A/N: Hi, I'm here with my first One Tree Hill fanfic. Lucas and Nathan centric with lots of angst and H/C thrown in. It's sort of an alternate take on what could happen when Lucas moves in with Dan. TW: Dark themes: Depression, emotional abuse, discussion of and non graphic depiction of self-harm in later chapters. I do not own One Tree Hill or anything recognizable characters or otherwise It belongs to the CW. The opening quote is courtesy of John Steinbeck, his words, not mine. Hope you enjoy.

Prologue

Nathan's POV

John Steinbeck wrote "It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone."

I never took much stock in the words of dead writers, but then I got the news that Lucas was moving in with our dad. It came so out of the blue that I thought he was kidding at first. Turns out he wasn't, and it turns out it would have more of a ripple effect than even I anticipated.

Hospital rooms are never friendly places. Pastel coloring and overly helpful staff aside, hospitals pretty much suck. I just never thought my dad would put someone here, I never thought my dad would put his son here. He's a bastard, yeah, but I figured asking someone to move in would mean that you wouldn't put them in the hospital.

I go in and he's awake, poking at some sad excuse for food. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. It actually started about a month ago.

Haley's POV

A month can change a lot of things, especially a month like the one we've had. I just never thought I would see my best friend in a hospital bed...again. After the car accident was bad enough, but this...this was so much worse, because we could have done something. We should have noticed sooner.

Lucas' POV

I can't say I feel much better. I'm safer than I've been in weeks, but in order to have that safety, I also need to have these machines. Everyone's trying to help, but they can't. That's the whole reason I moved in with Dan to begin with. Better my safety than theirs. Better me than them. The doctors will prescribe the medication and the secret I've been trying to keep for a month will be out in the open. One of many, but it's the only one that matters. It's the only reason I let Dan Scott in, and it's the one thing that's holding me together.

The first official chapter will go back a month, and the story will show how Lucas got to this point and the Tree Hill gang's efforts to help as they notice the changes in Lucas.