AN: Here we go...
Disclaimer: Nothing owned.
"Alright, Casey, you're on the first branch just get to the next one."
Casey continued to climb to the second branch, "These creepy long roots are freaky, Derek."
Derek laughed, "I know, but at least they give you a lift to start climbing."
"Yeah…" She kept going. About 15 minutes of climbing and encouraging words later, Casey made it to the deathly branch that ended Charlie's life. She stared at the very branched that snapped on him and immediately she started to get nervous. "Derek!" she yelled.
"Casey, don't look at it! Don't think about it, I know you can do it! You've gone so far up!"
"Alright, Derek!" Casey took a deep breath and looked up into the sky. Deep down she was hoping that whoever was up there… please don't her die. The branches and leaves covered most of her vision of the sky, but she noticed the sky not as bright or sunny as it was before. She took one more reassuring deep breath and set her hand on the next branch.
"It's okay, Casey! You're doing great!"
Casey didn't answer and took her time and reached up to pull her weight on it. She got on the branch and slowly paced so it wouldn't break. As she got on she heard a light snap, "Uh, Derek?!"
"Casey, take your time don't rush! The plane is right there!" Casey nodded to herself and slowly paced once more and she took her time like Derek advised her to. She took tiny movements where she crawled on the branch and over to the cockpit. She felt the metal and immediately she was relieved that it was almost over; she was a few more crawls away from being able to contact home. Those few crawls were made and she found herself inside the cockpit. "Casey! You did it!!"
"Derek! I'm inside! I did it!!" She announced excitedly; still on her hands and knees.
"Casey, be careful though because we're not sure how stable that thing is."
"Alright," she slowly got up off her knees and stood on her feet and immediately she felt good about herself. She stared at the things in front of her: The backs of two pilot chairs and a million electronic devices. "Derek, I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to do!!" She called out.
"You need to find the planes transceiver!"
"What the hell is a transceiver?!" She got closer to the front to cockpit, "What the hell is that smell…" she said aloud to herself.
"Casey, it looks like a walkie talk--" Casey screamed as loud as she could, "CASEY! WHAT HAPPENED?!"
What she saw was two decaying bodies that were obviously the pilot and co-pilot. "Derek, I think I found the pilot and his partner pilot!" She told him with disgust.
"EW!"
"I know!" She mustered enough courage and strength to ignore the two dead, smelly, and rotten decaying bodies. "Ok, Derek! What the hell am I looking for again?!"
"Trans--"
"I know that! I don't know what it looks like!"
"Okay, Casey! It looks like a walkie talkie and it's attached to a chord kinda like the spiral--" Casey found what he was looking for and unfortunately for her, it was in the hands of the decaying pilot.
"Ew. Ew. Ew." She muttered to herself. "Derek!" she whined, "It's attached to his hand!!"
Sadly she could hear him laugh from that high up, "Casey, just take it out his hand and all will be fine!"
"Easy for you to say!" she was disgusted with herself for even tempting to get a hold of that transceiver from that hand. Casey closed her eyes in thinking that it would make things easier but once her fingers touched a part she couldn't see, she immediately gagged. "Derek! This is just wrong!"
"Come on, you wimp!" She heard him laugh again, "It's okay! It's almost over with!"
Casey quickly yanked it out of pilot's hands and literally wanted to puke. "I got it, Derek!" She coughed.
"Alright, Casey! Now there's two buttons on the side of the talkie and press em to talk and hopefully you'll grab a signal. Or someone will answer!"
Casey held the buttons on the side and started to speak as she heard static, "Hello? Hello? Anyone?!" Static. "Hello?! We crashed on an island! We need to get out of here. Help! Hello?! Anyone?!" Static. "No one's answering, Derek!!"
"It's okay, I'm sure they will soon! Just wait!"
Casey tried again, "Someone! Anyone! Please. We need to get off. We've been here for 2 days and we really need to get home. Please somebody answer, we need to get home." Static. "Derek, no one's coming for us!" She cried out.
"Casey, don't say that! It might just be a slow sign--" the noise of sudden rainfall came in the air, "Shit! It's raining, Casey!"
Casey looked out the open space of cockpit and saw how hard the rain was starting to fall. She remembered when she looked up at the sky that it was becoming quite gloomy, "Derek! It's raining really hard now! What should I do?!" Casey quickly started to freak out because she was now stuck in a broken area of a plane with two dead bodies, suspended high up on the islands long and tall trees.
"Casey, just stay inside! It's too dangerous to come out now! The branches could break or you could slip if you tried to climb back down! Just stay in until it dies down!"
"Alright! What about you?!" She called out from high above.
"I'll be fine, Casey! It's just rain! It's more important that you stay safe up there alright?!"
"Okay!" She smiled at his protective nature over her. She sat down and brought her knees up to her chest and hugged tightly and thoughts started to run through her head once again. The transceiver wasn't working and no one was responding. She was starting to think that maybe they were just going to be stuck here forever. Casey then trickled thoughts of how long she would be able to survive here without her things; without real food; they might run out of water; they would hygienically have a downfall. Then she wondered if they would die. Would herself and Derek end up dying without saying goodbye to their family? She started to well up at the thought. Their family had no idea where they were and she couldn't even imagine what they were going through. She wiped her face with her shirt, "Derek?! Are you still there?!"
"Yeah, Casey! Still here! I'm not leaving!"
She was relieved but she was still terrified. "I just want to go home…" she cried to herself, "home." Home. The word gave her time to think about home. About the dreams she kept having that felt so real and that felt like she was really there but she constantly kept waking up back here on the island. "Home. Minutes." she muttered aloud as she thought, "Island. Hours." she tried to balance the parallels of her dreams. Casey was starting to realize that island time was longer than her home time, which only last about a 1 minute or 2 at the most then she'd wake up hours later back here.
Casey was brought out of her thoughts when she heard a few noises come from the transceiver. "He--" static. "Hello?!" Static. "Anyone there?" Static.
"Derek!! Someone's responding!!" Casey yelled in excitement.
"Answer it! Hurry!"
Casey literally pounced over to where the transceiver was. She heard the cockpit creak with the sudden weight shift but she quickly ignored it and grabbed the transceiver. Casey quickly pressed the answering button, "Hello! Hello?! We're here! Hello?!"
Static, "Hello! Who is this?!"
"This is Casey McDonald! I was on a flight from Toronto to Hawaii and we crashed on an Island presumably somewhere near or is Hawaii. There are a lot of us who survived and we need to be rescued quickly!"
"Flight 797 Toronto to Hawaii?"
"Yes! Yes! That's our flight!"
"We had lost contact with your plane about 3 hours before you crashed. We regained a connection and no one answered and we reported your plane as missing."
"There's a lot of us! We survived! Please come rescue us! Please!"
"We have a location of this connection we are sending our Rescue Planes to your location as we speak. Just hold on and inform the rest of the survivors that rescue is on the way."
"I will! I will! Thank you!!" Casey let go of the transceiver and ran over the open part of the plane, to which was still being bombarded with the storm as more creaks were being made, "Derek!!"
"Yeah?!"
"Rescue is coming!! Derek, we're going home!!" She cried out.
"Are you serious?!"
"Yeah!!"
"Casey, I knew you could do it!! You saved us!" In that instant Casey did feel like a hero. A sudden feeling washed over her and she just felt proud and happy. Then she was brought out of her thoughts with three simple words, "I love you!"
Casey was stunned to say the least. Her eyes grew wide because all it was so far with her and Derek was the word like. Now here she was able to make that call to save their lives; standing in a plane where just outside stood a man in the rain, who admitted he loved her… unless it was just a blunder. She had to make sure it wasn't, "What, Derek?!"
"I said I love you, Case! I love you!" He admitted even louder the second time around.
Casey heard it clearer this time and it made her heart race. She started to pace back and forth thinking that would help her come up with a reply to give Derek. Did she love him too? Did she still just like him? She wasn't quite sure but all she knew was all of this was coming so fast. Feelings, admissions, love: all so fast. She kept her pacing and it got more rapid this time. Casey didn't even realize she was pacing to the sound of the hard rain falling. She started to think of all the things Derek has done for her…minus those things during their high school relationship…but those things he'd done for her as soon as they'd been off to college and sharing their apartment together.
--
Derek and Casey sat on the couch watching TV. Casey waiting for her date to arrive, to which sadly he hadn't shown up.
"Casey, don't cry."
He saw her wiping her tears away quickly. She looked over at him and smiled, "I'm not crying. I'm okay. It's happened before, I'll be alright." She stood up, "I guess I'll just get back into my pajamas."
"No." Casey turned to look at him, "Cheer up. I'll take you out to dinner. My treat. You're already dressed so why not."
She raised an eyebrow, "Really?" He nodded. "But aren't you going out with Sam tonight?"
Derek shook his head, "Nope. He had to go drive down to his parents' house."
Casey nodded and offered him a smile,"Sure then. I mean if you really want to."
"Yes, Casey. I do. Let me get ready." Casey sat back down on the couch as he ran to his room to change.
Casey flipped through some papers on the table and saw a flyer for a new restaurant not too far from their place. She got up and headed toward Derek's room and was about to knock, "He--" she heard him on the phone.
"Yeah, I'm not gonna be able to go tonight. Something came up. Yup. We can just go check it out next Friday night. Alright. Cool. Bye Sam."
Casey realized he ditched his plans for her and he never did that for her before. It was one of the things that started off their closer relationship. Derek would often do things like that for her and living with him just got much more fun and tolerable.
--
Casey kept her pace going as she reminisced about everything. Finally the loudest creak would give her thoughts a break for the third time that day. She stopped her pacing and stood in the middle of the cockpit to figure out what the noise was. All she heard was the loud rain and loud creak that came from the front of the cockpit. "Casey?! Okay! I know I just freaked you out!" She snorted in her head but at that moment there was nothing in her to answer him as the creaks got loud with a slight tilt coming from the front once more. The rain was getting much harder and the tilting would start to get worse and all Casey could do was try to get as far from the front of the plane as possible.
Maybe she even hoped the weight shift would balance the cockpit, unfortunately it wouldn't. "CASEY! THE PLANE!" She ignored him once more and she was desperately hoping the tilting would stop. Again it wouldn't. The creaks got loud and the rain didn't help the plane become as stable as it was before. The tilt would happen and sadly the plane wouldn't find its balance, "CASEY!!"
"DEREK!" She screamed as the plane tilted completely on the front end of the cockpit and it fell from the tree. Casey was plummeted down to where she felt excruciating pain from her back hitting the seats and farther into the electronic devices. Everything just hurt until she heard a thud and a scream. A muffled scream.
She wasn't falling anymore. All she felt was someone pulling her out and the pain worsening to the extent that it was too much to bare. She felt rain. She felt hands on her. "Casey?! CASEY! NO!" Was all she heard. A simple cry from the voice that she distinguished was Derek's. Casey stopped feeling the pull and she was just still. She tried to open her eyes and all she saw was black hazy flashes of a blur that she also assumed was Derek. Everything was starting to fade once more as she heard him call again, "Casey!" He cried out again, "Case?" she heard once more before it faded and this time it wasn't white that she saw. It was the same black fade that happened after the crash. Casey blacked out. "Case?" was the last thing she quietly heard. Black out.
--
"Case?" He knocked on her bedroom door, "Casey?" He sighed a laugh because she was always so difficult to wake up, "Casey, get your ass up! We have to go!"
Casey heard his voice and immediately woke up. Sweating and panting. "Dream?!"
Anyone get the end scene? Especially Derek's words.
The next chapter is the end :)
