My first attempt at a multi chaptered TVD story and it's just because I can't wait all summer for resolution. Canon up to the season four finale, but totally veering off from there and will include all living originals and almost all of the Mystic Falls crew. Lots of drama and love and Klaroline eventually.

Chapter One

The guy she's with, his name starts with a B she thinks, is all hands and she's gripping the key to her apartment so tight in her fist she might be bending the metal. He's got five calloused finger toying with the hem of her dress and the others ticking up the back of her arched spine. He mentioned something about playing guitar. God what is his name? Brandon? Benjamin? She screws up her eyes in thought, but then his hand slips beneath her dress and presses against her thigh the question evaporates. His breath is hot on her neck and it is so rare to find a guy this age that is so good with his hands.

She's just managed to slip the key into the lock of her apartment, which really, she feels she deserves some recognition for. It has been years, literal years since she's been this drunk and this eager. Her apartment door is very lucky it chose not to be fussy tonight, because she was a few seconds away from knocking it down with one high-heeled foot.

They are so close, so blissfully close to falling into her apartment when the elevator door dings behind them and a laugh she recognizes fills the hallway. "You know Barbie," Damon drawls, "I always forget you can be fun."

"Seriously," she hisses against B-something's cheek. He's tactful enough to remove his hand from underneath her dress thank God, because even now there is no greater turn off for Caroline Forbes then the sound of Damon's voice. It brings back memories of her weakest self, a girl she wouldn't recognize now even if she were standing right in front of her.

"You know this guy?" B-something asks hoarsely. He's a smoker, and as she's shaken out of her lust haze she realizes her reeks of cheap cigarettes and whiskey. Gross. She runs a hand through her hair and swallows hard, alcohol impeding her usually quick wit. She has no idea how to explain Damon, because she has no idea what Damon is doing here. He's not even supposed to know where she lives.

Over her shoulder she sees Damon smirk and start crossing the hall towards them. "From a past life," Damon answers for her, "One that unfortunately requires revisiting." When Caroline continues to stare at him blankly and B-something still doesn't move away from her Damon grits his teeth and adds, "Right. Now."

Caroline nods finally, noting the crazy flare of Damon's eyes and recalling with dazed bitterness his cavalier attitude regarding human life. She cups the boy's face and looks deep into his eyes, "I turned out to be a tease and you're going to go back to the bar to bitch about me to your friends for the rest of the night."

She releases him and he draws back with a deep breath. He blinks at her, bewildered, and she feels a pang of guilt as she remembers again her past experience with the man standing by her doorway like he somehow belongs there. Then B-something's eyes darken and he turns on his heel without another word. She allows one hand to fall back to her side while the other touches her swollen lips lightly. So close, she always seems to be just a little bit of something away from getting what she wants.

Damon raises his eyebrows again, "Gonna invite me in?"

There isn't much to appreciate about her sloppy roommate Christa, but on nights like these she is so grateful to have a safeguard against unwanted vampire company. She crosses her arms over her chest, her complacent expression turning into a dubious one. She over-enunciates every word as she asks, "What the hell are you doing here Damon?"

Damon mirrors her stance, crossing his arms, his disposition turning from amused to pissed in less then a split second. He nods at the little purse dangling from her wrist, "Check your phone, Elena's been calling you for hours."

Caroline glances down at the purse and then back at Damon before scoffing and throwing it onto the coffee table. "That's not the phone I use to call Elena," Caroline calls over her shoulder, heading to her room and grabbing her 'special' phone from her nightstand. It's the one she uses exclusively for contacting her Mystic Falls friends. "But speaking of people I'd rather be talking to," she adds as she scrolls down the touch screen and sees that yes, Elena has been hard core blowing up her phone, "Where is she?"

She walks back out into the foyer and Damon is still standing rigid right outside the threshold. He sighs and genuine worry clouds his face. For the first time fear starts to creep into Caroline's mind. Elena is the only person who knows where she lives, and she and Damon wouldn't be here if something wasn't seriously wrong. That was the agreement they'd made all those years ago, minimal contact meant minimal damage. Silas couldn't get them all together and hurt them if he couldn't find all of them.

"In the car sleeping," he replies softly before the fierce look returns to his eye, "She's been fucking hysterical all day and she insisted we get you first. So if you're not going to invite me in you'd better start packing yourself because the car is leaving in ten with or without you."

She looks at him searchingly for a moment before crossing the floor until they're toe to toe, "Damon you can come in, just tell me what is going on."

Damon pushes past her without a word. He goes into her bedroom and starts rifling through her things, locating a duffel bag and tossing random clothes into it. "Matt went missing yesterday," he says as he grabs her least favorite pair of sweatpants and throws them into the bag. She rolls her eyes and vetoes his decision, throwing them over her shoulder while his back is turned.

"What do you mean went missing?" she asks incredulously. Matt lives with an original vampire, and Caroline knows better then anyone how big of a bitch on wheels Rebekah Mikaelson can be. There's no way she would let the alleged love of her life go without a fight.

"I mean," Damon begins as he zips up her duffel bag and throws it in the direction of the door before heading into her adjoining bathroom, "That Bekah came home from a family reunion in Louisiana, which the quarterback didn't attend since he's not that big on her family-"

"For obvious reasons," Caroline huffs as Damon, true to form, surveys her bathroom in the blink of an eye and starts grabbing random bottles. "At least grab me a razor," she adds, motioning toward the shower caddy.

"She came back and their house was torn to shit," Damon continues as he rips the caddy off her showerhead and dumps all of its contents into a plastic toiletry bag. She grabs her toothbrush from the sink and holds it in her hand, twisting it nervously as Damon speaks. She had worried about Matt for a decade as he traveled the globe on his constantly extending sight seeing trip with the girl Caroline and Elena not so affectionately nicknamed The She Devil. It had only been in the last few years that she hadn't had to suppress the urge to call him everyday. She wasn't supposed to have to worry about Matt anymore. "There were obvious signs of a struggle and Matt was nowhere to be found," Damon finishes his sentence and destroying her bathroom. He throws her packed toiletry bag next to her packed duffel bag and heads back out into the living room.

"How big of a struggle could there have been? Matt's only been a vampire for like a year," she asks incredulously. What she really wants to ask is how could Matt have been so stupid as to fight back? How could he have thought he stood a chance?

"There was a lot of blood," Damon ignores her question, and to her surprise he walks over the refrigerator and throws the door open. "Rebekah called going nuts and now Elena can barely speak," the last part of his sentence is said softly and it unnerves her. She still isn't used to seeing Damon be so blatantly obvious about his affection for Elena. He pulls out the handle of vodka in her freezer and takes a long swallow, "Matt knew where we lived and Elena knows where you live and we all know you have Stefan in the palm of your hand. The dominos are falling babee and we're stronger together then apart." He sets the bottle of vodka on her kitchen table and then goes for the blood bags in the back, the ones Christa is compelled to overlook.

Caroline watches him and, swallowing the urge to comment on his term of endearment, thinks. Her mind is racing. They'd know this moment would come. They knew eventually they would be found.

She closes her eyes against the memories she's been trying to outrun since she left Mystic Falls. Stefan's hand on her neck and his voice in her ear. The freezing temperature of the lake in November as she'd dove in and the way he'd looked when they'd finally pulled him out. Her voice is soft when she questions, "It's been fifteen years Damon. We've been apart for fifteen years. Why now?"

"No idea," Damon shrugs, and he throws the handle and a few loose beers into the bag holding her blood, "All I know is I'm not letting whatever took Matt get Elena and she insisted we grab you before we fled the continent. So is there anything else you need to bring?"

"You can't protect us from Silas Damon, wasn't that what we decided?" she asks and again her voice is far too soft and tentative. She doesn't like to show vulnerability around this particular Salvatore brother. She usually relegates him to cold stare downs and nasty quips. She is typically much better at hating him and undermining him, but tonight he actually looks…he might even be scared.

Damon's eyes cloud for a split second, and she thinks he might be remembering too. The sounds Stefan had made on the bank of the lake, the way his eyes had flashed as the first drip of blood had fallen into his mouth. The way he'd cursed and cried and crawled and the looks they'd exchanged. He'd been down there for months, almost half a year and they hadn't noticed, they hadn't even thought to suspect. "Maybe not," Damon agrees with a shrug, "but if I can't fight him I can outrun him." He flashes from the kitchen and a moment later he's thrusting a notepad in her face, "Write your roommate a note. Something short and vague so she doesn't have your face on the evening news by tomorrow night."

She snorts, because Christa wouldn't notice something about Caroline even if she had to walk over Caroline's dead body to get to the bathroom. She takes the pen from his hand anyway and scribbles some bullshit about her great aunt back home in the States. She says she may be gone for a while, but not to worry about rent because she'll take care of it regardless. She signs her fake name, Sarah because it was the most mundane and common thing she could think of, and then hands the pad back to Damon.

He's about to turn away when he stops to survey her. His eyes raking her up and down before he asks incredulously, "Do you want to change?"

She arches an eyebrow at him in disbelief, "I can't pack my own bag but now we have time for me to change outfits?"

"We're gonna spend a day in the car and then haul ass through airport security," he explains before adding devilishly, "are you sure you can accomplish that in a fabric swatch and stripper heels?"

She looks down, the dress is tight for sure, but hardly the sluttiest thing she owns. The heels are two about inches higher then respectable, but then she'd been trying to attract attention. "This is a great outfit," she retorts, her face screwing up slightly. Even fifteen years past high school graduation she still resents being judged even a millimeter off of perfect. She may not be Miss Mystic falls anymore, no longer a face that gets recognized everywhere she goes, but she is still Caroline Forbes deep inside, even though she hasn't felt like her in ages.

Damon looks at her once again, and his expression seems to say that he's not arguing but that his pragmatism has to prevail. "For an Italian nightclub," he corrects, "We're headed north, grab a sweater." He flashes away from her and then he' standing in the doorway with all her bags in his hand, "Car's out front, be down in two minutes or we're leaving without you." Then he's gone.

She walks back into her bedroom. The uncomfortable shoes come off first and then she wiggles out of her dress and lets it hit the floor as well. She slips into a pair of jeans Damon had overlooked and the most comfortable T shirt she owns. It's at the bottom of her drawer, balled up as if insignificant. The letters are almost faded away but if she looks close enough she can still make out Mystic Fall Cheer Squad printed across the front. She shrugs it on, it's not like she's hiding anymore.

She grabs her leather jacket from her desk chair and a pair of well-worn ankle boots. Then she crosses her room to the nightstand. She'd never liked any of her many bedrooms in the past fifteen years. Christa's room was filled with pictures on the walls but hers remained steadfastly bare. She didn't collect too many possessions because it made it harder to leave at a moment's notice. She could never really go home again. There was no home now, Silas had made sure of it, and so she had felt uneasy in every beautiful, gorgeous, exciting place she lived. She was never quite comfortable, never quite relaxed. It's almost a relief, she realizes, seeing Damon at her door because at least now she has the option of freedom.

Or death, she reminds herself.

Isn't that always the way her life goes though?

She crouches down and opens the bottom drawer, pushing away all the loose papers and half empty tubes of lotion she pulls out her most prized possession. The wide, leather bound photo album sits patiently as it always has, waiting for the nights when she needs a tether to the life she used to lead. There are pictures of her mother, of Bonnie and Matt and Jeremy. There are pictures of Caroline Forbes before she became Sarah Whoever, before she flung herself into the air like a handful of sand and went wherever the wind decided to take her. She zips her leather jacket up all the way to the neck and grabs the album. Then she leaves her apartment without looking back.

Damon is immediately visible through the glass windows of her lobby. He's leaning against a nondescript black car. He opens the back door for her without comment and she doesn't thank him, only hesitating to say, "The vodka better not be in the trunk."

It actually provokes a smile, just a slight tugging of his lips but still, he hasn't smiled since Elena got that phone call. She shuts her door with a slam and they are peeling away from her building just a moment later. It's pitched black outside, with only a few street lamps dotting the road.

"This isn't the best neighborhood Blondie," Damon observes with a low whistle.

Caroline is only half listening to the admonishment, because it's not like Damon is genuinely worried about her safety. He's only ever cared about her by association, that association always and forever being Elena. However she does feel she owes him some response when she discovers, bless his cold heart, the handle and the blood bags are sitting in the seat next to her. She grabs the alcohol and takes a long gulp, before responding gamely, "The bad neighborhoods don't see me coming Damon."

He actually laughs this time and Elena stirs from her fetal position in the passenger seat. This startles Caroline. She'd almost forgotten Elena was there, that her very best friend was within her line of sight for the first time in fifteen years.

Elena rubs her forehead, squinting out of one eye. "Care?" she mutters and her tone is dreamy, like she thinks she might still be asleep.

"Hey Elena," Caroline whispers softly from the back seat, and Elena's eyes open wide then.

"Caroline," Elena exclaims as she jolts forward. She sits up, barely glancing at Damon before crawling into the backseat. She falls into her blonde best friend's lap and wraps her arms around her neck. The bad things, the last few days she lived in Mystic Falls, flash in Caroline's mind then as she delicately hugs Elena back.

Elena had been the one to find her. The one who had shoved her way past Damon and into Caroline's old bedroom to discover her clutching her mother. Stefan, or what she thought was Stefan at the time, had only disappeared a few seconds before. Caroline was bleeding from both wrists, trying to get her mother to drink her blood. But there was no way, no coming back. There is no healing from a broken neck.

Caroline swallows hard and wills the memory away. She reminds herself that this is her best friend and that they used to sit on her bed for hours and talk about boys and what color schemes they would have at their weddings. They used to stare at her ceiling and wonder how their lives would turn out, back before they knew the world held a million sick surprises for each of them, back when they made plans for the future instead of living from one crisis and heartbreak to the next.

She pulls Elena tighter as the girl's shoulders start to shake, and then Caroline is crying too because Matt could be dead. Matt, who they adore, who had loved them both with such sweetness and devotion.

She likes projects.

She remembers that he said it with such affection and such certainty. Like he knew her as well and as simply as he knew the back of his hand. And hadn't he? Hadn't he known because he had been one of her projects and she had been one of his? She is so used to thinking of Tyler as her first and only great love, but there was Matt too. She hadn't been his first choice, in the back of her head she had always known that, but he had been hers. For the littlest sliver of time he had been all she wanted.

They sit like that for miles, until Elena is out of tears again and Caroline's eyes are red and puffy and her muscles feel like lead. They cling to each other because it is the only thing they can do right now.

It's Damon who breaks the silence. He reaches behind to grip Elena's shoulder. "Are you hungry?" he asks her and there it is again, the sweet tone that takes Caroline completely off guard because it sounds so utterly foreign coming out of his mouth.

Elena looks up and catches his eye in the rearview mirror. She musters up the most reassuring smile she can manage and knows he doesn't fall for it when his shoulders don't relax even one millimeter. She reaches out to squeeze his arm. "I'm fine," she promises, but when she sees the bottle resting against the car door she can't resist adding, "Just thirsty."

Elena takes the liquor bottle with her as she slips back into the passenger seat and with nothing else to distract her Caroline moves seamlessly into control freak mode. "Who else knows about Matt?" she asks, her voice too loud in the small car.

"Just Stefan," Elena replies hoarsely, the alcohol isn't going down as smoothly as she'd hoped. "No one has Tyler's number," she continues, pausing when she sees Caroling visibly flinch in the backseat. She lets the moment drag, until Caroline's face is blank again, "I'm the only one who has any idea where Jeremy is and I'd rather not worry him and his family yet." Elena hesitates again for the briefest of seconds, contemplating the starry night before adding, "One of my nieces just started first grade."

Damon's jaw snaps shut with a click and Caroline inhales so sharply it could be considered a gasp. "Oh Elena," she reaches forward to squeeze her friend's hand in her own. She agrees with the decision. Frankly there's way too much that hasn't been explained yet and she's not totally unconvinced Matt's disappearance isn't somehow Rebekah's fault. Jeremy's the most vulnerable among them and there's very little chance he's at risk. He should stay hidden for along as they can allow.

It seems Damon doesn't agree, "Elena, he's the only one that can see her-"

Elena turns in her seat immediately, silencing him with a glare filled with something that resembles hatred. "Do not start again," she hisses, her tone leaves no room for argument and shockingly Damon doesn't push. His knuckles turn white on the dashboard though and Elena takes one, two, three big swallows of vodka before turning back to the window to fume at the sky.

Caroline never does get to ask where they're headed.

This chapters a little light on action, but don't worry there's a lot on the way.