THE OC FANFICTION: A LIFETIME OF AGONY
Info: Ryan/Marissa, one-shot, post season 3 finale "The Graduates"
Disclaimer: Own nothing- if I did, Marissa would be alive and happily together with Ryan and the OC would still be on tv.
Ryan couldn't process anything- he was in pain and the only thing he could focus on was the fact that Marissa had closed her eyes and wouldn't open them again. In the back of his mind, he knew she was gone, but he just couldn't accept that fact yet. So he stood, cradling Marissa in his arms and he began to walk. His head was spinning and he was tired but he just kept going. He had to get her to the hospital and he didn't have a phone to call with and this he knew, he couldn't just stay there, waiting for somebody to come by.
As Ryan picked her up and began to walk to the hospital, memories ambushed him, clouding his vision as he saw himself cradling her passed-out body to the poolhouse. Tucking her in. Rushing to her side in Tijuana when he finally found her. Trying to wake her. Carrying her to safety. It was always Marissa and Ryan, the damsel in distress and the knight in shining armor. He always found a way to save her. But this time he feared he was too late. He pushed foward and it was all he could do to keep going.
Finally Ryan walked into the emergency room. He was week, but he let out a loud "Help!" A couple doctors rushed over and he placed her gently on a stretcher. "Baby, you've gotta be okay. Please be okay, Riss." he whispered into her ear desperately before the doctors pushed him out of the way as they fluttered around her. "I need you to be okay." he whispered to nobody in particular. Another doctor was attempting to examine him, but Ryan struggled, wanting to stay with Marissa, but he was too weak to resist and allowed himself to be looked over. He watched the doctors around Marissa as long as he could, but they soon drew a curtain as they started charging the paddles to shock her heart and his doctor pulled him away into an exam room before giving him some pain medication and telling him that nothing was wrong with him, he was just bruised and would be sore from the crash. Ryan was allowed to go. Marissa, on the other hand, would never leave the hospital again.
When he gets the news, Ryan is numb. No horrible pain in his chest, no sudden burst of tears. He felt oddly apathetic and didn't understand. She had to live. She was supposed to live. She needed to go to Hawaii to get herself together so that she could come back home and they could live happily ever after.
He wandered out, disbelieving at the sight of Seth holding a crying Summer and Julie looking shocked as tears streamed down her face. He went nowhere, really, walking around town. Ryan went to the beach and walked over to the lifeguard stand, half-expecting to see her sitting there, waiting for him with that gorgeous smile. But she's not there. She's not anywhere he would look for her normally. And she never would be again.
That was when the numbness faded. The Chino in Ryan, the Atwood in Ryan, tried to fight it, but the loss of Marissa is overwhelming and he fell to his knees in the sand and cried. Ryan had the smallest ounce of hope that it was all a dream, that she would be there, waiting for him at their spot, and her absense made it so much more real than before. He finally realized that she was gone. And the pain was too much for him to handle.
"It's agony. Complete, excruciating agony. It's like your heart has been ripped out of your chest and stomped on and you can't breathe. You don't want to eat, you can't function. It's...It's the most intense pain that you'll ever feel and the worst part is that there's no way to relieve it. It's unyielding, merciless torture and you know..that it's yours for life."In the weeks after the accident, Ryan shut himself off from everybody. He stayed in the poolhouse, didn't join the family in the main house and waited until everybody had gone to bed to go get meager amounts food from the kitchen. He rarely had an appetite. Ryan blamed himself (of course he would, being Ryan) and he drank his way through his pain. He found comfort in Marissa's favorite brand of vodka (and whatever other alcohol he could get). He knew how disappointed the Cohens were with his chosen way of coping, but it hurt too much otherwise. He needed to dull the pain and alcohol did that for him. It could almost make him forget how beautiful she was. How incredible her smile was. How caring she was. Was, was, was. How he hated that he had to use the past tense to describe the love of his life. Almost, he noted. Because not even being drunk could get her face out of his mind.
And so Ryan distanced himself from the life he had known for the last four years. He packed a bag and grabbed a box and filled it with all his memories from his life with the Cohens that meant the most to him- his Harbor sweatshirt, pictures of him and Marissa, etc. When he finished, he hopped into the car that he had bought about two weeks after the accident but had hardly used, threw his junk in the back, and drove away without looking back. Because wherever he went, he would still be haunted by his memories. No matter how much time had passed, he would still fall asleep seeing her face and dreaming about holding her in his arms again. God, he already missed her so much that it was real, physical pain. His chest ached when he thought of what could have been and so, he drove away from the Cohens', hoping that the more he distanced himself from them, the less he'd have to acknowledge the one person who wasn't at the Newport parties anymore. So he headed into his life of agony, because it's the most intense pain (physical and emotional) he's ever felt (more than the drunk beatings from his father when he was a little boy, worse than being beaten up to a pulp every week by his mother's various boyfriends, more painful than seeing Kirsten become an alcoholic just like his mother had), and he knows that that pain is his for life, all because of that beautiful girl that had left him for the final time.