Merger (Or: How Casey Came Back To The Future, Version 1)
by Amal Nahurriyeh 

Email: amalnahurriyeh@gmail.com 
Summary: Waking up can be confusing. 
Genre: Crack. Internal AU (ish).
Rating: PG-13 (language, behavior unbecoming a woman in her late
20s)
Warnings: None.
Angst Level: Medium-low.
Universe: Mulder-containing.
Timeline: Takes place in 2035.
Disclaimer: Intellectual property is a capitalist fiction designed to
oppress the working fic-writer. That said, I don't own them either.

Author's Notes:  I am writing out a series of ways that Casey might
have returned after her adventure in Stark. None of them are
intended to be precisely accurate representations of what
happened--think of them as exploring the possibilities. I will grant,
though, that this is the only one that is consistent with the
established post-2035 Caseyverse canon, so you're welcome to
take it as the canonical one. (Everybody who wants to laugh at me
for referring to my crack problem as having a 'canon' is more than
welcome to.)

Expect more, of varying levels of seriousness, over the next few
weeks. 

Thanks to maybe_amanda for the quick-turnaround beta, and for
encouraging the lulz.


She sat bolt upright from the tank.

At first everything was blurry. She blinked, and realized she was
wet. She was wet all over, soaking, and the reason she couldn't see
anything was that her hair was in her face and water was pouring
off it, blinding her. Everywhere there were hands, grabbing at her,
pulling on the wires that were taped to her body. She blinked again,
and gasped. Maybe she hadn't been breathing, maybe that's why
they were worried, but she was breathing now. The lights flickered
overhead. She blinked. 

Sounds were resolving now, the sound of her name, repeated over
and over again, sounds that were supposed to make her lay back.
But, no, that was bullshit, and she swung her legs out of the tank
and dropped down onto the ground. Her waterlogged gun fell out
of her holster, and she let the jacket drop off her shoulders. The
wires ripped off her as she walked, and she felt the IV pull out of
the port on her arm, but it didn't hurt, not that she could feel. The
hands were back, and the voices, and she was sure they wanted
her to listen to them, but then the lights crackled again and they fell
apart. The door, that was where the door was, and she pushed
herself towards it, shook her hair out of her face and blinked and
pushed out of the lab and into the waiting room.

Sitting in the ugly vinyl chairs was her mother. Her mother, bent just
slightly forward, tears on her cheeks. And next to her, him, his arm
around her shoulder, holding her close. Will in the other chair,
leaning forward. As the door banged against the other wall, their
heads all snapped up to look at her. 

She stood there, dumbfounded for a minute. She was relieved, that
was the first thing: he was here, she hadn't fucked it up somehow.
The lights flickered. She blinked, and looked down at her soaking
wet body. She came to focus, slowly, on her boots. The pair she'd
bought in Chicago, on her way to Montana, when she'd decided
she was an idiot for only having one pair of shoes with her. The
lovely leather boots with the scuffmark in the toe. 

She stared at them. "I'm wearing leather boots." 

Her family did not reply.

"I've been a vegetarian since I was fifteen," she said. "I'm wearing
leather boots." 

She looked up and concentrated on him, and it all came to her in a
rush. "I fucking hate you!" she screamed, and she wasn't certain
she'd said that since she was sixteen, but, Jesus Christ, she meant it.
"So, what, you die and all of a sudden I'm a fucking *vigilante* or
something?" She pulled one of her legs up and started untying the
damn boot, hopping unevenly as she balanced. "You weren't even
here, and you managed to fuck up my life enough that I turned into
that? I went out and bought a fucking pair of leather boots, and I
didn't even care!" She pulled the boot off, and hurled it at his head.
It deflected halfway across the room, but she barely noticed,
started unlacing the next one. The lights crackled and hissed, and a
bulb behind her burst in a rain of sparks. She hopped backwards
as she pulled on the boot. "I committed like eighty felonies a day!
*I stole three whole cars!*" She pulled off the boot and shook it
like a club, unable to gain enough composure to throw it. "I shot a
man in the fucking neck! I nearly shot my own mother! And, for
what? What was so important about you that I had to do this?"

She pulled her arm back and went to throw the boot, but her arm
couldn't move suddenly, and she didn't know why. It was like
something was pushing it back, and she looked over and saw Will,
standing now, his hand up and flat, fingers curved in what, she was
sure, was the shape of her wrist. 

Will. Will the little boy with his hands over the control panel, his
mind thrumming with hers. Will who taught her to tie her shoes one
July Wednesday on the back porch. It crackled between them, and
another bulb blew, but she could feel him whispering at her, the
same gentle reassurances she'd made to him from the floor in
control, promising everything is going to be just fine.

She backed up again, and hit the wall. *Will,* she whimpered
somewhere below speech, and he knew, he understood. She
dropped the boot, and slid down the wall to sit, knees up. She
pressed her face into them, and felt rather than saw Will take his
place next to her on the floor. Her parents--god, her parents--were
still there, and she could feel the great tumult washing off her mother
as the old world and the new one collided, and, new and familiar at
the same time, the twisting and turning monster that was her father
trying to figure something out. 

Will's hand was out. She reached for it, and held on. 

"Are you okay?" he asked after a minute. 

"Yeah," she said, and squeezed. 

"The lights thing," he said contemplatively. "That's new."

"I think it's entirely possible I'm River Tam now," she said to her
knees.

There was a little pause, and then her father spoke from across the
room. "No way. You're Luke Skywalker. Makes more sense."

"Wait, does that make me Leia? Thanks, Dad, I appreciate it," Will
said, not letting go of her hand. 

"Fox Fucking Mulder, you are not yet allowed to speak," she tried
to snap, but lacked the energy to really follow through. 

"OK, Sadie."

"Don't call me Sadie." She pressed her forehead into the wet denim
a little harder. 

"I will turn this laboratory around, so help me God," her mother
said, voice still sticky with tears.

The lab door creaked a little. Casey lifted her head up a little, and
saw Avner creeping out. Behind her, the other doctors and techs
were poking their heads out, trying to avoid getting in her line of
sight. "Casey?" Avner said, tentatively.

"I'm fine," she said. "Tell the dudes I forgot my lightsaber, so they're
spared." 

"OK," she said, and knelt in front of her. "Casey, can you tell me
how you feel?"

"Um. I have a headache? And hot. I feel hot."

"Well, that could be because you're about to burst into flames, or
because you're about to have a stroke, OK? So we need to get
you back into the lab where we can monitor you."

"I'm not going to catch on fire."

"You don't know that."

"No, I mean--" She held up her hand and turned it, and a bright
flame danced across her fingertips. She clenched her fist, and it
disappeared. "Did I use to be pyrokinetic? Anybody?" 

"Not that I recall," her mother said. "Either time." 

"You never told me you were," Will said.

"I would have told you," she said. "I'm going to save a shitload on
lighters. OK. So probably the stroke thing, that you should look
into."

"Yes, I think so," Avner said, with that intense calmness that Casey
distinctly remembered from a couple of nights where there was
more tequila than sense. "Can you stand up?"

"Gimme a minute." She felt Will's hand under her arm before she
asked him, and then realized that she wouldn't have to ask him,
would she. "OK. Let's go." 

With Will holding one arm, and Avner the other, she shuffled over
to the lab door, her body exhausted from the adrenaline crash. Just
before she crossed through, she turned back to look at her parents.
Her mother, who was still leaning on her father's shoulder, smiled at
her, and she knew everything was going to be fine. Weakly, she
pointed at her father. "I'm not done with you yet," she said.

"I'll be here when you're ready," he said, and she knew that was a
promise.