Disclaimer: Darling, if I owned VD, I wouldn't have to spend so much time writing fanfiction. I killed myself on this one, y'all. For tres MONTHS.

A/N: Lovely readers, this is complete...and...utter...crap. I mean, seriously. This is the worst I've written in a long while...and that's saying something, my dears. I just legitly could not stop...over 11,000 words total, though this is just the first installment of, like, six. :)

And I still have to work on my zombie fic! Argh, curse you, Muse. I also have to write several things in order to maybe possibly get the interview of my freaking dreams. Have I written anything? NO. When is it due? IN TWO MONTHS.

...I am dead.

Of course, on the upside/bright side, I might get a review or two from you lovely people, and that always brightens my day. :)

This came from the prompt: "Caroline always breaks her promises. A five-times fic, please. Related to a song if possible." - From an old friend from school. I hope I did her justice.

P.S. All titles of all chapters come from Johnny Hates Jazz's song, "Shattered Dreams."

Pairing: Daroline, eventually, but includes Klaroline and Forwood as well.

Rating: T, because God knows I can't go an entire fic without cussing several times. :)

so much for your promises

Johnny Hates Jazz, "Shattered Dreams"

(which is ironic, because I love jazz)

1.

a web of lies, but it was just too late to know

She promises Bonnie she'll control herself. It's after she kills those two deputies to save the Salvatore brothers. And she keeps her promise, for a time. But it's the first of many that she'll break. After all, she's young and impulsive and before she knows it something (she doesn't even know what, maybe it was the way that her mother looked at her this morning, like she knew even though Caroline had compelled her into forgetting) sets her off, makes her pissed and yearning and hungry. And she knows exactly what she wants, and the small part of her brain that is still rational and clearheaded—the one no longer in control, outdone by the thirsty, desperate, rage-filled monstrosity inside of her—begs her not to go for it, but she can't stop it. Her body is like a robot that she can't stop from performing its sacred duty, its God-given task, its programmed job.

It's like there's this red haze, a blur in everything, and she doesn't even know what's going on when suddenly it's like the bloody smoke clears and she sees that she's in a car, her own car, and she's dressed (leaving little to the imagination) like a risqué supermodel or something and her hair is perfectly curled into frozen-by-time-and-maybe-hairspray blond ringlets and her makeup is flawlessly styled after ancient Egyptians or something—long, dark, streaking carefully-designed black lines of eyeliner, and thick blue smudges of eye-shadow over her lids, accentuating her eyes. Her lipstick is a hot red when she checks her side mirror, and you could probably see it from fifty feet away. Fire-engine red, and when she licks her lips she can't make it fade away, and then her fangs come out and her gums hurt and she gasps and it's like the first time because the hurt hasn't gone away just yet.

The car's off. She doesn't remember driving, or parking, or turning the car off, but somehow she did and she's outside of a club and it's nighttime. She's alone in the dark parking lot, but she enters the club. Like she's in a freaking trance or something.

She finds a piece of eye candy. He outlines the requirements, the things she's always liked: dark hair, mysterious eyes, smooth skin, smoother words, and a heartbeat (that pattern was broken by Damon Salvatore, but who gives a fuck anymore—she certainly doesn't, and no one else gave a fuck about her to start with, so). He has a pretty smile, bright shiny teeth against dark skin and full lips. He looks Spanish and he has the accent, and his words are soft but sharp and they cut through her to the bone (the part of her that can still understand her, and what she's about to do to this pretty, soft-spoken boy).

I'd like to take you out tomorrow.

My name's Jesse. Jesse James Rodriguez. Oh, and, no, you don't get to give me crap about the name, my friends already do it enough. (There, he gestures to a bunch of boys at the bar who are grinning at him—you go, bro, she's hot, she hears whispered by one of them, and she smirks at that one—and winking at her and downing shots of vodka and tequila like they're vitamins to health freaks.)

What's your name? …I really like that. I mean, Caroline. I always thought that was a great name.

(It hits her that he'll never get to take her out tomorrow, and that his friends will never tease him about his name or his pick-ups—actually, she's picking him up now that she thinks about it—again, and that he'll never compliment her name again. And she can't stop it. She's just not that strong. She can't fight herself and her urges, and win. She just can't. She's too weak for this, to take down her new primal desires and succeed. No chance.)

She replies to his questions and answers with witty comments to things that he says, almost as though it's a routine. And though there's emotion and excitement in her voice, in all seriousness it feels like she's speaking in monotone, though the sane part of her mind is begging her to stop, to drive away, to not drink this poor guy dry eventually, alone and late in the night when he's too drunk to even stand half of one percent of a chance against her.

She orders an Arnold Palmer: half lemonade, half iced tea, "just a splash of vodka," she instructs the bartender, who looks bored and only interested in her breasts, which look spectacular in her size extra small red tank top. And her ass, in those too-tight jeans from two years ago. But they still fit, and she looks amazing in her black leather jacket, so. Whatever. Let the asshole stare.

She doesn't want to get drunk tonight—or, rather, the beast inside of her doesn't. The part of her that can feel what she's about to do, that small maybe-still-human part is screaming at her to get wasted so she might somehow forget all of this in the morning, in the aftermath of this.

That won't happen, though. Because she knows instinctively that she will never forget. The vampire inside of her will force her to remember, no matter how much alcohol she consumes tonight.

And it goes all exactly as the monster in her plans. He buys her drinks and chats her up and thinks that he's the one with all the strategy. The creature smirking within her seductively suggests that they move it to his apartment (which he shares with his roommates, but she hears when he goes over to them and tells them not to come home tonight or they will regret it, because she's freaking hot, guys, seriously, leave us alone or I'll slit your throats in the morning).

He follows her out of the bar when she drinks the last of her third tequila shot. She'd only had one Arnold Palmer before the thing in her decided it wanted a little something stronger. Sometimes alcohol, she thinks, might make the edge sharper, more defined, more exciting. (God knows Damon, back when she was human, was happier when he was drunk and drinking her blood. But then, he was practically tipsy all of the time. That's what happens when your main intake is blood and alcohol, she supposes. Both can lead to frenzies, and he frenzied on her often enough.)

They are in an alley as he leads her to his home. It's the most cliché of things, but the thirsty predator that didn't used to be there until a pillow went over her face chooses it, says it's good enough, and next thing she knows she's got him pinned up against the side of some building covered in badly-spelled graffiti. He's laughing into her kiss, thinking she just can't hold herself back any longer from him—and he's right, she can't (rather, a dark part of her can't) anymore.

Then her fangs are protruding and sinking deeply in his neck, piercing him, and she has a hand clapped over her mouth to cover his screams. Once Stefan taught her how to bite without hurting the person quite as much—just in case, he said at the time, just in case, let's hope you don't need to know how to do this—but she can't control herself and she knows it pains him to have her teeth in him like this.

When she's done and his screams die down into gasping breaths and maybe a few desperate pleadings, she sucks the last little bit and he's dry, he's gone, he's dead. Like her grandmother, like her old cat, like Elena's parents, like her parents' marriage, like a part of her (physically and emotionally and mentally, before you ask). He's dead.

She can't think of what to do. If she tells Elena, she'll certainly let it slip to Bonnie. That will be days of either aneurysms or ignorance, and definitely a lingering grudge either way. If she tells Stefan, he will say something to Elena; same end result, just add in a disappointed Stefan, which is one of the worst, most annoying, more rare, most terrifying things in the world (she's really seen so very little terrifying things, when you think about it, if that's on her top ten list). And there's really no one else to tell, except…

She doesn't want to think about it too much, but it is the logical choice. It makes—well, not perfect sense, but enough that she decides it will work out for the best. Because he can keep his goddamn mouth shut.

So, in the end, she calls Damon.

He answers and he sounds drunk and horny and angry and maybe a little needy (so, same as always, but she doesn't remark that because she needs his help) but he agrees to come out to where she is. She doesn't know where, exactly, but she knows where the club was and she just tells him, take a left from it, go one block and you'll find an alleyway. He hangs up and he's there much faster on foot than she was driving. (Apparently, even the monster inside of her is still getting used to the running a mile a minute thing, which is why she drove. That's her best guess.)

Without a word, he's there silently and he slings the body over his back. "Where do you want him?"

Then it seems like Damon has all the answers and maybe it's best just to let him do his thing. He's done this a thousand times before, right? (He would have done it to her, too, if he'd had the chance back after she turned. If Stefan had let him have the opportunity, if Elena hadn't stepped in front of her. That should be scary but it isn't now because most of her still can't feel anything but fear and disgust—for herself, for her craving for blood, for the fact that some of her still wants to lick the body clean.)

"Somewhere that no one will ever find him."

But they'll know he's dead. There will be no false hope for his friends and family. She knows this. Even without staring at the ground, she knows there's enough blood on the ground that no human could survive it. (She's still very messy with fresh feeding, and she can't tell if that's meant to be horrifying or comforting that actually very little of his life-force went into her.)

He takes her to a little branch of woods, just a few minutes away when they run. "Some company owns this place. They send people to check it out every year or so, per policy, but they never go farther down than six feet. I've checked. Luckily, with vamp strength, you can dig eight or so feet in about ten minutes, more or less, depending on energy rate." He tosses her the body. "Hold that thing, I'll dig it. I'm faster, and not to mention: I'm stronger than you, little girl. Don't forget that."

She doesn't like it, but she holds the corpse. He still has the same pretty lips, even in death, even spotted with black death-throes blood. But then, so does Damon, even when he's smirking.

She closes her eyes and counts down from five hundred. When she gets to negative fifty-seven or so, he taps her on the shoulder and she hands him the body carefully. Then she closes her eyes, but she's lost count somewhere along the way and so she just stands there, listening to Damon bury a pretty innocent boy that the beast inside of her murdered.

When Damon rouses her this time, he does it by stroking his thumb across her cheek, and she realizes that her face isn't dry anymore. Maybe it never was. Maybe she's been crying ever since she called Damon, but she doesn't know anything anymore and she doesn't know what part should scare her the most.

He licks his thumb and shows her all five bloody fingers on his hand. Wow, her face must be truly covered in blood. "You really need to control your biting technique," he states, as though he's done this before so much that it hardly bothers him anymore (maybe that's true, though she suspects it's not; his I-have-no-humanity mask is not half as good as he thinks it is, and that she could tell even while she was being compelled). "Seriously. You bloodied him up good."

"Those guys," she says suddenly, feeling panicked. "They saw me with him. What if they—what if they report me?"

He rolls his eyes and waves a hand at her dismissively. "Seriously? Those guys are probably halfway to getting wasted if they weren't when you left. Besides, there are no security cameras there, I checked on my way in to find you. Your instincts probably told you to take him to some dark corner to talk to him?"

She nods. Yes. And she had resisted. But it hadn't been enough.

"That's just basic vampire self-preservation instincts, VB. Keeps the coppers from coming after us as much. I promise, in the morning all those guys in the bar will remember was that you were blonde and hot with Egyptian eye makeup. Right now…well, you're only one of those things." He touches her face and pulls away his fingers streaked with black eyeliner, smudged by her tears and probably running down her face like a crying idiot. She curses her lack of waterproof eyeliner.

"Only one?" she can't help but ask. Whenever she's around Damon, it's like she can't help it. His smartass qualities just…have rubbed off or something.

He smirks, with just a touch of not-quite-hidden concern. He probably doesn't know, probably thinks it's hidden very well, but then, that's just Damon. "Yeah, well. To me, crying girls just aren't hot. Sorry. You'll probably get a different opinion from Mutt or whatever. Ask him."

Oh. She hadn't told him about…

"Matt and I broke up."

He smirks at her, amused. "Officially?"

"For real. Yesterday."

Huh. In retrospect, maybe that's what set her off? Oh, who knows, and who cares anymore.

"Well. Then don't ask him." He shrugs. "If I were you, I'd just ignore him."

"You didn't ignore me," she says when he turns away, and he turns back around, his single eyebrow raised dramatically in a question of curiosity. "When I turned. And we had broken up, or whatever. Trying to kill me's about the same thing as breaking up, I think."

He smiles, but it has very little humor in it. "If I recall correctly, you were the one that approached me at the carnival. Tossed me down a hallway, too, or something like that. I was just trying to protect the town from further deaths."

"Right, because that's always been your goal, your innocent motive," she says as sarcastically as she can manage, and her voice breaks and she remembers that she's standing two feet away from the grave of a twenty-two year old with some real promise and pretty lips and even prettier words. "Besides, if I recall correctly, you were the one that gave me blood in the first place." She crosses her arms, convinced. "You didn't give up on me." She doesn't know why she's pressing this—she doesn't want to give up on Matt, not completely, though part of her is wondering if it's worth the trouble. But that's not it. That's not why she's pushing this. And she can't figure it out.

"Elena didn't give up on you. Neither did Judgy." He crosses his arms back at her defiantly. "I just listened to them. Got bossed around by two human girls. Not the highlight of my life, let me tell you, stuck in a hospital full of blood and being told to do 'the right thing' and save the most annoying girl in the world." His voice turns mocking, imitating Elena as badly as possible, she thinks, probably perhaps on purpose.

"Bonnie told me that you suggested it," she shoots back.

He raises a delicate eyebrow. "Maybe Judgy isn't always in all honesty, ever consider that?"

She shakes her. "Bonnie wouldn't lie to me."

But you're about to lie to her. The words are unspoken on his lips, but they both hear them. Because Caroline's going to lie to one of her very best friends about breaking her promise. ("I won't kill anyone else, Bonnie, I swear that I won't. I promise, okay?")

They leave the woods and run to her car where she left it, and they drive home almost silently. He fiddles with the radio and threatens her when she almost leaves it on a bubblegum pop station and gives her a light pat on the shoulder when she drops him off. "Don't feel too guilty, okay, VB?" he asks her, and there's a hint of almost-gentleness in her voice. "It's nothing that you can control. I remember the first few months. The thirst. The torture. The way the slightest thing can piss you off so much that all you see is red and next thing you know you're drinking someone dry. I remember not wanting to, but the beast kept controlling me. I get. Don't let anyone else make you feel too bad for something that you can't control."

His eyes show a hint of empathy, and she soaks it in like a sponge. She needs understanding right now, and apparently only Damon can provide it because Stefan is such a lovely saint and nobody else in this damn town is a vampire that she can sort-of trust.

(Did she just admit that she maybe kind-of trusts Damon Salvatore? Oh, fuck, the world's officially doomed. Hell has frozen over, alert the presses.)

When he turns to go, she calls out to him, "Thanks."

He looks over his shoulder. "Promises aren't usually made to be broken, VB. Learn the lesson that I didn't."

She drives home and twists the ring on her finger that Bonnie gave her as she sits in her bed.

About a month or so later she hears about a memorial service for Jesse Rodriguez—she keeps tabs through newspapers and her computer—and she attends, wearing a long-brimmed hat and a black dress with a high neckline and long sleeves. (Her mother thinks she's at a party, her friends think she's visiting her dad.) Even though it's summer and she can feel every inch of it burning into her skin more and more by the sun, her self-awareness heightened by her transformation into a vampire. It's a small sort of torture to cope with the pain that she surely inflicted on that poor boy.

She shakes his mother's hand and introduces herself as one of his ex-girlfriends (which feels righter than saying she picked him up at a bar and sucked him dry, drank him in and left him buried deeply within the earth), feeling dirtier and guiltier and even more wrong all the time, and she leaves early and steals into the Salvatore home. No one's there and nobody is answering their damn phone so she just confiscates (plunders) a glass of Damon's bourbon.

Promises aren't usually made to be broken.

Not at the time.

Oh, but all the things that she's promised.

A/N: So, the first chapter ended all angsty! But not to worry, there is more to come! I promise. :)

Because I'm evil like that and I start new things all the time. But this one I've actually sort of maybe finished! (Not totally satisfied with the outcome, but oh well.) But you have to read to find out!

Whoa, shameless self-advertising right there! Anyway. Review?

Also: see if you can find the quote from "Disturbing Behavior," which I totally added in last-minute just for fun! It's probably totally obvious, but I had fun putting it in. :)