A/N: I, like I have said, know just about zilch about trials. So I decided the way I do it is how it's done in the O.C. Too bad if I'm wrong, oh well. If you don't like it, tough. If there is like a huge mistake, let me know and I'll go back and fix it to the best of my ability. I'm probably going to do the whole trial next chapter (which means next chapter's going to be a long one), so look out for that. I'm probably going to do the rest of my disclaimers at the end of the chapters, just so when I say I own , it doesn't spoil anything. Also, as always, I encourage you: Review, s'il vous plait! I love hearing that people like what I wrote (or that they took the time to tell me that they don't like it) and it gives me such much incentive to update quicker.
Marissa, Ryan, and Seth all sat down to a nice meal of egg rolls and chow mein that night. Everyone avoided talking about recent events, and since they had to carefully watch their words, Seth decided to blather on about some new video game that Death Cab for Cutie had done the soundtrack for, which, apparently was his lifelong dream.
"And so when you get to Level Six, and get the golden sword, they composed this like, special song, just for the game, and it plays out with this like, long guitar solo-"
Marissa and Ryan sighed in relief as the phone rang. Seth didn't seem to notice ("and then when you get to Level Nine, whoa man, it is just amazing how they incorporate the background to match the music").
Marissa jumped up. "I'll get it!"
"No, let me." Ryan insisted.
"I've got it," she said, grabbing the phone.
He snatched it. "Hello?"
She gave him the Evil Eye.
"Yeah, sure, hang on." Ryan's face fell. "Sandy wants to talk to you, Riss."
She gleefully took the handset. "Hello!"
"Ryan, my man," Seth gestured to Ryan's seat. "Take some more rice, cause, dude, I have got to tell you about the secret level."
"Hey, Marissa. Listen, I know you don't want to hear this, but I've got your trial date. I pulled some strings… okay many, many, strings and found an opening. It's really really soon, though." Sandy informed her.
"How soon could it be?" she asked, doodling on a pad of paper. "If it's really soons in a couple months, right?"
"I didn't say really soon: I said really, really soon. Which mean, we're heading to court in four days."
Marissa dropped the phone.
"Is everything alright?" Ryan asked, eager to interrupt Seth's ramblings.
"Yeah, yeah, everything's fine," she said shakily, a jittering hand picking up the receiver. "Did you say four days? Is that even possible?"
"Yeah. Which means that for the next three days, we will be spending every spare second working on your defense. They have you for manslaughter, which is good, because if you are convicted, then it's a much less severe sentence. We're planning on using the 'defense of others' plea, which means that if Ryan testifies, which he most likely will have to, he will have to tweak the truth a tad. He's got to make it sound like Trey attacked him and that he hit back in self-defense. The only way that we are going to get away with that is because Trey cannot testify against what Ryan says. "
Marissa tried to pay attention to Sandy, but if sounded like a bunch of legal gibberish.
"So, anyways, tomorrow morning, meet me around eight-ish in my office. We'll go over everything."
She swallowed hard. "Okay."
"I know that this is going to be hard for you. You're going to have to relive that night many, many times. So toughen up now, because, and I don't mean this to sound cruel, it's only going to get worse. Tell the others I'll be home around midnight."
"Bye," she said, dazed, and clicked the OFF button.
"What was that about?" Ryan asked, once again hurriedly cutting short Seth's nonsense about the game
"Sandy got my trial date." Marissa said, shifting her weight uncomfortably from foot to foot.
"Oh. When is it?" Seth wanted to know.
"Wednesday."
"Wednesday… which one?"
"The eighth."
"Of… September? October?"
"June."
"Wow, you have to wait a whole year?
"This June."
Seth blinked. "Whoa."
"Yeah," Marissa said, staring intently at her feet.
"Did he say anything about who's testifying?" Ryan asked
"He specifically mentioned me and you, but I think they could call up Seth and Summer."
"Really. Summer and Seth. How much you bet Seth freaks out on the witness stand?"
"Okay, let's keep talking about me like I'm not here, fine with me." Seth announced loudly.
"Sorry." Marissa apologized. "Sandy said to tell you guys that he'll be home at midnight. I'm going to go to my room, I'm sort of tired. See you guys later." She left the room at a quick pace. She had to go think.
She entered her room, and sat on her bed. She was feeling pretty shitty right about now. She hated going into her self-pity mode: it didn't get her anywhere. She was very tempted to go pull out the liquor; after all it was a pretty good solution. When she was drunk she didn't have to deal with her numerous problems. She could just stand back and let the alcohol control her. She stood up, and reached up to the highest shelf in the closet, and pulled down a bottle of it. She popped open the li, and was about to take a swig, when she remembered: the baby. She had no problem with hurting herself, but she could never live with herself if she got drunk now and the baby ended up brain-damaged, or crippled, or dead. She reluctantly went into the bathroom and poured it all down the toilet. She watched the last of the liquor flush down the toilet, and then pitched the empty bottle as far as she could out of the bathroom window. She walked back to her room as soon as she heard it crash outside.
She was all alone in her bedroom .She sat on her bed and hugged her knees, slowly rocking back and forth. She hadn't really thought about the prospect of losing her case, but it was there. What was to happen if she had to spend the next thirty years in jail? She shuddered. It was not something that she wanted to dwell upon, so she didn't. She lay down, and relaxed, slowly falling asleep, dreaming of a future where she wasn't in jail, wasn't a murderer, but was happy. She had a family. Maybe after this one she and Ryan would have some more kids, and get married. She had never seen herself living the white picket fence kind of lifestyle, but she envisioned it, and compared to her life now, it didn't seem so bad.
Ryan was in the middle of a half-hearted game on the Xbox, and was losing terribly, when the phone rang once again.
"I'll get it," he offered, leaving the controller down.
"What about our game?" Seth asked.
"I'm not really up to it, now," he replied, and answered the phone.
"Hello? Yeah, hang on a minute." Ryan went to go find Marissa. He pushed open her door. "Marissa, Summ-" he began, but found her lying on her bed, fast asleep.
"Sorry, Summer," he said, heading back to the kitchen, where Seth was now eating a cookie. "Marissa's asleep."
Seth looked up. "Summer's on the phone?"
Ryan nodded.
"Let me talk to her."
"Seth wants to talk to you."
He listened for a minute, wrote something down, and turned back to his brother. "I'm supposed to tell you that Summer says:" he glanced down at what he had written. "Oh, so now you want to talk? Well, then why didn't you call me two days ago, it's not like you do anything except sit on your ass and play video games." He recited.
Seth picked up the phone. "I love you, baby," he said sincerely to Summer.
"Aw, Cohen, that's so sweet." Summer was charmed.
Ryan rolled his eyes and hung up as the couple continued their mushy love talk. He was tired, too, so he took a page from Marissa's book and went back to the pool house to fall asleep.
A half-hour later, Seth hung up with Summer and glanced at the clock. It was only nine. Why was everyone so sleepy? He had had a few too many Pixy Stix at lunch today, and his energy was boundless. He decided to go play a one-player video game for a few minutes.
A few minutes turned into a few hours, and at midnight, when Sandy opened the front door, the first thing he heard was, "Yes. Yes. All right. Here we go. Come on, come on… YES! LEVEL FOUR!"
He walked in on Seth dancing madly around the family room, singing a made up victory song that sounded like "Alright Seth, I rock, oh yeah," to the tune of "We Are The Champions."
"I'm not even gonna ask," Sandy shook his head. "Go to bed, Seth."
"All I ask is for forty-five more minutes so I can eat the ninja-scorpions and get to Level Five," his son pleaded.
"Nope," he said, flipping of the game console. "Bed."
Seth stared at his father in horror. "Oh, my God. Dad, how did you do that? I hadn't saved my game since Level Two! It took me two hours to do that!" He stormed off in a rag towards his room, fuming under his breath.
Sandy went into the kitchen and unpacked his briefcase, taking out all his files on Marissa's case, and laying them out. They overlapped each other, filling the whole table.
He sighed, and got to work. This could possibly be his hardest case ever. The jury had no evidence against what they were going to say, and that would make them very suspicious, especially since most people the defense would be calling up to the stand were Marissa's closest friends. This case was going to be hard on everyone. It was gonna be long days and nights filled with legal crap for the next three weeks. He sighed once more, and began to work on what he would say to convince the jury (and himself) that Marissa Cooper was an innocent person.
He knew she had killed out of love for Ryan, not for hate for Trey: she wasn't guilty of that charge. But ever since he had discovered that she was pregnant, he was… what was it… He wasn't angry with her, he was… disappointed. He would have thought that being charged with manslaughter would have sobered her up (literally and figuratively), not made her get more wild and get pregnant. The only reason he had pushed so very hard for an early trial dat was so the judge and jury wouldn't find out about her condition.
He had spoken to Kirsten today. It was incredibly difficult, trying to explain the events of the last few days to her, and when he had finished, there was a long silence on her end.
Finally, after about five minutes of saying nothing, she had told him that she was going to come home. This was a family emergency, and she needed to be home.
But he had insisted that she stay. After arguing with her for forty minutes, he told her that she could come to the trials, as long as as soon as the day's hearing as over, she returned directly to the facility. She reluctantly agreed, and he got on the phone with her supervisor to inform him of the situation. At first, the director had objected, but Sandy asked him whether he should just take Kirsten out all together and get his money back, and the man hurriedly agreed with Sandy.
He stared down at the miles and miles of yellow files that lay in front of him, and uttered one last sigh, and began work on Marissa's defense. He knew he would have bags under his eyes for the next month. It was going to be a long night
Disclaimer: I do NOT own the O.C., but I do own hmm, it would all new situations and plots that you see in this story., such as Marissa's pregnancy, Julie kicking her out, ect. You get it. The only exception to that, as usual, would be if, by some incredibly unusual, yet amazing twist of fate, Josh Schwartz and the O.C. team read my story (right…), love it(sure…), and decide to use it on the show(ha. Like that's going to happen).. That would be perfectly fine with me. More than fine. I think if that happened I would probably faint and, when I woke up, pass out again. Because that would be amazingly awesome.