A Blueprint of Something We Never Finished
by caramelo

Author's Note: Just an idea that wouldn't quit bugging me after the season finale. A little AU from the end of the episode (as in: cutting out Lucas's ridiculous proposal). B/L, of course. Please remember to review!

Lucas Scott remembers the first time he ever saw Peyton Sawyer, all skinny arms and a tangled mess of hair. It was the beginning of sixth grade, when the two local elementary schools converged into one large, imposing middle school where everything that never mattered before – money, popularity, girls – suddenly mattered in a big way.

She was sitting on the curb by the school, knees drawn up to her chest, waiting for a car that wouldn't come for another few hours at least. Lucas knew because he was across the street, waiting for his own mother's car to come rattling up after her shift ended at the café. Normally, he would've been holed up in the library, reading in a private alcove to pass the time, but the day was so pretty in the middle of a week that had been so miserable that he found himself drawn outside.

He could literally feel himself falling for her in those two hours where she was absorbed in her sketch pad and he was absorbed in her. It was the beginning of a long and painful crush that would span years, social circles, and other relationships on both parts. He couldn't help himself. There was something inherently beautiful about lonely, dark, apathetic Peyton Sawyer.

Who would have known back then when he first laid eyes on her that this is where that tortured crush would take him – right into a tortured love affair? It's still hard, he had told her, after she had just so recently confessed to him how much she wished she had accepted his marriage proposal four years ago, and that wasn't a lie. Seeing her would never stop being hard. He supposed he ought to have considered that this was how it would all turn out, really, back in middle school when he finally got the nerve to speak to Peyton a year later in seventh grade English.

"What's that you're drawing?" he whispered while the teacher's back was turned, spying her huddled over her sketch pad once again and sensing a prime opportunity to finally speak to the girl who had been seated next to him for six weeks now.

"Well, it's called a sketchbook," she snarled back. "So I suppose you could call it a sketch."

"Of what though?" Lucas persisted.

"Do I know you?" she demanded, not waiting for an answer. "Mind your own business."

He smiles, bitterly, at the memory. They had never been on the same page, not then, not now, and not even in-between, really. There had been a time, in high school, when they had been in love and the world was every shade of golden but it was short and fleeting and riddled with frustrating drama.

So, yes, seeing Peyton Sawyer is, had been, and always would be hard.

He reaches for his phone and dials a number he knows very well.

"I don't know what to do anymore," he says when the person on the other end picks up. "Can you meet me?"

Twenty minutes later, he's at the Rivercourt standing in the middle of the black asphalt, Peyton's words surrounding him: I will always love you, I will always love you, I will always love you. There was a time when this would have set his heart aflame, that damned comet reawakening his faith in love and art and music; now, it only makes him tired.

There's a shadow beyond the court, facing the river. She's here, already, and he wants to express his gratitude so badly but the words choke in his throat. It doesn't matter. She hears them anyway and turns to face him.

Lucas Scott remembers the first time he ever saw Brooke Davis.

It was sixth grade again, a short time after he had first seen Peyton. In fact, it had been Peyton he had been seeking out in the lunchroom that day, although once he had caught sight of that head full of golden curls, it was hard not to notice the brunette firecracker beside her, cherry-glossed lips gleaming and bubblegum cracking.

She was, in a word, vibrant.

He hadn't recognized it then, watching her as she confidently took her place at the table in the center of the cafeteria, right next to the blue tray of one Nathan Scott. "Hey cutie," she said, much more flirtatious and direct than any sixth grader should have the right to be. All eyes were riveted on her, calculating and judging, and she took it all in with a cool nonchalance and an easy smile. Nathan's lips curled, a slow smirk, as he began to answer back but Lucas's curiosity faded fast as he refocused his attentions on Peyton. He grinned to himself as he saw her scowling off to the side. She was above all that popularity and reputation stuff. She could see right through Nathan Scott.

How terrible hindsight was, he muses so many years later.

"Luke," Brooke says, and his reverie dissolves to see a much more adult Brooke Davis standing in front of him. Sparkly cherry lip gloss has long been replaced with a more muted shade of red and eyes that were once bright with youthful vibrancy are now bright with tears. He remembers suddenly how she had to give up Angie today and how she folded into his arms so easily, shaking and heartbroken, and feels guilty and selfish for pulling her back into all of his old problems.

"I shouldn't have called," he says, shaking his head.

"Luke," she says again and makes a grand sweeping gesture with her arm over all the I will always love yous, and she smiles. "I get it. You were there for me earlier today, now let me be here for you."

He meets her eyes and hopes she can feel the gratitude radiating off of him. He hopes it's enough to mask the confusion and the pain and the uncertainty that are rising up, trembling in his fingers and stopping up his throat and filling his eyes.

"Tell me something, Luke," she says, and he waits for her to specify but she doesn't.

"What?"

She shrugs, and the smile on her face grows gentler. "Anything. Let me in your world a little bit."

He remembers, once, a long time ago, he had brought her here to the Rivercourt for that exact purpose. But just being here isn't enough anymore, and he isn't that same boy who can define himself so effortlessly anymore. He hangs his head.

"Is it possible, do you think, to give up on loving somebody?" he finally says.

Silence is the only thing that meets him. Reluctantly, he looks up.

Brooke has gone very still and very white. The smile on her face, so kind and gentle and full of warmth, has gone slack. He wishes he could read into her blank expression and pull something out, but there's nothing to be found.

"Everyone said it was a mistake for me to marry Lindsey," he continues, when it's clear he's not going to get any kind of reaction, "but I never wavered, not once. I said I do, for godsake, but even then everybody still blames me not loving her enough for her leaving me. They all keep telling me I'm in love with Peyton." He smiles, and it's bitter. "Do you think I'm in love with Peyton, Brooke?"

Brooke swallows and forces herself to regain composure. The way she approaches the situation is all very diplomatic and professional, no doubt the result of years of training in dealing with the press. "I think that you and Peyton have a lot to work through, clearly," she says with a pointed glance down at the I will always love you underneath her feet, "and I think you and Lindsey have a lot to work through as well. You've definitely got some soul-searching ahead of you, Lucas Scott."

He considers her words. "Okay," he says slowly, "I'm going to ask you again if you think I'm in love with Peyton, but this time I'd like for you to cut out the PR bullshit and give me something real."

She sighs and shakes her head, and a ghost of a smile reappears on her face. She sounds wistful now when she speaks, and a little broken. "Honestly?" she says. "I think you and Peyton had something epic, and that's what haunted me all those years ago in high school when we were together. I don't think there's a person in this town who can deny that you and her were made for each other."

He opens his mouth, but she never gives him the chance to interrupt her.

"But like I said, that was years ago, and we're all different people now. We don't live in some fairytale romance book where nothing ever changes, and you marry the girl you dated back in high school." She pauses, then grins wickedly. "Well, except for Naley, of course."

He nods, thoughtfully, and toes at one of the I will always love yous beneath his own feet. It smudges a little, and he stops, frowning.

"Did you, Luke?" Brooke asks hesitantly after a long beat of silence. "Did you give up on loving somebody?"

Her eyes are wary when he looks up at her, as if she isn't really sure that she wants to know the answer. She has always been a sucker for fairytale romances.

"I can barely look at her," he says quietly. "Every time, all I see is Lindsey running down that aisle, leaving me because of her. I honest-to-God loved Lindsey, Brooke. I was ready to spend the rest of my life with her. And every time when Peyton gets involved, everything in my life turns into another what could have been."

"Luke…"

But she doesn't know what to say. He wonders how long it's been since bubbly, cheery Brooke Davis has been stricken dumb. He needs to hear something anyway, even if he has to force it out of her. Even if it's insincere.

"Yes?"

She shakes her head.

"Brooke, what?"

"I'm sorry," she says, and when she looks back up at him he sees tears in her eyes. "It's just...I know how much this hurts, remember? I'm one of those could-have-beens. I always thought I was doing the noble thing letting you go because you and Peyton were supposed to be worth it. I think that's what Lindsey's doing too."

"She said there's another guy," he says tonelessly. "How much do you really think she's hurting?"

Brooke doesn't look away this time. "There aren't words," she says, eyes hard, and not for the first time, Lucas regrets letting her go with a ferocity that nearly tears his heart to shreds.

He could tell her this, Lucas muses, but he won't. There isn't a time or a place for that, because the time and place for him and her has long passed, and there's nothing he can do about it. "I never wanted to hurt anybody," he says.

She takes another few steps forward and stops just short of him. He's not sure if she meant to reach up and run a few light fingers down the side of his face, or if it surprises her just as much as it does him. "But in the end, it all hurts just the same," she says, but her tone now is kind, as opposed to all those years ago where she spat that out at him hatefully.

"Brooke," he says roughly, reaching up and entwining her hand in his.

She puts her other hand on his chest, as if to hold him at bay. "I'll probably be run out of town with pitchforks for saying this, but…go find her, Luke. Go find, Lindsey."

"She's gone," he protests, but she shuts him up with a look.

"You know where she is," Brooke says, sounding as if she's scolding him. "I'd run back up to my fancy New York publishing office too. I'll bet you she's buried in her work right now, trying to forget about you."

"Do you think it's working?" he asks, his voice low and hoarse.

"Not as well as she'd like," Brooke says as a small smile touches her lips.

They stand there, very still and very quiet, and it almost feels like those rare moments back when they were dating, when the world would mercifully pause for an hour or two, and they were left alone - his favorite times.

She's the first one to break it, looking up at him with bright eyes. "Go, Luke. She's good for you."

He sighs, a low, reluctant hum, deep in his chest. "If I go," he says tightly, "if I go, I won't come back. I can't do that to her again."

"I understand," Brooke says, and she doesn't look surprised. "And Peyton will too, eventually. I'll be here for her."

"You have an incredible heart, Brooke Davis," Lucas says slowly, forcefully.

"Tell me something I don't know," she says with a light laugh and a smile that stops just short of meeting her eyes. Her expression turns more serious. "Be happy, Luke. That's all I ever really wanted, all those years ago. I still want that for you."

"You too, Brooke Davis," he says, pressing a kiss to her forehead. He feels her breath hitch against him and stays close, leaning down until they're touching forehead-to-forehead. "We could have really been something, couldn't we have?"

He sees the regret in his eyes mirrored in hers. "We both still had a lot of growing up to do," she says. "Things would have changed. Things did change."

"And yet we still ended up here."

"We did make a cute little faux family with Angie, for a little while," she admits.

"I thought so too."

"We would have had some pretty precious real kids too," she says with a smirk. "Brooke Jr. running around in little couture dresses and blue eyes."

"And Luke Jr. with hazel eyes and a killer jump-shot," Lucas counters.

"Luke Jr.?" Brooke says, making a face. "I always wanted him to have a cool name, like Armani."

"You cannot name our hypothetical children after clothing designers, Brooke."

She laughs, a short, barking sound that seems to hurtle her straight back into reality. Her eyes fill with tears again, and she steps back abruptly and looks away.

"Hey," he says, reaching out for her, trying to get her to look at him. "Brooke…"

She shrugs him away. When she meets his eyes again, it's of her own accord. "You have to send me pictures, okay?" she says, her voice breaking on the last word. "I want to see the new wedding dress and the tux – so help me, Luke, it better be an expensive one – and the little girl in pigtails and the little boy with the jump-shot. You have to promise me."

"I promise, Brooke," he says without hesitation, knowing he would've promised her the world if it would make her stop crying.

She nods and wipes the tears away in a brisk, methodical manner, careful not to smudge her mascara. "Good," she says, almost business-like. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life wondering how yours turned out."

And though there's no particular emotion behind those words, though she's erased all evidence of her tears, and she's standing in front of him calmly, as if she's just said the most obvious thing in the world, it's that moment that shatters his heart and before she can react, he takes that small step forward and envelops her in a bone-crushing embrace.

"I never deserved you," he whispers into her hair fiercely. "Don't settle for anyone even remotely like me."

And he can feel her head tilt up against his chest to rest in the crook of his neck, and if it was up to him, he could stay there forever, but after a few minutes he can feel her shifting and he knows that breathing is probably proving to be a difficult affair for her in his tightly wound arms, and he finally lets her go and steps back, before he does anything that both of them will regret.

She's never looked more beautiful, standing there in front of him in jeans and a simple white blouse, her wavy hair slightly unruly from where he must have mussed it up against his chest. He drinks the moment in, making sure to burn every detail to memory. There's a voice in his head whispering that this is the last chance he'll get, and as much as he doesn't want to, he believes it.

"I love you, pretty girl," he says.

"You and Lindsey will have a good life together, Luke," Brooke says, and she sounds sure. "It's not too late for her and you to be something special."

When she turns and walks away from him, Lucas knows he'll always remember this moment and her sacrifice and those words, probably the last words she'll ever say to him, just as clearly as he remembers the first words she ever said to him, long ago in the dark interior of his car.

"Did you feel it change?"

"Feel what change?"

"Everything. I mean, how many moments can you point to and say, 'That's when it all changed'? You just had one."