends.

Please say that Peyton isn't…

But no. Brooke exhaled slowly, one hand going up to her neck. There she stood, Peyton, best friend and confidante. There she was, still lightly holding onto tutor girl—Haley—and staring at Brooke out of eyes that were wide with shock and fear.

"Peyton?" Brooke called out to her then, her voice nothing but a low-key croak. Her friend simply stood there, staring on, thin shoulders shaking, until she managed one quiet "Brooke?"

"Peyton Sawyer. Are you okay? Are you alright?" Brooke asked urgently, and hugged the blonde closely. Brooke nearly didn't hear Peyton's quiet affirmation in the end. But what she said afterwards, Brooke did hear all too clearly.

"I'm okay. But, Brooke: Lucas is… the ambulance is on the way, but it's taking them forever. Haley and I have only just arrived here a few minutes ago, but… God, Lucas really needs a doctor, and—and—God this is so horrible—he was driving Nathan home, Brooke, and we found all this blood, but Nathan's not here, he's—we need to find him, Brooke!"

Peyton, tense and ramrod straight, stood facing her best friend, fisted Brooke's top, her fingers digging into Brooke's flesh uncomfortably, but both girls hardly seemed to notice it. The blonde's eyes, so wide and frightened, never once left the other's face.

"Sssh, Peyton. Peyton!—P. Sawyer, calm down. We found Nathan. He's okay, you hear? He's unconscious now but he'll be fine soon, I'm sure."

She wasn't aware of the look Haley gave her as she mentioned Nathan being okay and she didn't hear tutor girl's deep inhalation, or the following exhalation, streams of air that would otherwise have told her more than any words or actions could have done. But Brooke was only aware of some of the tension leaving her best friend and making her shiver ever stronger. She also noticed Haley letting go of Peyton's arm eventually and returning to the overturned car, saw the two guys she'd picked up at the party—or rather: who had picked up her—go with Haley, to check on the cars that had been in the accident. First, they went to the one closest to them, the one Brooke didn't dare look at, the one where the guys left Haley to wait. Then they went on to the other one, the one further off. Brooke saw their suddenly pale faces when they came back from that second car and knew she wouldn't want to know what they had seen. Nothing in the world could make her walk over to that car…

"Peyton, sweetie. How about you go over to Greg's truck now and check on Nathan while we wait for the cavalry to arrive, huh?" she suggested, ignoring her uneasy feeling and rather continuing to cajole Peyton. She knew what this must have been like for her, finding Lucas like that, when she was still—and always would remain—traumatized by the way her mother had died so violently. Poor Peyton…

Poor Lucas.

Lucas.

"Okay," Peyton agreed, sounding tired all of a sudden. Brooke smiled at her once again, needing all her strength for that expression, and as soon as the other one had gone over to the pickup truck, Brooke's face went blank as she tried to find the strength in her to go up to the car, go up there and see for herself how Lucas was doing.

She saw Haley standing there, bent at an awkward angle, leaning into the car. She saw Greg and his friend, whose name she couldn't recall, she saw them talk to Haley, and to someone on their cell phone.

And right when she took her first step forward, drawing in as much air as she could and still feeling like she was suffocating, right then she rather felt than heard or saw the ambulance arriving. A low rumble underneath her feet, low and distant, growing stronger, and she froze in place again.

They're here, Lucas. Just hang in there, you hear? Hang in there, Lucas Scott.