How long has it been since I updated, six months?

Um...oops?

I am so sorry that this is so late. I honestly expected to be done with this months ago, and the original finished chapter was. But I wasn't happy with it at all, so I rewrote it from scratch, so yeah. Really late chapter. On the plus side, the next chapter, which is my version of Founder's day and The Return with Leesha involved, a;ready has the main parts written, so I just need to write the connecting bits, edit, and do the final read-over. I want to get it up before the next season starts (16 days! Excited!), but with how my last posting idea went, I'm not making promises.

Also, I seem to have forgotten to disclaim the title in the first chapter; it comes from the song 'Dare You to Move' by Switchfoot.

...I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor
I dare you to move
I dare you to move
Like today never happened
Today never happened before
Welcome to the fallout
Welcome to resistance
The tension is here
Tension is here
Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be...

Chapter title comes from Peter Schilling's "Major Tom (Coming Home)." Of course, I only know the Shiny Toy Guns cover from the Lincoln commercial...

Three weeks in Mystic Falls was busier than a year working at Saint Joseph's, but Leesha already loved it.

She loved the house that she'd bought and how quiet it was on her street. She loved how Jenna across the street was always popping in for coffee and advice on her thesis whenever she had the time. She loved how the town was small enough that the hospital was only a few minutes drive away and everyone knew each other, but was still large enough that everybody didn't know everything about everybody else's business (unless you were part of the founding families or had somehow gotten on Mrs. Lockwood's bad side. That changed everything).

The only problem she had with the town was also the biggest reason that she'd been busy: vampire problems.

First there had been Stefan's attempt to get himself off human blood. It had failed miserably, and Leesha had a suspicion that Damon hadn't helped matters at all. Then there had been the Miss Mystic Falls pageant, where Stefan had fed on one of the girls running for the title (Amber, who Leesha had made sure to keep an eye on while she had been in the hospital), which segued directly into what Leesha was privately referring to as Human Blood Lockup Rehab.

She still thought it was creepy that the Salvatores had a dungeon in their cellar, although she couldn't deny that it had been useful.

And she had met Jeremy's Anna at the pageant. Leesha smiled to herself. She liked the odd couple. Jeremy reminded her, strangely enough, of what she thought Damon might have been like before Katherine had turned him, and Anna was refreshingly straightforward whenever they talked. Plus Leesha was a bit of a geek when it came to cultures and legends, and Anna, who had travelled all over the world in her 700-odd years, was normally willing to answer her questions as long as Leesha understood some areas were offlimits.

Of course she understood. She was friends with Damon Salvatore, king of touchy subjects - like the one between him and Alaric regarding Isobel.

On top of that, she was working at the hospital almost every day to store up days off in case something happened and she was acting as relationship counselor for Jenna, Jeremy and Anna, and Elena. Leesha chuckled disbelievingly into her coffee at the reminder that she was giving advice on three separate relationships, two of which involved vampires at least six times her age. Leesha wasn't good with her own relationships, so why were they coming to her for advice on theirs? It made no sense.

She glanced up at the sound of footsteps upstairs and waited for Anna to appear from the hallway. "Good morning," Leesha said, already moving towards the coffee pot. They both knew the routine for the mornings that Anna would show up with questions and without warning by now.

Anna smiled at her before taking a seat on one of the stools at the island. "Can I ask you something?" she asked once her hands were wrapped around the warm mug.

Leesha smiled faintly as she turned towards Anna. "Of course."

They talked for half an hour or so before Jeremy knocked on the door and let himself in like she had told him he could. "Hey Leesha," he called.

"We're in here, Jeremy," Leesha called back. Once she was sure that he was there looking for Anna, she quietly slipped out and went to get ready for work.

A hand holding a vial of something thick and red...

A building on fire, the one just down one of the roads by Town Square that had been Jeremy and Elena's father's practice before he died, the same one Anna's mother is interested in buying...

Two Elenas, one with straight hair and the other curly, face-to-face. But the one with curly hair has a malicious expression on her face that Elena would never wear...

A stone, white and cloudy - maybe a moonstone...

A mask...

A full moon. There is something moving in the woods...

Leesha opened her eyes before sitting up with a groan. She was starting to get really sick of this repeating dream...

Still half-asleep, she stood and pulled on her robe before going downstairs to sit on her porch and stare up at the sky with unfocused eyes. She whispered, "Are You trying to tell me something, or am I just going crazy?"

She didn't really expect an answer, but she still smiled faintly at her silliness and nestled back into the seat, comforted enough by the idea of someone watching over them to fall back into something resembling sleep.

She hated Isobel, Leesha decided as she turned off her engine and opened her door.

She knew that she'd been called a bitch before, and she'd accepted the label, even taken it as a compliment a few times. But Isobel was just...Leesha floundered for a word. How was it that she was a native speaker of two entirely different languages, and yet she still couldn't come up with a term strong enough for Elena's vampire birth mother?

Anyway.

Nobody, except maybe Elena's uncle, deserved to be treated the way that Isobel had treated Ric when she'd rolled into town last night. Thankfully, from what she could tell from a quick phone conversation with Jeremy, the worst injuries that anyone had gained from the incident was a light beating (John, and it was his own fault anyway) and Jeremy's growing distrust of his weaselly uncle.

Leesha frowned at the light coming through the living room window. Had she left the lights on in the kitchen again?

"You knew," Elena accused as soon as the door was open.

Leesha rolled her eyes and shrugged out of her coat. She'd been on the night shift all week in order to have Founder's Day tomorrow off. She was exhausted, she had the sneaking suspicion that she smelled like the hospital, and all she wanted to do right now was to eat something and shower before she crashed for the day, not have the yes-I-knew-that-Damon-was-in-love-with-you-no-I-didn't-tell-you conversation with Elena that Leesha had known would be coming whenever Elena figured it out. "Hello to you too, Elena." She slipped off her shoes and went to reheat some leftover Chinese before she went to bed.

"You knew that Damon's in love with me," Elena said.

"Yes," Leesha said simply.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Elena demanded.

"How'd you find out?" Leesha returned, inwardly wincing at how much she sounded like Damon when he didn't want to talk about something.

Elena blinked. "Um, Isobel. But that isn't the point!"

Isobel. Of course. Okay, another thing to add to the shit list under her name. "Because it wasn't my business," Leesha said. "It's Damon's life, and it should have been his decision about when to tell you. Obviously Isobel took that choice out of his hands, but I, personally, didn't see a reason that I should interfere."

"I thought we were friends," Elena said.

"And we are, honey," Leesha assured her. "But I don't share other people's secrets. It never ends well for anyone involved." She took a bite of beef with broccoli before adding, "You want to know something? I've known the man for ten years, and I've never seen him look at anyone the way he does at you when he thinks no one's looking. Not once."

Elena didn't say anything to that. She just stared at her hands thoughtfully as Leesha finished her meal.