Disclaimer: All Law And Order: Special Victims Unit characters and namesakes are the property of Dick Wolf / NBC.
Author's Note / Warning: This story contains an original character that plays the love interest of Casey Novak. The story deals with the relationship between Casey and my original character, and it is told from both of their perspectives. I had a very specific storyline in mind that I felt could not be realized by pairing Casey with an existing SVU character, thus the creation of Det. Seth Bauer. This is not intended to be a Mary Sue story, and I can only hope that from the writing and characterization, this proves to be true.
A/N/W: From Chapter 7 on, the themes become slightly more adult in regards to violence and sexual content. Nothing explicit enough to warrant an M rating, but just a heads up to readers all the same.
Chapter 11: Dreaming
December 13th, 11:10 PM
"Seth?" Casey asked in a slurred, muffled voice. She tried to open her eyes and move her head, but she couldn't. She could still hear the rain outside, but it sounded deep and hollow. All the sounds around her, including her own voice, echoed through her sluggish brain, and the whole room felt like it was waving back and forth, side to side. She knew she was dreaming.
After considerable effort, she was finally able to open her eyes halfway, and she looked around the hospital room in her dream, knowing Seth was there somewhere. She heard the soft 'plinking' sounds of raindrops on the hospital room floor. The room was completely dark except for the dim light cast in from the hallway. In her dream, Casey realized the dripping sounds were coming from next to her bed. Her vision was cloudy, and she strained her eyes, peering out into the shadows of the room.
There was a dark, menacing shape poised in a chair in front of her. She could barely make out the person's face in the dim light, but whoever he was, he was soaking wet. When he spoke, she realized the dream-person in her hospital room was Seth. His voice was tinny and strange, just like all the other sounds in the room.
"I'm sorry," he said in a deep, uneven voice, slowly turning his head to one side. "I let you down before, but I won't let it happen again."
Casey felt like she was floating underwater and the pain from her injuries no longer seemed to exist. "Seth..." she said through lips that didn't want to move. "Fell off my bike...cut my chin. Why...you didn't...help me?"
Dream-Seth didn't answer her; he just sat there unmoving.
"Mom said...don't cry," she continued in her garbled dream-speech. "Dad...be home soon." That happened when you were six, her far off, inner dream voice said incoherently.
Seth suddenly moved forward into the light by Casey's bed. His face was distorted and ugly, and his skin looked like it was a dull gray color. In her dream, she thought Seth was dead. He reached for her, gently brushing his cold hand across her cheek. "Shhh," he said, looking down at her. He squeezed her hand lightly, then pulled away and stood up, the raindrops still falling from his wet clothes.
He's dead, Casey's confused dream-brain thought. He died in a car accident and is lying out in the rain somewhere.
"I love you," Dream-Seth said in a far off voice.
"Love you...too," Casey said, closing her eyes again.
Seth was gone and she fell back into the darkness of her dream. In the morning she wouldn't remember having had the dream at all. Nor would she understand why there was a small puddle on the floor next to her hospital bed when she woke up. She would dismiss it as some kind of accidental spill, perhaps a glass of water that had fallen off the nightstand while she had slept, never knowing Seth had been in her hospital room that night.
