Disclaimer: I do not own The Vampire Diaries TV show. That honor goes to Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson.

Hello, my lovely readers. This is a new fic that I meant to begin posting at the beginning of June. It's going to be short, about sixteen, maybe twenty chapters at max. On with the show…

Chapter 1: Anywhere but Here

Laying on her back, Caroline Salvatore placed a pillow over her face. She was biting back a scream into her older "brother," Damon's goose down pillow as he argued with their "siblings." "Morocco!" Damon Salvatore yelled.

"We can't afford Morocco, Damon," Stefan Salvatore said reasonably.

"Who cares?" Damon snapped back.

"Venice!" Hayley Salvatore interjected.

"We went there over the winter!" Damon argued with her.

"So?" Hayley cried and Caroline felt the bed shift as Hayley flopped down and grabbed Caroline's feet. "Come on, sis, help a girl out here."

"NO!" Caroline retorted, although her answer was muffled.

"We can't afford to go to Italy, without our parents paying for it," Stefan told them and Hayley groaned, letting go of Caroline.

"That blows. Okay, but we could take our allowances and put them together for the trip -" Hayley began when Damon stopped her.

"Oh, no way, honey. I am not funding some trip so that we can get stuck with whatever lame ass place you conjure up," Damon snarled.

Caroline muffled another scream. What had gotten her into this hell? Looking back at her life, Caroline attempted to pinpoint the exact moment that she had realized that she would be stuck with this as her family and that it was a nightmare. By all outward appearances the Salvatore family was a close knit group and were perfectly happy. But if you looked under the surface, you saw that there was much more to it than that.

When Caroline Forbes was eight, her parents divorced. One year later, after what others perceived as a whirl wind romance, Giusseppe Salvatore married Elizabeth Forbes. In reality, the marriage was simply the recombining of two of the founding families of Mystic Falls. It was purely about the power. Or at least that was what Caroline believed it to be.

With the combining of the two families, Caroline found herself as the younger sister of Damon and Stefan Salvatore. Damon looked at Caroline with disdain as the annoying sister he was glad he had never had. Stefan, on the other hand, was happy to have someone his own age to play with, even if she was a girl.

In less than a year, Giusseppe and Liz began to remark upon how uneven their set of children were due to Damon's insistent need to point out the gender difference between himself and Caroline. To "fix" the problem Caroline's new "father" and mother decided that they should do what any family who had so many rooms in their house, and a seemingly unlimited amount of money would do in the situation, they adopted. Not only did they adopt, they went out of their way to find a girl who would fit into their idea of disadvantaged and brought home a girl from Appalachia.

Unfortunately for the parents, they were soon to find out that their new daughter, Hayley, and their other children did not get along. Damon tortured her over her accent. Stefan was afraid of her because she punched Damon and broke his nose. Caroline was simply not interested in sharing the attention with yet another child. It was bad enough competing with her "brothers," but to add insult to injury, they had to bring in another girl.

Ten years later, the children were more or less grown and had come to tolerate each other. However, that did not mean that they were above petty arguments, like trying to narrow down the right place to vacation while their parents were in the Bahamas. Of course, they could not simply each take their money, and go their separate ways just like they could not not end up at the same college. Somehow when they were deciding where to go, they could not seem to separate. Some days, Caroline thought that that was one of her stupidest decisions. She would rather spend every day of the school year sharing her dorm room with her siblings than spending her vacation with them.

Groaning and muttering curses into Damon's pillow, Caroline wished that they could just pick some place, and get it over with already. "You picked last time!" Hayley complained as Damon began to drum his fingers on his jeans.

"Why don't we just get a map, and throw a dart at it?" Stefan offered and then there was silence in the room.

Sitting up, Caroline flung the pillow across the room. "Yes, that is what we should do," she said, getting off the bed and starting across the room, she added, "I'll get the map."

"Why do you always side with Stefan?" Hayley moaned after the younger woman, propping herself on her right elbow.

"'Cause you side with Damon half the time," Stefan answered for Caroline as she began to look through Damon's closet. She could have sworn that she saw a globe in here, one time.

"Oh, my God. Ew! What is that thing?" Caroline shrieked. Stumbling out of the closet, she fell on her rear end on her escape from the offending object.

"What did you find?" Stefan and Hayley asked simultaneously as they came to stand on either side of Caroline.

"I can't tell you. It's just too terrible," Caroline replied, covering her eyes with both her hands as if that would make the image go away.

"What the hell?" Hayley gasped as she pulled out a globe with a picture of Damon's ex-girlfriend, Rose, covering it. In the picture, Rose was nude.

"Whoa," Stefan said, it took him a moment to stop staring before he let out a cough and stared at the floor.

"Why, Damon? Why would you do that to a globe?" Caroline complained with her hands still covering her eyes.

"Because it was part of a little game that Rose and I would play. I spin the globe and then -" Damon started to explain when Caroline began to sing at the top of her lungs, cutting him off. "Fine. I'll tell you when you're older, kiddo." Patting her on the head, Damon smirked. "You can look now." He began to laugh his head off when Caroline came face to face with parts of Rose that made her face turn red.

"I'm going to kill you," Caroline screamed, jumping to her feet and launching herself at Damon. She knocked him to the floor and wrapped both hands around his throat. "You are a sick, sick man and I will be doing the world and women all around it a favor," she proclaimed, tightening her grip.

It took the efforts of both Hayley and Stefan to free Damon from their youngest sibling's clutches. "Let me kill him. I promise that when the police come, I'll tell them that neither of you were at home," Caroline begged. "Or I'll bury the body myself. Whatever you'd like, but don't let him live. He's evil. He needs to be stopped. Think of the poor, innocent women that have yet to have fallen into his clutches. It's like doing charity work."

"No, Caroline," Stefan told her while Hayley seemed to be contemplating the proposal.

"Naw, too much of a mess. And what would we tell Mom and Dad when they came home and you were in jail?" Hayley quipped as she peeled the photo of Rose off the globe.

"Hey, that was a perfectly good picture," Damon protested. "Now you scrunched it."

"Text her. She'll probably send you a new one," Hayley told him. Balling the picture in her fist, she stood on tiptoe and tossed it into the trashcan. "She shoots. She scores and the crowd goes wild."

"Get a life, Hayley," Damon snapped, frowning at the demise of his beloved photo. "Why did you do that?" He sneered at Hayley, who rolled her eyes. Digging through the trash, he pulled out the picture and began to smooth it out with the flats of his palms. "Just because you're jealous that I can get a woman who's that hot, and you -"

"Damon!" Stefan's tone came out with a warning as he folded his arms over his chest.

Damon began to chuckle. "Ah, yes, back to Saint Stefan mode in which he saves all the little chickies before the big, bad hurts their poor 'lil feelings. Aren't you two blessed to have the good brother to defend you from the bad seed?" The taunting would have continued if Hayley had not walked out of the room in a rage. "Midol works for that, you know," he yelled after her.

Caroline rolled her eyes and left the room. She needed to find darts as Stefan and Damon began to yell at each other. Soon they would be the ones on the floor, rolling around. Walking past Hayley's room, Caroline heard loud music pouring from the room and the sound of loud sobs. "Hales!" Caroline shouted to be heard.

"Go away!" Hayley shouted back. Caroline rolled her eyes. She sometimes thought that she had been stuck in a family of three boys and one girl. But that was an ignorant thought that she had taken up when she was in high school.

When she was part of the cheerleading squad, her fellow squad members would ask Caroline if she was not worried that Hayley would come into her room at night and do stuff. Caroline had ignored the comments, for the most part. It was just idle gossip and something for the girls to giggle about as Hayley passed by in the hallways. They had formed the impression that because Hayley had joined the basketball team and shunned hanging out with Caroline's crowd, that she was odd. Then odd became the rumor that she must be gay, because she didn't have a boyfriend. Or worse yet she was one of those people who was waiting for marriage to have sex. Sometimes the girls asked Hayley where her chastity ring was. Sometimes they asked if she was robot, who just didn't like anyone.

The problem was that Caroline did nothing to dispel the rumors. She knew that Hayley had had crushes on many guys in the TV shows they watched and that she had gone out with guys from other schools. However, it had been easier for Caroline to be the girl in the family at her school. There she was special. It was her place to rule, and rule she did.

Of course the fact that she had two smoking hot, older brothers did not hurt her popularity in any way. Many of the girls wanted to be able to meet Damon and Stefan. This made it easier for Caroline to end up on top. What no one knew until they had the stupidity to date Damon, was that he was a serial dater. He did not want a relationship.

Then there was Stefan, who would date the same girl for a year before Damon would find a way to end it for his little brother. That was Damon for you. He was like a wrecking ball that destroyed everything in its path. He had singlehandedly ruined every single relationship that all three of his siblings had ever had. This did not help the rumors about Hayley, because who would believe that it was Damon's evil plans that made her not want to date, knowing her older brother would ruin her happiness in the blink of an eye.

Grabbing a box of darts from Stefan's room, Caroline headed back toward Damon's. Hayley came out her own room, her eyes red rimmed, but she put on a big smile. "Found the darts? Good, can I have one? I think I'm going to play a new game with Damon's face."

Smiling, Caroline fell into step with her sister as they re-entered Damon's room. "Okay, now, it's time to pick where we're going."

"Just cover up anything cold. I didn't buy swim trunks for nothing," Damon instructed Caroline who ignored him as she picked up the globe and set in on his bed.

"Stef, you want to do the honors?" Caroline asked, holding out the box to Stefan.

"Why does he get to pick?" Damon demanded, glaring at his siblings who ignored him. Stefan pulled out a dart and threw it at the globe. Damon leaned over and read the spot before smiling. "East coast, here we come."

"Huh," Hayley nodded as she looked at the spot.

"New Hampshire," Caroline said. "Do we know anything about this town that the dart landed on?"

"No," Damon said as he walked toward his closet. "All we know is that it's not here, and that is the main agenda, sister."

"Should we book a hotel before we go?" Stefan inquired, pulling out his phone.

Before Stefan could get on the internet, Damon snatched the phone away. "No, we do not. Why, you ask me, with those puppy dog eyes of yours, that, sadly, do not work on me, little brother, because we are going to be spontaneous. We are going to go on an adventure. We are going to go on a real vacation. Who's with me?"

Hayley held up her hand while Stefan and Caroline looked skeptical. "Come on! Caroline. Stef. For once, let go of the maddening sense that you have to plan every, last step, and allow the road to take you. Let me be your guide. In your brother, you trust."

"Never!" Stefan, Caroline and Hayley replied before laughing as Damon deflated.

"Screw all of you. If you refuse to stop be boring, I will just leave without you," Damon grabbed his suitcase and began to head out of the room.

"Bye," Caroline called.

"Wait," Stefan called.

"Good riddance," Hayley muttered after Damon's retreating back.

"You rang," Damon replied, stopping and looking at Stefan.

"So, if we go with your plan of not planning, then the next trip we take you will not complain about anything, right?" Stefan inquired.

"Sure," Damon said, holding out his hand, he shook with Stefan. "A deal is a deal. Ladies?" Caroline and Hayley traded looks before reluctantly shaking Damon's hand. "Alright then. Hello, New Hampshire. Goodbye, Mystic Falls."

Thanks for reading, faving, following and for reviewing. Let me know if you have any questions/comments!

Peace,

Jessica