Just a little something that I thought of while babysitting. This story takes place immediately after the finale, and every chapter will end in a flashback to when Ryan was little. Just to let you know, I don't own the O.C., so don't sue. Pretty please. Enjoy.

Back to Hell: Ryan contemplates his choice to leave, and faces the consequences of leaving the Cohens.

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Ryan peered out of Theresa's car, willing himself not to cry. He was Ryan Atwood. Boys like him did not cry. Especially not in front of girls.

Especially not in front of girls like Theresa.

He had the strange feeling that she would laugh at him if he cried, but as he glanced into her brown eyes, he realized that she would never laugh at him. Not after all that they'd been through together.

Ryan knew the baby wasn't his. He could feel it in his gut and in the bottom of his heart. He could feel it in the little nook of his brain that reasoned mathematically and calculated the odds.

He wasn't stupid. That was the one thing he wasn't. They had had sex once in the past year, and even though they hadn't used protection, the chances were slim.

Eddie and her must have done it hundreds of times. Ryan snorted involuntarily. Ok, so maybe he was exaggerating, but they sure as hell must have done it more times than he and Theresa did.

That said, the fact that the baby probably wasn't his didn't mean anything to him. No matter what Marissa whispered to him when they were trying to sleep, it didn't matter.

Marissa said that he couldn't go with her. She said Theresa could go back to Eddie. She said Eddie wasn't a bad person. She said he must have been angry. He must have been drunk. Did Ryan care?

Hell no.

He had been prey to the end of a fist too many times to excuse any old bastard. When he was little, his mother used to tell him the same thing. His father wasn't a bad person. A.J. was just angry. Steve? Well Steve was drunk off his ass and thought that Ryan was a cop. An eight year old cop.

Ryan rolled his eyes. He'd heard it all. He'd said it all. After they'd hit him, and he went to bed, he'd cry as he whispered the words to himself through sobs. They didn't mean it. They were just angry. When they hurt him, it meant they loved him.

He clenched his fists. Eddie had hurt Theresa. And she had used the same excuses that he had. That had made him want to kill Eddie more than the fact that he punched her.

Theresa didn't know. She didn't know that those excuses weren't real. She hadn't crossed the little line of realization that he had. Those fists had no excuse. They were pure hatred, shoved out of the black heart of a man who had once been an innocent child and released through his hands.

Did Ryan love Theresa?

Probably not.

But did he love Marissa?

Probably not.

So he didn't love Theresa and he didn't love Marissa. Which one did he like more, then?

Theresa had betrayed him, but Theresa hadn't been his girlfriend, had she? And he was the one that left Chino without telling her. Then again, he couldn't tell her, because if he had told her, she would have talked him into staying with her. And he hadn't wanted to impose on Theresa's mother. She had had enough trouble as it was, taking care of her two children the way she did. Theresa ate three meals a day and never got hit. Her mother didn't have an abusive boyfriend.

Actually, Theresa's mother didn't have a boyfriend at all. After Theresa's father died, her mother never quite recovered.

Theresa took care of Ryan when he got severely beaten. Her mother had taken him to the hospital herself when Steve had accidentally broken his arm.

Theresa had found him on the ground two days after he had gotten his ass kicked and had called her mother on the payphone after she had dragged Ryan outside.

Theresa was tricking Ryan to have a man to protect her. Ryan wasn't a man, he was a boy, and he didn't need to take care of another girl. It was probably his fault that she had to trick him, though. It was always his fault.

Marissa had betrayed him as well, but for Oliver. She had chosen a boy she'd met in a psychiatrist's office over her own boyfriend, for Christs' sake. And she hadn't been that much better with Luke. Even though Luke cheated on her, she had offered to spend the night with Ryan voluntarily the night the model home burned down. Maybe things were different in Newport, but in Chino, that meant he would have gotten some action from her.

A lot of things were different in Newport than they were in Chino. For one, it was always sunny. It seemed to Ryan that Chino was in a perpetual state of gray. The sun didn't shine outside, and it didn't shine inside his heart. There were never people who really cared about him in Chino, besides Theresa and his brother.

Seth cared about him. Perhaps more than Trey did. What the hell was he talking about, Trey had gotten him sent to jail. Of course Seth cared about him more than Trey did. Sometimes Trey sent Ryan to pay off his drug dealers-- with only half the required money.

Then Trey would walk into Ryan's room and apologize, and say that he would never ask him for anything ever again. But it was always a lie. And an apology didn't do much good when it was a lie, did it? An apology didn't take away the scars and the bruises.

Seth didn't say a proper goodbye. That broke Ryan's heart more than Trey's lies did. He sat there, made of stone, not willing to shed a single tear for the boy Ryan thought he considered a brother. Seth sure had said it enough times.

Ryan sobbed silently out of Theresa's view as the truth dawned on him. He had never told Seth that he thought of him as a brother. He hadn't told him that some things were thicker than blood. That his love for him was one of those things. He had ripped Seth's heart and thrown it into the ocean without telling him the truth.

The ocean.

Seth thought he was so stealth. He had left the note addressed to "Mom and Dad" in plain view on his desk, and Ryan had seen his backpack looming in the background, right behind his bed.

Ryan hadn't said anything. He had no right to. If he was leaving, why shouldn't Seth? It was quite obvious that Seth was going to sail away into the sunset, as he once planned to do with Summer. God, he was so melodramatic sometimes.

Ryan liked that about him. He loved how Seth managed to make him feel better, even in the worst situations.

Then again, this was the worst situation, and Seth hadn't made him feel better.

Ryan had expected him to say a joke, a snark... anything. Anything that wouldn't make him feel like he was leaving a part of him in the Cohen house. I mean, a part of him would always belong there, but he was thinking more of a part of him that made him lose who he was. A part of him that would make him become one of those people that he hated so much.

Oh God.

What if he left the good him in Newport? What if the Ryan he was now was exactly what he was trying to run from? What if now he was going to be that horrible person who hit kids and drank alcohol he found in the dumpster?

No. No, he wasn't going to be like that. He wasn't going to be one of his mother's boyfriends. He wasn't going to let people hit Theresa's child like it were something of little, or even no value.

He remembered being so proud of his mother when she tried to stop her boyfriend's from hitting him. But that didn't happen very often.

What was he saying, Dawn didn't love him. Dawn loved herself. That was the only person she was able to care for.

Kirsten Cohen was a different story.

Ryan was sure that Kirsten would throw herself in front of a moving truck to save Seth's life. Hell, she would probably do that for him. Of course he would never let her, but it was nice to think that she might.

Kirsten had cried for him. She had shed tears for a boy she had known for a year. She hadn't cried that much, but it showed him that she cared. That and the fact that she made him a lunch. His own mother had kicked him out of her house with nothing more than his bike, a bruise, and those six words that always haunted his dreams.

"I want you outta my house..."

She hadn't bothered with a sandwich. Actually, Ryan didn't think she knew how to make sandwiches. Unless they were made with alcohol. A 7&7 sandwich. They could sell it at Subway!

Seth would say that if he were here.

The tears were back. There they were, acid in his eyes, begging to be released. And this time, they were going to fall, no matter how hard he fought them back. Luckily, he was distracted by his very own damsel in distress. Tears poured from her beautiful eyes.

"I'm so sorry..."

"Not your fault." he said, slightly bitter. Right now, he shouldn't be mad at her. At least her disturbance had made the tears disappear.

"No, it is. This baby probably isn't even yours. I mean, we only did it once... Me and Eddie, we had sex all the time--"

"Good to know." Ryan interrupted, not daring to meet her eyes.

"Ryan...Why did you come with me?"

Ryan chanced a look at her as he gave a small sigh.

"Because I needed to help you." he said, his blue eyes connecting with hers for a brief second before he pulled them away. She knew him too well. She would see the tears that still threatened to spill from him.

"I am not your responsibility." she stuttered, also fighting her tears.

She was tough. That was another thing he liked about her. She barely ever cried, but he knew this was a special occasion.

"I thought you wanted me here." he whispered, his tone much softer than before.

"I do...I do...I'm just...sorry." she said, her tears subsiding.

"I know."

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"Ryan! Ryan! Wanna come play with us?"

Ryan shrugged his shoulders and kept his eyes on the ground. His mom was angry at him, and had sent him outside so he'd leave her and dad alone.

"Please Ryan?" She blinked at him several times, trying to get her eyes to well up with tears.

Ryan looked up and saw her brown hair tied into a ponytail on her head. She was wearing denim overalls and her little pink high tops, and her eyes glistened in the sunlight. He immediately got up and dusted his pants off. He couldn't stand to see girls cry.

"Uh, what do you wanna play?" he asked shyly, as she moved his ungroomed hair to the side so she could see his eyes.

"Why don't we go to the park and decide there?" she said, grinning at him.

Ryan nodded and followed her sullenly as she skipped away, every once and a while beckoning him to hurry up.

They sat down on the grass in the park, surrounded by fragrant flowers and big trees.

"Let's play 'Damsel in Distress'" said Theresa, still smiling.

"Ok. How do you play?" asked Ryan, allowing himself a brief smile.

"I'll be the beautiful Lewis Lane, and you can be Superman." she said, waving her arms around dramatically and fluttering her eyelids.

Ryan wrinkled his nose at her.

"I don't like superheroes."

Theresa furrowed her brows and crossed her arms in front of her stomach. "And why not?"

Ryan shrugged. "I dunno...They wear those really tight pants and they have capes. I hate capes."

Theresa rolled her eyes. "Fine then. I'll be the maiden and you can be the white knight."

Ryan smiled.

"Ok. What do I have to do to be a white knight?" he asked, genuinely interested.

Theresa put her right hand on her heart and her left hand up, raising her chin up high. "First, you must get on one knee."

Ryan obeyed.

"Now, you must take a solemn oath. Repeat after me."

She cleared her throat at Ryan's nod.

"I, Ryan Atwood, do declare that I will follow the code of the white knights and protect maiden Theresa Nunez from any harm and help her whenever she asks for help from now until..." She paused, unsure of what to say. "Forever and ever." she finished.

"Forever and ever?" asked Ryan skeptically.

"Forever and ever."

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I will post more as soon as I get my computer fixed from that damn sasser worm. Please do review. I love reviews. They're my friends.