Okay so chapter three is a little late, but hopefully there are people still reading this. I will be updating it more now, I promise. Reviews are really apperciated.

In from they rain they were welcomed in. Embraced, and held. Kirsten's eyes watered as she hugged Marissa with just the slightest hint of caution. As they both stood in the foyer, soaked and shivering Kirsten covered her mouth. Still eyeing Marissa, she knew almost not to ask for stories; almost afraid that if logical questions were asked this homecoming would become an apparition. Sandy came out of his study with his reading glasses still on to see who could possibly be at the door that deserved and required this much attention from his wife. With the answer of knowing just who, he embraced Marissa as well, saying only,

"Welcome home, kid." After deeply studying the two of them for nearly half an hour, the four of them sat around in the kitchen, drinking coffee. Marissa and Ryan wrapped in blankets that Kirsten forced upon them. Kirsten's pajamas hung loosely and awkwardly off of Marissa, being much too big even with Kirsten's petite frame. The rain fell outside and there weren't many questions asked. Just "Did you get here okay?" as if they had only been gone a couple of hours at a concert in LA or something. Marissa lost count of how many "You can stay here as long as you want, you just have no idea how happy we are to see you again"s there were.

At 10:30 Marissa let out the faintest of yawns and both Sandy and Kirsten erupted into a exasperated spiel on "how tired she must be!" Kirsten lead her into the pool house, giving her fresh towels and insisting the sheets had just been changed. Ryan stood awkwardly in the background as Kirsten near tucked Marissa into bed like a small child. She instructed Ryan with maternal instinct, telling him it probably would be best if he slept on the couch inside. They both stared at her for a while before Kirsten kissed her forehead and flipped off the lights ushering Ryan back inside. Marissa lay there, pretending to be asleep, in a place more familiar to her than any bedroom of hers had ever been. Listening to the rain, she tried to push back everything she felt and relay on the heavy sleep that she used to use as an antidote to the reality she once faced upon awakening.

Inside the Cohen kitchen Ryan laid on the couch listening to Kirsten call Julie, picking up words here and there. Julie was living in Tucson with a golf-enterprise millionaire named Jacob Hillmore-Stephenson III. He couldn't remember if they were married or not, and truly hadn't though of Julie much in years.

"Yes she's here. I couldn't believe it. She just walked in with Ryan tonight."

He could just make out Julie's long pause on the receiving end, obviously awoken in the middle of kind of medicated sleep.

"I thought she was dead."

She said with deadness in her own voice that Ryan had remembered wasn't always there. Ryan wasn't sure if Julie would try to come up here and see the daughter she had thought she had lost when she had left four years ago. To his knowledge, the last she knew of Marissa, that they all knew of Marissa, is that she was gone. With no trace. No notes. No goodbyes. They had heard about a girl turned up dead in a house with fifteen people, junkies, in Venice Beach, from an accidental overdose. That had been a year ago, and they when the LAPD had trouble identifying her, they had called the Cooper-Nichols. The police had asked them to come take a look at the body to see if it matched the missing persons report they had filed on Marissa three years earlier. Julie refused, but Jimmy had gone. Flying in from Hawaii to confirm that the body was so well on it's way to deterioration from being left in a separate room of the house for weeks before the junkies had notified authorities, fearing a house-raid, that it was hard to identify. He concluded that the girl was too short to be Marissa, but something in him and Julie clicked in coming to the realization that their daughter was never coming home. The dental records of course proved that the dead girl was actually some girl named Julia Peterson of Pomona, California. Julie hadn't told anyone but she'd sent the family a sympathy card, guiltily sighing a breathe of relief that tragedy was passed on to some other faceless family for now.

Marissa's eyes fluttered open to read the clock next to the bed, 1:31. Panicked briefly, searching for Ryan thinking that they were back in the motel they had shared outside of San Diego, then felt a surge of ice-cold fear run up her spine at the figure standing over her bed. Face coming into light she breathed something mixed of overwhelming relief and slight shock.

"Hi, oh my god, I'm so sorry wow, I didn't mean to wake you up."

Seth Cohen was never good at things like this. Tragedy, although he had had his share of watching it happen to other people, wasn't his forte. Marissa Cooper had always been tragedy in human form to him.

"It's okay." She said, glancing to the side and avoiding eye contact. She had an urge to study his face, to see if it was still the same. It was. He looked only a little older by the way he carried himself. Maybe a little bit of muscle here and there. She smiled, Seth had always been such neurotic normalcy in the snow-globe she used to occupy.

"Truth be told Summer, kind of, had me come in here because she wasn't sure she could keep her hands off of you. I mean not like in a lesbian way, well maybe, who knows, but like in a I'm really glad to see my best friend who we weren't sure was still alive kind of way. She didn't want to wake you up, but now I see I've already done that sooo…I'm going to go get her." Seth turned for the door of the pool house the subtle blue light, Marissa realized, illuminated the entire room.

"Seth?" She asked a little uncertain. He turned around.

"Could you tell me a little bit about what you guys…um, are doing? It's going to be a little too weird, asking my own best friend what college she ended up going to, or where she is in her life, I don't think can…handle that. I feel like I should at least…know." Seth smiled.

"Of course." He told her sitting at the edge of the bed.

For the next fifteen minutes Seth gave an elaborate, but condensed on Seth standards, version of how Summer had gone to UCLA and he to NYU breaking up upon the 3,000 mile difference. Near the end of freshman year, a panicked Summer had become tired with filling her life with "superficialities" and told Seth that she was tired of losing the people she loved in life. Living life she said was something that should not be faked. With that she had packed, transferred to FIT to study fashion, and Seth and her had nabbed a cozy but little apartment in the village. They both would be graduating in the spring where they both had jobs lined up from the internships they were working. Summer at Marc Jacobs, Seth at Marvel. Marissa noticed how much he glowed while he talked about this all, a history she was not a part of. Suddenly he seemed a lot more grown up, and she couldn't help but feel a pang that while the three people who used to be her chosen family had grown up, she had grown down. While they were making plans, building relationships, and discovering who they were, she had been dwelling like a rag doll at the bottom of the ocean that someone had discarded. Limp and dreamy, only talked about in memories and what-ifs, she had missed everything.

"Seth?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm kind of tired, do you think you could send Summer in here before I fall asleep again?" She laid back down, resting her head on the pillows, faking a wave of sleep.

"Of course." He turned again to open the door and crossed the short pathway to the kitchen. Marissa could see Summer inside now, waiting for him sitting at the counter of the kitchen with a cup of coffee. She looked at him like her best friend now, she could tell, and Marissa figured he probably was. She was, more beautiful than Marissa had ever remembered. Glowing with happiness and sophistication. The kind of glow someone only has upon fiding security in love and oneself. She watched her come in and she knew they both saw each other now. Opening the door Summer came in and covered her mouth with her hands, the only one so far to not cover up the tears now readily flowing from her eyes upon Marissa's homecoming.

"Coop. Oh my god Coop." Summer whispered, and soon they were both hugging, and for the first time too tonight, Marissa was crying. Summer pet her hair and cried into holding her tightly, as if letting go would make her just a figment of imagination. Then they both laughed, looking into each other's faces they laughed not saying a word, and Marissa didn't second-guess anything. Ryan and Seth eventually came in, like a night vigil, except in celebration for the girl they all thought dead to them.

Minutes turned to hours and soon Marissa fell into deep sleep again, a happy sleep, one she hadn't had in years. With Ryan sitting in a chair next to the bed keeping watch on her as always, and Summer and Seth asleep together on the floor. The family she had chosen.