Chapter 4: Stranger in a Strangeland

Wolves in sheep's clothes.

The rest of the early morning had passed and Caroline hadn't slept a single minute of it. She lay on her back, nestled in cream sheets, and staring at the soft blue ceiling. First dawn grew from a light pocket on the floor, to a balloon on her bed, faded behind curtains that matched the sheets. The comforter was spotted with pink threads and embroidered roses. A chest of drawers sat idly under an oval mirror in the corner. A small picture frame of a boat heading out into sea faced her from across the room. But Caroline didn't see it. She really didn't see any of it. Last night's scene was replaying over and over in her mind.

Was that really Damon Salvatore? Angry, bitter, dripping with sex, Damon Salvatore? Where was the leather, the black jeans, the permanent scowl? Was he really gone?

She heard rustling downstairs, feet moving about and the refrigerator door being opened. Caroline made herself very still in order to amplify the sounds.

"Are you sure she's really who she said she is?" Amy asked as she closed the door, bringing out what was probably the makings of breakfast.

"That's definitely Caroline Forbes." Damon responded but he sounded unsure. "I've known her for years and she can't lie for shit. But I don't always remember her having the capabilities of Bruce Lee."

"Damon, this isn't funny." Amy stopped, probably frowning. "Our daughter is gone for three days to God knows where and she comes back with a woman you haven't talked to in years, claiming to be a doctor to help me feel better. Something's not right here and you know it."

He sighed and a chair moved, as if he was standing up.

"Ams, I'm not saying what Quinn did was right, in any way. You want to punish her and I'll stand right beside you. But Caroline . . ." He paused and Caroline tried desperately to imagine the look on his face. "Caroline is a good person. She would never do anything to hurt Quinn. The Caroline I knew would die before letting anyone she cared about get into harm's way. If she's here to help, then she's here to help, simple as that."

There was a pause.

"How do you do that?" Amy asked quietly.

"Do what?" His voice implied his face was full of smirk. He already knew what she was going to say.

"Make everything be all okay and safe. I know nothing can touch me when you're here to protect me."

"And that's the way it's always going to be."

Caroline didn't need superhuman hearing to know what they were doing now that otherwise kept their mouths occupied. She heard tiny footsteps come down the opposite staircase.

"And good morning to you too." Quinn said, sarcastic as ever. They broke apart.

"And just where do you think you're going, missy?" Amy sounded breathless.

"School, Mom. It's Monday."

"Oh, right, of course. I'll drive you."

"Thanks, because walking five miles would really put a damper on my day. I didn't wear my running shoes."

Amy moved about the kitchen, slipping on shoes and grabbing her purse and keys. "Want breakfast? I know the kitchen's bare but I'll stop by the store after I drop you off."

"I got an apple." Quinn said slightly bored.

"Right, well, great. And, Damon, you'll be fine here, right?"

"Of course. I think I need to drop by the office for a bit, but I can show Caroline around town. Maybe set her up with Dr. Bayer. We'll be fine."

She gave him a quick peck on the cheek before herding Quinn out the door. The moment the door slammed shut, Caroline bolted from the bed, down the stairs and positioned herself casually against the wall.

"Please tell me you actually wear a suit to 'the office'," she smirked. To her enormous surprise, he jumped, startled.

"Jeez, Caroline, what the hell?"

Caroline raised an eyebrow. "And a good morning to you too."

She waited, ready for a quick, sharp comeback, probably demeaning to her as a person and her very existence.

"Ok, I'm sorry. Good morning, Caroline, would you like some coffee?"

He turned and went to start a new pot.

The phrase "dumbfounded" only barely grazed the surface.

"What?"

Damon frowned. "What, you don't like coffee?"

She stood up, giving space between her and the white veneer doorway. She wondered if her boots had tracked in mud. "Yes, I still like it. I just didn't think you did."

"Course, why wouldn't I?" He poured two cups of coffee. He handed her one mug. It was in the shape of a cartoon cat. Its bizarrely wide eyes stared up at her while she took a sip of coffee through its head. Caroline slowly lowered the cup onto the counter next to her and carefully turned its manic eyes away from view.

"So what's for breakfast?"

He reached into the fridge and pulled out a carton of milk and a cup of sugar from the cupboard. Caroline resisted with all her strength not to cringe as he added milk and sugar to his coffee. He caught her watching him.

"Want some?"

Caroline numbly shook her head.

He shrugged and motioned to the toaster behind him. "There isn't much in the pantry, but there's some leftover meatloaf from last week's barbeque. Our neighbor, Harry Nicks, has this sauce recipe that is out of this world!" He grinned happily. "You are welcome to whatever you want. The supplies should be a little better after Amy gets back from the store."

"And you went to that barbeque, didn't you?" That was the only thing she could think to say.

Damon frowned. "Why wouldn't I? I am a notoriously good cook, after all." He smirked at her.

"Did you wear a Hawaiian shirt?"

Damon paused, thinking. And then, he nodded. "Amy got it for me a couple of months ago. It was just up in my closet, just collecting dust and I—,"

"STOP!" Caroline screamed. She grabbed her face, pressing at her skin as if that was the last thing she could hold onto. She knew she looked bug-eyed, verging on crazy, but she didn't care. She had long passed shocked and speechless and now reality was cracking into sheer fantasy. "Damon, JUST STOP."

He watched her, alarmed. "What? What's wrong?"

"YOU!" She cried, throwing her hands up. She buried her face again— she wanted to scream. "Who the hell are you?"

"Caroline, what are you talking about?"

"Have you completely jumped off the deep end? Sugar and milk! Barbeques!" She spat the words from her mouth as though they were acid. "Hawaiian shirts, Damon! Hawaiian SHIRTS!"

"They're very comfortable—,"

"You're a stepfather, Damon!" She screeched. His face suddenly went blank. "You're someone's dad, Damon! Do you have any idea what that means? You're raising a child. You tuck her into bed at night, telling her stories about the monsters under her bed when there's one right beside her! You're a VAMPIRE—,"

Suddenly she was slammed into the wall, his forearm digging into her throat. His eyes were glittered like hellfire.

"Don't say that again." He snarled.

"What?" She could barely breathe but she knew he was hanging onto every word. She laughed at him. "Monster Man doesn't want me screaming vampire from the town square? Got comfortable playing House, didn't he?"

"Don't you dare you ruin this." He hissed. "I'm happy here."

"Is that the lie you tell yourself in the mirror every morning?"

Damon pushed deeper into her neck, his teeth bared. "I'm not lying!"

"But I'm bored." She jerked her leg around his and threw her weight forward. As physics commanded, he fell and collided with tile floor. She snatched the knife always attached to her ankle and stabbed through his shirt, centimeters away from his shoulder. Her knee fell onto his diaphragm and he gasped. "You listen here, and you listen good. I'm stronger than you. I have spent the last one hundred years, learning how to kick more ass then you could ever dream of. Every muscle is my body rock hard and I carry with me an arsenal of weapons just half as tough. You do not threaten me. Got it, Suburbia?"

His face faltered from surprise to anger.

"Fine. Whatever. Just get off of me." Damon grumbled.

Caroline stood up and grudgingly put out a hand to help him up. He took it, looking very uneasy. He eyed her as if she was going to knock him over again.

"So, the discussion of the past clearly makes you uncomfortable, could you just mime where the best hunting grounds are? Because I'm starving."

"Look, I'll take you there but I'm not going to feed. I only feed once a month now."

"On animal blood? Damon, that's suicidal!"

"No, it's safe." He murmured. "Go get dressed and I'll take you to the spot, but I'm begging you don't say anything to Amy about this."

Quinn already knows, she wanted to say, she still loves you. Why are you so scared?

"So Amy doesn't know that you're over two hundred years old?"

He sighed and leaned forward on the counter, the flannel shirt unbuttoned near the collar. "No, she has no idea. Neither does Quinn. I can't tell them. And I don't want to. They will never look at me the same way again and I couldn't handle that."

Caroline watched the agony cross his face as he imagined his words. She shook her head. Maybe this was all a dream. Maybe it was still January 15th and this whole thing was a very real, very visceral dream. To some degree, she wished it was.

"Okay, so I'm an old friend and you're human and I'm a doctor. That sounds like the perfect amount of lies to start out any relationship on." Caroline crossed her arms, frowning.

Damon stared at the counter top. His shoulders were tight, his eyes half-lidded, as if there was something deep inside bursting to get out. Then he ran a hand through his hair, sighing bitterly.

"Look, there are things you need to know. About how I met Amy and why I stayed here, about me. And some of it, I don't understand—,"

"Quinn thinks you're abusing Amy."

All remaining color in Damon's face drained in a millisecond.

"What?" He whispered.

"She showed up at my door step in Seattle, Washington in the middle of the night to save her mother." Caroline watched him with hard eyes. "Whatever you're trying to hide, you're not doing a good job of it. When she said I came to heal her mother, she wasn't lying. I've been busy too, Damon, training fledgling vampires to fight their instincts and not kill humans. But sometimes it doesn't work and I have to stake them. Don't think I won't add you to that list."

"That's the second time you've threatened me in a hour, Forbes." His voice was near a snarl.

"As they say, the third time's the charm." Her eyes were as sharp as daggers.

They stood, facing each other like animals in a cage, ready to strike with claws or their teeth—

And then the ice cream man's jiggle was heard through the house walls. The tension leaked out as the tune passed by.

Wolves in sheep's clothes.

Damon was the first to break. He let out a harsh laugh, forced and tight, and took a massive swig of coffee. Then he turned and drank directly out from the pot.

"What are we doing, Caroline?" He muttered, adjusting the lid.

"Being monsters," she replied softly. "We haven't seen each other in over a hundred years and the first thing we do, besides literally beating the hell out of each other, is emotional scar each other by bringing up the past. I guess neither of us have changed—,"

"Don't say that." He muttered. "Because I've tried—,"

"Me too." Caroline stared at him, sadly. But by his face, her words cut him more deeply than she expected.

With a heavy sigh, he realized that this catharsis of the past was inevitable. "It's time you knew."

Quinn was right. Little had changed in Mystic Falls. The most of old buildings were still standing, the statues still there, no doubt a move by the City Council to conserve the richness of the old Mystic Falls. Of course, the cars now flew across floating traffic lights and drivers honked angrily at one another thirty feet in the air, but even then, Caroline had to bite her tongue to stop the rush of tears that suddenly caused her eyes to burn. As they walked through the town square, it was as if she had never left.

"Not getting sentimental now, are we?" Damon asked, not looking at her. They had gotten dressed and instead of taking the flying Chevy, he decided to leisurely take their time with a walk around town. He plucked a flower off one of the gates surrounded the old Victorian homes, rubbing the petals absentmindedly with his fingers.

"No. I just can't believe it's all still here. I'm in shock, not sentimental. There's a difference."

Children played in the street. A dog, an actual dog— not a genetic mutant Protectorate Companion— nipped at their heels, barking. They were throwing something back and forth, giggling.

"I guess humans aren't as mortal as we thought." Damon murmured behind her. He sounded oddly close but Caroline was too entranced to care. "Maybe we change more than they do."

A boy tossed the object— a football, an actual football— over to his friend. The boy caught it and the dog tried to grab it. He laughed and jerked it back. The dog growled and barked happily.

The other boy came over, scowling. "This is boring," he said. "Grandpa is a big fat liar. Let's YCube."

The boy frowned and really did pull the ball away from the dog, which suddenly sat down quietly. He nodded.

"YCube, play Battle Force Five."

The ball shivered and with a mechanic whirl, it shifted into two thin iBands. The boys grabbed them and strapped them to over their eyes. The dog, disturbingly still, twitched and its chest open to reveal two BioWands. The boys grabbed them and instantly entered the mystical and virtual world of Battle Force Five.

Suddenly, Damon blocked her view of the boys. He was holding a white rose for her.

"Or maybe they're exactly the same." His eyes were grinning. Not menacingly like the old Damon, but it was better than the Mr. Oxyclean.

"Isn't that Einstein's theory of relativity?" Caroline graciously accepted the rose. "Time appears to be traveling at a slower speed to those who are traveling at a higher speed?"

"You know that theory was disproven years ago, right?"

Caroline rolled her eyes and hastily put the rose in her hair. "Yes, but don't I get some credit for knowing Einstein's theory of anything?"

Damon chuckled and kept on going. "Yeah, I guess, you do."

They walked passed the old pizzeria, just as an Auto-man tossed a new roll into the air. Caroline played with a strand of hair.

"So, you said you were in Seattle, tell me about that." Damon asked as a new wave of cars passed overhead.

"I tried California for a while." She said. "And then I became horribly depressed when I realized I couldn't tan any more. That was a slap on the face that I really couldn't stand. So I left, again. I went to Europe. I saw some ruins, some old stuff, some new stuff, some artsy stuff. . . Oh, I met this super hot warlock. We shacked up for a few days in the Plovdiv Church in Bulgaria. That was fun."

Damon smirked, his hands resting in his pockets. Caroline was wrapped up too much in her memories to cringe at the fact that they were blue jean pockets. He nodded for her to continue.

"Then I went East. Rode on the Tran-Siberian Rail Way. It was a lot less scary than that movie made it out to be. I looked for Whip-Lash in Moscow but I guess he was busy kicking Ironman's ass somewhere else." Caroline grinned.

They passed by two women jogging with visors on, probably BioMessaging to each other silently. Damon watched them go before looking at Caroline with some amusement.

"You do realize you're still stuck in the teens of this century? If you were with anyone else, those jokes wouldn't make any sense."

"I know my audience." She said airily. They kept walking.

"Ok, so no super-villains in Moscow. That's still not Seattle."

"Tokoyo was too crowded but the supernatural world there is really fun to party with. I probably partied there for the better half of the early twenty-forties. I got an electric tattoo with this giant flying fish named George. He paid for it."

"And what, pray tell, is this tattoo of and where?" Damon asked, highly amused.

"It's of a half moon. It lights up when I'm . . . excited." She smirked to herself, knowing he was watching her. "As for where, that's a secret."

"And why a moon?"

The grin faltered and completely fell from her face. "So I never forget that night."

Damon's smile was washed away too. They paused in front of the old City Hall. "I'm sorry, Caroline."

A hot wave of anger flushed through her but she managed to keep in down. "Thank you," she said.

They kept walking.

"But you're having sex with a giant fish and getting risky tattoos in Japan. This still isn't Seattle."

Caroline was silent for a minute before cutting her eyes at him. "I was not having sex with him. At least not physically. He's a psychic and he'd make himself look like Hugh Jackman when in he was in the mood."

Damon sniggered. "Someone's certainly been busy."

"Oh shut up. But, yes, Seattle. So George and I are out one night at this restaurant and this guy just shows up drunk out of his mind and the waitress won't serve him. And so he vamps out and rips her throat out. As the only supernatural beings in the building, George and I try to stop him. But he's super strong, obviously, since he just fed on a human. But he's just this blind rage and George senses that he's new. Like hours new and he's freaking out. So I manage to get him to the ground and eventually talked him down. He just didn't know what was happening to him. So George and I told him and he was just surprised. I told him he didn't have to be a killer and I think he really took it to heart. We gave him some animal blood after that. The weeks were hard but he never strayed, never faded. When I left he was still on animal blood. I think if you can get to them early enough, before they open up a bloodbath on the locals, then there's a real chance they can be saved. But I was done with the 'being foreign' scene. So I came back to the States. The sun seemed to mock me, so I went to the Rainey City to help baby vampires not live up to their full potential. And that's where I've been ever since."

Damon listened her with an intrigued face. When she was done, he broke into a faint smile.

"Caroline Forbes, Savior of the monsters and blood-suckers." He said quietly.

"That's Private Investigator to you. I thought it would be easier to get into crime scenes if I could flash a badge."

"You thought of everything, didn't you?"

"I've had a lot of time to think, Damon."

He paused, gazing at her, only guessing at how much she had changed. "Why do I feel like that's only half the story?"

"Because you're not as dumb as you look." Caroline smirked at him. She took the rose from her hair, twirling it in her fingers. "Maybe Amy is teaching you something after all." She added, something sharp in her throat.

"And I thank her every day for it."

Caroline suddenly took a step back, realizing she was far too close to him. Suddenly, she realized where they were.

"Whoa, no, no, this is not okay. Damon, you said the past was off-limits."

They stood out on the grounds of what used to be the Lockwood family mansion. No one had come to rebuild it, or even clear away the burnt rubble. It stood there, a black mount of ruins, of chairs and beds and dining tables, collapsed and a scar in memory, just as it was on that fateful night. She hadn't even realized where Damon had been leading her.

The thought of their bodies still trapped beneath the rubble made her stomach squirm. But no, she was the one who brought him out, who dragged Tyler's limp body away from the fire, praying that there was some spark of life— that there was still time to say all the things left unsaid— but there wasn't. She would never talk to him again.

"How dare you take me here," she snapped, unable to tear her eyes away from the monstrosity. "You know what this means to me."

"And you need to know what it means to me." He stood next to her, gazing at the moment their lives were changed forever. "And why the possibility of me hurting Amy is ridiculously absurd."

"Does it have to be here?" Caroline had to look away; the rising tears were coming far too close to the surface.

"No. We can go into the woods." Again, he led her away, only this time Caroline wondered if she should follow. But of course she did. The alternative was just too painful.

"So, why is the idea that you're happily munching down on an innocent woman so ridiculous?" Caroline snapped once they were far enough away. She turned her back to the mound of rubble just to keep herself from looking at it.

"Because they're the only things I have left, okay?" Damon's eyes made her momentarily forget about the obscene horror behind them. They were begging for her attention. Caroline shifted, and leaned against a tree, her bitterness shrinking. "You're not the only one who lost someone that night."

"I lost two people, Damon. Bonnie's body was never found." The bitterness and anger returned, in ten-fold. How dare he try and compare his stupid love triangle to loosing her best friend, her boyfriend all in one night?

"That night didn't happen like you thought it did."

Caroline narrowed her eyes. "What are you talking about?"

"Elena chose me."

The box containing that memory fluttered, dust spewing everywhere and bugs becoming unsettled.

"What?"

Now she could see the pain on his face, the frustration of something he could never change and the anger by which he recalled the passed.

"Elena chose me," he said, harsher. "She came to me that night and said my previous mistakes had been forgiven. That what I had done, it didn't matter. I was a changed man and she could see that. And then I told her I loved her and we—,"

"God, there is not enough booze in the world to make me want to hear the ending of that sentence." Caroline scowled. "I'm here to help, not vomit."

Damon's eyebrows twitched out of annoyance. "So we . . . consummated our love."

"Now I feel like a dirty Mormon."

"Caroline, are you listening?"

"Obviously."

"But because of what happened with Bonnie, because I chose to save Elena over the witch, she went for Stefan." He burst out, before she could stick in another snide comment. "And you have no idea how much that hurt."

Hurt, past tense. That's interesting.

"That night I came home and realized that there wasn't enough time in the world to make her see differently. I had given everything to this girl and yet, it wasn't enough. So I decided to move on."

Caroline frowned, a disbelieving brow high in the air. "That's a surprisingly mature notion to arrive at on your own."

Damon paused, suddenly looking a little put out. "Yeah, well, maybe it wasn't that night I came to this startling conclusion. Maybe it was several months, one alcohol-induced coma and Alaric Saltzman not dicking around like his usual self later."

"You went into an alcohol-induced coma?"

"I had just lost the girl of my dreams. What did you expect? I'm nowhere near being that emotionally stable."

"True. Continue."

"So I took a page out of your book and left. I really did try to leave. I got out, out. You went to Moscow, I went to fucking Siberia, froze my ass off asking myself when I was going to stop being a dick all the time."

"Clearly that inward conversation lasted a long time."

Damon looked like he wanted to strangle her. "Do you feel the need to commentate on every little thing?"

"When you set yourself up like that, yes." Caroline smiled blankly at him, as if it were obvious.

Damon rolled his eyes. "So Siberia, cold, getting colder and what comes in the freakin' mail, but an invitation to her wedding to MATT! Can that bitch please at least pick if she wants a heartbeat or not?"

Caroline bit her tongue to keep a smile from breaking out over her face. This time she only shook her head.

"So I come back to the place that has seen some truly spectacular kickings of my ass, and she's there looking as beautiful as ever, but he's there with his stupid hair! And the only thing I can remotely offer her is a you look nice and oh by the way, I'm giving up human blood for you— and the dick has the nerve to give her the same damn thing. I didn't stay for the reception."

At least you showed up.

Damon leaned into a tree opposite her, kicking an offensive twig away. "Half a century later I still can't decide if seeing her that day was a mistake or not. I couldn't tell if she was happy to see me or scared or— she just seemed like a different person, distant, aloof. I thought it was because of what had happened that night, but she treated Stefan the same way. She said she was done with vampires. And I really couldn't blame her."

She was done with vampires. Was I considered a vampire or a friend?

"Stefan finally left, but I didn't. To be completely honest, I had nowhere else to go. I worked on rebuilding the Salvatore boarding house, after the last one ended up much like the Talking Heads song. But even after it was started, I couldn't live there. I mean, we only managed to salvage so much and honestly, the Salvatore house without its vast collection of Persian rugs just isn't the same."

"Obviously." Caroline couldn't resist. He smirked at her.

"Those things weren't exactly a dime a dozen."

"Since you loved them more your own mother."

"Oh, no, that past is going to stay deeply buried!"

"Fine, fine. So you were heartbroken over the loss of the love of your life, and you were skeezed by Elena's actions. What else?"

Damon raised an eyebrow at her before continuing.

"I went around, unhappy, drunk, and hungry. I'm not proud of the things I considered doing then, of what I wanted. But thanks to my steely resolve, I stayed away from the people that made me want to cause the most harm. And unfortunately, I had to ditch my old hangouts. That didn't leave a lot of hangouts in a three hangout sort of town like Mystic Falls. One morning I woke up on a park bench, a children's park. Someone was poking me with a stick."

Caroline grinned. "Let me guess, that someone was Quinn?"

Damon nearly grinned but clearly the memory was special because he no longer smiled, he beamed.

"I met Amy that day. She wanted to know why I was sleeping on a park bench. I told her I had just lost everything, my family, my friends, the girl I loved, which was true even though it was nearly a century later." He stared passed Caroline, into the bright blue sky. He looked happy. "Probably against her better judgment, she asked me to come home with her and have dinner with her and her daughter. She probably assumed I was homeless and when I took her back to the rebuilt boarding house, she was a little more than surprised."

"So you got a free ride home that night," Caroline said, a sharp edge to her voice. She swallowed to keep the flaming jealousy out of her tone. "Doesn't mean you suddenly got bored and decided to take a few bites out of her."

Damon frowned, his eyes slipping from the sky to Caroline's dark gaze. "You don't see it?"

"See what?" She snapped, the jealousy becoming unbearable.

"For the first time in nearly two hundred years, I was wanted. I was needed. I had been rejected over and over and now this perfect stranger missed me when I didn't come around." He met her eyes and she saw the desperation there. "Caroline, I had a clean slate." He said slowly. "I was forgiven."

His words hung in the air, causing a shiver to run up and down her spine. He watched her, his eyes daring her to counter.

"Well, congratulations." She finally said.

It was obvious he couldn't tell her sarcasm from her regular voice any more. He shrugged. "I should be congratulated."

There peaked that anger again— white hot and growing rapidly.

"Yeah, congratulations on moving on, Damon!" She snapped, her voice rising. "Congratulations that you can just forget the last one hundred years! That your guilt is sudden gone because Saint Gilbert bestowed her holy grail on you! I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that she needed to compare sizes to make her final decision!"

Damon's face fell.

"Congratulations that the entirety of your existence depended on the answer of one pathetic little girl! That family literally meant nothing to you because you tried to seduce your brother's girlfriend! Congratulations, because the only forgiveness you needed, despite ALL the people's lives you destroyed, was Elena's and you finally got it!"

His face was blank.

"I don't have that luxury, Damon. I don't have the luxury of forgiveness. For the past one hundred years I've been trying to do things that would somehow lighten this sickening guilt, but I'm nowhere close to getting even the slightest amount of relief. Because the person that I need forgiveness from the most, is dead." She pointed across the clearing to the mound of ruble. "He died in that fire, along with my best friend. I don't have the luxury of ever hearing his voice again!"

Her eyes were dry. Her tongue was dry. Her chest was dry. Her anger could rip apart buildings, but the mind-numbing sorrow— that was buried to deep. Caroline turned and bolted from the forest.