She walked about the strange place. Stranger things had happened. Stranger than the events that had just come to pass: events that made her totally unsure as to whether or not they actually happened. But stranger things had happened in dreamland.
The forest that she walked around in was sparkling with the flowers spring had brought. Even though in the real world it was fall, in Casey's dreamland it was forever spring. Of course, she didn't know she was dreaming: because in dreams being in strange forests with pink blossoms in the trees and flower petals falling down like rain seemed perfectly natural. It was her little perfect dream, the one place she could escape to. In dreams nothing has to make sense, nothing has to fallow the rules. In her dreams she didn't pause to think about how things came to pass but was only disappointed or pleased when they did. In this case she was pleased.
She'd come up to a stream and had looked down at her reflection in the water. Her face seemed old and aged beyond what she'd ever seen in the waking world. It concerned her in a way. She wanted someone to talk to. She wanted someone else to come and be with her. And as if on cue, there he was.
She didn't ask what John was doing there because as she was dreaming it seemed to make perfect sense. "Hello," she said.
He crouched down to where she was sitting by the stream and looked at their reflections. "We look young, don't we?" he commented.
Casey raised an eyebrow. "I think we look old."
"Well I always look old, don't I?" Munch said dryly.
"Not to me."
"That's not good, you should call a doctor; your vision is clearly getting very bad."
She sighed. She sat there for a moment, allowing herself to relax. "Do you think we could make it work, you and me?"
"Make what work?"
"Us. Could we be together?"
For the first time he smiled at her. "Yeah, I think so. Stranger things have happened." They didn't touch but just sat there together, content with each others presence. When she looked back down at the water at last she saw what Munch had seen, the two of them young together, as it should have been.
Munch just got up and left abruptly. Casey had to fight the urge to say something sarcastic, but didn't want to ruin the mood or whatever it was that had just happened. So there she was once again walking about the forest. And somewhere in the distance an alarm was going off. She closed her eyes and when she next opened them she was in her bed with her alarm clock beeping away.
She rolled out of bed and smiled to herself. For once, not a nightmare. She sighed to herself and wondered just what exactly it was that she wanted. Wasn't Munch supposed to be too old for her? But then the words came back to her, stranger things had happened. It could be worse, and besides, it could be great. I could be wonderful, if she could only let it happen.
But bells were being rung inside her head and something inside of her shifted. For once since she'd become SVU's lawyer she knew what it was she truly wanted-who it was she truly wanted. At last she knew, stranger things had happened, than what she was about to do.