Author's note: Applause of course, to Joey and Crash for the betaing, which I'm quite sure, I have already ruined. Thanks for reading everyone and two snaps to my amazingly loyal posse of reviewers. Thanks for taking the time guys.

Still chugging along. This is part three of eight.

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Windex

A Seth POV Concerning the Season 2 Finale

Part Three

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"Seth?"

Moses, save me...I'm going in.

I clutch the phone to my ear and grimace in anticipation.

Is there a patron saint of Cingular? Saint Cell or something? 'Cause this conversation? I do not want to have without divine back up.

"Hi, Dad."

I'm getting so much better at being the new and improved grown-up Seth 'cause the old Seth would have said something like, 'Hey, Dad. What's up? Anything happening I should know about...say, maybe that you've lost Ryan?'

The old Seth would have pointed out repeatedly how my picking up Ryan in a car, at 4:20 a.m. from a hospital without permission from a single person over the age of seventeen, was completely, entirely, and most definitely everyone else's fault...but my own.

But I don't say any of that. I give the front line pawns a good pep talk, hang on like hell to my king, and wait for my dad to make the next move.

My dad growls at me, "You do not leave that house again without telling someone. Do you understand me, Seth? I don't give a damn whatever your reason is. I cannot deal with your irresponsibility on top of everything else. You do not leave that house!"

Yeah. Got it, Dad. That's a directive that's pretty clear to follow. Won't be needing a translator for that one.

I say quietly, "I'm sorry, Dad. I had no right to leave the house without telling you or Aunt Hailey."

There's complete silence on the other end of the phone and I'm thinking what a convenient thing it is that Sandy Cohen is still at a hospital. Because right now...with me and the quick, and I hope it sounded sincere, apology...I'm pretty sure he's in the midst of his first major coronary attack.

And as long as the paddles are handy...

"Dad, Ryan's here, at the house. He's ok."

Straight to the point. Nothing snarky like, 'It's your lucky day, Dad. It just so happens I have found your missing item, so you can go back to whatever it was that you were doing instead of what you should have been doing. I know you have a ton of more important things to do than making sure Ryan is safe and secure. And speaking of secure, be sure to tell Hoag that's one hell of a security force they have there. Ryan can almost walk upright. I'm sure he posed quite a challenge to monitor.'

"Is that why you left the house, Seth? To get Ryan? Do you have any idea at all how seriously injured he is?"

I scratch the back of my neck and think, yep, I'm starting to grasp the whole Ryan's actually injured thing.

"Do you have any idea how much danger your actions have placed Ryan in?"

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that question is rhetorical in nature. Oh, and by the way, Dad, you and Hoag are so Lucky Charms lucky he called me instead of wandering off on his own, so how 'bout you get a stool, climb on down off that high horse and can the lecture. Hey, and one more thing while we're on the subject of placing Ryan in harm's way. YOU brought Trey home, Dad. You did, not me, after Ryan tried to warn you not to. So if you're passing out 'putting Ryan in danger chips,' better start by giving yourself two.

"I'm coming home," he says and I'm thinking, seems prudent...SINCE YOU HAVE NO REASON TO STAY THERE.

"Hi, Seth, is it?"

A non-father person comes on the line and now it's me who is very, very, silent and possibly having a heart attack.

"Seth, my name is Doctor Stanton."

Whoa.

Stranger Danger.

Now I want my dad back on the line chewing my ass. 'Cause I don't think I'm gonna' like where this is going.

"Seth, may I speak to Ryan please?"

What to say, what to say? A minimalist approach seems the most sensible.

"Um, Ryan's asleep," I tell the doctor.

I hear a deep intake of air from the doc's end of the phone and he's definitely doing better than me 'cause at least he's breathing and at this very second…I'm pretty sure I'm not.

"Yes, I was afraid you'd say that. Listen, Seth, could you do me a favor please and make sure that Ryan wakes up if you nudge him? I gave him a pretty potent pain reliever because I thought we'd be monitoring him at the hospital. I need you to go wake him up for me."

Maybe Ryan will let me borrow his cast... so I can beat my brains in with it.

I'm so fucking stupid, bringing Ryan home. What the hell was I thinking?

I wasn't thinking. Ryan threw the Frisbee and I did what I always do: I ran after it like a good Sparky. I'm so his bitch. I'm Summer's bitch too, but that never results in conversations like the one I'm having over the phone right now.

I may be Zach's bitch as well, but I don't have time right now to analyze that twisted relationship.

"Seth? Are you still there?"

Oops.

Keep the train on the track, Seth. Doctor guy is on the phone, asking whether or not I could check to see if I've killed my best friend.

"Yeah, sorry. Um, how long should I keep Ryan awake?"

I have my hand on my temple because I need to concentrate very hard on the doctor guy's answer. This is important shit and I need to stay focused.

"Five minutes or so. And ask him a few questions, simple ones, like, his last name, what day it is. Just easy questions that he should know the answer to."

Well, that isn't so hard. I'm good at asking Ryan questions. Ok, yeah, sure, I don't always care if he answers me, and yes, most of the time I end up answering them myself, but tonight…tonight, I'm going to be Regis Fucking Philbin.

"Atwood. Did I hear you correctly, Ryan? Is that your final answer?"

"Oh, and, Seth? Listen carefully, this is imperative. If Ryan doesn't wake up, you need to call an ambulance. Immediately."

Well of course I do, Silly.

Because you know what, irritatingly calm, doctor dude? An ambulance racing to this house to gather up a comatose Ryan is just the shiny cherry this ice cream sundae of a day needs on top.

"Uh-huh," I answer. And I know I sound like an idiot with a response like that but suddenly it's very important for me to get off the phone as quickly as possible so I can run like hell down the hallway to Mom and Dad's bedroom and nudge the shit out of Ryan.

My dad comes back on the phone and tells me he'll be home in a few minutes, which is both terrifying and reassuring, and I hang up to go in search of Aunt Hailey because I'm too chicken to go into my mom and dad's room alone.

I'm not afraid to wake up Ryan.

I'm afraid Ryan won't wake up.

Because after tonight, I'm really and truly beginning to understand just how much the Atwood family is Fate's bitch.

I find my aunt in the kitchen peeling an orange, which seems like an odd thing to do, given everything that's happening. But I guess that's what makes Hailey…Hailey. At least she's getting her daily supply of Vitamin C.

"We have to wake Ryan up," I tell her.

She looks up from her orange, "We just got him to sleep."

"I know that, but now we have to wake him up."

And surprisingly enough, that's all the explanation Hailey requires. She puts down her half-peeled orange and dutifully follows me down the hallway to the bedroom.

I turn the light up a little bit and ask into the still dimly lit room, "Ryan?"

Just that strange little post-attempted strangulation snore is all that answers me, so I creep into the room halfway, Hailey following behind me with her hand on my shoulder like we're in some horror movie, going into the dark basement of a serial killer, and I ask a little louder, "Ryan?"

Nothing still and now I'm scared and I tell myself to stop freaking out because he was awake, what, fifteen minutes ago? And of course he'll wake up and most likely it takes at least a half an hour to fall into a proper coma. Doesn't it? Because although last semester, in health class, gonorrhea was covered in more explicit detail than I ever want to be exposed to again, coma wasn't even touched upon and I'm completely appalled by my lack of practical coma knowledge.

"Seth, go closer," Aunt Hailey hisses and shoves me into the room more and I stumble a little on the carpet and find myself knee to mattress with the California king that Ryan's lying on.

Do people snore if they're in a coma?

It dawns on me that coma people definitely do not snore, I'm absolutely positive of this. So now waking up Ryan isn't so much scary, as it's going to be a challenge.

I push on his arm a tad and he doesn't move so I push a little harder and he still doesn't move.

Oh that's right, nudge.

The doctor said to nudge.

I decide that jabbing is more closely related to a nudge than pushing so I jab at his bicep and then jab a little more and still no waking of the Ryan and I hear Aunt Hailey grunt an exasperated, "Oh for God's sake Seth, move over."

It's an excellent suggestion and a role reversal I am more than willing to comply with, because, let's face it, Hales has a hell of a lot more experience waking up drugged people than I do.

She leans down over his face and, God love her, puts her hand in the middle of his bloody bangs and says fairly loudly, "Wake up, Ryan."

Ah, I understand now. I left out instructions. This is, after all, Ryan Atwood, and concrete directions tend to work best.

He shifts a little and Hailey tells him again, and a little louder, to wake up and after a few more seconds he opens his trademark one eye and blinks it at us.

I get out my doctor-provided flowchart and mark off 'wake up' and follow the arrow to 'make sure is aware.'

I blurt out, "What's your last name, Ryan?" And Hales looks at me as if I'm fucking nuts.

Which, at this point, I probably am.

"Go get me something to clean him up," Aunt Hailey commands, and I've never been so grateful to get the hell out of a room in my life, and that includes the time I walked in on Grandpa with his hand up Marissa's mom's top.

Because each time Ryan wakes up, he's a little closer to being lucid. And that means I'm forced to be a little closer to trying to figure out how in the hell you help someone deal with what Ryan is going to have to deal with in the next few days.

And months.

And years.

'Cause while some things may drift away over time, they're always visible on the horizon. And what happened tonight, in Trey's apartment, I'm thinking is one of those things.

I leave the bedroom and drag race a straight path for the bathroom. I start throwing whatever in the hell I can find that resembles medical supplies into my t-shirt, which I've converted into an impromptu carry on bag, by curling up the bottom of it, just like I used to do to carry my Hot Wheels.

Never really liked those things. I think Dad bought them for me when he still held out hope.

As I walk back down the hall, I wonder what Ryan and Hales are possibly talking about in the bedroom right about now 'cause, you know, they just have so much in common.

Not.

I ease my way into the room, trying not to drop anything out of the corners of my t-shirt, and I see that Aunt Hailey is propping Ryan up into a semi-sitting position, putting pillows behind his back and repeating softly, "That's it," as Ryan scoots on his butt incrementally up the bed.

I close my eyes and listen to Hailey talk and she sounds just enough like the Kirsten, that if I keep my eyes clamped really, really tightly, I can almost imagine that my mom is here taking care of Ryan instead of her sober sister.

"Seth?"

I open my eyes and Hailey is staring at me in anticipation, so I jump forward into action and hold my t-shirt out to her and say, "Here, um, this is all I could find."

The old Seth would have added something like, 'Because, you know, we've handled limited amounts of blunt trauma at Casa de Cohen.' But I don't say that. I just watch her as she fishes a few things out, like a box of gauze and some antiseptic wipe. She holds up a bottle of Listerine and gives me a 'what the fuck' look and I shrug, because I don't even remember putting it into my shirt. But hey, I'm sure that in some underprivileged country somewhere in the world, Listerine is considered top-notch health care.

I switch my attention to Ryan, who is semi-reclined against the pillows with his eyes closed and his head alternating between dipping down and jerking back up.

I've decided that as much as I don't want to cope with reality right now, dealing with and seeing a medicated Ryan isn't much better, and quite frankly a little more disturbing, because I feel like the drugs currently keeping him complacent are nothing more than a dirt dam that is going to give way with a violent explosion when it finally wears down and crumbles.

Hailey starts wiping the dried blood off his face, going really slow and methodical, 'cause little bits of dried blood are a bitch to wipe off someone's face, especially when they are clinging to bruises, and the whole time she's complaining that, "The hospital should have done this." and "What is wrong with those assholes that they left all this blood on him?"

I glance down at my hands, at my fingernails, and stare at the few flecks of Trey's blood that are still under them and embedded in the cuticles. I was going to scrub at them with an old toothbrush. But then I had to leave the house, because Ryan called me and jump-started this already insane night.

I hear a loud gunshot and look frantically at Hailey and she says to me, "Sandy must be home."

Right.

The front door slamming, not a gunshot.

Silly me.

Ryan doesn't react to the news. He hasn't bothered to reopen his one eyeball and I doubt he ever did open the other one.

"SETH?"

I hear my dad call my name loudly and I turn to let him know we're in the bedroom and all the stuff falls out of my shirt and I look at it and decide that if Hailey needed anything else she would have gotten it by now, so I kick the stuff towards the closet and then walk out of the bedroom into the hallway and run square into my dad...and some dude holding...yep, sure is...a black bag. And my eyes follow the black bag up to the guy's face.

"Seth, this is Doctor Stanton."

I wave a few fingers at him, curl my upper lip up a little and hope that he can tell how massively sorry I am for having taken his patient away from him. I make a mental note to ask my dad someday how he managed to score an ER doctor at 5:00 a.m. but then again, he is Sandy Cohen, and he just has a way of doing these things.

My dad gives me a look of, 'just wait until I have a spare second and then you are so screwed,' and starts to escort the doctor into the bedroom.

Hailey meets the two of them at the door and tells my dad, "He's really out of it, Sandy."

And I assume she is referring to Ryan, although I'm thinking I could pretty much dance to the same tune.

"Has he said anything?" my dad asks, and I see Hailey shake her head "no," and my dad puts his hand on her shoulder and thanks her.

He disappears, shutting the bedroom door behind him, and Hales and I stand in the hallway, staring at the closed door.

"I'm going to go lay down on the couch," she says and then yawns, loud and not very lady-like.

Don't forget your half-peeled orange, I almost tell her.

But I don't.

Hailey brushes past me, and then stops and turns around. "You should go lie down too."

Yeah, that'll happen.

"Ok." I nod up and down. "Sounds good."

I wait 'til she's out of sight then I lean against the wall and slide down it until I'm sitting on the carpet and I drop my head down and just let it hang and be a beneficiary of properly functioning neck muscles.

I'm so fucking tired.

The thought occurs to me, in a sun flare of insight, as if I'm Ben Franklin holding the kite string, that I've never been this tired in my life.

I sit there, on the ground, watching the closed bedroom door, very, very closely, on alert, like I'm a Pit Bull, waiting for the exact right moment to pounce on a baby bunny.

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"Seth."

My dad is leaning over me, shaking my shoulder.

I move my head back and forth, blink a bunch.

Must have fallen asleep.

I glance at my watch expecting it to be hours from when I sat down against the wall but it's only been twenty minutes.

I pinch the bridge of my nose and continue to shake my head. I glance up and it's just the two of us, my dad and me. The bedroom door is open slightly and I look at it and then back expectantly to my dad.

"Ryan's still here," my dad reads my mind. "He's sleeping. Doctor Stanton said he could stay as long as there's no sign of complications. I have to run him by the hospital later today for a check-up."

I almost ask, "Complications to what?" 'Cause I'm still not sure exactly what's going on with Ryan medically, but come on, I really don't want to know the full extent of what, in the last few minutes of his life, Trey did to his little brother.

I do that sometimes. I gloss over the details. It makes selective ignorance so much easier.

"Has he said anything to you?" my dad asks me. His voice sounds different, aged, worn out, defeated. Maybe everyone's voice has changed tonight. I'd better check mine, see if I still sound like Seth.

Maybe I expected him to be mad at me, be yelling at me. But it seems as though the time with Ryan and the doctor, in the bedroom, has completely taken the wind out of my dad's angry sails.

His concern for Ryan has trumped my verbal ass kicking.

"Seth, has Ryan said anything at all to you?"

The old Seth would respond with, 'About what, Dad? Oh, you mean the drug dealing, attempted rapist dead brother killed by the pistol-wielding girlfriend? Is that what you are referring to, Dad?'

The new me just shakes his head. I leave out the cast breaking the window thing, because the time to tell that story was when the doctor was here and oops, my bad, how could that have slipped my mind?

But it did.

"Marissa," I hear myself say. "Ryan asked about Marissa."

My dad rubs his forehead and tells me, "I spent half the night on the phone with Chris Johnson from the DA's office. There's a good chance they won't press charges against her." He sighs, brushes his hair back, and lets out a puff of air. "You kids are going to have to go in and give depositions. Chris wanted to haul you all in tonight, but I talked him out of it."

What does one wear to a deposition? Maybe my brown cords are clean. But it's summer and the cords are too hot for...

"Seth?"

What? Oh yeah, my dad and I are talking.

"Um, his mom. He mentioned his mom, and finding her."

My dad stares at me and doesn't appear to have a pat little 'I spoke to Chris Johnson at the DA's office' answer for that one, so I offer, "I um, told him, that if he wasn't up to it, Summer and I would go find her."

Ok, now that just sounds ridiculous.

It didn't an hour ago, in the bedroom, when I felt like a piece of duct tape trying to hold Ryan together but out here, in the hallway, away from my immediate need to pacify Ryan, I realize that Summer and I, in the rent-a-car, roving the streets of Chino with a bullhorn yelling out the broken window, "Dawn Atwood. Has anyone seen Dawn Atwood?" is so not going to happen.

My dad is way ahead of me. "I'll contact a private detective in a few hours."

Of course he will.

Because long before Ryan was born, my dad had a cape of his own.

"You should try and get some sleep, son."

The old Seth would. He would go up to his room and grab Captain Oats and crawl under the sheets and let his dad handle this whole, entire, fucking mess. Trey needs to be buried, right? So that's a funeral and that takes planning and let's see...who's gonna' be heading that morbid parade? Sandy Cohen. Marissa's gonna' need some on-going legal assistance...Sandy Cohen. Ryan needs to go back to the hospital...Sandy Cohen. Who is dealing with his wife in rehab? That's right folks, Sandy Cohen. Who's gonna' find Ryan's mom? Sandy Cohen. Who's not going to sleep anytime soon, 'cause they're going to be sitting next to Ryan, watching him breathe? Sandy Cohen.

"Dad, you go to bed, you must be exhausted. I'll stay up with Ryan."

He looks at me as if I've revealed the secret of life and I think how sad it is, that such a small offer, would make this guy look at me with more pride than he ever has in my entire life.

"Can you handle it, Seth?"

Can I handle it?

Can I handle it?

Let's see. No, actually, I can't handle it.

I'm hearing gunshots, Dad, and I can't stop thinking about how I still have Trey's blood on my hands, down deep, under my fingernails. Do you want to see it? And Marissa, my friend, maybe not my best friend, but still my friend, she shot a person tonight and killed him. She killed Trey, who just a few weeks ago, was swimming in our pool and eating our food and living in our pool house. He was really good at Tony Hawk's Underground, did you know that? He used to play it with me all the time 'cause Ryan can't stand it. And yeah, we didn't really talk too much. Well, Trey didn't, but I still knew him a little bit. And I know Trey did bad things, ok, I get that. But should be dead bad things? Like, only twenty-one years old and dead?

Like he was irredeemable by anyone's standards, so dead is the best solution?

"You'll need to wake Ryan up every hour, son. If his breathing changes in any way, or he won't wake up, come and get me right away."

Ryan.

Have you noticed that Ryan isn't Ryan right now, Dad?

And I'm scared that he won't be again.

I'm scared that whoever that is, in the bedroom, may have replaced my Ryan, for good. Because I'm trying to figure out how he's gonna' bounce back from what happened tonight. How the hell is he going to do that? I'm not sure if even Ryan Atwood can solve this problem with that magic, apathetic force field he surrounds himself with. And you know what, Dad? Do you want to know the really horrible part? I'm pretty sure I'm more concerned over how Ryan...not being Ryan anymore...is going to affect me… more than it is him.

There. I said it.

I said what I've been thinking the minute I was sitting in the back of that police car with Summer.

I keep thinking, how are Ryan and me gonna' float in the pool and go to school and worry about all my shallow bullshit...now that Marissa has killed Trey? How are things not irreparably demolished by something like that? How is tonight not going to ruin, on some level, the rest of our lives?

And yeah, I could blame everybody else, 'cause everybody else is to blame, but I hate myself because I'm the one who told Ryan about what Trey had done to Marissa. I told him because I was afraid that if he found out I knew and didn't tell him, he wouldn't be my friend anymore.

I was more willing to risk Ryan's reaction than I was his friendship.

But I see now, I made the wrong choice, and Ryan's paying the price.

"Are you sure you can handle it, Seth?"

No, I can't handle any of this.

I'm coming apart.

"Yeah, got it, wake Ryan up every hour. No problem. Go get some sleep."

He pats me on the shoulder. I've redeemed myself. I've earned a Sandy Cohen pat.

Before I go into the bedroom, I stop in at the kitchen, to snag something with caffeine.

Aunt Hailey's orange is still on the counter, sitting there, half peeled, incomplete.

I feel a little sorry for it, 'cause it spent all that time growing, and now, instead of reaching its ultimate destiny, a human stomach, it's gonna' end up in the trash.

It seems like such a waste.

So I grab the orange, and take it with me back to Mom and Dad's room, and slowly finish peeling it, while I wait in the dark to wake up Ryan.

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To be continued…………..