A/N I think my computer at my mom's house may be working, but I'm not too sure at the moment. It's a weird story, but I hope it'll work. Meanwhile I've had inspiration for this story and wrote a long chapter. So R/R and I hope you enjoy!

There is no greater sorrow than to recall in misery the time when we were happy.

- Dante

"So have you been doing any better?" Marissa asked Ryan, not looking at him. She never really looked at her clients, just listened to them and told them what to do about their messed up life.

"No." Was all the reply she got. It had been a week since they last talked, when he had left her office upset. She didn't know how he'd been holding up, and honestly probably didn't even care. Ryan was right about what she got out of it. Usually she got her check, put it in the bank, and then talked to her mom or her friend Summer Roberts. She never really cared much for her clients other than money. Why get close to someone that you'll probably never see again? She didn't believe in relationships with her clients, it wasn't professional.

"How has your week been?" She asked, still looking down. She was doodling on her notepad, something she always did to pass the time.

"How do you think?" he asked bitterly.

"I don't know, why don't you tell me?" She asked, glancing up at him.

He sighed and looked off into space. "Terrible, stressful, tiring, boring..." He trailed off and then in a really far off voice, one that she could barely hear he said, "Lonely."

She looked at him and asked, "How so?"

"Work's been hard. My mind drifts off a lot, and then there's the way everyone looks at me like I'm some victim. I just hate it when people pretend like they care when they really don't." Then in a bitter tone he said, "And then there's the fact that I don't have a family anymore."

She looked at him and it was like she was seeing him for the first time. His hair was kind of shaggy and his eyes were blue, but they empty, like there was no one behind them anymore. He looked like he hadn't slept in days from how dark the circles under his eyes were and he looked more like he wanted to die than he wanted to live. She tried to not let it get to her though and said, "Have you been sleeping?"

He shrugged and said, "A few hours every night tops." He played with his hands and said, "Sleep's overrated."

"You're supposed to sleep Mr. Atwood." She said sternly.

"Call me Ryan for one." He said, looking up at her, his eyes emotionless. "And two, I can't sleep."

"Why not?"

"I still hear them." he said, looking off into space.

"Hear who?" She asked curiously.

"My family." He said, looking down. "I hear them laughing, and then suddenly I hear the gunshots. The next thing I know, they're screaming for help. A few more gunshots, and then they're quiet." He looked up and said, "That's when they die."

She didn't know what to say for a while, and he just stared at her, waiting for her to say anything. Finally she said, "So you're starting to remember?"

He nodded and said, "Bits and pieces. I can't see anything, but I can hear more and more every night." He looked down at his hands and said, "I hear mostly my family, but sometimes I hear other people's screams. I haven't heard who the shooter is yet."

"How are you holding up without your family?" She asked, though she could tell that he wasn't holding up well.

He looks at her and said, "I know I shouldn't be, but I'm so damn angry at them."

"How come?" She asked, though she already knew why.

"They left me here all alone, every single one of them." He looked at her, and for the first time that day, his eyes held some kind of emotions in them; pain, hurt, anger, love. "They just left me all alone. Didn't they realize that I needed them?"

She watched him take in a deep breath and she said, "They didn't have any say in whether they lived or died Ryan. Death is a part of life."

"I know, but all my life, people have just left." He said softly, looking directly into her eyes. "I guess I thought that the Cohens were different."

"What do you mean by people just leaving you?" She asked.

"My mom abandoned me, my brother left me to go to jail, my dad got arrested and never tried to contact me again…same as my brother. Everyone in my life just leaves me." He looked down and then in a quiet, barely audible voice asked, "Is there something wrong with me?"

She quickly said, "There's nothing wrong with you." There was something about Ryan that was getting to her, something about him that was different from all her other clients. He seemed desperate for answers, for help, when a lot of her others just wanted someone to tell all their small problems that didn't mean anything. But Ryan had actually lost something, well, everything really. He didn't have a family, didn't have any friends, and he was already insecure by other people abandoning him. "You're great. Look at you; you have a good job, lots of money, a nice house and car I'm sure. What else could you possibly need?"

He looked straight in her eyes and simply said, "A friend."

They stared at each other for a few minutes, neither saying anything to break the strong silence that seemed to overcome them. Finally, she looked away from his strong gaze and said, "I'm recommending you come to therapy three days a week from now on." She wrote something down on her notepad, an actual note this time and said, "Does that work for you?"

He shrugged and said, "It's not like I have anything better to do."

She nodded and avoided looking up at him. "I…well…this session is over." She looked up at him and said, "You're free to go."

He sighed and stood up and she stood as well. "Well, it's been nice talking to you."

"Really? I thought you didn't want to talk." She said, raising an eyebrow at him.

He shrugged and said, "It's better than having to be alone."

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"You guys have one of these every week?" Luke asked in amazement, looking at all the people. "I haven't been to something this elegant all my life."

Ryan laughed and nodded his head. "Yeah, but you get used to it."

Luke shook his head and said, "I'm not so sure."

Ryan opened his eyes and glanced at the clock beside his bed. It was two thirty in the morning and he couldn't sleep. He could rarely ever sleep anymore because all he saw when he closed his eyes were images from that night; Kirsten on the ground with blood pooled all around her, Sandy next to her. He relived the same scene every time he fell asleep, and still heard the cries every time he woke up. He was beginning to remember a little more, but not the shooter. He never remembered the shooter for some reason.

He attempted to sleep again, but he couldn't. He wondered if he'd ever be able to sleep again.

"Luke, Luke, are you okay?" He asked, running his eyes over his friend's body.

Luke looked at him with far off eyes. "He got me man. He got me…"

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Ryan couldn't pay attention at work. He sat at his desk, trying to pay attention to the paperwork that was in front of him, but it was harder than it sounded. Every time he looked up, he would think of when Kirsten or Luke or someone else would visit him in his office. Every time he looked on his desk, he saw the picture of his family, the one that was now dead. He couldn't deal with it anymore. He felt the emotions slowly starting to move about inside of him and he knew soon he would blow, and no one wanted to be around when he finally let loose and grieved.

He got up out of his chair and walked to his secretary in the other room. "I'm going to take the rest of the day off." He said, walking past without stopping.

She didn't even attempt to call after him, because everyone knew that he was taking things pretty hard. Before he knew it he was at home in his bedroom. He sat down on his bed and put his head in his hands.

"Ryan, help…" Seth said warily, drifting out of consciousness.

He picked up his head and looked at the nightstand by his bed which held the Chrismukkah picture from when he first moved into the Cohen house. He stared at it a long time, still able to hear Seth, It has twice the resistance of any normal holiday. You have Jesus and Moses on your side.

"Seth, hang on man. What about Chrismukkah? What about the comic book? You can't leave all that. Come on…" He watched Seth struggle to continue bleeding, but they both knew what would happen.

He stared at the Chrismukkah picture for a bit longer and then picked it up and with all his might hurled it across the room, hitting the wall and shattering the glass on the frame. He got up and walked towards the broken frame and shouted at the picture, "You left me! Did you not think that I deserved for you to stay? Didn't you care?" He bent down and picked up the picture. "Don't you know I need you?" he whispered.

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Therapy seemed to be the only thing he looked forward to for some odd reason. Maybe it was the fact that he finally got to talk to someone about what he was feeling, almost like a friend, or maybe it was the fact that Marissa made him feel somewhat normal. He liked it that she didn't look at him like a victim like so many people were doing now. He liked it that she seemed like she preferred the cold hard truth over the sugar coated lies. Basically he liked her.

So as he walked into her office, he finally felt at peace with everything, well, as close as he could anyways. He felt as if he could finally relax and take all the weight off his shoulders. No matter what he thought about stuff, Marissa always knew what he was talking about. She understood that he was angry, but didn't look at him as if there was something wrong with him like tons of his coworkers would've. He sat down on the couch across from her chair and waited for her to say something. She was looking down at her papers again, as usual, and it was his time to watch her instead of the other way around as it usually was. She didn't really dress too fancy. She usually wore just jeans and a t-shirt. She was comforting when everything else seemed overwhelming.

"So, how have you been?" She asked, glancing up from her papers. It surprised him since she hardly ever glanced up from them.

He shrugged and said, "I've been through better but I've been through worse." A lot worse.

"They've got a gun!" He heard a guy shout.

He shook himself and Marissa stared at him intently. "What's wrong?" she asked, and he could hear the sympathy and concern in her voice. It didn't sound fake though, it sounded surprisingly real.

"I hear them sometimes, crying for help." He said softly, looking away.

"Oh." She said, obviously not knowing what else to say. She looked down at her papers and then asked, "Do you remember much else?"

"A few things, nothing important to who the killer is though." He said sadly.

"Well you know you need to tell me when you do remember right?" She asked.

"Yeah, I know." They were both silent for a little while until he asked, "When I do remember….am I going to have to stop seeing you?"

She shrugged and said, "I don't know, depends on what you want."

"I think you're the friend I have." He said, looking down at his boots, too embarrassed to look up at her. "And you're not even really a friend."

"Then we can continue the sessions." She said, not commenting on the friend thing. He knew he shouldn't have said anything, but it was how he felt. "So what have you been up to?"

"I threw a picture at the wall." He said, suddenly feeling foolish for doing so. "I don't know what overcame me when I did, but…it all got too hard."

"Do you want to talk about it?" She asked.

He sighed and said, "It was like everything I've been denying for so long suddenly came out and it was too much to take so I got angry at everything."

"What do you mean by everything?"

"I got angry at them for leaving, got angry at the shooter for taking them from me, got angry at everyone for acting like they cared when they really don't." He let out an upset sigh and then continued by saying, "I got angry at myself for being angry and denying it for so long. I got angry for trying to remember it, and got angry because I couldn't sleep at night because of it. Then all of it just sort of fused together and made me so angry that I was like blinded by my rage and threw the first thing that I saw…which happened to be the picture."

"What was the picture of?" She asked, seeming curious.

"Us when I first came to move with the Cohens at Chrismukkah time." He said, smiling slightly.

He saw the confusion on her face and she asked, "Chrismukkah?"

He laughed and said, "Yeah, it's Seth's super holiday. It's basically Hanukkah and Christmas together. He'd always say it had twice the resistance of any normal holiday because you had Jesus and Moses on your side." He smiled at the memories of them together and said, "It was my favorite time of year, though I didn't tell anyone that."

She looked at him with raised eyebrows and then said, "You know, I thought I'd heard everything until you shared that with me."

He laughed and she laughed too. He noted how beautiful of a sound it was, but he didn't say it. Hearing laughter at the moment sounded foreign to him, and it made him feel normal again. "I miss them." He said, and their laughter died down. He looked at her with pain filled eyes and said, "I miss them a lot."

She watched him for a second and then said, "The thing they don't tell you about when people in your family die is that your life goes on. And then people tell you that you're going to be okay, that things will get better.." She waited for him to process that and then said, "But life never goes back to the way it used to be."

"That's reassuring." He said.

"It's true because no matter how much you want things to back to the way they were, they never will. You'll always be without that person or those people and you'll always wonder if what you're doing will make them proud, if you're the person that you wanted them to be. You'll always look up at the stars and swear that you see them smiling, or listen to the wind and swear that they're whispering your name." She looked at him with tears in her eyes and said, "But life goes on, different yes, but it goes on. And after a while, you learn how to live without them."

He saw the pain in her own expression, the far off look and then put his hand on hers that was on her knee and said, "You sound like you'd know from past experience."

She took in a deep breath and one lone tear fell down her cheek. He wiped it away, letting his hand stay on her cheek just a little bit longer than necessary. "When I was smaller, my father and sister died in a car crash." She didn't say anything else, and just as quickly as their intimate moment came, it was over. He sat back on the couch and she sat back in the chair and they acted like there hadn't been something between them, like they hadn't just had their little moment. "So Chrismukkah huh?"

He smiled and nodded, "Yeah, it's great. It's unlike anything I'd ever done before."

"Your family sounds like they were amazing." She commented.

"They were." He said softly. "They were the best people I ever knew. They gave me hope and a home when I thought everything was over in my life. I don't know what I'll do now. It's like I no longer have a purpose in life."

Marissa took in a breath and then said, "You'll go to bed at night and wake up in the morning and though your family isn't here, you'll smile and get up out of bed and go to work and you'll make your family and friends proud." She gave him the smallest smile and said, "It works."

"Sounds hard."

"I never said it would be easy. There will be days that you want to crawl under your blanket and never come out, and on those days you'll take it easy." She watched him and then said, "I hope Trust me when I say it will all get better."

He gave her a small smile and said, "I already do."