sixwordstories : do you want the truth or something beautiful?

[likedillinger]

Who: Dean and Brooke Davis (ihadmittenson )
What:  Dean says his final good-bye.  And takes his last opportunity to tell Brooke the truth.
When:  Wednesday.  Following 5x17, 99 Problems
Where:  Tree Hill, NC; Brooke's place
Note:  Banner made by secretlytodream 
Verse:  Brave New World

The familiar stretches of highway actually looked different to him this time.  It took him a couple states to figure out exactly why.  It wasn't the space between one goodbye and the next.

It was actually seven goodbyes.

There were the ones he couldn't actually say: everyone back in New York, and Cas, and above all these, Sam.  The only goodbye he could afford his brother was the sound of the car driving off.  It was better that way.  There'd have been a scene otherwise, and a fight, and that's not how he wanted Sam to remember their last moments together.  He'd rather it just be normal one minute, and over the next.  No chick flick scenes.  No explanations that he might not be able to put into words.  No guilt leveled on top of what was already there.

No having to look Sam in the eyes and admit what he was going to do.

There was the goodbye he'd said on Sunday, after spending a day tracking Lisa down.  It was a farewell to a dream that he'd held on to in the secret chambers of his heart: the picket fence. 

The family. 

As he cruised down the same expressways and routes he'd been traveling for as long as he could remember, he'd realized that was the third goodbye.   This was his home, or as close as it got.  The open road, and the highways and byways of the continental United States, that he knew like the back of his hand.  Like they were a well-worn paper route.  There was comfort in them: in the lines as they flashed by, in the rest stops that were all of one mold.  As he passed along them this time, an equally worn smile touched the edge of his lips, though there was no joy underlying it. 

The Impala purred along the roads towards his second to last destination, and his smile flickered out a bit thinking of that fourth goodbye.  There'd be no Paradise for his baby, after all.  He doubted Michael was going to decide he wanted a slick ride to take along.  Who knew where she'd end up.  His hand all but caressed the steering wheel as he tried to pretend that maybe she'd be waiting for him again in heaven.

The fifth goodbye was the easy one.  It was saying goodbye to the job, and he was almost sickened by how easy it was for him to do.  He might have given Sam a lot of shit for being able to talk about settling down and dropping the business after this was 'over' but in truth, he was more than ready to be done.  To let someone else take up the mantle.   Honestly, he was just plain tired. 

The sixth was where he was heading now.  He concentrated on that one, seeing as how he wasn't sure he was ready to face the seventh yet. 

The last goodbye would be to everything that made him him, after all.

The Impala pulled up in front of Brooke's and he set her in park and sat there for a moment, staring out the window and trying to decide whether this was really what he wanted to do.  But he knew it was.  He wasn't going to leave this world without giving her the truth.

He owed her that much.

And beyond that, even more important, really: he'd never have another chance to let her see the real him.  And he wanted her to know.  Know some of it, at least. 

He still couldn't put into words why, but he'd had lots of time to think about it on the drive.  To think about how Lisa and Ben had been a promise for something that might have been his, in an ideal world.  A link back to his past even.

Brooke, on the other hand, had been his anchor to reality for a couple months now - a link back to the real world, and even to a potential future in it. 

He should have known better, really, to even let himself entertain that idea. 

The door slammed behind him, and he stuck both hands in his pockets as he walked slowly up the pathway to the front door.  After a moment, he rapped on it three times.