Disclaimer: Whoa, y'all. If I owned VD, there would be no more Delena-Stelena triangles. And Daroline would rule the earth.

A/n: On the strangely-upside, I was looking up Forwood stuff because, natch, I started writing something else, and found I was still totally in love with it. So if there's a few past-Forwood moments in the future of this fic, I apologize if you don't like. It doesn't change the outcome, it just might slightly alter how we get there. :)

Also: I broke fifty reviews! I've never gotten that high before - in reviews. Ummm. Anyway. I have decided something! Because I am such an accommodating, awesome (ha) person, I'm going to give my fiftieth reviewer a chance to incorporate something - be it a dream, an object, a name, a song, something small like that - into my next chapter. I know it's probably lame, and he/she most def does not have to take part in it, but please feel free. :)

AmyFrancis, just PM me if you want to really do this. I don't know how much you actually liked this, but if you think of something, please tell me.

God, that doesn't sound all, "Oh, I'm such a big hotshot writer, I'm gonna give you a gift and let you put something small into my fic," does it? Because I so didn't mean for it to sound like that.

Anyway. :) I'll also be doing this for the hundredth review, and the hundred and fiftieth, and so on, and GOD, HOW CAN I DARE TO DREAM THAT FAR. A HUNDRED REVIEWS? HOW CAN I EXPECT THAT MUCH? (Next thing you know, I'll be full-on, all-out hallucinating.) Honestly, I'm just not that good. :)

So, I hope you enjoy chapter four! I put a lot of hard work into it, and I must thank Mariagoner for her lovely tips when I sent her a rough draft of the beginning. She's always so helpful and I really enjoy our little chats! Please feel free to review with comments, questions, requests, I'll even take flames because they keep me warm during the winter. *huddles in warmth of flames*

Enjoy!


forget the dreams that were broken

–Nina Simone, "Forget"


Stefan typically does not dream. This is usually because he's already a bit of a daydreamer, and Damon once—mad because Stefan hadn't been paying attention to one of his angry Damon-esque quip-y rants—suggested that it was because of that that he drained his supply of imagination during the waking hours.

(Like almost everything else that Damon says, it's bullshit.)

But he dreams this night, of Elena's warm body and the way her feet are always cold underneath mounds of blankets and how she looks in his shirt and boxers in the morning, hair ratted and tangled and eyes heavy with a memory of sleep. And maybe it's a bit creepy to be dreaming of this girl he's only had sex with a few times (no, creeper, you don't get details, what do you think he is, some sort of sexual conquistador, try the other brother) but he can't help it.

There's some sort of connection with Elena that he feels.

Sure, she can be a bit vain and excessive and overly emotional. Sometimes he wishes there'd be less of all that dramatic stuff that always seems to go on in her life, tragic or not. But it's part of what makes her who she is, and the moment he saw her he knew he wanted that dark hair, those curious doe eyes, and her exotic full lips.

Anyway. So he dreams about Elena.

The dream switches over maybe partly through, and next thing he knows they've gone from lying on a fold-out sofa together (if anything, his imagination is not clichéd, there are no soft king-sized beds for him) to running from zombies in a field together when one particularly fast monster takes a large bite out of her pretty flawless creamy mine shoulder.

After his dream-self, blurry and slowed by the deceleration that always seems to take place in dreams, gathers her up in his arms and tells her soothing nothings that obviously don't soothe, he stops dreaming.

Just…grayness.

(Sometimes he's afraid that that's all he'll be after this is through. Just an empty space, colorless. He can feel the darkness of this situation stripping part of him from his used-to-be-whole self bit by fucking bit.)

The grayness scares him even more than the thought of losing Elena, sometimes. And other times it's neck and neck.


He wakes to Caroline trying to push his shoulder off of his body. "What?" he asks, and yeah, maybe he's a little grumpy. Because he could swear that he hasn't been asleep but one hour. Maybe two. He checks his watch. Nope, not even one. Yay.

Caroline gestures to her seat at the front, where he can hear a slight tapping. "We've got company," she mouths. She moves on to Damon next, who mumbles something about ions and a failing grade before she shakes him awake.

Stefan, quickly pulling on Damon's old pair of combat boots—of course he didn't have any of his own, are you kidding me—barely notices how Caroline's fingers linger on Damon's shoulders, or how their eyes lock, blue on blue, or how Damon's breathing rate decreases and his eyes move down to her full, now-pale-with-cold pink lips.

Barely. Really.

Eventually, Jenna clears her throat from the backseat, where she's waking up the rest of the group, and says, "Caroline, you gonna let go of him anytime soon? In case you haven't noticed, we've got somebody to meet. Hopefully somebody that's not murderous or whatever."

"If they just wanted to kill us they'd have broken the glass with their guns," Caroline says. "And shot us then." But she lets go of Damon immediately, as though touching him stings.

"That's assuming they have guns."

"It's the zombie apocalypse and they've survived this far. They have guns," she says firmly, as Jeremy and Bonnie seem to wake at the same time.

Jenna wakes Elena and they fill everyone in on the tapping, which still hasn't ceased.

"Can we, um—can we talk?" a voice from outside barely penetrates the locked doors and the thickness of the colder night. It's female, about their age…maybe a little bit younger. The wall between them of the car makes sound seem so much more different and subject to change. "Look, I—I promise that I, I, I'm not a serial killer or anything. I just want to talk. Please. It's…well, not life-or-death, but you know the outside world. It could be, eventually."

"Can we please open the door now?" Damon asks snappishly, possibly even more confused and annoyed now that these mystery people have spoken. "Those people are starting to piss me off. How did they even know there were people in here?"

Caroline shrugs. "Maybe the fact that the hood's still warm? I guess that might be it. And these windows are tinted black, and they don't seem to have a light source big enough to pierce through the tinted glass—it's not strong enough for us to see it, anyway. So I suppose they're just guessing."

Bonnie digests this information first. "Well…they don't seem to be much threat. Like you said, they would've already shot us if they were. They probably just want to meet with us, talk to us. Assuming it's more than just one person."

There's a pause. Elena asks it first: "So, who's gonna go talk to them?"

Another silence.

"I suggest Stefan," Damon throws his brother under the bus. At seeing his brother's slightly betrayed look, he explains, "Look, you're our best…speaker, or whatever. The whole…speech…thing." He waves his arms around, flailing slightly in their confined space and nearly smacking Caroline in the face (she's still almost uncomfortably close to him now, Stefan notes) to extend on his point.

Stefan takes this with pursed lips and a slight nod.

"I'll go, be the gun-holder and intimidation and everything," Jenna offers. "I mean, I've probably got the quickest reflexes at the moment, I am spiked with adrenaline now." She gives a small grin, but it falls flat quickly.

"The rest of us should stay in the car," Caroline decides. "And if they're not back in five minutes, we go out with our guns and…respective other weapons." Her gaze drifts over to Jeremy's bloody, brain-stained baseball bat, glued to his hands now. "And if it's a lost cause and they're gonna overwhelm us, we jump in the car together and drive away. Same with if there're zombies out there. That work?"

"I think so," Stefan agrees. "Anybody else have any other ideas?"

Elena speaks up, almost timidly so as she eyes Caroline. "Why do we want to meet these people, anyway? I mean, I know they're probably not dangerous but…what if they're cannibals or something and just don't like eating around the buckshot? What if they're gonna stick us in an arena with a bunch of other zombies?"

"Elena…" Damon sighs. "Elena, Elena, Elena. Too much of The Walking Dead. I mean, seriously. Nobody's stupid enough to actually put zombies in an arena." He shrugs. "Besides, it took them a year to build that thing. This zombie thing's only been going on for a couple of weeks."

"Can you guys check it out now before an equally stupid subject comes up and unnecessarily scares us more?" Caroline interrupts. "Not that I don't love discussing The Walking Dead, but I—I, I mean we—have all had enough gore and shit in our lives lately already without discussing some stupid comic book. Can we get this over with before I get even more creeped out?"

Stefan raises up his hands. "Okay, Caroline's right, enough. Let's go, Jenna."

They crawl out through the trunk, guns firmly in hand with the safeties off, shutting it softly behind them.

There's silence.

Jeremy and Bonnie start to talk quietly, and Elena bends her head and starts muttering to herself—or maybe she's praying, nobody knows and nobody wants to ask her.

Leaving Caroline, crouching down near Damon's knees, and the badass brother himself, listening eagerly for news of the boy they both—um—deeply care about is probably the term that would fit best, she hasn't known him long enough to love him or anything. If anything, Caroline thinks desperately, Elena and Damon should be talking right now. They both love him, after all. I've only known him—them both, really—for going on two days. So.

"I'm sure he'll be fine," she says when she notices the crease in Damon's brow.

His sculpted features look worried before he forces them into a relaxed expression. "Yeah, I know," he says, and his voice is still tight. "I'm sure he'll be all right. He's Stefan, after all. He's always all right."

"Yeah," she replies, because there's nothing else left to say, and because Stefan does seem like that guy; like nothing bad could ever happen to him. Like he's untouchable, by zombies or heartbreak or anything else a seventeen-year-old has got to worry about in this day and age. He even seems impenetrable in his emotions. Like time could never touch anything but his usually-lined forehead.

But the truth is that he could have just been bitten by a rogue unnoticed zombie and they might not know for another thirty minutes, by which time it'll probably be too late—if they fall into a temporary coma, then it's too late, and that usually happens within thirty or forty-five moments, she guesses.

The truth is that he could have been hurt, or killed, in the past five seconds, and they wouldn't know until the time for saving him is already gone.

And even though she's only known him for nearly two days, that thought still terrifies her. Deeply, and to a point that she'll never admit to it.

So she just settles for gently setting a hand on Damon's dark blue jean-clad knee and trying not to be too affected by his surprised expression. Is it really that surprising that I can offer comfort?

Damon just clears his throat, offers her a small smile that doesn't reach his eyes—she hasn't seen one yet, but she thinks that she'd know if it did—and calls to the backseat, "Hey, Baby Gilbert, whatcha talking 'bout with your girlfriend there?"

But they never hear the answer, because there's a slight rapping on the driver's window again. Caroline launches toward the seat and rolls down the window instead of opening the door. A bright light flashes in her face—Stefan's lantern. She blinks in shock and then he moves it, revealing his face in an eerie ghoulish-like light: a dark, almost dank yellow is what comes to mind, though somehow it's still pale. It reminds her creepily of their first few moments after meeting in that little cottage, and her hair dripped down her back and his face was lit up and he looked like what she would have called a creepy-looking-maybe-monster if she hadn't been walking past the real ones for hours before.

This time, however, Stefan's face is lit up in a grin that she's never seen before. It's an intrigued, curious grin, but there's also some humor in it. "You are not gonna believe this," he says, calling back to the backseat, catching Elena's attention as she looks up from her mumbling. "It's uncanny. Unrealistic. This should only happen on soap operas."

"What?" Damon asks crossly, though Caroline can tell that it's to hide his relief that Stefan's okay.

(Not a very emotional pair, are they? Not when it comes to each other, she grasps. Though she imagines that if the time came, they would choose to sacrifice themselves for the other. They just have that kind of hidden, strong, undeniable-yet-they-in-some-way-deny-it-anyway bond.)

Stefan just smirks again in reply (and God, does that look weird on his face, it honestly just fits better on Damon) and motions for them to get out.

Painstakingly, they climb all over each other and end up in the pitch dark. There's a full moon, so there is some light—and God, this is like every horror movie they've all ever seen—but all that Caroline can make out is two dark shadows underneath the nearby trees. One is significantly taller than the other, around her or Elena's height.

The shorter one steps out. She's tall for her age—probably fifteen or sixteen at the most, but no younger than fourteen at the least—and her dark, wavy chestnut hair falls to her ribcage. Her eyes are a warm brown, though darker than Elena's. Her lips are a pale pink, untouched by lipstick or gloss. Her skin is pale and hints at perhaps an Asian origin, though Caroline can't be sure. She's wearing a black jeans jacket, a white tank top, and fitted black jeans. Her shoes are simple sneakers, black—which is probably for the best, considering how well blood shows up on white.

"Hi," she says, the same voice as the one from before, and stares, transfixed, at Elena and Jeremy, side by side—though probably for very different reasons. With Elena, she's looking at her like she's a goddess, or a freak of nature, or an impossibility brought to life. With Jeremy—her gaze is almost intrigued, if anything. And intrigued looks good on her, her fine dark eyebrows lightly raised as she blinks at him and then looks away, looking even more curious.

Jeremy looks equally interested by the introduction of this new girl, but he doesn't say anything and grips Bonnie's hand tighter.

"I'm Anna." She looks around at the shadow by the trees, still unmasked. Still a mystery. "I'm here with my adoptive sister. We've…we've kinda been striking it out on our own."

"Anna," Elena breathes, stepping forward. "I'm Elena. It's nice to meet you." They shake hands very formally.

"I believe the pleasure's all mine," says the taller one, who is still unrevealed, and her voice is smooth and silky but—

—But it's very strangely similar to Elena's.

The shadow comes forward from the trees, its—her—legs seeming to be a mile long and covered by dark, ripped blue jeans. She's wearing a dark green (the color of emeralds) halter top and shiny black leather boots that go up to her knees. Her face is revealed last as the final bit of secrecy vanishes as to her identity.

And out steps someone Caroline never thought could exist.

She looks like Elena's twin or something. Same height, same weight, same dark brown hair (though this stranger's hair is admittedly curly where Elena's is straight), similar eyes (though this new person's look more indifferent and perhaps colder than Elena's could ever be), and every other facial or body feature is intact. It's like someone made a replica of Elena and left her out here with this Anna for them to find and marvel over.

"Hello," she says, looking Stefan up and down with a knowing smirk, "I'm Katherine."


"I don't understand how this is possible," Elena says slowly.

She's the first to speak in all of this…craziness.

"Well, it's certainly…interesting," Stefan offers up.

"Yeah, no kidding," Damon snorts. "They're exactly alike, Stefan. Of course it's interesting. Not to mention, impossible. There must be some slight difference." He ponders this. "Okay, Stefan, I'm presuming you and Elena have taken it to that level, which I won't specify for fear of traumatizing poor innocent Baby Gilbert forever. Are there any, um, minor details—particular, precise ones? Ones that would be practically impossible for another person to have, considering they look that alike?"

"Well—" Stefan starts, but Elena slaps a hand over his mouth.

"We decided never to talk about that," Elena growls, and he shuts up. For fear of his own life, obviously. "Damon, stay out of my personal business. Including my body."

"But it's so nice to—" his eyes rake their way up and down her body. "—discuss."

And even though by the tone she can tell that he's joking, and that there's obviously no tension between them (like there sometimes is between her and Stefan), Caroline still can't help but feel a twinge of jealousy. Which she doesn't understand. At all. Like, seriously. They've exchanged maybe thirty words, altogether.

So I'm attracted to both brothers, trying to save my friendship with the girl who kissed my boyfriend two years ago, whom I'm trying to forget, by the way, and I think Jeremy still has a small crush on me, though hopefully that's just fading away all quiet-like and stuff. And that's just getting into my love life.

…FML.


Anna is the first one to speak after the next long silence. "Well," she says, clearing her throat. "Where you guys headed?"

Jenna talks next, saying, "We're picking up my boyfriend. He was in Florida when this whole mess started." She flails her arms to accentuate the all-encompassing-ness of the "mess."

"Are you sure he's still alive?" Katherine asks dryly, sidling up to Stefan, who nervously edges his way back to Elena's side. Katherine just sticks close to him despite his clear edginess when it comes to her. Elena's caught somewhere between a satisfied smirk and a jealous glare, both directed at Katherine.

"Yes," Jenna says, practically snarling at the unspoken accusation that this might be a waste of a trip. And, more importantly, that Alaric might be dead. "I spoke to him three days ago by phone, before the phones and computers and other tech just stopped working. And Ric's smart enough to stay alive for three measly days."

"Right," Katherine replies.

"Would you…would you like to go with us?" Stefan offers. He looks slightly unsure of himself, though a nod from Bonnie and Jeremy gets him to smile a bit more confidently at the adoptive sisters that look nothing alike.

Anna grins. "Absolutely. I was getting bored anyway. This should be…entertaining." Her eyes find Jeremy again, but she looks away so quickly it's like her gaze never even strayed.

Bonnie's smile lessens, and then vanishes completely when Jeremy uncomfortably clears his throat and holds her closer. Yet he feels farther away.

Meanwhile, Elena is glaring hard enough at Stefan to kill a creature with less will and inner strength. As it is, Caroline suspects that he's fighting for his life not to either pass out from the force behind Elena's stare or to save himself and take back the suggestion so freely given to the sisters.

It's Damon who interrupts the awkward silent moment, saying, "Okay. So they can stay. But where the hell are we gonna put them? If you'll notice, this car only seats seven. And there's nine of us now, if you count Baby Gilbert, Mr. Forehead, my dashing self, the brunette Olsen twins over there, Bonbon, Jenny over there, this crazy Anna person—sorry, I don't know you well enough for a better nickname, my apologies, I'll come up with something better soon—and Carebear."

"Carebear?" Caroline sputters. "Oh, hell no."

"Oh, hell yes. That was a very good ghetto impression, by the way, my congrats," Damon says back, as snarky as possible, overdramatically clapping his hands twice for show. "Now, as I was saying before Carebear so rudely interrupted me, the car you see before you, stolen by moi, only seats seven. And there are nine of us now. If we're actually keeping them." He looks at Anna, then at Katherine, then at Elena's laserlike glare towards Stefan. He turns to Stefan, and then whines, "Do we have to, by the way? I mean—"

"Yes, we have to," Stefan says, and his words are firm. He tries not to look at Elena while saying it, and succeeds. He doesn't give in and retract his invitation, a kind of strength in which he strangely feels an odd combination of pride and guilt over.

Katherine's grin brightens, and Elena's scowl darkens.

"Then let's find another car," Damon grumbles, clearly disappointed by the lack of kicking people out yet. They split into groups: Katherine, Caroline, and Bonnie; Anna, Elena, and Jeremy; and Jenna, Stefan, and Damon.

"Make sure it's the right kind of car," Damon instructs as they separate. "In other words, find me an SUV, or something similar but still badass!"


About thirty minutes later they've found a nice 2013 GMC Savanna 2500 at a nearby car dealership that Damon practically dies over, because apparently it's a steal for a nine-person car. It's a hot red color, which apparently suits him just fine. "We look like a taffy-pulling machine just demolished our car," he says, "but it'll fit. Though it may be the farthest thing from badass I've ever seen that's car-related, except for that Volkswagen Bug that Stefan started saving up for at age ten and promptly dropped ten minutes later." He sighs. "God, this thing is huge and it only fits nine.

"Jesus, what are we gonna do ifffffff—when we get Alaric?" he asks, editing when he notices Jenna's cold, silent, angry stare. "Get a fucking bus or some shit like that?"


That morning, as dawn breaks, Jenna is still driving—she refuses to try to sleep again, saying it's unnecessary, though the dark circles forming rapidly underneath eyes suggests that she needs otherwise—and almost everyone else is asleep. Anna and Bonnie are asleep on Jeremy's left and right shoulders, respectively, and that kind of creeps Katherine out a little bit (Anna normally doesn't like strangers, like, at all) while she discusses where they're gonna go with Caroline and Damon, who are next to her. Elena is asleep, cheek pressed to the window and forming a cloud of air on the glass, on Damon's other side—he is trapped between her and Caroline—and Stefan is resting in the passenger seat. Katherine is on Caroline's other side, and she peers over Caroline to ask Damon, "So, we're picking up this chick's teacher boyfriend? At a university? Are you guys insane or something? That's practically suicide. Probably."

"Probably," Damon shrugs. "But Jeremy and Elena are insistent; anything for Jenna. Ever since their parents died five or so years ago, she's really been helping them out. And she's been really traumatized by this whole zombie thing going on, a lot more than the rest of us, I think." They're speaking quietly so Jenna, who's concentrating on the road and thoughts of her boyfriend—the one stability in her life so far, except maybe the kids—won't hear, which feels juvenile and slightly guilt-inducing. It probably should.

"I feel like we should be calling them something else," Caroline speaks up randomly. "I mean…it just seems so cliché and stupid to call them that. They were people once, after all. Don't they deserve something better, something less…I don't know, George Romano? Don't they deserve something more original, something less stereotypical and dehumanizing?"

Damon snorts, but it's not without a little gentleness to it, if that's possible. (She doesn't even know if Damon Salvatore can be gentle or not, but after that hair gel moment, she suspects he has his few, brief, quickly-passing episodes of…a sort of softness. Well, maybe not softness. Just being softer than usual.) "Please. They're trying to eat our brains, if you haven't noticed, Carebear. They were human once, but now they're not. Why bother giving them something that they won't care about? All they want is the meat on our bones and the brains in our heads. They don't need a new name, cliché or not."

Caroline scrunches up her nose, slightly dissatisfied with his obvious dismissal of these things that used to be people, these things she's shot for her own survival like you kill vermin, but she drops it. It's not a question you ask other people, really. It's a question you ask yourself, she thinks. It's a question you have to answer yourself, too.

Shrugging, Katherine doesn't comment on this strange tangent of many that she's discovered Blondie's prone to (Damon's got her hooked on the nickname already, as they both warm up more and more to Carebear and Caroline's pure hatred of it), and the discussion is left unfinished.

But that doesn't mean they don't stop caring, or rethinking, or pitying these thoughtless creatures whose families and careers and lives and homes and thoughts and wants and needs. Before a mindless epidemic took it all away, and a bullet to the head ended all hope of any cure, of any reorganizing for that one person who used to actually be a person, when human beings were still human.

They just care and rethink and pity those things out there inside their head, and not out loud.

Because, really, you shouldn't pity the things trying to kill you, but somehow they do.


They reach the university before the sun has finished rising, having taken all back roads and maybe-possibly-made-up roads (who knows with Jenna driving—Jenna, who's crazy to get back to the guy she's been with for what seems like forever now), and Jenna gets them all to wake up as they reach the entrance—mostly because she turns the CD player on full blast, making Coldplay (Elena's CD) scream into their ears. It's a lot faster than the individual wake-up calls they've been doing lately…but also a lot more terrifying and likely to deafen you, and not just because of the music, but because of the shrieking.

Caroline screams, Damon winces at Caroline's shrill tone and the music, Bonnie jerks, Elena twitches, Stefan's eyes pop open in a hilarious mixture of comedy and horror, Jeremy jumps, Anna opens her eyes quickly and claps her hands over her ears, and Katherine somehow manages to fucking smirk in the middle of it all.

Bitch, Damon thinks about this Elena carbon copy, and he suspects that it won't be the last time. They just seem like they're the type of personalities that…clash, or something.

"We're here," Jenna says.

"Can't we sleep for a few more hours, and then go in?" Bonnie mumbles, and Jeremy suppresses an amused smile at her half-open eyes.

"No," Jenna snaps, and her voice leaves absolutely no room for argument.

And so, they prepare for probable war against a bunch of red-eyed (it's natural, the zombie apocalypse didn't start that, blame the drinking), groaning, virginity-is-totally-speculative, flesh-eating frat boys and previously-unhappy, bowtie-armed, brain-chewing faculty.


A/N: So, tell me, just how cliched was I? *cowers in expectations*

Again, AmyFrancis, if you didn't get the message above, please feel free to add in a personal request that I will totally take to heart, okay. It will totally end up in the next couple of chapters if not the next one immediately. *ponders* It's optional for another five days or so. :)

Thank you everyone for sticking with me through this for so long and so far, and I really do love you people and your commentary! Some of you make me crack up, some of you make me smile, and several of you make me want to just hug you for the incredibly nice things that you say that I truly don't deserve. So, thanks. :)

See you next chapter? Review and let me know!