Disclaimer: Ugh…yada yada…don't own…yack yack.

A/N: Ok, here is my second LWD…..This is actually Lizzie and Derek……you think it's pretty screwed up?…..yeah, well so do I.

WARNING: Very dark fic. Take the R-rating seriously. This is not one of those fics that gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling in your stomach and it may be slightly disturbing…..you've been warned. I love flames!….. They make me giggle.

Three Cheers For Empathy.

Casey, Casey, Casey.

He sits there in silence. His legs pulled up around him in the chair that keeps him from hitting the floor. The lights are off, in more ways than one, and he finds the room that brought him solace as a child to be suffocating and confining. Memories of words that have slithered off her tongue play repeatedly in his mind and he wonders vaguely why she wont just leave him alone. He holds a wooden structure in his hand, a little stickman that he made in first grade, and clutches his fingers around it until it breaks. He laughs softly to himself because he fears that if he doesn't laugh he might scream.

Life for twenty-two year old Derek Venturi is a living hell.

He whistles loudly in the silence, a tune of a song that he never really cared to learn the words to, and images of her face and legs and hair and fucking everything keep running through his mind like some kind of sick joke in a sick world. He throws the crumpled wood to the floor and leans back in his chair.

Casey, Casey, Casey. Damn her name and damn her as well.

He remembers the last conversation that had been shared in private between them and he laughs again because it's the worst thing that he can do and he always did like to do the things the wrong way.

(FLASHBACK)

He pulls his pants over his hips as he watches her head for the door of his apartment. He calls after and she swings around to face him, anger and shame written clearly on her pretty features.

"I said we couldn't do this anymore!" He waits in silence for the tears to start streaming down her face. She had said that it had to stop, she had said it plenty of times, and yet there they were again, smelling of sex and making promises that were so hard to keep.

"Why, Casey? Why does this have to stop?" He truly doesn't know, even though he should.

"Because I'm married to Sam, Derek!"

Sam, Sam, Sam, how he fucking hates Sam.

"Oh, come on Case-"

"No Derek, this was a mistake." And he despises that word almost as much he despises Sam. He walks over to where she stands with her hand on the doorknob, and pulls her into him. She struggles against his arms but he does not fail to notice the shiver that runs along her spine.

"How can this be a mistake, Casey?" He places his mouth against hers and for a moment everything is ok and nothing could be further from a mistake, but then he feels her hands against his shoulders and she pushes him away with a strangled sob.

"I don't love you, Derek." She says with more confidence than he could ever hope for.

"You're lying." She has to be lying because he needs her to be. She cannot do this to him.

"I don't love you." She repeats the words again and he cannot understand why she's doing this to him, why she's hurting him like this.

"Stop it, Casey."

"Goodbye, Derek."

"God, Casey!" And now he's yelling, because maybe it he spoke louder she would hear him better, understand him better.

"Goodbye, Derek."

"No-" And she looks back at him again and he searches in his mind for something to say, anything to say.

"I Love you, Case." He's never said it before and he can tell by the expression on her face that she had never expected him to, but soon her shock wears off and her face hardens and she looks him straight in the eye.

"And it was just about the sex." Her tone is cold and the words are even colder. She turns away from him then and he doesn't attempt to stop her.

(End Flashback)

Now it was Christmas Eve and he was back at the house that he grew up in, sharing the holidays with his family, and her. Dinner had ended half an hour ago and the rest of the family had gone out to look at Christmas lights, and to do shit that never had really interested him.

Dinner had been spent in an unnoticeable awkwardness for Derek and there had been a countless number of times that he had tried, in vain, to catch her eye. He found it revolting the way her arm would slide into Sam's on her end of the dinner table and he had been quite thankful when the family had decided to leave. He needed to be alone right now, because if he couldn't have her, he needed to be alone.

If he is alone he can convince himself that she doesn't matter. That he doesn't need her to keep on breathing, because she's not as perfect as she seems. Her laugh isn't beautiful, her face isn't gorgeous, she isn't some fucking untainted angel, and-

"Fuck." He breathes out because now he even finds it hard to lie to himself. She has completely destroyed him. Derek, high and mighty God, oh how pathetic you've become.

He feels the tears start to sting the corner of his eyes and he curses himself for being so weak, for letting her do this to him.

"Derek?" He hears the small voice and nearly jumps out of his skin.

He raises up sharply in his chair, "What?" He says it a little more harshly than he intended to. He notices that it is Lizzie standing at his door an he wonders why she isn't out with the family.

"What are you doing here?" He says, trying to keep his voice void of any emotion.

"Christmas lights aren't really my thing." She says resolutely and he laughs, not because it's funny just because it makes sense to.

"What are you doing in here with the lights off, Derek?"

He doesn't answer her, because he doesn't know what to say.

She walks over to the chair setting across from him and plops down in front of him. 'What's wrong?"

Everything. "Nothing."

She knows he's lying and the look on her face tells him that she is willing to probe.

"I wouldn't even know where to begin." He says truthfully and she looks at him for a long moment before saying.

"How about we begin with Casey?" And he's shocked and his facial expression surely must have shown it.

"I'm the only one who knows.."

"But how…"

"I walked in on you two this same day last year." And he feels sick to his stomach.

"She's stopped fucking me." He says it so nonchalantly that both know that things are that bad. She nods her head and pulls her legs up around her to sit Indian Style in the seat. No words are said for a long while and they stare at each other because words are dangerous tools and silence is the protector. He looks her over as she sits there. At seventeen years old, Lizzie had grown to be quite pretty. Not as pretty as Casey, but to him no one would ever be. Her light, brown hair hangs around her shoulders and her face has grown more defined over the years. The bridge of her nose points out and he finds it to actually be quite cute and he wonders why he's never noticed it before.

When they lived in the same house, Lizzie and Derek never talked much. They got along purely because they never gave themselves a reason to fight with each other.

"Did you ever love someone who didn't love you back?" He says suddenly, breaking the silence. She nods without hesitation.

"Who?" She pauses for a second before lifting her head to stare him directly in the eye and he wonders one more time why he's never noticed what type of person she is.

"Don't play stupid, Derek." And suddenly he feels a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach, because he's not stupid anymore. Flashes of memories of times that he had caught her staring at him. Caught her eyes lingering just a little bit too long….

"Lizzie.."

"Don't, Derek. It's not a big deal. I was young and it was just a crush on my older step-brother…..at the time I didn't even realize that it was wrong." She regrets the words as soon as she says them, because in calling herself wrong she just called Derek's entire existence one sick mistake.

He rises from his chair and she can see the anger in his eyes and the way that his fist clench tightly at his sides.

"God, Derek, I'm sorry, I-"

"Wrong! All I ever hear is wrong! Maybe it's supposed to be wrong. Maybe that's the only right way to do things in this world." He's yelling at her, and he can see that she is scared, but he can't stop. Someone has to listen to him, someone has to understand and Lizzie just happens to be in the wrong place.

"She told me she didn't love me. She just stood there and fucking said it to my face. Why did she do this to me? Why did she make it so that the only thing I ever think about is her? I can't stand this, I can't stand feeling like this. It's not me. This is not me!" And he's crying now. He's crying and he doesn't know how to stop. He sits back down in his chair and buries his head in his hands. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." he repeats in a small voice because he didn't want her to see him crying, he didn't want her to have to listen to that. For a while all that he can hear is the sound of his own soft cries and he wonders vaguely is she has left the room. He wouldn't blame her is she had. But then he feels hands placed atop his own as his fingers are pulled gently from his face. He doesn't really know why she is suddenly crawling on top of him, her legs straddled on either side of his own. He doesn't really know why she begins to place kisses along his jaw line or why her lips work quickly to wipe away the tears. He doesn't know.

"Lizzie, why-"

"Because you need this." She whispers in his ear before running her fingers along the hem of his shirt before pulling it up over his head.

"This is wrong, Lizzie."

"Maybe that's the way things should be." And she kisses him then and he's suddenly too tired to care. The smell of Casey is all over him. On his clothes, on his skin…reeking on his mind and body and he wonders if Lizzie notices, and he wishes that he could stop noticing. He picks her up suddenly and carries her over to his bed and he knows that what he's doing is wrong and he wonders why he doesn't stop, but he can't stop, not now.

" I wont stop." He says firmly.

"I know." She says before pulling him down on top of her. He pulls her shirt roughly off of her body and discards of her pants just as quickly. He knows that he should slow down, but if he slows down he will start to think, and thinking is the last thing he wants to do. There is no foreplay involved and neither of them really care. Clothes are pulled off in a matter of seconds and panties are just pushed aside and the only time he slows down is when he pushes into her. She lets out a hiss and clutches on his shoulders hard enough that he feels blood trickling down his back.

Tears spill involuntarily from her eyes and he now knows that she is a virgin, and feels like such a sick bastard.

"Is it worth it, Lizzie?" He whispers through gritted teeth and her voice is strained in her response.

"I do it for you." And finally someone understands. He receives empathy from someone that he wishes was someone else, and in the end he hates himself.

He begins to push in and out of her, and soon it isn't Lizzie lying under him, it's Casey instead. This is just one last time that he'll get to spend with the girl that would never be truly his. One last fuck with Casey McDonald, and he's too disgusted with himself to even enjoy it.

His speed quickens and he keeps his eyes closed through it all because if he doesn't have to look he can believe it's someone else.

"Casey.." The name slips off his lips and Lizzie is crying under him now, but he doesn't seem to notice and he doesn't whisper words of comfort in her ear, because it's not Lizzie, not really, and this is just another night in his bedroom, alone with the sin of his dreams.

"Casey, Casey, Casey."