Fic: What Will Your Legacy Be (ten steps to growing up)

2038-01-19T03:14:07Z

Title: What Will Your Legacy Be (ten steps to growing up)
Author: monroeslittle
Genre: One Tree Hill (Peyton and Lucas; Sawyer's POV)
Rating: completely innocent
Summary: How Sawyer Scott grew up.

i.

Your parents start fighting worse than ever before. You come home from school to the sound of shouting, and a peek in the kitchen reveals the battle lines clearly drawn: your mother, tears streaking down her face, is waving her arms about wildly, and your father has a kind of furious fire in his eyes.

You hate it when they fight, because they fight so rarely that it always means something when they do. You wonder what they're fighting about now and if it'll affect you in any bad way.

You never thought so highly of your life; you hate the girls at school and you know your mother doesn't understand: she was never an outcast, however much she'd like to believe she was. You fight with your parents because they want you to follow your dreams but you don't have any dreams to follow, and you're tired of trying to find some — you'd rather watch TV.

But your life is your life and it's what you know, so when they announce that you're moving, that the whole family is moving, your head explodes. Is this what they were fighting about? It doesn't matter, because now they're fighting with you. You scream and cry and throw a book your dad wrote into a lamp, sending it crashing to the ground, but the temper tantrum doesn't do any good.

The school year comes to an end and the next thing you know, everything you own is in the moving van and you're on your way to Tree Hill, your parents' home town, your least favorite place in the world.

You hate the house they buy. It's too big, too white, too unlike everything you've ever known. You hate when Aunt Haley comes by with casserole and croons over how very much you look like your mother. You hate how happy Anna and Keith are to be in Tree Hill, and you hate how no one seems to care that you're so full of hate.

You lock yourself in your room, leave everything in boxes except for your ipod speakers, and as you lie on your bed blasting the music, you wonder why your life is so hard.

You've been in Tree Hill for nearly a month when your mother collapses in the kitchen, splattering spaghetti sauce and completely terrifying you. She's in the hospital when your father squats down in front of you in the hospital waiting room, his eyes wide. He tells you the truth, then, and you learn why your parents were fighting and why you've moved back to Tree HIll and why your mother collapsed and why your life was nothing close to hard before now.

Your mom's dying.

ii.

Anna and Keith were adopted. You were five at the time, and you didn't understand why your parents wanted more than you. For five years they had been your parents, yours and yours alone. You had been the center of their lives, the center of their day, the center of their hearts. How could they possibly want any more than you?

But they did, and you can still remember when they came home with two babies, Anna Elizabeth and her twin brother Keith Larry. You stared at them, not understanding your mother when she told you how wonderful it will be to be a big sister. You didn't see anything particularly brilliant about it, and the babies weren't so very cute: they were small and squishy and they cried too much.

When you suggested your parents take them back to wherever it is babies come from, they laughed and you pouted and they assured you that you'd always be their baby, but that the family had grown now, and you had to accept it.

You did, eventually, and years later you understood why it took them so long to have more children: your birth was a risk, and they were too scared to try again, so scared, in fact, that in the end they didn't try again; they adopted, and you suppose that they could have done worse. Keith and Anna are pretty okay, you think.

When you're sixteen and they're eleven and your mother is dying, you realize for the first time what your father had meant the day he told you what a responsibility it was to be a big sister. Because Keith and Anna don't understand why Mom is in the hospital; they don't understand why Dad is crying for the first time in memory. You don't want to understand, either, but you think you do: the world is an unfair place.

You can't explain that to them, so you take them to ice cream and play video games with them and they're so happy to be cool enough to play with you that for an hour or so a day they forget how the world is crumbling down around them and you think that's about as much as anyone can expect of you.

iii.

Tree Hill was always like a movie set to you. It was where you went on Christmas and Thanksgiving and sometimes during Spring Break. It was the picture perfect family vacation, and it contained picture perfect families that ought to be on postcards. When you arrive in Tree Hill at the start of summer, you see your extended family as you've always known them.

There's Aunt Brooke and Uncle Julian, always bickering and making out and bickering and making out like they can't decide whether they want to be an eighty-year-old couple or a seventeen-year-old one. They have two sons, both of whom look like models, and you hate them both, because they're so very much the epitome of jocks that you look at them and think of all the boys at school you despise.

Then there's Aunt Haley and Uncle Nathan, the ever-endearing example of a loving mom and dad, the perfect family with four children, two boys who have dark hair, boyish grins, and sharp basketball skills, and two girls who have light brown hair, sweet, innocent eyes and a love of all things school. You think maybe your cousins weren't born but rather manufactured, and you suspect that Aunt Haley has a secret lab in the back of her house that contains the chemicals she used to clone her husband and herself for her perfect little angels.

Of course, that summer is the first time you've spent any extended period of time in Tree Hill and therefore with your aunts and uncles and cousins. Tree Hill doesn't represent vacation anymore, and for the first time you see your relatives as less than perfect: Uncle Nathan fights with his son Bobby more often than any father and son you've ever known; Aunt Brooke desperately wants a daughter, and she looks at you and your mom like she wishes she could redo her life.

Nobody gets whatever they really want in life, you think, and it annoys you, because you realize that maybe it would be better to have gone on thinking of Tree Hill and the people within it as little dolls who knew no pain or suffering, and you hate that everything has changed. You hate that you see all the cracks and you hate that your mom is sick and you hate that you still can't stop hating everything.

iv.

Anna is a dancer who has a talent for writing music and singing it too, and Keith is a basketball champion true to the Scott family legacy. You've never understood how Anna and Keith could be so like your parents when they're adopted. But at eleven years old they are, and it just doesn't make any sense.

Because you're not adopted and you're nothing like your parents. You can't draw to save your life; music is only music to you. You have the grace of a club-footed duck and you can't even be a cheerleader, which isn't even a real sport to start with. The only connection you can see is your blonde hair and green eyes and penchant for reading books with a fury.

Apparently that's good enough for your mom, though, because for as long as you can remember, seeing you read has always made your mom smile. You would sit curled up on the couch while she ironed and you'd look up from Dickens to see her eyes warm as they watched you. You would lay on the grass in the front yard and as she passed to fetch the mail, you'd see the slight change in her expression, the slight upturn of her lips, and you'd wonder how seeing you read Pride and Prejudice could really mean all that much to her.

But it does for some reason; you think it must have to do with your father being an author, but you've never really thought of your love of reading as something that made you like him. Your mom evidently does, and when you visit her in the hospital and you walk in on the doctors telling her the options for women with brain cancer, you go straight home, pick up the first book you find, and go right back to the hospital.

You sit on the chair beside her bed, pull your legs under you, and you start to read, waiting. From the corner of your eye, you see her watching you. You see her slowly start to smile, the expression reaching her eyes for the first time since she became sick, and you feel proud of how simply you can make her happy.

You start spending every afternoon reading beside her bed. You don't talk with her, not really. You've never been able to talk with her for very long. What does a teenager talk about with her mother? That hasn't changed now that's she's sick. It's only gotten worse. But you don't need to talk. You sit there and you read and she smiles and you don't hate it.

v.

You always liked Jamie. He's the kind of cool cousin that's in movies. He's in college now, the star of the Duke basketball team, but he's home for the summer, and you can't help it: you ask him what it's like to live out the dreams his parents had dreamed for him.

He tells you that they might have dreamed it, sure, but he dreamed it, too, and that's what matters. He seems so wise, then, grinning at you like he knows and understands everything, and you know that you adore him the way everybody does.

Everybody does adore Jamie: his parents, your parents, even Aunt Brooke and Uncle Julian. You know that he was born when they were all young and in a way they all feel as if they had a part in raising him. You realize they probably look at him and see their youth and the beginning of parenthood and being grown-up and you wonder what it would be like to be Jamie and if he ever gets tired of being so important to so many people.

You resolve to be more like Jamie.

You start with Aunt Brooke; she's always tried to be close to you. She always wanted to talk to you on the phone when you were little, to play with you whenever you were in Tree Hill, to spoil you and make you think of her as your favorite aunt. She still hasn't given up, so when you stop by her store and ask if maybe she wants to hang out, she jumps at the chance.

She takes you out shopping but you hate shopping; you hate trying clothing on and standing around in stores. But it doesn't seem to bother her that you're bothered. She tells you that you're just like your mother and drags you back to the store to give you a make-over.

You look at yourself in the mirror when she's done. Your flat blonde hair has been curled, and the curls shorten it so that it barely passes your ears. You're wearing green eyeshadow; you've only ever worn brown, and not very often. She's put you in a sundress with large lilies on it and a light green cardigan, but you don't wear dresses; they pinch what little cleavage you have uncomfortably and you think them silly in general.

She fawns over how gorgeous you look, and when your dad stops by a few minutes later he says you look amazing, too, but all you can think about doing is getting out of the store, away from your crazy Aunt Brooke and into the t-shirts and jeans you so much prefer.

That night, you lie on the couch in sweatpants and a blue wife-beater, your hair in a messy ponytail and a bag of goldfish resting on your stomach as you watch television. When you notice your dad watching you and you turn to glare at him, he only smiles, and he tells you that he's glad to see you look like you again.

He calls you baby and kisses your forehead, the smell of his aftershave familiar.

You think maybe all the fighting you've been doing with your dad lately isn't worth it.

vi.

Your mom goes into surgery on a Thursday night. They're going to try and remove the tumor. It's a make or break situation, and you can taste the fear in your mouth like old cheese. Anna and Keith talk with your mom first and then leave the hospital with Aunt Haley and Uncle Nathan. Your dad talks to her next, and you talk to her last, five minutes before the surgery is scheduled.

The two of you are quiet at first, and you realize that she could die. She could die. You suddenly start to cry, because why didn't you realize this sooner? You knew it, of course, but you didn't really know it. You wouldn't let yourself know it. She reaches for you and wraps her arms around you and shushes you and you feel like you're a little kid again and you know that you shouldn't have stopped yourself from missing this so much as you grew older.

She whispers that she loves you and you repeat the words through your tears. The last thing she tells you is to take care of your dad, and the words echo in your head as they wheel her away, because she spoke them like they were words to live and die by. She spoke them like they were the words by which she had lived and would now die; she was telling you to take care of your dad because she wouldn't be around to take care of him any more.

You sob outright as she disappears down the hall, and its Aunt Brooke who wraps her arms around you, then, and she's sobbing, too, and you cry together, trembling and rocking in the worn hospital chairs. She doesn't tell you its going to be okay; she doesn't try and change the subject. She holds you and cries and she's there and she's warm and welcoming and you begin to comprehend for the first time why your mother was always so close with Brooke Davis.

The surgery goes well, the doctors tell your father. Most of the tumor was removed.

But when your mother wakes up four days later, she's not your mother anymore.

vii.

When you were eight, you broke your arm falling out of a tree.

Its such a cliche that you almost feel silly telling people. But you secretly love remembering that time, because your parents spoiled you rotten in the weeks in took you to recover. They bought whatever food you wanted at the grocery store. They let you watch TV all day long and eat ice cream out of the carton. Your mom drew pictures that you described to her and your father started to write a story that you had devised, and you felt like a queen with her two most adoring subjects.

When school starts up in Tree Hill, you're a celebrity. You're Lucas and Peyton Scott's child; you're Mrs. Scott's niece; you're the new girl that everybody knows about by the time homeroom ends. You try and ignore it and when your English teacher — and aunt — assigns an essay on a childhood memory, you focus on collecting your thoughts for that essay.

You decide to write about breaking your arm, and you sit on your bed and use your dad's laptop. He would let you if you asked, but you don't have to ask because he hasn't touched it in weeks; he's barely been home in weeks. As you're writing you start remembering more than falling out of that tree.

You remember going to the circus with your dad and sitting on his shoulders. You remember Parents' Day at your elementary school and how when all the mothers were asked to write a word describing their child on a card to post on the wall, your mom wrote mine. You remember when you found out that the boy you'd been in love with for all of sixth and seven grade was dating Stacy, the most beautiful red-head on Earth, and you'd cried until it hurt and your mother had stayed up all night watching movies like Pretty in Pink with you and talking about how stupid girls like Stacy were.

You remember how it hadn't only been those weeks after breaking your arm that your parents treated you like a queen. They've always treated you like a queen. And somehow, in becoming a teenager, you forgot how wonderful they were and are, you forgot that they didn't care if you weren't a cheerleader, if you had only a handful of friends and they were all as nerdy as you, if your only dream was to figure out a dream. You forgot how much you loved them.

You finish the essay and turn it in and ignore the stares of the Tree Hill high school students, because you've finally remembered.

You only hope its not too late.

viii.

Your mom is bald now; they shaved off all her hair for the surgery. She has a nasty scar on her bare head where they cut her open, and you can't look at it. She doesn't remember you; at least, you don't think she does. She doesn't talk. Her stare is vacant, and the doctors say her memory has been severely affected, as is often the case in these situations. You think it'd be more accurate to say she's simply brain dead.

They start her in on chemotherapy in hopes of fully destroying the cancerous cells that remain. Your dad decides it would be best if Anna and Keith don't see your mother too much; they can't handle it, he says. They end up going to live with Aunt Haley and Uncle Nathan, because your dad doesn't have the time for them anymore. He doesn't have the time for you, either, but you refuse to leave him.

You sit and read next to your mother, but she doesn't smile anymore. She doesn't seem to care at all that you're there. It becomes the worst part of your day, but you go every day after school anyway, because you can't think of anything else to do.

ix.

One night you leave the hospital particularly late and when you arrive home your dad isn't there. You know he's not at the hospital. He doesn't pick up his cell phone. You call Aunt Haley. He's not there either. Where else would he be? You call Aunt Brooke. She picks you up ten minutes later and the two of you begin searching for him.

You find him at a bar. You don't ask why Aunt Brooke knows to look for him there. He's past drunk when you find him, and you've never seen him like that. Your aunt Brooke takes over. She takes the beer out of his hand and splashes it in his face. She begins to lecture him, dragging him out of the bar. She looks so much like your mother at that moment that you feel your heart break in the same instant you realize why its easy for Jamie to let Aunt Brooke think the world of him.

You want Aunt Brooke to think the world of you, too.

The days drag by slowly, your mother stuck in limbo, your father slowly falling apart, and your own world a world you don't recognize. You want life to go back to the way it was before. You were so young and immature and unburdened then, and you want that back. You want to hate the world again, because right now you're not angry, you're just . . . lost. You're sad and scared and lost and this isn't something you've ever been before.

Your mom told you to look after your dad but you don't know how.

When you go to the hospital and find Uncle Nathan sitting and talking to your unresponsive mother, you don't know how to respond. You never thought Uncle Nate and your mom were all that close. You find yourself talking to him as you haven't talked to anyone in a long time. He's doesn't put the pressure on you that everybody else does; he's never tried hard to be close to you, and its kind of like the theory of how easy it is to talk to a stranger.

He listens and nods and he doesn't tell you about all the stories he found on the internet of people who gained back full functioning skills after having brain cancer like his wife does. First its Aunt Brooke and now its Uncle Nathan, and you wish you'd been raised in Tree Hill so you could have known how amazing these people are all along.

You wish it didn't take losing your mother to gain everyone else.

And you can't begin to decide who you'll go to live with when your father finally loses it altogether.

x.

Something is different. You sit in your mother's hospital room reading Joy in the Morning and something is off. You realize what it is: she's watching you. Her green eyes, the same eyes you see every day in the mirror, are staring at you. The daze that you've become accustomed to associating with her is gone.

"Hey Mom," you say. "Are you okay?"

She reaches for you, and her bony hand lies on your arm strangely. She stares down at her hand, and her fingers seem to flex, and suddenly they clamp around your arm and she looks back up at your face. She's so bony now. The doctors say she hasn't been eating well. Her grip is tight on your arm, and you repeat your question, scooting closer to her. She squeezes harder, and you feel like she's telling you something, but you don't know what.

Ten minutes later the doctors are checking her vitals, your Aunt Haley is hovering around firing off question after question, and your dad has arrived on the scene. He runs to her, literally shoving aside a nurse, and falls to his knees beside the bed. He murmurs her name, his countenance desperate. He looks different now, too; some of the desolateness is gone from his face, replaced by sudden hope.

Her hands cup his face, he begins to cry and she starts to make sounds, strange, groggy sounds that are thick as they slip from her dry throat. She never does say anything, not that day. Not for a long time after. But tears streak her face too, and as you watch your parents, you see that there's no such thing as a perfect life, as a perfect child, a perfect couple or a perfect family. The world is an unfair place and the wrong people suffer all too much.

But even if your life isn't perfect, you'll take what you can get. It's an okay life, and you've never been happier recognizing that everything is going to be perfectly okay.

A/N: One Tree Hill was on sale at Target when I was there to pick up new towels a few days ago, and I couldn't help myself: I added to my collection and bought season three (I am now the proud owner of seasons one, three, and four!) I've naturally been re-watching the season, and something about the friendship (squee! I love the scene in the gym when Dan attacks Luke and Peyton tries to stop him) that Lucas and Peyton develop in the third season inspired me to write this (although it was much more Sawyer focused than anything else -- my brain draws bridges in strange ways). I wrote it all in one sitting and all mistakes are mine; feel free to point them out so I can fix them! Hopefully this was enjoyed :) Review and let me know what you thought!

The title was inspired by the song War Sweater by Wakey!Wakey!, a song that I listened to over and over again while writing this. It's great! It was actually in the season six finale.

if i could name you in this song, would it make you smile and sing along?

Fic: What Will Your Legacy Be (ten steps to growing up)