You're looking at Act One, Scene One, of a nightmare, one not restricted to witching hours or dark, rain swept nights. Twilight Zone

He was going to kill himself.

This wasn't the hysterical suicide of a slighted teenage girl, nor the lonely, hasty end of a cornered boy. It had been thought about, pondered, planned meticulously and put off until the last moment.

It had been five days since he'd run out of the Gates house. Five days was all it took for Pop to break him, drive him to this point. He was no longer disillusioned with his lot in life: Ben wasn't looking for him, he knew that now. Of all the things Pop had whispered to him in the dark of the night, it was that one that stuck with him, that fact he believed in.

Ben had Abby. He had Joy. He would look back on this point in his life and remember Riley as that boy he once knew. He wasn't Ben's son, no matter what the adoption papers said. In the end, Ben had chosen Joy – beautiful, perfect, unspoiled Joy – over him.

In the end, that was the hardest part.

Once he'd come to terms with the fact that Ben wasn't coming – it had been five days. Five days and he hadn't been found – it was surprisingly easy decide that death was better, kinder, easier than life.

"Why hast thou forsaken me?" Riley murmured, glancing uselessly at the door. It was still too early for Pop to be back – he didn't know where the man went during the day and he didn't care, as long as he wasn't around the house. But the sun was inching closer to the tops of the trees, and Pop would b e back, and the nightmare would stop again.

He had been left in the bedroom instead of the basement. Perhaps Pop meant this as some small kindness but that wasn't how Riley saw it. This room was dirty, in every sense of the word, and with the door locked Riley had nothing to do but stare and think these terrible thoughts.

He'd given up on tending to his wounds, which had begun to scatter themselves over his entire body as Pop re-took what had once been his. He couldn't feel anything beyond his lower back, which was one big bruise. Before it had throbbed in a dull, monotonous way. Riley suspected that it still hurt, but his brain no longer registered.

Five days, and the abuse was now normal.

It was frightening how simply Riley had slipped back into the role of the submissive son. He never thought of fighting back. Even if he'd been bigger – he had been fed regularly with the Gates and had still only managed to gain fifteen pounds in two years – he didn't think he could go against Pop. He would never be that brave.

Because committing suicide is so brave.

Riley wasn't waiting for Ben anymore, but being with the Gates had only strengthened his faith in God. He didn't fear death: he believed in a benevolent God, but even a forgiving God would be angry if Riley threw away his life easily.

So he thought about it. For five days he thought about it. He would kill himself in the morning, after Pop left. Logic said that killing himself now would save him from pain, but…

…he believed in God. He believed that Pop was the devil. Most of all, he wanted to believe in Ben. Logic didn't factor in matters of faith.

So he would give Ben until morning, until Pop left. He would give Ben a few more hours, but at the end of it all, Riley would kill himself, because there was nothing left here for him. Except the pain.

Riley winced when the door slammed and the wood of the shoddy cabin creaked under the uneven tread of a very drunk man. He had to bury his head in a pillow to keep from crying out: the abuse was always harsher when Pop was drunk, always had been. He would be more likely to use his fists or a belt or a hanger to keep Riley in place than if he were sober.

And this was no exception.

Just before the doorknob twisted and Pop came barreling in, Riley snaked his hand over to the bedside table, where he'd been keeping the knife he would use the next morning. He closed his fist over it, happy that it fit neatly, easily.

Because suddenly his plans had changed. Suddenly, he decided that if his world was going to Hell in a hand basket – with him right there in the thick of things – he might as well go down swinging.

***

"It's just a little way up here…no, past this street, and then you turn left. It'll get you up into the mountains." Tyler seemed happy to be back in his old neighborhood, had even waved to a couple of street toughs that Ben in a million years would never have pegged as friends as the gangly, bespectacled youth.

But Ben couldn't quite bring himself to tell Tyler to stop talking, please, for just one second, as he might have on a different occasion. They were finally getting near to Riley, and that was the most important thing.

And suddenly there was a hand on his arm, tentative and light as a feather. "Don't worry, Mr. Gates, I'm sure your son knows you're looking for him. We'll have him back in a jiffy." A flicker of something passed over the teen's face and he suddenly looked older, more menacing,, "And that…other guy. He'll be behind bars for a long time, I reckon."

"You reckon right." Sadusky grunted from the front of the car. "There's a three-way split, kid."

"Go right." Tyler said, barely glancing out the window, not even bothering to look at the map he held him in his hands. For some reason, Ben sensed that he didn't really want to know how this boy had gotten his knowledge of the various hidey-holes within the city from.

Ben would never get used to mountains like this, sprouting out of nowhere, climbing steeply and littered with trees and shrubs and the worst roads imaginable. He kept looking for a driveway, a hiking path, something that would point them in the right direction, something that would tell them where Riley was.

He wouldn't even let himself think about what he would do if, for some reason, Riley wasn't here, if all their intel up to this point had been wrong and they were chasing down a false lead. Would he be one of those parents that pop up on the tabloids every once in a while, on slow news days, begging for the return of their child that had been missing for a decade or more? Or, worse, would he forget about Riley a decade from now?

Ben didn't think he could ever forget about Riley. Just like the moment he'd found the treasure had been forever burned in his memory, so would the moment he knew that he would always be Riley's father, when he'd fished him out of that river and felt him come back to life in his arms.

With the treasure, he'd put in a lot of time (a lot of time) in tracing down false leads, researching dead ends. With Riley, he'd put in a lot of time (a lot of time) on the easy stuff, the stuff that was supposed to come naturally. It had been a slow progression from sir to Ben, it had taken almost six months for Riley to stop flinching whenever he heard a loud noise.

And, in both scenarios, the end product was worth all that time, all that energy, all that devotion. Because those were the two proudest moments of his life, surpassing even the amazing forces of Abigail and Joy. Finding the treasure had been his life's mission. Helping Riley was what made his life worth living.

When looked at it from that point of view, it was easy to see which one was more important, in the end.

"Cabin, straight ahead." Tyler made to jump out of the car before it had even stopped, but that's when Sadusky turned around.

"You aren't getting out of this car, kid. You call the local LEOs, make sure they get out here and have the man power to arrest someone who's probably going to be resisting arrest." Sadusky glanced at the cabin, a hundred yards away (he'd made sure to stop far enough away, so the sound of the car wouldn't tip off Pop, wouldn't make him do anything rash). "And see if they can bring a paramedic with them. We'll probably need one."

Tyler's lips pursed to a thin line and his grip on the cell phone was vise-like. "Don't come in until we're sure it's clear." Ben spelled out, because he recognized the expression on the teen, the head-strong, stubborn look he'd seen on Riley once or twice. He managed a smile, for the kid's sake. "And don't worry. This isn't the movies, no one's going down in a hail of bullets."

Ben and Sadusky ran up the path, Sadusky with a firm grip on his gun, Ben trying to get a firm grip on his emotions, because if he let himself loose on the monster, the way he'd wanted to every time Riley flinched away from him, the cops would be hauling Pop out in a body bag, and Riley didn't need to see that on top of everything else.

For a second, Ben wondered if they were going to burst in the door or go the quieter route, but when a scream broke through the air, a scream that was very obviously Riley's, the question was answered for them. The door was kicked down, Sadusky's weapon drawn up, and Ben was shouting before they even entered the room.

And…this is where irony shows its face for the first time, interceding alongside fate…as it turned out, Ben didn't have to worry about his emotions at all.

Because in the tiny room, Riley was standing over the still form of his father, bloody knife in hand.

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