The Running Woman

I don't own anything

Summary: Caroline is still running from Damon, she doesn't know it because he keeps making her forget, only she wont go down without a fight and the chase is on...(Dark Fic)

Rating: K+ maybe more later on...

chapter 1

A raspy voice threatened her almost sleep tonight…

'Caroline …'

She sat up with trepidation, anticipation and then after a creepy croak from a ghostly crow sitting on her window ledge… fear. she'd seen this crow before, she was sure, not that she generally went out of the way to notice birds of the creepy nature ala Hitchcock style. She also felt aware that she was strangely calm, the fear was still there. but it was ebbing away softly, melting with the moving shadows outside.

Caroline pulled her covers upto her neck and shut her eyes tightly willing the creepy hullucination to vanish, when she opened her eyes the damn bird was still flitting about near her window in her room restlessly.

she grabbed the pillow from behind her and threw it at the creature with revulsion, and that moment a dark image flashed in front of her, when she blinked her eyes the image was gone. The crow flew away making strangely familiar angry noises.

She felt the wierd fear resonate up her spine once more, gooseflesh broke out over her arms...it was like someone was calling her, watching her...something dark, angered....promising harm.

The Night scared her these days, a few weeks earlier night times were exciting for her as a high school senior, so full of every kind of wild opportunistic possibilities teenager's engaged in. Wild after school parties, boys & booze.

But then she'd stopped visiting all those avenues for fun, the parties, the school , college boys, even being intoxicated didn't hold the same juvenile kind of excitement for her it did a few weeks before...That's when Damon came into her life. All cheap thrills ceased to exist for her.

'Damon...' she shuddered at the memory of the fuzzy image in her bedroom. Caroline lay back down on her now pillowless bed, she didnt want to leave the safety of her covers to retrieve the pillow she'd thrown at the crow...however flimsy and pointless the protection her bed provided her.

When her heartbeat managed a steady rhythm she examined the last few weeks of her life feeling more and more vain and silly then any of those girls she used to make fun of or be mean to. Yep, she was one of those cheerleader types, who pretended to be above all, the cream of the crop. Unapproachable to others. All the hard work, the bubbleheadedness just for a man who would sweep her off her feet in the shadows of the dull night. Of every dull night she'd gotten used to in Mystic Falls. She hated being that girl now.

All that waiting for someone dangerously handsome and older to want her, to love her & be only hers. To be better then the boys who rejected her. So that she would have an amazing story to tell her gal pals about her own adventure with a older, sexy dangerous guy, to drive them all insane with jealousy, to spur them to find their own Damons. Which they would never, because there were only one of those around, and he was hers.

She sighed turning over. At least she thought he was hers, but after the first few times in bed she had this itch in her brain even while he was kissing and caressing her, his eyes were closed tighly like he was intensely wishing and waiting for someone else to appear in her place under him. It was how uninterested he was in her after their trysts and his snacks, how he never cuddled or comforted her, how sometimes he left right after without a 'i'll see you again' or a 'i missed you' and never in so many weeks in any amount of words or even brutal gestures a single 'i love you'.

She felt her neck gingerly, the bite wound from the founders day ball still hurt, It reminded her of his kisses and his gentle moments with her in a strangely twisted way. It also brought unshed tears to her eyes, because she remembered the night in fragments with him being sweet and gentle in the dark and then suddenly being vicious, crushing her in his grasp and biting her hard...telling her he was 'so' over her.

Cruel but true.

He mocked her senses. Made her feel helplessly alone and viciously sad, made her feel the bitter evil in his fangs, the mad frustration in his demonic eyes... all these she experienced before fainting from his biting her and then waking up on the cold wet grass...no surprise there 'alone'.

Didn't even have the decency to finish her off. And she had loved him so completely and selflessly.

***

The sexy car wash had been Caroline's idea of a fun money making school extra curricular activity, she'd let the nightlighting crow disappear from her mind like her delirious illusions about Damon and his the murky buckets of soap suds, She barked at the girls to do a better job, hustle more people, wash more cars and stood fiercely proud surveying her powers of controlling a mass of high school girls and multitasking by supplying fake enthusiasm and dancing idly to the feel of loud music vibrating through her body.

It was great. It was sunny, business was in boom, teachers were radiating waves to approval in her direction. Stefan and Elena were working slowly, more interested in making googly eyes at each other then the actual work, Caroline snapped her eyes away from their intensely childish flirting and tried smother the questions in her mind about 'him' , since she asked Stefan about his brother, him telling her Damon wouldn't be back shattered her insides so badly that she refused to believe it was true or to look or speak to either of Elena or Stefan regarding this matter. Although she knew deep down inside all this was not their fault, but it was very deep down, on the surface she believed both love sick idiots to be responsible for Damon's disappearance. She wouldn't be surprised if they'd thrown him in a cell and locked away the keys just because Elena saw her stupid bite marks.

Sometimes she really wanted to kick that girl, she was always in her way at the wrong place in the wrong time. she wanted Elena to dissapear right now no matter how much concern she'd shown for Caroline's welfare earlier..

Great! she was all twisted and dark now thinking about making her best friend disappear, and it was so all 'his' fault. He did this to her. Gave her a taste for spilling blood?

The newscaster Logan was standing by his van reporting the car wash looked disconcerting in his white collar suit and clean shave among all the wet soapy teenagers looking unruly in their cut offs and jeans. Just when one of the girls asked for a more towels she felt a peculiar thrill in the air, a change, a pull in the atmosphere, she looked around to see if anyone else had noticed the newscaster was will flashing his white teeth at the camera unconcerned. Elena and Stefan were now holding soapy hands and talking to each other. Nobody had noticed then.

Caroline blinked hard, there...the dark figure, Damon?

The breath got caught in her throat as she dropped everything at the fading image of Damon Salvatore calling out her name, his eyes sparkled unnaturally blue hypnotizing her limbs to move away with the figure, and she followed it mutely, smiling faintly. Finally, he had realised what she meant to him, finally he would tell her he was sorry and that he loved her back just as much.

Her first true love.

She didn't know It then but this first and only selfless love was the start of a nightmare for her that wasn't going to end for a really long, long time because love was the last thing Damon Salvatore had in mind for Caroline Forbes, insanity and murder was more his style.

Scary but True.