A/N: Holy Crap Cakes Batman, it's been a while! Sorry for the not updating in a while; life was busy kicking my ass. But, lo! I am back, with a completely unedited new chapter, that I also wrote at three in the morning. FEAR ME! Rawr.

Thanks so much for the reviews, and for adding my story to your favorites and/or alert lists. It makes me so happy I could just explode joy all over the place! But I won't; that's unsanitary.

In this chapter, people fail in many different ways, we get more insight into a certain character, and somebody actually doesn't fail so hard it hurts. Enjoy!

I Do... Don't I?

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Chapter Four: The Best Things in Life May be Free, But so is Torture!

Operation Cheer Casey Up was in full swing. Well, it was at the point where someone usually jumps off the swing… and then breaks a leg, is taken to the hospital, and told they have cancer. It wasn't going very well at all.

Currently Marti was trying everything she could think of to take Casey's mind off of Max and everything that had to do with him, or them. She was beginning to see that Edwin was right; it wasn't easy. Lizzie had taken the first shift, and when it didn't go well, morale dropped significantly in the ranks.

Derek, of course, was of the opinion that everybody should just let her wallow in her own misery for a while. Everybody, of course, completely disagreed with him. And Marti and Lizzie had agreed that he was a big, stinky jerk-face.

"Marti, this is really sweet of you; all of you! But I'm not sure I can physically take any more cheering up." They were sitting at Casey's kitchen table, two bowls of melted cookie dough ice cream beside them (this was mostly Casey's bowl), and playing cards spread out on the table in front of them. Sure, maybe Go Fish had been a lame idea, but after the puppet show her creative juices had just stopped flowing. Marti was just one young woman, for crying out loud!

"But, uh…" Casey smiled sadly, and Marti knew that she'd failed at her mission. She only hoped that her commanding officer (Lizzie) would be lenient in issuing her reprimand. "I guess… it's getting late anyway."

After the cards had been cleaned up, and the bowls put in the sink, Marti slipped away to 'use the bathroom'. Had Casey been devious enough to bother listening at the door, she would've heard the ensuing conversation.

"Smerek!"

"Oh, are we doing that again, Smarti?" The voice on the other end was dripping with sarcasm. Marti didn't spare it much thought but to roll her eyes.

"Yes, and you need to get your butt over here right now." She heard shuffling on the other end, then silence. "Derek?"

""Yeah, I'm here." There was another long pause, and then, "I'm pretty sure Case doesn't want the entire clan over there reminding her of all this shit, me especially." Even a rare glimpse of pure honesty wasn't gonna cut it this time. Marti had set her pride aside and been Casey's flower girl; she'd done it to make her happy. Derek barely said two words to Casey, and when he did he was usually picking a fight. He was going to put his time in whether he liked it or not.

"Well, tough shit." The silence on the other end of the line brought a satisfied smirk to her lips. Still being thought of as the baby of the family sometimes had its perks, if you knew how to swing it, and Derek had taught her well. Marti may have been sixteen, but she used her swear words sparingly, and like weapons. She found it had more impact that way. She continued, "You owe me, Derek, and I'm calling in my favor."

A beat, and then… "Fine."

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Marti had borrowed Nora's car for the evening (which was still too weird for Casey to think about), so Casey had waited for the call Marti had promised she'd make when she was home safe. Casey was still Casey, after all.

Right now she was watching a commercial for an exercise machine that claimed to be the best in the business: "Reshape your abs in just days!" She was about to change the channel when a soft knock sounded at the door. Thinking that maybe Marti forgot something, she opened it without a second thought. "Hey Marti, what'd yo-"

That definitely was not Marti. His words soon confirmed that.

"Last time I checked, I was not a hyperactive sixteen-year-old with a penchant for naming inanimate objects." That was a trait Marti had picked up when she was nine when she named the new toaster Frank, and possibly the one thing she had been unwilling to let go of from childhood. Casey almost laughed, but Derek was standing in her doorway holding a bag in one hand, and a bottle in the other. She was surprised to see that it was a soda bottle, and not some type of alcohol.

"Well, I doubt you'd come here to try to help… So let me guess: you're here to torture me?" Falling into old patterns was easy; it was comfortable. She could tell that he felt the same by the look on his face as he responded in kind.

"Why, hello to you too, Case. How am I doing? Oh, just fabulous; and yourself?"

Casey promptly turned away from the door and started to walk toward the couch. "Either get in here, or kindly close the door, jackass." Soon after she heard the door shut, her lap was flooded with DVDs from the bag her step-thing had been carrying. "So your tactic is to drown me in bad acting?" she asked upon seeing some of the titles. The Blob, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Creature from the Black Lagoon just to name a few.

"Actually, yes," he replied, sinking onto the couch next to her. "I thought we could MST3K it up." He reached out and took one of the DVDs, examining the cover.

"Edwin already tried movies." She had pushed the cases to her right, so that they fell between them, some of them straying between the cushions.

"Clearly, he was doing it wrong." He took the case in his hand, and offered it to Casey, who took it cautiously. They stared at each other for a second. "Now throw it at the wall."

"Uh… what?"

Derek looked like he was about to explain something very complicated to a very small child. "Whichever one lands closest to the couch starts the marathon, Spacey."

"You would have me dent my walls just to watch crappy movies?" Her features warred between appalled and amused.

"Of course," Derek picked up a case of his own. "I have absolutely no qualms about damaging your property in the pursuit of cinematic enjoyment. Now throw the damn DVD." And so, feeling for the first time in days like she'd had a choice in how she felt, Casey chucked Alien Apocalypse at the wall above her TV. It made a tiny little chip.

She smiled, and so did Derek.