It Is Best to Keep It All Inside

AN: I'm surprised at how difficult it has been to write LP after what I consider to be the series finale aired. This post 6x17 story has been in the work for months but I just haven't had the inspiration or the desire to write. Hopefully that's passed, as I'm starting work on a completely ridiculous LP/end of the world fic that's been rolling around in my head for a very long time. Thanks for reading!

He tries to be ok with the fact that she is carrying a child that she might never meet, a baby that might take them both away from him. He tries to not let his heart sink with every pain, every grimace, every sharp intake of breath though her clenched teeth. He tries to believe in her words, in her belief that everything will be all right.

But his blind faith only lasts so long.

*

She won't tell anyone about what they've come to refer to as, her condition. She wants a normal pregnancy on the surface, bouncing baby names off Haley, and listening to Brooke's plans for how she's going to spoil the kid rotten.

He comes home one night to her talking on the phone with her dad. She paces the kitchen, the phone wedged into the crook of her neck, and an unconvincing smile playing on her face as she tells him that she and the baby are doing great. She spots him standing in the doorway, and hurries off the phone with her dad while he pulls a bottle of beer from the fridge and takes a seat at the kitchen table.

He doesn't look at her when she hangs up, and she doesn't say anything to him when she sits down at the table. He sips from his beer and she traces invisible patterns on the table with the tips of her fingers.

The quiet is unnerving, but sometimes it's all they can handle.

*

She keeps a book about pregnancy on her nightstand. At night while he mimes reading Bukowski, flipping the pages absentmindedly, unable to concentrate, she reads about what to expect with each coming trimester, sometimes reading aloud from certain passages, usually about how big the baby is now, and whether it's in the process of growing eyelashes or tiny little fingernails.

He stares at the words on the pages of his book, and listens to her talk, the fear in her voice masked by her unrelenting attempts at optimism. Some nights, he lays his hand on her stomach, feels the gentle shift of their child beneath his palm, and for a moment he can forget everything, and just be happy.

Most nights though, he wants to beg her to stop reading, because it just makes everything harder.

*

Doctor's visits become more frequent in her later months, and he holds her hand tight when they move the wand over her swollen stomach, picking up fuzzy images of their baby, ten perfect toes and ten perfect fingers.

He watches her trace her fingers across the monitor, brushing gently across the image of their baby's head, tears forming in her eyes. The doctor asks if they want to know the sex, and she shakes her head, telling him they want it to be a surprise. And then she catches the look in his eye, the one silently asking her if she's sure, banking on a surprise she might never get to see.

"I'll get my answer after this baby is born, and I get to hold him or her in my arms for the very first time."

"Ok," he says, and then he turns to face the doctor. "We don't want to know yet."

He stares at the frozen image on the monitor, a grainy silhouette of this tiny stranger he already loves and thinks of what a cruel joke this has become, that the life their love created might take her away from him, that he might lose them both, and he's never felt more helpless.

*

He wakes one night to her side of the bed empty and cold.

He shuffles through the house calling her name, eyes heavy with sleep. He checks the nursery but he doesn't step inside the room and hasn't since the day she promised him everything would be ok with a smile that never reached her eyes. The front door is cracked open, and when he slips out onto the porch he finds her sitting on the swing, her hand moving across the expanse of her belly, a whisper on her lips directed towards their baby.

He leans against the side of the house , his arms folded across his chest, and watches her unnoticed for awhile, until he shifts his weight and the wooden beams beneath his feet groan, exposing his presence.

She turns to him and smiles, her head tilted. "Come sit with me," she says, patting the empty spot next to her on the swing.

"You need to be in bed." When she doesn't move, he sighs and crosses the porch to sit next to her.

"The kid is really moving tonight. You have to feel this." She grabs his hand and presses it tightly onto her stomach, and he feels the soft kicks beneath his palm. It's the first time in weeks, maybe a month, that he's let himself touch her stomach to feel their baby. And then he remembers why he'd stopped, the things he would imagine, visions of a life without her, their child standing over her grave with drooping flowers in their hand, a tortured young girl full of anger, a carbon copy of who her mother used to be.

He pulls his hand away, and kisses her temple before telling her to come back to bed.

*

She wants to move up the wedding.

When she tells him, that sinking feeling in his stomach that has lingered for months returns with a vengeance. He knows why she wants to get married sooner, her excuse about how busy their lives will be once the baby comes doesn't hold much weight.

He wants to refuse, but the soft and gently pleading look in her eyes makes him relent. He just wants her to be happy.

They marry a week later, near the spot along the lake where they spoke for the first time. She promises to love him for the rest of her life, and he realizes those words mean something different now, that the rest of her life might not be as far away as other people who make that same promise. There is a lump in his throat that he can't swallow away, and tears that prick at the back of his eyes, but then the pad of her thumb is brushing across his cheek and the minister is pronouncing them man and wife, and she kisses away the doubt and the fear for just a moment.

They spend their wedding night stretched out across their bed, still dressed in their wedding garb, her wedding dress splayed across the sheets, making her look too much like an angel. His head is buzzing from endless glasses of champagne and the fact that this girl he has loved for a majority of his life is now his wife for always, however long that may be.

"What about Sawyer for a girl?" He asks suddenly, rolling onto his side and resting his hand on her stomach, the wedding ring on his finger looking like it had always belonged there, and too much champagne coursing through his veins, letting his mind drift to places it usually doesn't. "Boy or girl, it doesn't matter. I want our baby to have your name and mine."

"Sawyer Scottt," she whispers, a smile playing across her lips as soon as the words pass through them. "They do sound perfect next to each other."

He trails his hand from her stomach, over the soft skin of her bare arms and up to her cheek, his fingers tucking back a strand of loose curls before he buries his fingers in the mess of hair near her neck. "Promise me forever, Peyton."

A promise passes her lips, sure and soothing, and they fall asleep on top of the sheets, fingers entwined, normal for just one night.

*

Four weeks before her due date, he catches her praying.

It sounds strange coming from her, knowing what he does about her belief in God, or lack thereof, but her words and her audience are unmistakable. It's late at night when he hears her voice, her gentle pleas coming out in a choked whisper, asking for whoever may be listening to save her baby.

He lays in bed next to her, his back turned away, listening as she exposes her secret while thinking that he's asleep. She has doubts that she won't share with him, and he wonders if it should make him angry or just a hypocrite.

Then he hears her whisper, "Please God, if you could maybe save me too, save my family, save all of us. Please." And then just a little softer, "Please."

Her words eat at him, long after she's fallen back asleep, and he wonders if this could feel any worse.

And then he finds the box.

It's buried deep in the corner of their closet, covered by blankets and extra pillows, and when he pulls away the lid he feels his heart catch in his throat. It's their life in a box, all their great moments captured by her pen or a camera, sketches and photographs mixed with ticket stubs from movies and concerts they'd seen, letters he'd written her when she was in LA. She's telling a story to their child that she might not be able to share in person.

She's sitting in the kitchen, flipping through a magazine and picking at a sandwich when he drops the box onto the table. It lands with a heavy thud, rattling plates and glasses. "What is this?" he asks, turning away from the table to pace the kitchen.

There is a long pause, silence filling their small kitchen, before she slides the box from the table and into her lap, curling her fingers around the edges. "It's just something I made for the baby. It doesn't mean anything."

"Is that why you hid it in the back of the closet?"

"Luke," she starts.

"No," he says sharply, cutting her off. "Is this why you wanted to move up the wedding? Why you've been praying at night? Because you think you're not going to make it?"

"Luke, that box is for just in case."

"You're planning for a life that you won't be around to see." There is a lump in his throat, and the threat of tears in his eyes. "You told me everything was going to be ok, that we were going to dance at this kid's wedding. You promised me, Peyton. You promised."

"Can you please just sit down so we can talk about this, ok? Let's just talk." She reaches for his hand, but he steps back from her, his hands held up in the air.

"No, I can't do that right now. I just need some air, I need to get out of here."

He hears her call after him, yelling his name at his back while he walks away, and then the front door slams shut behind him.

It takes him almost an hour to walk across town and through the iron gate that surrounds the cemetery. He walks the sloping grass hills, briefly touching his fingers to his uncle's headstone before winding up where he'd intended, at the foot of Anna Sawyer's grave.

There are tears streaming down his face, silent and steady at first, before they become quiet sobs that wrack his shoulders and he's crying in a way that grown men aren't supposed to. He sinks to his knees, the moist earth soaking through his jeans, and he begs.

"Please don't take them from me," comes out in a choked and frantic whisper. "Please Anna, don't let them take my family. Don't let them take my family."

*

It's late by the time he makes it home. Their bedroom is dark, along with the rest of the house, but she isn't in bed. He finds her in the nursery, sitting in the plush nursery chair that Haley had given him, drifting in and out of a light sleep.

He crosses the room to hunch in front of her, balancing on the balls of his feet while he trails his fingers across her thighs until she stirs awake.

"Why aren't you in bed?"

"I was waiting for you, wanted to make sure you actually came home tonight."

"I'm sorry for walking out," he says, resting his chin on her knee. "I feel like a hypocrite, yelling at you for keeping your fears from me when I've been doing the same thing. I am just so scared Peyton. And I thought that after a while things would get easier, that this situation would get easier, but it hasn't. It's just gotten harder, and it keeps building and building and I don't know what to do anymore. I don't want to lose you, I don't want to lose this baby, and I am scared to death at the very real possibility of that happening."

"Honey, it's going to be ok." She whispers, rubbing her hand through his hair.

"Don't do that, ok? Don't promise things you have no control over. You might die Peyton. Does that even scare you?"

"Of course it scares me, Lucas. It scares the hell out of me to think that I might leave you and this family behind, that I might never get to hold my baby or watch her grow up, that the rest of my life might only be three weeks." Her voice starts to crack, and when he looks there are tears rimming her eyes. Her hands cup his face, forcing him to look at her, and he wipes away a stray tear that trails down her cheek. "But Lucas you have to understand that I can't dwell on that. The possibilty of me dying is stored somewhere in the back of my mind, and it is always reminding me of what could happen, and the only way I can make it through a day is to believe with all of my heart that we are going to make it through this. I have to believe that, ok? I have to believe that Lucas."

"Ok," he whispers, pressing his lips into the palm of her hand. "Ok."

"I need you though, Lucas. I can't have you pulling away from me anymore." He looks up at her, surprised that she's noticed, and she gives him a half-smile. "I know you better than anyone, Lucas Scott. I know how hard this has been for you, and how helpless you feel, and how much you're trying to hide all of that from me, but you don't have to. I don't think less of you for being afraid, but you can't pull away from me, and from us. I need you."

"I need you too. No more pulling away, I swear to you." He pulls in close to her, wrapping his arms around her and resting his head against her swollen belly. "If you believe that everything is going to be ok, then so do I."

She curls her upper body around his, running a free hand along his back. "We're gonna be ok," she whispers into his hair. "We're gonna be ok."

*

Two weeks later there is blood forming in a pool at her feet.

It is desperate and pleading the way she cries his name, and his heart sinks as he steps out into the hallway to find her braced against the wall, dark red streams of blood spiraling down her bare legs, too fast and too steady. She steps towards him, her arms stretched out, reaching for him, her bare feet forming sticky red footprints on the hardwood floor, and he tries to remember her promise of forever as she falls into his arms.

*

He paces the quiet hallway of the hospital, his shoes sticking to the freshly mopped linoleum, her blood staining his shirt and the spaces beneath his fingernails. Two hours have passed since she was pulled from his arms by a team of doctors and nurses, wheeled away on a gurney with frightening urgency through the double doors at the end of the hall.

It's another hour before a doctor comes through those doors, his expression unreadable even as he pulls the surgical mask from his face and makes his way towards Lucas.

"Is she ok? Are they ok?" He can barely hear his own voice over the now-frantic beating of his heart.

"There were some complications during surgery," the doctor says slowly, his words measured and cautious. "Your wife lost a lot of blood during the procedure, and it took us longer than expected to get it under control, but she pulled through, and she's going to be fine. Both your wife and your daughter are both going to be fine."

"My daughter?" He smiles wide, his heart now in his throat.

"You have a healthy baby girl. She's being taken down to the nursery right now and you'll be able to see her very shortly."

"And my wife?"

"She's headed to recovery, and she'll be out of it for a while, but once the nurses have her settled you can sit with her. It might take her some time to wake up, but she will wake up."

He thanks the doctor, shakes his hand, pulls him into a quick hug, his silent tears of relief staining the older man's shoulder, before sinking into an empty chair in the hallway. It's the first time he's sat in three hours, the first time he's breathed a sigh of relief in months, and he can't help but laugh, tears stinging his eyes, at the fact that the two of them finally got what they wanted the first time around, no heartbreak, no all too familiar tragic ending. Just absolute joy, and a healthy baby girl.

He looks upward and silently thanks Anna.

*

The first time he lays eyes on his daughter it's through the large glass window of the hospital's nursery. He watches her sleep, his palm pressed flat against the glass, the every day motion of her steady breath suddenly seeming extraordinary to him.

A nurse in soft pink scrubs hovers over the baby, taking her vitals and making notes in her chart. It's an excruciatingly long time before the nurse pokes her head out into the hallway and asks Lucas if he'd like to hold his daughter. He smiles wide and tells her that he would.

She fits perfectly into the curve of his arm, all glowing pink skin and pale blonde hair. She has her mother's lips, and much to his relief, her mother's nose. She's a Sawyer through and through, right down to the familiar curves of her tiny ear. He thinks that this might be the greatest tribute to Peyton's strength and courage throughout her pregnancy, that their daughter is a carbon copy of her mother. He stares down at his sleeping baby girl and he knows exactly what her name will be, what it always has been.

"Sawyer Scott," he whispers softly.

He spends the next hour holding her, rocking her softly under the dimmed lights of the nursery long after visiting hours have ended. Eventually she stirs awake, glancing slowly around the room, before her small eyes meet his.

"Hi Sawyer," he smiles, a soft laugh catching in his throat. "I'm your daddy."

He brushes the pad of his thumb across the soft skin of her cheek. He studies her tiny features, falling quickly in love with the tiny human being nestled so soundly in his arms.

"I love you so much Sawyer," he says softly. There is regret and shame that washes over him suddenly as he looks down at his daughter. He sighs, pulling her closer to him, and he whispers softly to her. "Do me a favor, ok? Don't hold it against me, the fear I had. The truth is that I've loved you since the moment your mama told me that you were going to come into our lives. I've loved you your whole life. I was just scared, of losing you, or losing your mom. But your mama, she always believed in you, and she loves you so much Sawyer. She's going to be so happy to see you when she wakes up, and she's going to wake up real soon. She promised me."

*

24 hours after she's born, Sawyer Scott comes home from the hospital. Lucas does it alone, unwilling to let anyone take Peyton's place in a moment he was always supposed to share with her.

The house is quiet without her ever present music playing down the hallway, and it makes her absence all the more glaring. He leans over to scoop Sawyer from her carseat, settling her gently into the crook of his elbow before crossing the living room towards the stereo. He flips through the box of discs Peyton keeps next to the stereo, her favorites, until he finds one he knows she'd love for this moment. Lucas settles onto the couch, Sawyer in his arms, Ray LaMontagne's Trouble playing softly behind them.

He smiles down at her, his hand ghosting over the crown of her head as she sleeps peacefully.

"Welcome home, Sawyer."

*

36 hours and she's still not back yet. The doctor reassures him, over and over again, that Peyton will wake up when her body is ready. He tells him to be patient, and to keep talking to her, that sometimes a familiar voice can help pull a person awake.

And so he sits at her bedside, his hand tucked into hers, and tells her about their baby girl.

"Our girl? She's beautiful, babe. She's beautiful and she's perfect and I love her more than I ever thought possible. I got to take her home yesterday. I spent the whole night sitting in the nursery just watching her sleep, which she doesn't do a whole lot of, by the way." He brushes his thumb across the soft skin of her knuckles, pressing his lips to the back of her hand, careful of the iv's taped to her skin. "So enjoy all this sleep you're getting, store it up, and when you're ready, you come back to us. We'll be right here, waiting for you."

*

It's hours later when she finally opens her eyes.

He's at her side once again, holding Sawyer in his arms, telling her from memory a story his own mother used to tell him. A rocking chair brought down from the nursery especially for the new father creaks and strains with his movements, the noise just loud enough that he almost misses the hushed whisper she forces from her lips. Almost.

"Peyton," he calls out, his smile wide as he rushes to stand near her, to run his fingers through her hair, to kiss her forehead, their daughter tucked soundly in his arms. "Oh, thank God."

Her eyelids are heavy, and he watches her struggle to keep them open. It isn't until her hand brushes across her now flat stomach that she's wide awake. "Luke, the baby?"

"She's right here," he smiles. He turns towards the bed, angling a sleeping Sawyer enough so that Peyton can lay eyes on her for the very first time. The soft cry that catches in Peyton's throat melts his heart.

She reaches for her, arms pale and tired but strong enough to hold her child. Lucas settles the baby into her arms, watches as Peyton kisses the crown of their little girl's forehead, and then she looks up at him, her eyes teeming with awe for the tiny being before her. She laughs, her eyes wide, and then reaches for him, tangling her fingers in the front of his shirt and pulling his lips down onto hers.

"She's beautiful," Peyton breathes, her fingers trailing over the slope of her tiny nose. "My sweet girl."

"Sawyer," he says. "Her name is Sawyer Elizabeth Scott, in honor of her mother, the bravest woman I have ever known."

"Thank you, Lucas." She grabs his hand and presses her lips to his palm.

"You never have to thank me. I should be thanking you for what you have you brought into my life, for all that you have given me. For this little girl, and for coming back to us. You came back to us."

She turns towards him then, gently kisses the corner of his mouth, and feels his smile form beneath her lips. "I promised you forever," is all she says, her hand trailing across his cheek.