This is awful. I hate that I even wrote this. Let's just call it the seventh inning stretch- so skim over it, and feel confident that the next chapter won't be so bad. Dies
Summary: After having a serious accident, Derek looms around the house unseen, learning things about his family he never expected. Eventual Dasey.
Disclaimer: I own neither Live With Derek nor The Invisible.
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The Invisible
Exhaustion and Heartbreak
Edwin burst into Lizzie's room, not taking any extra time to consider whether or not she'd be angry at him for not knocking. The two of them were always closer to each other than Derek and Casey were, but right now, they both felt like they had no one but eachother to rely on.
"Ok- I heard Nora tell George that the cops can't do anything about Casey, and that a search party for Derek would be organized tomorrow." Edwin was out of breath to begin with, so by the end of his sentence, he was nearly blue in the face.
"Edwin," Lizzie started, standing to walk behind her step-brother to close the door to her room. Marty had finally fallen asleep, and she didn't want to risk waking her up again. "That's all information we already knew, why are you so..." She paused for a moment to look over his appearance once again. "That?"
Edwin slouched and nearly threw himself down into Lizzie's desk chair. "I'm exhausted. And now Casey's out of reach too..." Edwin looked up at Lizzie, seeing that her eyes were brimming with tears.
"I hate not being able to do anything." Lizzie said, her voice breaking. "I can help save the rainforest, I can raise everyone awareness of their carbon footprint, I can usually stop a Casey/Derek meltdown from happening. But I... I just don't know what to do now..."
BREAK
To say that Casey was frustrated was quite the understatement. She had been through what she could only describe as 'hell and back' over the past days and hours, and she was beginning to lose both her patience and her drive.
So, finding herself exhausted physically and emotionally, freezing in the Canadian fall night while she ambled around a neighborhood she had no knowledge of whatsoever, Casey had to admit that she was irritated. Of course Derek was the reason she was miserable. Derek was always the reason she was miserable. But this time, she was feeling so awful because he was gone, not because he was pestering her. He was in danger, missing, maybe even dead, and he was making her a different kind of miserable that she wasn't very comfortable with.
"You're stupid, Casey," she berated herself, blowing out a steamy breath that lingered in the frigid air before dissipating into nothing. "Go out, knowing nothing... running aimlessly..."
Casey stopped walking, noticing that she was standing right in the middle of a four-way stop with the third Thomas residence behind her. "Not even just a fork in the road." She muttered. The next Thomas house was several blocks away, and she somewhat doubted that the Carhart she was wearing would keep her warm for much longer. The temperature felt like it was dropping consistently, and she herself would be in the hospital if she wasn't careful.
The low rumble of an engine interrupted her thoughts and Casey quickly crossed the street, stepping behind a hedge as a sedan slowly passed. Casey pulled her cell out of her pocket and check the time, annoyed at how bright the light was in the shadows. Seeing that it was just now approaching midnight, she sighed before standing and observing everything around her.
Several of the houses visible from her spot standing on the corner of some stranger's lawn had the light blue glow of a TV in one or more window, and she thought she could hear music beating from somewhere. Then again, that could have just been the pounding in her head. Casey noted that a few of the houses had the garage doors open even when all the lights were off, and she was relieved to realize that she must be standing in a somewhat secure neighborhood. Her eyes locked on Thomas 3 once again, standing tall at the center of the cul-de-sac.
Suddenly, something quietly beating repeatedly scared Casey, and adrenaline rushed unpleasantly through her body while her eyes frantically searched for the source of the noise. She focused on the street lights when she heard the noise again, and noticed with a sigh that the night swallows were out, swooping under the lamps to get the moths that dared to be out in the cold. Casey relaxed a little, but the tight tension that settled in her refused to leave completely.
Raising a hand up to her head to try and ease the headache she was giving herself, Casey ran her hand down the length of her hair and noticed that her hair had annoyingly gotten tangled where the collar of the coat met her neck. She grumbled before pulling a thin, black hair-tie off of her wrist and pulling her long hair up and winding it into a messy bun to get out of the way. This, of course, just to add to her diminishing patience, left her neck and ears markedly colder, and she wished she had been smart enough to wear a hood.
"One more thing you didn't think of," she scolded herself, and finally turned her back to the street with Thomas 3 to head the four blocks south to the next house.
From just behind her, a flock of swallows that she hadn't been able to see were disrupted by something that Casey couldn't hear, and all flew off with quiet chirps that were more than enough to whip the teenager around to look for the cause. Resisting the urge to call out asking if anyone was there, Casey walked slowly back towards where the birds were, just back on the side of the street that she had been on before and to the west a couple dozen feet. A few of the little dark birds were still visible against the white fencing, and Casey slowly crossed the street, feeling that a flock of birds out at midnight had to be some sort of anomaly that deserved to be looked at. No matter how many times she had told the lead role in the movies to not follow the strange sounds in the night.
Casey prayed for a cat, or a squirrel, anything that would have caused the ruckus, but as she stepped onto the sidewalk after crossing the road she found nothing but the strong apprehension that she hadn't felt since sitting in Derek's bedroom. Casey swallowed hard and decided that was enough to go in a new direction, and threw a glance up to the street signs before walking further west.
Derek, rosy cheeked and out of breath, pumped a fist in the air and spun in a circle as Casey walked past him. "Jesus, Case, thank you!" He had been chasing birds for about 5 minutes now, trying to catch his step-sisters attention. Finally, finally she decided to catch on and follow him.
"Don't get lost, Casey, don't get lost." The teenager repeated quietly to herself, accounting the goose bumps down her neck as another nasty symptom of under dress rather than a result of walking past Derek.
"I don't give a crap if you get lost," Derek started, taking quick steps to catch up to her. "I just want you to find the freaking car at this point." Casey, of course was completely oblivious to the comment, and Derek found himself missing the complimentary screech of his name that she would have normally given him.
Casey continued walking, her eyes watching three different shadows of herself from the various streetlights around her. She was surprised to realize that she wasn't very scared at all, now that the strange noises had been credited to the birds. Her initial adrenaline rush was fading, however, and her eyes were starting to burn from being tired and burnt out. Fortunately the chattering of her teeth and the rhythmic beats of her feet on the pavement were enough to distract her from her fatigue.
"Right, Case." Derek directed, noticing the cross street where his car was parked was only a few yards a head of them. Casey's eyes didn't rise from her feet. "We have to turn." He repeated, bumping her with his shoulder, which did not have the same effect as it did earlier that day in the hallway of their house, when he was able to physically move her.
Moments later, Casey stood in the dark with her big blue eyes staring up at the crossroad in front of her and the words on the reflective green signs. Instead of seeing "Bluegrass" and "Clementine" all she saw was "You're lost" crossing "Turn around". The stinging in her eyes mixed with the dry, frigid winter air, causing Casey to have to blink a few times to keep tears of physical exhaustion and heartbreak from falling down her face. Her lungs were starting to burn from the cold air, and the tightness in her chest from shivering made a small portion of her brain feel as though she was being suffocated.
"Casey," she breathed almost silently to herself, "You're an idiot. No smarter than Der-" When a sudden prickling sensation ran through her right arm, Casey cut her own thought short and looked around her for what had interrupted her quiet self-loathing.
Derek started when he noticed that his incessant tugging on his step-sister's right arm had actually paid off. That plan had been much easier than trying to get the swallows to fly away again. And, Derek noted as Casey took a few cautious steps to the right, straight for the Prince, incredibly rewarding.
"One day you're really going to have to explain to me why you can feel all this crap and no one else can." Derek whispered in her ear, watching her eyes closely for a reaction.
Casey swallowed, the words not comprehendible in her ear, but definitely detectible. She was going in the right direction, and Derek was with her.
BREAK
Nora sat down heavily on the couch in the living room of the McDonald-Venturi house and wiped away the tears that were falling down her face. Something deep inside her, past the point that was detectable by anyone without a maternal instinct, she knew that Derek had found trouble much worse than just running off to spite his father. Though the notion didn't surprise her in the least, Nora could tell, she knew thorough the core of her being, that her oldest step-son was in a lot of trouble.
Still though, that didn't stop her from ignoring Casey's frantic claims that she knew where Derek had gone so long ago- a whole three days now? But Nora had closed her own daughter out, and had been blind-sided by the car speeding out of the drive way much too fast for her to follow. Casey had never done anything like that, so Nora never saw it coming.
"George, honey, please," Nora said, her voice so close to a whimper she almost took a moment to be embarrassed.
George came to a sudden halt, the father of the blended family's face showing new worry lines that seemed to have carved themselves in the past twenty-four hours. "What, Nora?" He answered with a slight bite in his voice that didn't go unnoticed by his second wife.
"Please stop pacing, I'm anxious enough with-"
"Stop pacing?" George repeated, using anger to poorly mask his panic. Both of the oldest children were missing now, and she wanted him to stop pacing. "What do we do now, Nora? We've already called the cops, they're no help at all-"
"George," Nora stopped him short. "We need to keep our heads on straight, we need to stay calm and continue to try and get a hold of Casey. We need to," George looked over at his wife to see her face had fallen into her hands. "I don't know, George."
BREAK
Pounding on the windows didn't work. Pulling on the door handle with all her might proved to be a failure, too. So, Derek wasn't shocked in the least when his step-sister turned around and slammed her back against the Prince before sliding down the metal until she sat on the pavement with her knees pulled up to her chest.
Tears were running freely down her face and Derek found himself not completely understanding why she was so upset. "You found my car, Case," Derek said, crouching down next to while she sobbed. "You didn't fine my rotting corpse, this is good news."
Casey sighed and wiped her face. "Casey," Derek started, putting a hand on one of her right shoulder. "Casey, you have to find the hospital. I know that you know you're wasting time."
"I'm wasting time." Casey muttered to herself.
Derek nodded, and watched her eyes as intently as he could while she searched the pattern in her jeans for an answer. "Go to the hospital." He told her as strongly as he could, hoping against everything that he could get through to her once more. Their communicating situation was a mystery to him at this point. It was hard enough to talk to her when he wasn't half-dead and invisible.
"Ok," Casey said, standing up slowly after Derek had taken a step back. "Okay, I'll go to the hospital." Derek wondered if she was talking to herself or to him.
Casey faltered as she rose, nearly loosing her footing, and though Derek tried to help her, she was able to correct herself on her own. Suddenly, so many hours without food or sleep crashed down on Casey and she turned to place both palms on the drivers side window of the Prince. "I don't want to find you dead," she muttered to interior of the car and slowly pushed herself up. Turning, Casey started walking down the road that she had just sprinted up after seeing the horrible color of the Prince sitting just out of the circle of light cast by a street lamp.
She closed her eyes and swallowed before stopping at the crossroads of "You're lost" and "Turn around" once again. A sigh and a sniffle later, Casey was retracing her steps towards her mom's car with Derek following silently behind her.
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This was so much shorter than I wanted it to be, but I've been staring at it for weeks, and I just have to end it here. I'm going to start with a new blank document for the next sections to unscramble myself. And I apologize for the ridiculousness of the George/Nora bit, I just had to break that stupid emo wandering crap from Casey. I'm telling you. I can write Derek forever, but when Casey decides to cry all over my work, I come to a complete stop.
So, so sorry for the wait, and I promise to have this thing done by the 22nd, as that is when I lost computer privileges again. Good news, a move may be at hand for me, so I may possibly get the wonders of the internet again.
Thanks to everyone who reviewed for the last chapter. You've all been so flattering that I'm just hoping I'm not letting you down towards the end of this monster. Every time I get a review (which is so exciting that I check it instantly, regardless of work or anything else) I just get a rush knowing that you're pleased. Bear with me through this chapter and I'll put forth a better effort for chapter 8. The only thing I like about this crap is the title. :-) Later, and thanks so much again.
