So, uh, I haven't watched the OC in ages and I missed the finale, but obviously I heard about what happened and this kinda just came to me. It was written in about half an hour, so sorry for any mistakes, but please, let me know what you think of it!

We Are Nowhere and It's Now

A ten minute dream in the passenger's seat

The world was flying by

I haven't been gone very long

But it feels like a lifetime

- Bright Eyes

There's a lot of free time, where she is now. Time to watch her friends grow up without her, time to wish things had been different, time to learn why they couldn't be.

She fills the void by humming songs under her breath – not the punk music they always bobbed their heads to at the Bait Shop, but the oldies, the stuff her father used to listen to back when he drove her to middle school. It gives her a feeling of safety, as if she's still thirteen and too tall and awkward but it doesn't matter because her father is her hero and she will one day be beautiful like her mother and Luke called her on the phone the other day to ask her to a movie.

She would sing, if she could, but she's never had much of a voice and she forgets half the words now, anyway.

She spends a lot of time imagining Greece, too. It would have been beautiful. She thinks she might have grown up there. Might have found freedom and courage and dumped her ever-present flask into the ocean and then dived in and come up for air reborn.

And when she came back, she is sure Ryan would have met her at the airport. There has never been a distance between them that he can't cross. He would have brought flowers, but he would have screwed up the presentation of them with an embarrassed mumble and gracelessly shoving the bouquet into her hands.

But, oh, she would have laughed and smelled them and drank in the sight of him and thought he was the cutest thing she'd ever seen.

She never lets herself imagine anything beyond that point. It gets too painful, thinking about how happy she could have been. Should have been. Because Marissa still doesn't think it's very fair that she had to die just when she'd finally decided to live.

But it's not like she can cry foul and clamber for a do-over. So she sits and watches as her friends mourn her and then, slowly, painfully, begin to rebuild their lives. She wants to be angry at them for moving on, wants to scream and shout and beg to be remembered, but they can't hear her and it just makes her throat hurt.

Sometimes, though, sometimes she can talk to them. It's only when she's feeling particularly miserable and in the morning, they wake up disoriented and try to grasp the edges of a fuzzy, fading dream, but it's something. She perches on the foot of their beds and they talk to her honestly, ask her questions she can't answer, tell her things she doesn't always want to hear.

Visiting Ryan is the most painful. His eyes are a darker blue than she remembers and filled with regret and he always apologizes. Sorry, I'm sorry, so sorry, I'm sorry. The words tumble out of his mouth like prayers and she catches them by leaning in and pressing her lips to his in the ghost of a kiss.

She doesn't want him to be sorry. She doesn't want to be dead, either, so that shows how much say she has in the matter, but she doesn't think he has anything to be sorry about. She tells him this, stresses that he did everything he could for her, more than he should have. She says she's sorry, too, and she means it more than he'll ever know because (as much as she'd sometimes like to) she can't spend all eternity haunting him.

Seeing Seth afterwards is a relief. Even in his dreams, he is glib, tossing out horribly clichéd puns about death and chuckling at his own wit. She tells him she wishes his sense of humor could have flown out of the SUV and smashed up on the side of the road instead of her body, but her lips are twisting upwards, too, and he knows she doesn't mean it.

You'd die without my humor, he says, and offers her a dimpled grin, and she would laugh if she could but she is only air and memory and dreams no one talks about and dead girls don't laugh at living, breathing boys.

Summer is almost too much to bear, because she has always been just what her name implies – sunshine and lazy days and the sweet, carefree feeling that comes from knowing that there's always tomorrow. She doesn't shine as bright anymore and Marissa has to look away from the dulled edges, the pale complexion.

In her dreams, Summer bites her lips and avoids Marissa's eyes, too, and the two girls have never not connected before and it would be a physical pain if Marissa didn't have her bones all jumbled up already. I didn't need you to be my sister, Summer says, You were already my other half. And Marissa would like to cry, but nothing leaks out so she just nods and says she understands, she feels the same.

It's a little bit of a lie, though, because she doesn't feel anything anymore.

There's a lot of time, and she can try to fill it with half-remembered songs and silly daydreams about far away (farther, now) places and conversations with her still-alive friends, but it doesn't make her any less gone. And time continues to pass, not just for her, but for her friends, too, and they go to frat parties and suffer through midterms and go back home on Thanksgiving and Christmas to gorge on home-cooked meals and quality family time.

And then the day finally comes when Ryan sleeps right through her visit, his arm wrapped snugly around a slender brunette's waist, their chests rising and falling in a peaceful tandem.

She tries Seth, who wakes up and says, What's the matter, you look like death, and laughs as he snuggles closer to Summer and drifts back to sleep. And then Summer opens her eyes and sits up and looks a little guilty and Marissa can see why.

Summer has her glow back, she is as radiant as the diamond that sparkles on her left hand, and she says, Oh, oh, Marissa, but the name sounds unfamiliar on her lips because she hasn't thought of her dead friend in quite some time. I miss you, she tries, and it's still true, but the ache has faded for her, and she wakes up in the morning smiling, unaware of even having the dream.

As for Marissa, there's a lot of free time where she is now, but there's also some peace. She watches her friends' weddings and their children's births and the huge holiday celebrations and the little moments, too, like when Seth and Summer's daughter has her first date and Ryan's little boy gets in trouble at school for coloring the walls instead of his paper.

She passes the time watching them and loving them and she hums to herself and thinks, maybe, just maybe, she got to grow up after all.