DISCLAIMER: I do not own anything that you recognise. All rights go to the CW, and the amazing L. J. Smith, and all others who contributed to the creation of this brilliant saga. Please, oh please, do not sue me.

Nb: Merideth Harrow asked me if Emma was going to turn into a vampire because of the vervain. I'm going to be honest, this idea did occur to me in the early stages of this fic, but I thought that vervain is definitely a negative to vampires, and it just wouldn't have that type of effect. But, thanks for noting the vervain—I was worried no one had noticed :/ — it is an important part of this fic and everyone should make sure to notice it. A lot more clarity will come in this chapter.

Tora asked if I was going to be following Season three. Well, as an avid Delena shipper, I am LOVING this season in so many ways it's hard for me to express. And while I'm still able to write Emma/Damon, I don't particularly want it stretching there. My season three ideas for this fic will become evident, but I'll let you know more as this fic comes to a close. ;)

ALSO: (one last thing, before you can go on and read :P) I'm glad at the response I've gotten concerning the 'Damon/Emma' relationship that I was worried about. I'm glad that everyone views Damon and Emma as having a 'friend' relationship instead of the family one I've been worried about.

AND WITH THAT ALL SAID, I'd like to say another big thanks to shippolove844, belleslvtr1867, Neon Knightly, ThisLooksLikeAJobForMe, Rae, SomebodyWhoCares, rosewhip889, Marina164509, Mara, chase83, May-Flowers99, Jessiscrazy9108, Your Story Is Wonderful, Vera, Hayley, Andy, Hanna, Tora, Maria, Naira, Karia, Qara33, SarahF, Merideth Harrow and rainbow-wallet for the great reviews. Keep it up, please! And a BIG hello to Anonymous who's a new reader and whose review (last night) compelled me to finally get this chapter finished. Like all reviews.

xXxXx

Matt

He got out of the car slowly, unable to keep his face as nonchalant as he'd have liked. He could feel the corners of his lips turning down, and the tips of his eyebrows coming together, even if he was doing all he could to try and act calmly. If the look on Emma's face was ay indication, he didn't look happy with her. Which, he decided, was probably fair. He wasn't happy with her, after all.

It was a short walk from his side of the car to her side—where she was standing on the front porch, nervously shifting her weight from foot to foot. It had been something like a year and a half since he'd seen her. In the history of Mystic Falls, her first stay here was nothing more that a blip on the radar. Other things had happened instead.

But still, people still laughed at him behind his back for his 'paranoid' phase. The time when he'd run around the town telling anyone who would listen that she'd been kidnapped by the crazy blonde guy who believed in vampires.

It was only when Liz had approached him that he'd shut up and decided she was better far away from this town. Away from Stefan and Damon and Caroline—and Tyler, whatever he was, and Bonnie who was actually a witch and Elena who was apparently just deluded, and full of a stupi amount of misplaced trust.

His revelation, that Emma was far safer wherever she'd gone than she would have been here, had been a recent on. It was only really fair that, on the coattails of that decision, Emma would ride back into town and just casually call him.

This town was really messed up.

Still, Matt remained silent. Emma hadn't spoken either, apparently perfectly happy to let Matt make the first noise. Leaning back, letting his elbows lean on the bonnet of his car, he didn't speak, so much as sigh.

"You dyed your hair," he commented lightly, his gaze sweeping over Emma's newly blonde locks.

At his words, she looked surprised, like she'd forgotten that her hair was a different colour. Maybe it wasn't new, he thought. Lifting a hand, she touched her own head, as if reminded herself, before shrugging and nodding. "Kind of hoping to change it again," she said.

Matt raised an eyebrow.

"I was going to go to the store." She said quickly, answering his unanswered question. "To buy some hair dye or something—to fix it. But I don't have a car, my heads been kind of hurting ever since I got here and Damon said he wouldn't take me so I figured I'd wait until tomorrow and walk in or something—" she fell to a stop when she noticed that Matt was moving.

More than that. He was getting back into his car.

She frowned and Matt smirked to himself. Surely she was thinking those neurotic thoughts she used to voice to him. Had she said something that he didn't like? Was he just done with it and leaving? She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times before Matt spoke.

"Get in," he said. "We'll talk while we drive. You look weird."

.:.

"I knew it." Matt said triumphantly, as they made their way back from the store to his car. Following Emma's final admission of guilt (and the revelation of where the hell she'd been) Matt had a confident, smug grin on his face. "I knew you were with that blonde freak."

Emma frowned slightly, thinking of Lachie—who she'd sent away only about forty five minutes ago. Pushing the thoughts of where he would have been by now—the ride to the city was a long one, and she hadn't thought to ask how he was going to get there—she brushed it off and laughed slightly with Matt.

He turned his accusing gaze to her. "You told me that you weren't near him." He said with narrowed eyes. "In that stupid text you sent me."

She flushed. "Just get in the car."

Matt snorted.

Opening the door, Emma put her purchases in the space at her feet before climbing in. She'd planned on buying hair dye in a box (even though she expected that there wasn't any hair dye that suited her old hair perfectly). Because of the dance, it had been open late to do girl's hair—and had been happy to dye her hair before they closed. So now, the hair on her shoulders was a dark brown that Emma was happy to see in her peripheral.

So, instead of hair dye in the bag, there was just the food she'd bought (peanut butter, a bar of chocolate and some red vines) and the headache medication. Although, Emma noted, now that she was away from the Salvatore mansion and out in the fresh air, the pain had abated slightly.

"You know," Matt said to her as he started the engine. "I thought you would come back. Even though Caroline kept telling me how much Damon hated you these days—and I mean, even though she exaggerates a lot, everyone could see that he was pissed about something."

"Caroline?" Emma said with a slight frown. From the expression, Matt could tell that she hadn't given the blonde drama queen a second thought in months. "She's still around isn't she?" she mused. "I forgot about her—I just remember being so angry when she told me to stay away from her boyfriend."

Matt smirked, "you're not doing a very good job, though."

Emma shrugged. "What was I going to do?" She asked him, her frown making the slow progression to a scowl. "Just stay away from Damon? It's not like they were destined to be together or anything—I mean, he's my guardian. I'm not just going to leave him alone because she demanded it, you know?"

Matt chuckled.

"I wasn't talking about Damon."

Emma frowned.

Matt watched with amused eyes and the cogs turned inside Emma's head. She wasn't quite as free with her emotions as Caroline was, but she wasn't nearly as good as hiding them as Elena. Matt was good with both girls, and he had been Emma's close friend on her first trip here, so he didn't have any problem observing as the light flicked on and she realised what he'd meant.

She turned to look at him with horrified eyes.

"No."

Matt chuckled.

Emma continued to stare.

Managing to shift his focus between both Emma and the empty road he was driving on, Matt straightened out his smile. He'd been having his problems doing as Liz had been asking. He didn't have to lie to many people—but even if it was just Caroline, he had his problems. In fact, he'd just gotten back from the dance—and exhaustedly making sure he didn't let it slip that he wasn't as compelled as Caroline had wanted—when Emma had called.

He'd called Liz as soon as she'd hung up.

Sheriff Forbes had been a great help over the last couple of weeks—even though she really wasn't giving him much room to back out of this crazy stupid spot he'd gotten himself into. And even though he really wanted out of this business with Caroline—he wasn't going to leave the Sheriff out. And Emma Hamilton's abrupt return was important—because she was the ward of a vampire and there was no way she couldn't know about it.

Still, Liz's directions were clear. Figure how much she knows and then report back. And he was already lying to Elena, Caroline and Stefan. What would it be if he added one more person to that list?

"Come on," Matt said, now that he'd successfully turned the conversation to his vampire girlfriend. "She's really not that bad."

"Not that bad?" Emma echoed incredulously—in the same fashion she had when she'd been complaining to him about how she was dating Damon. "She's the most shallow girl I've ever had the misfortune to—"

"Hey," Matt interrupted her with a warning tone, reminding himself that this was his girlfriend. "Come on."

Emma harrumphed once and slumped in her seat. She paused for another moment before sighing. It became clear to Matt that she would be remaining silent if she wasn't allowed to complain about Caroline. She seemed to have remembered that she was the one who had set off for higher horizons and left him behind.

Working again for Liz, Matt sighed as well.

"You might as well get used to her being around." He said, making sure that his voice sounded like any other boyfriend's might when a girlfriend hung out with someone more than him. "She's always at the Salvatore Mansion with Elena and Bonnie and Stefan and Damon."

Emma glowered at him heavily, but Matt kept the smirk on his face.

Okay, so maybe he really shouldn't have been pushing the Damon thing. Emma had always had a weird problem with Damon—she could be as negative as she liked about him, but as soon as someone else was, they were going down.

Grumbling beside him, Emma readjusted herself in the seat, having problems with her seatbelt or something, before she sighed. "Why?" She said. "I mean, I know Elena likes her—but she was always just convenient to Damon—I don't get it, you know?"

Matt found his hands tightening on the steering wheel before he even thought about it. Convenient? Caroline was just convenient to Damon? Caroline had told him about everything she remembered from under his mind thing that Damon had done. It was only with the knowledge that Damon could (and would) rip his head from his shoulders that Matt didn't bang down his door and demand that they solve this outside (by way of fists). Also Caroline was a vampire.

And that was wrong.

Just as the voice in his head began to ask if it really was as wrong as he'd been told, he shook his head and pushed the thoughts away.

He didn't know what Liz was going to do about that, but as far as he was concerned, Vicki was dead because of them. And that was something that he would never forgive.

He shook his hands in the air for a moment, before taking hold of the steering wheel again, and focusing on what Emma had been saying.

She was still muttering under her breath different thoughts about what Caroline would be doing spending so much time with Damon and co. He couldn't quite distinguish the words but her eyes were moving frantically across the dashboard—following invisible jumps that Matt knew meant she was thinking hard.

Then she stopped and looked up in horror—as what could only have been realisation dawned on her.

She knew, alright.

Matt was about to press the issue some more when Emma started. "That's the turn," she ordered.

When Matt looked he realised that the drive had gone far faster than he'd intended—and the driveway to the Salvatores was ahead. He had to swerve to make it, and he frowned when he realised that the sudden movement had disrupted her chain of thought and she wasn't thinking about Caroline any more.

Or, at least, she wasn't going to talk about her.

"Jesus," she joked lamely. "Wanna focus a little more on your driving, there, Matty?"

Matt forced a laugh, flinching from the use of his sister's nickname. It wasn't uncommon, but it certainly wasn't Emma's place to use.

"So," Emma asked conversationally, "how's Vicki?"

It was with a sickening realisation that Matt remembered that Emma had left before Vicki had vanished—and then been revealed as dead.

Clenching the steering wheel hard, Matt took a deep breath. "She's dead, Emma."

The silence was always the worst of it, Elena had once told him. The pitiful silence as the other person tried to desperately think of something suitable to say. He hadn't understood back then, when she'd broken up with him, but he damn well understood now. And Emma was more awkward than most of the people he knew. Her silence would last longer if he didn't do something about it. "Uhm... she disappeared just after you left last year. Then, Caroline found her body."

Another pause. But, some of Emma's wits seemed to have kicked in and she knew not to leave it for long. "Jesus Christ Matt, I'm so sorry..."

Matt didn't respond, and simply pulled silently into the drive way. Emma went to say something again, but Matt interrupted her. "So this was fun." He said briskly, turning the engine off and looking at her. "We should do it again."

Emma seemed to get the hint and, flushing; she opened the door and got out. Grabbing the food she'd bought, as well as the medication (she'd said something about a headache and a stomach ache, but how it was getting better around him. Grabbing the food she'd bought, as well as the medication (she'd said something about a headache and a stomach ache, but how it was getting better around him. Yeah right.)

Matt had the engine on again before the door had closed, but, in a moment, before he drove off, he rolled down the window.

"Em." He called out, to her now retreating back and her new dark hair. She paused and turned to look at him, smiling hopefully. He took a breath. "Call me. Or, at least, text me. You know, if you're going to vanish again."

Emma had time to nod, and see Matt's shaky smile, before the window was up again and his tires were crunching the gravel.

.:.

A few minutes earlier, at the Salvatore Boarding House,

Stefan

It was late by the time Stefan finally managed to sit down. With a scotch in his hand, he made sure he could hear Elena up in his room, still talking gleefully to Bonnie on the laptop that Damon had evidentially provided. It usually would have been easy for him to hear it from anywhere—he should have been able to hear Elena even breathing from outside the house. But, that brought him to his second problem—and the reason why he was holding the scotch in his hand so tightly. It would do him no good to be even remotely inhibited by alcohol for when he needed to talk Damon down from murder.

There was a crash upstairs, and Stefan sighed. Any normal person would have flinched. Anyone who didn't know his brother would have flinched.

Momentarily, Stefan pondered whether or not Emma Hamilton would have flinched.

There was a lot he didn't know about the girl, he'd realised only lately. He'd thought, when she vanished earlier in the year, that he'd done what Elena had asked him to do. He'd achieved what he'd tried, and she'd simply left, realizing how important it was that she stay away from Damon.

Apparently not.

No, instead she'd been sent away by a boy that Stefan had never met, maybe even kidnapped. And then, the same boy had sent Damon an email that put him off the trail. And she'd reappeared in their lives, with her own gang of supernatural-esque hunters and Katherine on her tail.

So really, didn't Stefan have the right to know what in the hell was going on?

He'd said as much to Damon before. Always being brushed off and ignored, Damon responded only with vague messages that reminded him of the phase he'd gone through when making fun of Stefan's philosophy degree from Harvard in the nineties. It was infuriating.

But there was some things he did know.

For one, Emma was gone. They'd returned to the house, with a furious Elena, and were distracted quickly enough that they hadn't noticed she was absent from the house. It was only after that, after Elena had slapped his brother across the face and after Damon had declared that he was always willing to be the bad guy, that they realised that she was gone. And that had, of course, triggered Damon's current actions.

Throwing around their expensive furniture and breaking things.

He really needed to get Damon involved in some sort of anger management treatment or something. Their shared furniture was worth a crapload, and it really couldn't be fixed.

There was another crash, and Stefan made his decision. Quickly, he downed the glass of the scotch (could he really even get drunk anyway?) and pushed himself to his feet. He wanted to calm Damon down by the time Elena had noticed anything more than the fact that Bonnie was still alive. For the moment, it wasn't even on her radar.

In a flash Stefan was upstairs, beside his irate brother. Sure enough, a cabinet table from the nineteen twenties was in pieces on the floor beside a number of other pieces that they had liked. Stefan was relieved that they'd put Emma in a spare room—all the good, expensive furniture was either downstairs or in his and Damon's room.

"You should calm down." Stefan said lightly.

Damon clenched his fist. "You really shouldn't tell me what to do, brother." He said through his teeth.

Stefan sighed.

"You don't even know what's happened yet. She left everything here—she probably just went into town or something." He said.

Damon shot him a look. Despite what the evidence suggested, they both knew that that wasn't what had happened. It could have been the case, if the vault downstairs wasn't empty. Elijah was still in the vault adjacent, but the blonde little boy had vanished.

It appeared that she and the kid had gotten out as soon as they could.

"Look," Stefan said slowly. "Doesn't this just mean that we've got one less person to look out for? She's probably safer from Klaus now that she's gone, anyway. And Katherine can't get to her."

Damon looked at him, an incredulous expression on his face. If he weren't his brother, Stefan would have just brushed off the look as more of this anger. But Stefan knew Damon. In his eyes—Stefan could see the pain in his eyes. He didn't like seeing Damon like this. It reminded him of a heap of things about his brother that he didn't like to think about.

Still.

"That's the point, Stefan." Damon said angrily. "Why would Katherine want to get to her?"

Stefan shook his head. "No. That's not it, Damon. The question is why do you care?"

Damon's eyes flashed, but he managed to restrain himself to not break any more of their things. Instead, he clenched his fists tighter and glowered at his younger brother. With a steadily drawn breath of air that he didn't even need, Damon finally saw sense and let himself sit on the end of Emma's bed (when had it become Emma's bed?).

"I care, Stefan." He said. For a moment, Stefan stared at him, shocked to hear the revelation. Was this Damon? Damon admitting that he felt things? That he had feelings? However, before Stefan could get too excited, Damon corrected himself. "I care because she could be dangerous to me. Katherine had me watch her, her whole life, Stefan. Since she was four. And because I was an idiot, I did it. Without any question."

Stefan blinked.

Damon had looked after a four year old? On Katherine's wishes? … how did he not know that?

"And now?" Damon continued. "Now everyone knows her secret, except me. Katherine, her little boy who she left with, even freaking Klaus."

Stefan's eyebrows shot up.

Klaus knew?

Klaus was interested in Emma?

The noise of tires squealing on the gravel and the door opening caught their attention. Then the door slammed close. "I'm home," Emma's jovial voice called out. "How was the dance?"

.:.

A/N: Sooo…. I'm a crappy author? Is that what you're all trying to tell me? *shifty eyes and nervously twiddles thumbs*

STILL. I do have an explanation. Because I'm awesome (and, apparently, Barney Stinson… :S )

Right. So, over in Australia (greatest country ever, amirite?) it's the summer holidays. I've just graduated High School (which I think is different over here than America I think…whatever it is, I'm about to go to University this year). So I've been out at parties, at the beach, holidaying, playing Solitaire on my new IPAD and watching a butt load of the West Wing (WHICH IS AWESOME FOLKS. WATCH IT) to get through the mid season break that goes over Christmas (TOMORROW PEOPLE. TOMORROW IS THE FIFTH. For me, anyway. Maybe it's the day after for some of you guys. GOD I'M SO CONFUSED).

Also, for my formal (senior prom, I guess?) I got fake nails, which makes typing a freaking pain in the BUTT, and that had contributed to my writers block. Still, I got through it, and I'm getting there.

SO, here is this chapter. Chapter ten. ;) Bit of a filler, but I'll get to work on eleven momentarily. And I know I'm a shitty author.

BUT PLEASE REVIEW. It's thanks to your reviews that I was compelled to update after all this time! SO… '

REVIEW. REVIEW. REVIEW. REVIEW.

PLEAAAASSEE :S

Peace out, bros.

G.

PS. I have found the MOST amazing Damon Salvatore centric you tube video. And, because I love you guys for putting up with my dodgy author ways, I'm going to put the link up.

www . youtube . com / watch? v=q1uPGNe7rMo

REMOVE THE SPACES PEEPS.