as long as you don't say it aloud it isn't real

/or a synopsis of damon and caroline's relationship

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"Yes," She says when he asks her out on a date, tall dark and handsome and so achingly cool it makes her heart stop in her chest, the perfect contrast to his broody younger brother. (I'm old enough to handle him-) She will say to Elena and Bonnie later, when they look at her and sigh her name like they always do (Oh Caroline, are you sure?) and then the disapproving looks when they are proved right, when one of her dates treats her wrong again.

She leans forward in her seat at the Grill and laughs, placing her palm over Bonnie's hand and reassuring them that this one will be fine, that this one will be her prince charming. He has to be- she's on her- fifteenth time lucky?

Caroline puts her chin in her hand and listens to Elena gush about Stefan and the way he smiled at her in History, and tells herself she will not be overshadowed by Elena, not in this relationship. This one is all about her. Damon doesn't care about Elena- why would he?

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Last night is a blur. Caroline racks her brains again and again, pulls at the scarf wrapped tight around her neck absentmindedly, but finds she cannot and will not take it off. Damon's hand comes to still the movement of her own anxious fingers and she smiles at him, trying to convince herself nothing is wrong.

"Stop worrying," he murmurs, and she finds him pulling up outside the school where her cheer team waits for her, and fights the guilty pang in her chest as she hops out of the car and kisses him nonchalantly on the cheek.

Just being around him, includes her in his aura, and Caroline cannot help but boast to Elena (I got the other brother) like it's a contest, because everything with Elena always is.

She's better than everyone here, she thinks as she lowers her shades to meet their awestruck gazes. The most excitement these girls see is teen parties, and Damon has boosted her to the top of the chain.

She waves at him when he drives off, and waits until he has disappeared from view before she begins to start the routine. Everything is finally perfect, if she ignores the twinge she gets when she thinks of Stefan Salvatore and how callously he rejected her.

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She finds herself daydreaming about what life with him would be like; he's rich and super-hot and super into her, and seems more like a fantasy than something really hers.

They would have children, a little raven haired boy and a blonde girl, both with glittery blue eyes. The boy would come first, and she imagines it is so he can protect his little sister from any harm, just as her brother would have done, had she had one. He is her prince charming, she thinks with a satisfied sigh.

They could travel the world together- Milan and Paris and London, and he could show her everything he sometimes talks about. Life with Damon would be good, Caroline thinks, and knows that she should try to hang onto him, because he is the real deal.

They go to the Founder's Ball together, and something prompts her to put a scarf around her neck like she always does, but when Elena questions her about it she finds she has no answer and instead snaps at her and almost reduces her to tears.

Something tells her she should not be telling Elena, anything, that Damon will get mad at her (No Damon hasn't done this- what are you suggesting? God, Elena, you're so jealous-) so she grips Elena's arm as she turns to leave, half desperate with fear.

"Don't tell Stefan," Is all she can say, and Elena smiles and clutches her hand like she used to do when they were children, and Caroline almost believes her.

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He's gone. She wakes one morning and Damon isn't there anymore, but no one seems to care, not even Stefan. She wants him back- she needs her boyfriend to hold her like Stefan holds Elena, wants Damon to give her a gift as thoughtful as Stefan's locket.

She franticly ask everyone if they know where he is, but is met with denials everywhere she turns. "He's my boyfriend," She says to Stefan, "Tell me where he's gone."

"Damon's out of town," Stefan says to her, a half smile on his face that she wants to slap off. Let him see how funny he finds it if his precious Elena goes missing.

And then the self doubt starts to creep in, and Caroline finds herself thinking about whether or not he really had any feeling for her, because she's too young for him and he must find her babyish and he could do so much better. She catches herself pulling at the scarves more and more nowadays, and finds the gaps in her memories confuse her more.

What is wrong with me? She thinks at night, curling up and crying and crying and she can't think, can't breathe, can't even see-

She doesn't know what's happening to her.

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He's back and they pick up right where they left off, except Damon becomes more and more distant and Caroline finds herself tripping over the words on her tongue, speaking and speaking to fill up the silences.

He only looks at her, one of those- I'm only humouring you- glints in his eyes that makes her feel like a five year old and stutter mid-sentence. He's just so much better than her, she thinks and tries her hardest to cling onto him, even when he stops greeting her and they barely go out except to double date with Stefan and Elena.

I hate him, she thinks sometimes, when she's faking smiles and Elena and Bonnie while Elena tells them all how perfect Stefan is, how he always opens the door for her and buys her the best presents.

Caroline finds herself making up her own stories to accompany Elena's (oh, he was going to buy me a kitten for my birthday but my mom said no, how ridiculous?) but they all come out like fake gold in her mouth, the taste of metal all too recognisable.

I am wanted, she tells herself over and over at night, until the sky becomes awash with pale blue and the birds begin to chirp, I am wanted, I am, I am.

Her mom doesn't notice anything, then again- when has she ever?

She feels four years old again, curled up and waiting for her mom to come home because she couldn't sleep. She remembers how she'd wait but her mom wouldn't come and she'd eventually fall asleep from exhaustion.

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He comes to her party at the Grill, all snarky smooth lines and she watches his gaze slide over to Elena and wonders who he really came for. She wishes she hadn't chosen the purple dress for him, because he said his favourite colour was purple one time, and takes shot after shot from the bartender. (Underage) the voice in her head that sounds a lot like Bonnie sings, and she finds herself walking up to him with no real idea of what she wants to say.

StupidShallowUseless is what follows and she finds herself holding it to her for the rest of the night, the words following her as she takes shot after shot. It's true, she thinks with a grim certainty and knows he has got her personality down in three words. I deserve this, a little voice in her head says, and she fiddles with the cool metal of her bracelet and thinks about playing princesses when she was younger and how well that turned out for her. She stumbles over to Matt- because really, Matt is just nice but finds him only reaffirming the fact that everyone wants her to be more like Elena, Elena whose eyes aren't just chips of glass that reflect everything back to people, but Elena with the tragic backstory and the compassion and the frankly awful jeans. "I don't want to be-"she says to Matt and he just smiles at her, humouring her like they all do (one coffee for the drunk girl ) because that's all she'll ever be, the drunk girl or the dumb blonde or ditzy or cute but never picket fence material no matter how hard she tries, and she really does.

"Like you care," She spits through the haze of alcohol and embarrassment and sadness, not missing the way her mother's face falls, but at the same time, not quite caring either. She loves her mother because she has to- not because she understands her at all, or even really helped raise her. There was no time for raising her in her mother's busy schedule; of course a murder was more important than reading Caroline bedtime stories, and she understands that, she honestly does.

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He paints her like she's a road or a map, little bruises that mar her perfect skin every time she fails to do something he wants her to do. And slowly Caroline finds herself sinking into a shell of herself, a shell who has a drawer full of patterned scarves and doesn't really feel much outside slaps and little hard pinches. There's a numbness to her now that she often mistakes for peace, a resignation that nothing will ever change and every day will be like this forever and ever. So she got her fairytale in the end, she thinks, because what aren't they doing if not living happily ever after?

Caroline knows, she's read the leaflets and watched documentaries and been told that no means no and that she should not ever ever let anyone lay their hands on her. But she does, because sometimes he says I love you back and he's warm and he holds her (she swears it's never felt that good whenever anyone else holds her).

"Come back to bed," He says and she when she does, folding herself stiffly into him, he peppers the curve of her neck with kisses, little ones that make her sigh and pull him to her. When he's good, he's amazing, the perfect boyfriend, the one she tells everyone about.

So she doesn't protest when he hits her anymore, aside from the occasionally squeak when he twists her arm too painfully or she thinks he'll go too far because even when he does hit her he treats her like a china doll and sometimes she watches the muscles flex in his arms with real fear in her eyes.

"Do you love me, Caroline?" He asks and she looks into bright blue eyes as if she's searching for a sign of the slightly mad glint her gets right before he hits her or shouts (she doesn't know which is worse).

"Of course," She replies, trying not stutter, trying to hold his gaze. And then he asks for another thing and she wonders if this is all relationships are, her giving and others taking. It feels like that.

But there were no relationships before Damon, it seems, only boys and girls playing at adults. At least, that's what they tell her, all the girls at her school (it's your first real relationship, right Caroline? You're so lucky…) and then her mom when she finds out how old she is only wrinkles her nose at Caroline over dinner.

"Boys mature slower than girls," She remarks primly, crossing her legs at the ankle and smoothing down the creaseless fabric of her favourite white cotton summer dress. She looks at her mother like a Queen from her table- laughably haughty with blue painted toenails showing against the cream of the carpet as she purses her lips and looks down her nose at her.

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As suddenly as she was with Damon, she wasn't. Everything is a blur- like always- when is it not? Caroline can't remember the last time she tried to sift through her brain and find a memory without being confronted with nothing but white noise.

So she uses Matt in an attempt to try make Damon jealous before the bruises have even faded, because she cannot stand the way Elena and Bonnie look at her, the looks that cry (It's okay Caroline, they'll be others) the looks that make her want to slam her fist into a wall and cry.

It doesn't work and he doesn't care, and when they catch him kissing Matt's mom, Caroline tells herself: this is it, this is the last time I will try with him, and it is time to move on.

She makes an effort at the dance, like she always does, and when Bonnie sticks with her for moral support the whole night and they spend most of it talking about how they would kill Damon, she is happy- not happy like she remembers being before, like dancing with Elena and Bonnie in her room- but a quiet kind of happy that makes her feels as if she is glowing softly.

Matt kisses her and she lets him, cupping her hands around his face when he pulls her to him like he would die if he didn't hold her, and there is something triumphant in her grasp when they break apart. People do want me, she thinks, and resolves to show Damon that.

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Things go wrong but things never go right for her, so Caroline isn't surprised. She ends up being Miss Mystic Falls and also being fed Damon's blood in order to save her life.

She wakes to streams of light from the windows in her hospital room, and a pair of eyes she knows looking down on her.

"Elena," She mumbles groggily in a baby voice, and the stranger smiles, face contorting into an expression she isn't sure Elena is even capable of making. She combs back into her still groggy brain for snippets of conversations, of whispers of- she looks like me – until she settles on a name to match this face, this terrifyingly beautiful face that seems as if it is carved out of marble. Katherine, she thinks, and knows she is different from Elena from the way her eyes glint and her smile is pursed and condescending. It is the last thing she sees before a cushion is pressed to her face.

She fights. She screams and kicks and scratches and bite down on the cushion in an effort to get her to stop- this is all a game, she tells herself, it'll stop soon.

Then it does, but not because the game is up. Instead, it stops because Caroline is dead.

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She can't describe what makes her do it, what makes her grab the random guy by his hair and sink her teeth into his flesh. All she knows is that the pain she has been feeling all day in her gums has gone away, and she's not hungry anymore. It's only when his lifeless body falls to the ground that she realises what she has done, and she falls to her knees beside him. "Get up," She pleads, reaching bloodstained hands to his face as tears run down her own face. "Please, please get up."

"Help!" She says when she hears footsteps approaching, slow and heavy against the soft grass. "Please help me, I don't know-"

"Caroline," He says, offering a hand to her which she takes, trembling. "It's okay, Caroline."

She leans into him even when the flashing of memories, of him biting her come back, because right now he's all she has. So she grips his leather jacket tighter and cries, into his chest, staining his grey shirt red until someone is pulling her off him and she doesn't understand what's going on but the words- stake and Damon are clear.

She stumbles back into Stefan and tries to stop shaking. She can't. He pulls her away gently, stroking the hair back off her face when she finds herself in a starkly lit bathroom.

"I'm a monster," She cries when she sees herself in the mirror, blonde hair streaked with red, crusted blood around her mouth and nose and chin. "You should have let him kill me!" She shrieks, and she knows she is being hysterical, but there is no way she can be sane.

"I will not let anything happen to you," He whispers into her hair, and she believes him.

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She is a mess. She confronts Damon at school, with words that are not hers but anger that definitely is. She wants nothing more than to keep slamming him into her lockers, to keep slamming his head into them until he can't see because he has stars in his eyes, but instead she walks off like she's been told to.

Tears fall from her eyes now more than before, and she finds herself sobbing and sobbing for what seems like hours at a time, trying to find out what is wrong with her. She is a mess. Caroline knots her fingers together and wonders if she does want to life forever. She kind of thinks it would be better if Damon had killed her and wonders why she still hasn't told anyone.

"I like you alive," Stefan says to her when she goes to vamp lessons with him, and she feels like crying. (again)

"Shut up and teach me how to kill a bunny without hating myself," She says with an eye roll, arms crossed over her chest.

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three years later

"Abuse," Bonnie finishes her sentence with a reassuring smile. "it was abuse."

Caroline feels like she's breaking the surface of a lake after years of swimming underneath it; the little pop as she resurfaces and gasps for air. She closes her eyes.

"You knew?" She chokes, because she was always under the impression that Bonnie- that everyone- didn't know, that she kept the secret well enough, the little territory that marked out when they had been together that no one ever talked about.

Bonnie nods and Caroline thinks she might fall apart again but it also, strangely, feels like she's pulling herself back together.

It takes her three years of muddling through, of running, to admit to herself; but the confession comes quickly now, over and over like a mantra so she says it aloud.

"Abuse," She whispers, and watches the sun shine over the town square in front of her and hopes everything will be okay again.