Another reminder that this is a re-vamp. Do what you will with that information.

2

"Once Upon a Dream"
Sleeping Beauty Soundtrack

Naturally, Casey whined and complained.

Why would her own mother—her own flesh and blood—abduct and drive her two hours to some high school in London, Ontario under the pretenses of a dentist appointment? Why could she not have brought a change of clothes so her daughter wouldn't have to traipse around a public high school in her school uniform? Why were they the ones who had to uproot their lives in Toronto and replant it in some random city?

All of these questions and their variations comprised the plaintive babbling that spewed from fifteen year-old Casey McDonald's mouth.

However what occupied her mind was that they were indeed in London, Ontario. London, Ontario, ladies and gentlemen. London, Ontario.

She hadn't forgotten Derek. After all, what were the chances of her mother meeting a man who just happened to have three children named Derek, Edwin, and Marti? What were the chances that there was more than one Derek in London, Ontario who had two younger siblings named Edwin and Marti?

Hm?

Hmm?

Hmmm?

The little episode Casey had in the car was not because her mother was essentially ruining her life—though that played a small part in the bigger picture. She was panicking because…Derek.

Derek was here, and he was about to give her a tour of his high school. A high school she would be harangued into going to, of course, but it would still be his high school. He would be there. They would be interacting at home and away from it. They would be classmates.

Derek was here.

All right, it was true that she wasn't 100% sure it was really her Derek since she had yet to come face-to-face with the boy. She'd met Edwin (in all his gaseous glory) and Marti (in all her purple princess glory), but Derek had remained this elusive, indistinct, shadowy figure in the corner of her eye. A shadow who vaguely resembled a thirteen year-old she knew once upon a time—once upon a dream.

There could only be two reasons why she hadn't "met" him yet.

One: he knew it was her, and since the circumstances of their re-acquaintance would necessitate them to behave as siblings instead of…whatever they had been gravitating toward before, he couldn't possibly bring himself to meet her in fear of the fact that his dormant feelings for her would suddenly rise up like a tidal wave and sweep her off her feet in some passionate, hormone-induced, highly-inappropriate display.

Or two: he'd completely forgotten about her and thought he would just be meeting some random girl named Casey who happened to be a complete nerd and therefore refused to associate himself with such a character.

Those seemed to be the only plausible excuses as to why he was either feigning sickness and/or prior engagement to avoid her all this time.

So when she was approached by a teenage boy wearing a baseball hat backwards with a voice that already made him sound like a complete dimwit, Casey sighed in relief. This couldn't possibly be her Derek. Her Derek was smart and witty…and definitely didn't refer to himself in the third person. Sure, this Derek was sweet and kind of slow—in a very endearing way!—but there was no fun banter, no "keener-jerk" reactions, and there was definitely no smirk.

But despite all that, Casey figured that things wouldn't be so bad. George was nice, and it seemed to rub off on his son. She could already picture the nice brother/sister bond between herself and this Derek.

Until he very nearly asked her out.

Oh, yes, Casey may have come from an all-girls institution, but she hadn't been living under a rock all this time. This Derek mentioned boyfriends and smoothly transitioned into, "Well, if you ever move to London, maybe you and I could, um—"

We were then—fortunately or unfortunately, she wasn't quite sure anymore—interrupted by another teenage boy their age with familiar brown hair who introduced himself as "Ralph." However his hair color either didn't quite register in her mind or she was just too offended because the jerk up and butted into the conversation saying he need to speak with Derek alone. And when she tried to make acquaintances with him (since a good sister would try and get to know her brother's friends so as to maintain a civilized and friendly atmosphere), she was rebuffed and told to take a hint! And when she blurted out an offended excuse me, he actually excused her and tossed some money onto the table so she could grab herself some sort of tater cobbler. She'd shoved herself out of her seat as primly as she could, threw a retort in his face, and walked away with his money.

It should've dawned on her at that point. Looking back, she realized how stupid and dense she'd been for not seeing it sooner. In fact, she was still ashamed that she didn't see it sooner.

Thankfully, her brain rebooted itself and stuttered back into intelligence when "Ralph" walked into the restaurant that she was supposed to meet her mother, George, and her new stepbrother.

As she saw him stalk toward her, she couldn't help but hear the familiar song playing in the recesses of her mind, like background music to the scene: I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream. I know you, the gleam in your eyes is so familiar, a gleam. Yet I know it's true that visions are seldom all they seem, but if I know you, I know what you'd do—you'll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream…

She never thought that stupid song could ever apply to her life, but there it was. Right on the dot; it hit the bull's eye.

The gleam in those chocolate brown eyes (the ones that she didn't get a good look at back in the cafeteria because he flat-out refused to make eye contact), the sharp, biting wit (that really should've been the prime indicator that this jerk was her Derek), the arrogant, self-absorbed comments (that were merely for exaggerated amusement before but were now legitimately for the narcissistic purpose of self-glorification), but most of all…the Smirk™.

And the song continued to ring true. Visions really were seldom all they seemed, and if she had known Derek, they would've picked up where they left off—even thought that point was fairly nebulous in itself.

So she apparently didn't know Derek. Or at least, she didn't know him anymore. He wasn't the same boy he had been two years ago.

She supposed that she could blame it on the divorce he must've gone through as well. That was why she'd had so much hope that they'd get along; they'd both had to suffer through the extremes of deafening fights and stone-cold silences. And aside from trying to stomach those ordeals, they had to shield their younger siblings from the same thing. She thought that maybe they'd be kindred spirits.

But apparently not.

During that disastrous Operation Disengagement process, Casey could tell she and Derek had some sort of weird telepathic exchange underneath the actual, verbal conversation/sparring match they were having. It was a mutual, silent agreement that what happened between them two years ago was a summer fling between two entirely different people. He made it sufficiently clear that he felt this way and that she should follow suit. The Derek and Casey on that ship should be repressed and forgotten.

It should not be spoken about. It should not be implied. It should not be alluded to. It should not be given second, third, or fourth thoughts.

Her Derek was gone. In his place was Derek Venturi, a fifteen year-old who seemingly hated her guts for absolutely no reason. So when the McDonalds moved in with the Venturis, it wasn't hard for the two eldest teens to transition into a love-hate sibling relationship that could not be compared to warring cats and dogs because the simile was just too tame.

By the end of her second month living in that house, it felt like her Derek had just been some distant fantasy. She practically forgot about him since this Derek pissed her off to the point of utter thoughtlessness and speechlessness where all she could bring herself to do was split his name in a shriek: "DER-EK!"

Of course, he had his moments in which she saw that old gleam in his eye whenever they fought. She caught fleeting glimpses of the sweetly mischievous boy she once thought she knew whenever he played with Marti or…or when he did something completely out of character like help her.

But those moments were immediately dashed against the rocks because he'd follow it up with something immature and/or stupid to ruin the moment and re-establish his cool-guy persona.

The only thing that managed to survive their two vastly different relationships was:

"JERK!"

"KEENER!"

The prick made it his hobby to piss her off, and he did it very well. He'd prank her for no reason, and he'd challenge her for the most trivial things. For every clumsy thing she did (horrendously embarrassing or hardly noticeable), he'd point, laugh, and call her "Klutzilla" instead of grabbing her hand and steadying her like he'd done before. He'd leave his rancid hockey gear lying around the house—not to piss off his father and stepmother—but to piss her off.

For months after that cruise, Casey dreamed of Derek, and she'd wake up feeling hopeful and happy. For months after she moved into the Venturi home, she'd wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat because Derek was strangling her in her nightmares.

Once upon a dream indeed.

When George Venturi came home and announced that he was seeing a woman named Nora in Toronto, Derek was aware enough of his dad's relationship with his mom to be legitimately happy for the man—not that he let it show, of course. Abby Venturi was a nice woman, and Derek loved her dearly…but there was a reason why George had won the custody battle. Even if they weren't supposed to pick sides, Derek knew where his loyalties lay, and that was with the man who'd stuck with his children. And he deserved to be happy.

Besides, Nora sounded nice and genuinely cared about his bumbling idiot of a dad and his family, and since she had kids of her own, Derek figured she had enough motherly instincts to be a good stepmom to Marti and Edwin. Mothering Derek himself was out of the question, of course.

Then George sat him down in the living room one night and told him about Nora's two daughters. Lizzie was the younger one, about Ed's age, and Casey was the older one who was about his age…

Casey.

Casey.

Only one thing flashed through his mind like a giant advertisement: "WARNING!"

But he pushed it to the back of his mind because what were the chances of there being just one Casey in Toronto with a younger sister named Lizzie? Toronto was a big city, and "Casey" and "Lizzie" were common enough names.

So Derek sat back in his recliner, wondering if this particular Casey was as hot as the other one. Then George brought Nora home to meet the kids, and as soon as Derek laid eyes on the woman, the giant advertisement's message morphed from "WARNING!" to "SHIT!"

Oh, yeah, Nora looked nice. She had a sweet smile, a cute haircut—definitely a MILF. But it was his Casey'smom—the one who'd saved them from the tongue-lashing Casey's dad was about to unleash on the both of them. She had longer hair then, but she still looked the same. She obviously didn't recognize Derek, and he hardly expected her to. There was such a drastic difference between thirteen year-old Derek and the Canadian Adonis he'd become.

When she showed a picture of her two kids, though, the Canadian Adonis fell off his pedestal, choked on his soda, and spat it out over the table because there she was. Take out the bad haircut, the retainer, and the super dorky-ness that seemed to have latched on and infected the poor girl, and it was her. It was Casey.

The blue-eyed, dark brown-haired, klutzy keener who'd become his best friend in a time span of two days. The one who'd cried on the staircase wishing neither of them had to go. The one who gave him a legitimate science lesson that he'd actually listened to (she taught him the different methods of how to plant trees—like marcotting). The one who gripped his hand for dear life every time they walked near a puddle in that conservatory.

It was her. God, he could tell it was her even if he was standing from a hundred meters away.

So when he figured out that his dad and Nora were intentionally keeping their two eldest kids apart (again), Derek didn't know whether to be relieved or pissed off. He didn't know how he was supposed to act around her—maybe she forgot all about him. (Unlikely since no one forgets Derek Venturi.) But…maybe she just wouldn't be able to recognize him…that was a possibility. Nora hadn't, but then again, he and Nora had only seen him a few times on the cruise and had never actually interacted with him.

Either way, Derek needed to figure out a way to make their eventual meeting less complicated. So the night before Nora was supposed to drag Casey out to London and for a Derek Venturi Tour of Thompson High in the hope that Casey would be more willing to move to London, Derek stayed up almost half the night going into full-on devious mastermind mode to come up with a plan that would keep him from jumping this girl and scaring the ever-loving hell out of her.

See, he wanted to his dad to marry Nora. The poor guy needed the lovin' of a good woman, and the only person who seemed up to the job was Nora. Plus it helped that Marti was completely attached already. Lizzie and Edwin laid eyes on each other and immediately became partners in crime, so there wasn't much to worry about on that front either. Everything would be fine.

Except for Derek and Casey. If she still had any feelings for the thirteen year-old Derek, then how would she react when she saw the fifteen year-old Derek? The poor girl would have a nervous breakdown as he soon as he said "hi." All right, this wouldn't be a problem under normal circumstances, but this situation was far from normal already.

They were potential stepsiblings! One could not jump on potential stepsibs! Oh, yeah, sure, you can—he looked it up and everything. No blood relation and all that, but regardless! Derek Venturi could not have a hot stepsister for whom he use to have f…fff…(damn it)…fffeee…(come on, Venturi!)…FEELINGS for! That would be awkward beyond all reason! He'd be a social pariah! His rep would go up in flames!

So he saw only one solution: the two of them could not get along. There was no way. If they got along—if everything was copacetic in Derek-and-Casey-Land—things would go south very quickly—literally, figuratively, in all senses of the phrase. So he would have to make her hate him—which means, he'd be attempting the impossible—so there would be no room for her to have feelings for him. Feelings that he would most definitely wind up reciprocating.

Okay, sure, it would piss her off. Sure, she'd probably hate him so much that it would make his cheating off her homework and tests that much more difficult. Sure, he'd have to pretend to hate the prospect of her moving in. Sure, she'd end up bringing home her boyfriends—who weren't him. Sure, his forehead and his desk would become great sparring partners.

But it would be an uncomplicated relationship. He'd piss her off; she'd hate him. All would be well.

So he set it up so that Ralph would pose as "Derek," but the dumbass made "Derek" sound like some lovable idiot, and Casey—in her hot little schoolgirl uniform—found it cute. They were getting along. They were getting along so well, in fact, that Ralph would've asked her out if Derek hadn't jumped in.

And Operation Make-Casey-Hate-Derek was a go.

For the next three and-a-half years, he became the bane of her existence. He'd prank her and piss her off. He'd slipped up here and there, but he managed to keep his cool and get back on track with a well-timed insult or prank.

He was getting so good at playing Derek the Jerk (not that it was really a far cry from the Derek he actually was) that it just became second nature. He pretended to hate her guts so she wouldn't have to pretend to hate his. At first it had just been a courtesy thing…then he realized she couldn't lie worth shit, so it was a good thing he took that out of her hands.

Despite all that, though…she was still his Casey.

Head. Desk. Bang.

He'd admit it—he was a player. Girls would flank him left and right on a daily basis, and he wasn't about to do anything to change that. He was Derek Venturi—if you wanted him, his adoring fans came as a package deal. But before Casey showed up in his life again, it wasn't that bad. After she moved in… Well, George had to sit him down and lecture him about thinking with the lump of meat in his skull and not the one dangling between his legs.

Truthfully, he had been using his brain. A small, nearly-subconscious part of it wanted to make Casey jealous, but the primary motive was to distract himself so he wouldn't dwell on the fact that aside from a bedroom wall, there was something between him and Casey—chemistry.

It wasn't complete torture living with her. He could check her out all he wanted even if he had to feign disgust. He got to see all the different sides of her that her other little boyfriends never got to see. Arguing with her made him substantially smarter since he had to keep looking in the dictionary to figure out her insults. He got into Queen's, for crying out loud!

It's like she was this annoying light he could never turn off—annoying and bright as hell, but she still managed to light things up and—OH, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

The only person who managed to actually divert his attention was Sally, but that hardly turned out into a happily-ever-after. He'd hoped that maybe the sight of Casey with a boyfriend would desensitize him and bring out the brotherly side that he reserved for Marti and sometimes Lizzie, but when she brought home guys, it wasn't overprotectiveness that made his eye twitch. He would deny it to the ends of the earth, but he was jealous, damnit.

He mastered the art of background checks and tailing people because of her and her ridiculous taste in guys—with the exception of Sam, of course. (But things nearly when DEFCON-1 when he accidentally slipped up and brought in the male code.) Max was a pretty decent guy, but he was a football player. GAG. Not only that, but he singlehandedly managed to turn Casey—Casey!—into an airhead. And Truman—good God, freaking Truman! He was like a slimier, scummier, asshole-y version of Derek that he figured Casey tried to settle with since she couldn't have the real thing.

And she gave him a second chance. She. Gave. Him. A. Second. Chance.

What. The. Hell?

They got back together after he cheated on her! His Casey would've had the sense to never date the degenerate in the first place! But it's not like he could talk either. After all, he dated Emily. The first fake date that had been in retaliation to Casey and Sam should've been the prime indicator that Derek and Emily would not have been a good idea, but then he went and became her freaking boyfriend.

But everyone has their stupid moments. He rectified it, of course, by dumping her before they left for Casey's grandma's place at the lake. There had always been something about that girl that irked him anyway. His reasoning, of course, was that they'd both be at different colleges, so they parted on fairly good terms. Or at least, he thought they did.

She ended up bitching out on Casey, and he didn't bother to find out the reason why. Derek just called her up, called her out, and told her to never speak to either of them again unless it was to apologize. And even then, Emily would have to do some major ass-kissing. And then she made the mistake of demanding to know why he was jumping to Casey's rescue again.

So it was a tearless goodbye when he, Casey, and Sam said their final farewells to Emily when they went off to Queen's. She would be going off to Toronto, so coupled with the fact that Vicky and Fiona lived there, both Derek and Casey now had an excuse to never, ever visit Toronto again.

But Derek had high hopes for Queen's. No longer would there be an audience to convince, no longer would there be standards and reputations to live up to, no longer would there be parents.

He wasn't gonna seduce her, of course. He was just gonna…taper things out and let their natural chemistry smooth out their normally-rocky relationship. And if things panned out from there…so be it.

Because he was a little tired of simply walking away from their fights; he wanted to do the exact opposite. Because he was done doing nothing about the fact that she would prance around in these outfits and flash him these smug little smirks. Because he was done simply being the annoying stepbrother who managed to bring out more passion in her by stealing the remote than any of her boyfriends combined. He wanted more.