A/N: I bet you can't believe I already have another chapter up lol. What can I say? I was on a roll. Actually, this chapter was originally going to include a lot more stuff, but it was pushing six thousand words (and I wasn't near being done) so I had to cut it in half. The stuff I cut out (plus more) will be in the next chapter.

Disclaimer: Nope. Not doing it. Now what?

Shout out to Amanda!

OOOOOOOO

"So, are you done giving me the silent treatment?" Emily asked as she shrugged out of her jacket and hung it on the coat rack.

The ride home had been beyond uncomfortable, what with Sam refusing to talk to her and choosing instead to glance at her every five minutes with extra sad puppy dog eyes. His sad face was worse than usual too; one of his eyes looked like he was auditioning to be in the Rocky remake and it made his face look even more, well, sad.

She knew her about-face on the whole hate the Venturi's issue had made things rocky between them, and she had the feeling things were probably going to get a lot worse before they got any better.

"That depends," he folded his arms across his chest, "are you done acting crazy?"

"You were rolling around a grimy floor, fighting some guy you haven't seen in years, and in front of your kids no less; but I'm the one acting crazy?"

"This is nothing to joke about," Sam said, jaws tight. He was really having trouble finding any humor in their current situation.

"You're absolutely right," she agreed. "Which is why I think we should sit down and discuss everything like adults."

Her words reminded him of what Nathan had said to him at the diner, and the memory did very little to improve his mood.

"Just like you discussed things with me before you decided to join Team Venturi?" he retorted, sarcastically.

Emily looked almost insulted. "I didn't join 'Team Venturi'. I'm trying my damndest to keep Team Shepherd alive, and even though it's the fourth quarter and we're down by a field goal I'm getting almost no help from my kicker," she said in exasperation.

"What? Who's the kicker?" Sam asked, confused. "Am I the kicker?"

"Yeah, Vanderjack, and you're F-ing things up."

"How exactly am I doing that?" he wanted to know. "I mean, excuse me, I'm sorry if by trying to save my daughter from a lot of unnecessary heartache I've somehow interfered with your relationship with your new bestest friend Casey," he said mockingly.

When she responded it was obvious from her own tone how much his had grated on her nerves. "Maybe if you pulled your head out of your ass for a second you'd be able to see that there is a method to my madness."

"So," he quirked an eyebrow, "you admit that you're mad?"

"Now who's making a joke out of it?" she huffed, before plopping down on the couch.

"No, no. I'm not joking." He leaned against the staircase, all the while regarding her coolly. "I really think you've lost your mind."

"And I really think you're about to get slapped upside the head." She was having about enough of him talking to her like that.

"But I thought fighting was bad," he said, feigning confusion. "Or is it just wrong when I'm beating up on your precious Derek?" As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Sam knew it had been the wrong thing to say. It wasn't that Emily looked angrier than she had before; it was more like she looked like she might dissolve into tears at any second.

Actually, she was trying very hard not to do that very thing. Sure, she and Casey may have been friends now, but Derek was… well, she wasn't sure what Derek was but she knew he was anything but precious to her. And she certainly wasn't looking forward to having to talk to him tomorrow.

Inhaling sharply, she turned accusing eyes to him. "How could you say that to me? You know," she paused, swallowing her cries so he wouldn't know just how deeply his words had affected her, "how I feel about that man."

"No, I don't," he said fiercely. "That's what I keep trying to tell you- I have no idea what you could possibly be thinking right now. None of this—not you and Casey, not you supporting Lauren and Nathan—makes any sense to me."

"Well, I'm trying to explain it to you; so why don't you come over here and let me."

Her words hung heavy in the air and for a moment she and Sam simply stared at each other.

Sam seriously considered ignoring her and going upstairs to bed, but whatever he saw in her eyes stopped him. It wasn't anger, or even really sadness; it was something akin to desperation, and it tugged at his heartstrings. Sighing and inwardly berating his decision, he made his way over to his wife and sat next to her on the couch.

"Explain," he demanded.

'Okay…' "So, truthfully, I really do like Casey again—I genuinely want to be her friend." Sam rose out of his seat a bit, looking ready to bolt, but Emily place a hand on his knee and pushed him back down. "But that's not the reason I am ready to give Lauren permission to date Nate now." He sent her a disbelieving look, but she soldiered on. "I don't think that Nathan is the guy for Lauren; heck, I don't really think he's the guy for anyone. Good boyfriends do not a Venturi make."

Finally, some sense out of the woman. "Then why--"

Silencing his interruption with a scowl, she continued. "Now, that being said, what I think about Nate doesn't really matter. It's what Lauren thinks about him that counts."

"So we're letting our kids make all their own decisions now?" Sam asked incredulously. "So tomorrow when Tony wants to start shooting heroin and Lauren signs up to work for that call girl service—

"You really think that's going to happen?" she asked in a monotone.

"Well… no."

"Then shut-up and let me finish." After seeing his reluctant nod, Emily asked, "Do you know how often Derek and Casey have seen George and Nora since the rehearsal fiasco?"

'Way to switch subjects.' "Umm… no."

"Zero; zero times," her voice was almost hysterically high, but Sam didn't seem to have any idea why what she was saying should mean anything to him. "Think about it, Sam. George and Nora each tried to keep their child away from someone they loved, and as a result said children pretty much ran off and stayed away." Emily had spoken slowly, waiting on her words to sink in.

Sam shrugged. "Well, that's too bad for George and Nora," he said, sounding anything but sympathetic. Really, he didn't hold any grudges towards them, but their problems were of no concern to him. In fact, he figured they'd lucked out- who would want to be in touch with their children if they were like Derek and Casey? "But that could never happen to us," he said confidently.

"How do you know?"

He didn't know how he knew; he just knew that he did. And, really, he couldn't believe that Emily didn't know any better. "I just do, okay."

"No," she shook her head, "not okay." Emily didn't see how he could still be acting like this after what she'd just told him. After Tony pointed it out to her she'd been willing to give in, but Sam was still acting all nonchalant. "I'm not gonna loose my baby because you can't swallow your damn pride and sit in a room with Derek without wanting to kill him."

"If you had heard what he said," Sam began as he jumped off the couch.

"Then I'm sure I would've wanted to fight him too," Emily finished for him. Getting off the couch, she moved to stand toe to toe with him. "I get that. I get that he pushes your buttons," she yelled. "And I'm not asking you to be his friend, or hang out with him, I'm not even asking you to be nice to him." She was crying now and breathing heavily, her words coming out high and loud. "All I'm asking is for you to not let your hate for him get in the way of our daughter's happiness."

"Emily--" He tried to interrupt then, but she wasn't having it. Nope. Emily was on a roll now.

"Let's say we forbid her to date him again," she said, "then what? We know she'll keep seeing him—she certainly did the last time." Sam's frown deepened but at least he seemed to be listening now. Really listening. "So we'll try harder, which will only push them closer together. But then we'll make her choose right?" Her eyes were wild, blazing. "Us or him." She paused, then, "We'll lose, Sam."

"No--"

"Yes; we will lose." 'Good,' she thought, 'he's finally starting to look scared.' "That's how it always ends in situations like this." 'Hasn't he ever read a book? Seen a Lifetime movie?' "We. Will. Lose."

His head was shaking back and forth, furiously. "No we won't."

"Damn right we won't," she agreed. "Because you're gonna bite the bullet, go to dinner tomorrow and talk to Derek and Casey, and accept that boy, aren't you?"

When Sam didn't answer she cocked an eyebrow at him and repeated herself. "Aren't you?"

'Am I?' Was he? Yes, he definitely was, because just like Emily did, he loved his children above all else. Even if he didn't always show it, even if he had screwed up a lot, even if he hated the Venturi family with a passion, he loved his babies. And he would accept that boy if it was the only way he'd be fully accepting his daughter.

"Yes, I am."

OOOO

"Nathan," Derek bellowed as soon as he and Casey entered the house, "get down here."

Shocked as she was at hearing her husband's voice—he hadn't spoken during the entire ride home, choosing instead to stew in silence—Casey almost didn't react. But, luckily for Nate, she did.

"Stay upstairs, Nate," she yelled in response. And just as soon as she did, she heard a door slam shut. Thank goodness. The last thing she needed was for Derek to start yelling at everybody and ruin everything.

"What the hell are you doing?" he asked, head spinning around to glare at his wife.

"What the hell are you doing?" she shot back.

"Well, since you and Emily have obviously taken leave of your senses, I'm going to have to fix this mess you've created."

In response to his overly patronizing voice, Casey folded her arms across her chest and shot him a heated glance. "Meaning what exactly?"

"Meaning," he mocked, "I'm not about to let my kid get caught up with Sam's crazy ass or his daughter. So, you can just call Emily up right now and cancel that dinner because it isn't happening."

"Why are you acting like this now?" Casey asked; voice an equal balance of confusion and anger. "We've discussed Nate and Lauren before—you knew they liked each other. And even though you didn't like it, even though you were sure that Emily and Sam would disapprove, you still didn't forbid him from seeing her. So why do you want to do it now?"

"That was all before I had the pleasure of seeing Sam again," he said, voice dripping with sarcasm. "It was before I was introduced to just what kind of craziness Nate will have to put up with if he's dating that girl—

"That's what the dinner tomorrow is for," she interrupted, "to put a tap on the 'craziness', as you call it."

"Besides," he kept right on talking as if he hadn't heard her, "Lauren is a bad influence; you should have heard the way your son was talking to me."

"Lauren's a bad influence?" she repeated incredulously. 'Has he met our son?' "Since when has Nate needed anyone's influence to do something bad?" Nope, Nate had always been able to find his own way into trouble.

Derek just huffed. Okay, so she might've had a point. But it wasn't everyday that his son cussed at him in the middle of a restaurant. Besides making him angry, it had kind of shaken him up.

"So, tell me, Derek, just what did he say to you?" It was obvious from her tone that she was making fun on him.

Derek was silent a moment, then, "He called me an ass."

'Really?' Nate and Derek were thick as thieves—as close as a father and his teenage son could be. This was surprising, but after she thought about it a minute, it wasn't that hard to believe, especially if… "Were you being an ass?"

"That's beside the point," Derek finally answered after a very long, very telling pause.

"Is it?" she asked pointedly. "I don't know what you did or didn't do to Nate and Lauren." She had a few guesses though; the girl had been crying when she and Emily had walked in. "But think about how you would've reacted—you've never taken crap from anybody, even your own father."

"Okay," he conceded. "But I'm nothing like my father," Derek said sounding insulted. And he was. George was a bastard, and Derek resented the implication that they were anything alike.

"Really," she paused, then, "because this all seems real familiar to me."

"It's not the same," Derek said, having caught her meaning. "It's not even close to being the same. What our parents wanted to do—wanting to keep us apart when they knew we were in love, and just because they couldn't deal with it—was just plain evil." His words were harsh and raw and his voice shook a little as he spoke. Even after all these years, the memory of what the parents had tried to do still filled him with an almost uncontrollable rage.

"And what you want to do isn't?" she snapped, unable to believe that he really couldn't see the similarities.

"No," he shot back. "And I'll tell you why. You and I were in love, but Nate's… well, Nate. He doesn't fall in love; he'll be able to bounce back," Derek said, sounding sure of himself.

After Derek spoke the most intense wave of déjà vu hit Casey. Hadn't they had this exact same conversation before? "You keep saying that Nate's not in love, that he's like incapable of it. But you saw him these past couple of weeks when he and Lauren were broken up right?" She waited for some sort of reaction, and when he gave a reluctant nod she continued. "How did he look?"

"What?"

"How. Did. He. Look?" she repeated. "More importantly, what did how he looked remind you of?"

'What did it remind me of?' Derek grimaced, trying to recall what Nate had looked like. Actually, he hadn't really seen the boy all that much, which was odd in and of itself. They usually spent a lot of their free time together, but Nate had spent the past couple of weeks locked up in his room. But, he had seen his son a few times, and when he had it had reminded him of… well, nothing.

"Sorry, Casey; I'm drawing a blank here."

God. Was she gonna have to spell it out for him? "You, Derek, he looked like you."

"He always looks like me," he said slowly, wondering if his wife had finally completely lost it.

"Don't act ignorant, Derek," she retorted, annoyed. "He looked like you looked after I told you I wouldn't marry you." It was a sore subject and something she tried to never bring up, but desperate times called for desperate measures. "He looked like a guy who wasn't with the girl he was in love with," she said pointedly. "Think about it, Derek," she implored. He needed to understand.

That awful period of his life where he'd been without Casey—when he'd been angry and sullen, completely bereft of the affections of the woman he loved and all because of their stubborn pride and silly ideas of what was or wasn't the right thing to do—ran through his mind. Was that how Nate had looked? No, it couldn't have been… could it? Derek's mind traveled back over the memories of the past dozen days, and after an unbearably long time, for Casey anyway, he nodded.

"I get it," he sounded exhausted, angry, and amazed all at once. "I get it," he repeated, "he's in love with the girl."

Casey sighed in relief, for a minute there she'd thought she was going to have to draw him a picture.

"Now," she inhaled sharply, then sighed again, "what did we promise ourselves when we first found out I was pregnant with Nate?"

Derek closed his eyes and frowned, truly ashamed of himself. Not because he'd forgotten the vow they had made while they'd held hands and watched that first ultrasound, but because he had come so close to breaking it.

"We said, we'd never become our parents, never do to our children what our parents did to us. And we won't, I won't," he promised, moving closer to Casey. "If Nate wants to date this girl I won't stand in his way."

"Good," she said, satisfied. "And, you'll go to dinner tomorrow?"

"Yes," he grunted, sounding considerably less sure about that decision.

"And," she pressed on, "you'll apologize, or, at least try to apologize, to Emily and Sam?"

Typically, Derek Venturi didn't do apologies. But Emily, well, Emily was different. She'd never done anything but take care of him, listen to his problems, and love him. She hadn't deserved any of the many bad things he'd done to her. He knew back then that she hadn't deserved it, he just hadn't cared enough to stop; and now that it was over, he cared enough to know that he needed to apologize to her, especially if he expected her to ever fully accept his son. So, yes, even though it would be awkward and damned uncomfortable, and even though she probably wouldn't even accept it, he would apologize to Emily.

But Sam… was someone he was loathed to apologize to. Maybe it was because he had always resented the fact that Sam had Casey first; which was partly why Derek had said what he had about Emily earlier. Or, maybe it was because he didn't see any of the abilities to forgive that Emily seemed to possess, present in Sam. Or, better yet, it could've been because he knew that yeah, he'd done Emily wrong, but that he'd really done Sam wrong. He and Sam had been friends since they were six and Derek had thrown their entire friendship away. Sam may very well have been a bastard now, but he was a bastard that Derek owed one hell of an apology.

So, actually, loathed as he was to do it, Derek knew that he'd apologize to Sam too. For his wife, for his son, for the simple fact that it was the right thing to do; he would apologize to both of them.

"Derek?" Casey said softly, momentarily scared that she'd pushed to hard.

"Yeah, Princess, I'll do it."

TBC…

A/N: We're almost to then end of the road. This fic will probably only have two more chapters after this one.

Oh, Mike Vanderjack used to be the kicker for the Colts. He cost us a very important game against Pittsburgh a few years ago, and, as you can see, some of us are still a little bitter about it. Vanderjack is infamous for F-ing things up.