A/N: Look at who updated! Me! Inspiration struck me last night as I'm dealing with some issues of my own.

A lot of things that Caroline goes through in my story, I've been through myself. The whole foster care thing, it happened to me. I started writing this story as therapy for me, as a way to get my story out there. That's one of the reasons updates take me so long. Yeah, it's true that I've kinda lost inspiration with The Vampire Diaries, but it's double for me since I've got an emotional response to this story. But I know where it's headed and everything, so please stick with me! I'm grateful that you guys have stuck with me so far and I want to thank you for every one of your reviews, follows and likes. Thank you so much you guys!

A blood-curdling scream awoke Elijah that night out of a deep sleep. He knew the scream once he heard it – it was Caroline. He'd know her scream anywhere. Quietly, without waking Rose (seriously, that woman could sleep through anything), he grabbed the hunting knife that he kept in his beside drawer and snuck down to the room that Damon and Caroline were sharing. Damon was outside the room with a nervous look on his face.

"What's wrong? What happened to Caroline?" Elijah asked immediately.

"Oh, good," Damon said, sounding somewhat relieved. "You heard her, too."

"Of course I did," Elijah snapped. "What happened to her, Damon?"

Damon shrugged, "I don't know. We were sleeping. She started mumbling incoherent sentences and then started screaming. She was shaking a little bit, too, but when I tried to wake her up –"

"Oh no," Elijah muttered. He sighed, "Don't try to move her, don't even touch her," he warned. "The nightmares are back."

"Nightmares?"

"Yes, nightmares. Obviously she gets them, because of everything she's been through, but there are times where the night mares turn into night terrors and she has a hard time dealing with that." He handed the knife to Damon. "I can't go in there with that," he said. "That'll scare the crap out of her if I do." Sighing, he opened the door and went inside.

Damon wasn't sure what to think, but he stood outside the room and watched as Elijah interacted with a sleeping Caroline. He hoisted her up a bit so he could slide in underneath her back and just held her. Every once in a while he would whisper something into her ear, and he would stroke her hair. He rocked her a little and she finally started to come out of it.

"They didn't want me," she was mumbling. Damon heard this, and his heart broke a little. "Nobody wanted me. Nobody could ever want me."

"We want you, Caroline," Elijah said soothingly. "My family wants you – we've always wanted you."

"Am I unlovable, Elijah?" Caroline asked softly.

Elijah shook his head, "No, Caroline, you're probably one of the most lovable people I've ever met."

"It hurts," Caroline said. "This makes me hurt. Was I a bad person or something in a different life? I must've done something incredibly terrible."

"Sometimes bad things happen to good people, Caroline," Elijah said, stroking her hair. "It's not your fault."

Tears were running down Caroline's cheeks as she continued, "It hurts. The dreams, they make me hurt. I was unlovable, unadoptable, and extremely unwanted."

"We want you, Caroline," Elijah said. "My mother and my siblings and I, we've always wanted you. We love you because you're one of us, okay? Don't ever forget that."

"I just wanted to be wanted," she said, tears streaming down her face. "I wanted to belong."

"I know," Elijah said, and God bless his heart, his tone didn't change and he was telling Caroline how much the Mikaelsons wanted her. "I know you did. They took advantage of that, but it's not your fault. None of this is your fault, okay?"

"It feels like it is. It feels like I did something to deserve this."

"You didn't, okay?" Elijah said calmly, motioning for Damon to come into the room. Damon stashed the knife in the bedside table without Caroline noticing. Then Elijah said to her, "Damon's here. He wants you, too, Care."

"Oh God," Caroline groaned. "He must think I'm such a baby."

"I don't," Damon said. "I love you, remember? I love you, and I'm always gonna be there for you whenever you need it."

Elijah slid out from under Caroline's body and motioned for Damon to take his place. "I'm gonna go back to sleep, okay, Care? I really think that you should talk to Damon about this, though. I mean, he wants to help you. Don't you, Damon?"

"Absolutely," Damon answered, realizing he didn't even have to think it through. "I'm always gonna be here and I'm always gonna help you when you need it."

Elijah nodded towards Damon and grabbed his knife as he left the room. If Caroline found that there the next day, she would freak out. And Elijah understood why. He guessed that if he awoke from a nightmare and found a huge hunting knife in the bedroom that he had no idea how it got there would freak him out a little bit, too. As he left the room, he heard Damon trying to sooth Caroline to the best of his ability. He knew that Damon was quite new at this, so he wouldn't know exactly the right things to say, but the thing was that Elijah was happy that Damon was trying to help. He was trying to make it better.

When Elijah got back into bed, putting the knife back where it belonged, he heard Rose's voice, "She okay?"

"I thought you were sleeping," Elijah answered, putting his arms around his wife. "I thought you slept through that."

"Please, Elijah," Rose scoffed. "Who could sleep through that? She was screaming loud enough to wake the dead."

"She's gonna be okay," Elijah said, cuddling up next to Rose. "It's just the nightmares. Part of the PTSD."

"I know that," Rose answered, "but I know that you still worry about her. Hell, I worry about her. Caroline's been through a lot."

"It's true," Elijah said after sighing. "She has. She doesn't deserve to go through this."

"It must make you angry," Rose said.

Elijah thought about his words in his head before nodding, "It makes me extremely angry. The way that they hurt her. I think telling someone that nobody could want them is one of the cruelest things anyone can say to another person, especially when that person is a child."

Rose nodded, "Yeah, I know. I know you worry about her, Elijah, but Damon's gonna take care of her. I know that you and your brothers had your doubts, but I think they're gonna help each other out quite a bit."

-x-

The next morning, Caroline was embarrassed. She got out of bed before Damon even woke up, pulling on a pair of sweatpants and a tank top she borrowed from Rose, telling them she wanted to go on a run. She didn't do it as often as she'd like to, with her busy schedule at the dress shop, but running helped Caroline. It helped her get thoughts straight in her head. She didn't even like listening to her iPod when she was running because she felt like it interfered with her thought process.

Her mind went everywhere while she was running. She liked letting her mind run free – it was something that she couldn't do very often and sometimes it took her places that she didn't want to go, but other times it took her exactly where she needed to go. She remembered everything about the night before, about how Elijah had woken her up and how Damon had held her until they both fell back asleep. She figured that Damon was probably a little freaked out by her waking up screaming, and he had every right to be.

She was broken. All those people in foster care, they broke her. She was hardly recognizable, even to herself. She had changed so much from the eleven year old little girl who had no problems. She remembered a time where she didn't have to worry about anything, but that was a long time ago. She wondered if Damon even remembered that girl. After all, their parents had been pretty close. It's true that after his wife died, Guiseppe kind of went into his own little state, but a lot of Caroline's memories from before foster care were fucked up. She didn't remember much, and the things that she did remember were kind of fuzzy. She went to a psychologist once that told her that she was blocking out the bad memories. But the thing was, she remembered every horrific detail of foster care, but didn't remember her carefree days as a child. It was beyond frustrating.

Part of her wanted to end things with Damon. Yeah, she did that before because she got scared, but this time, she would be doing it for his own good. He deserved someone whole, someone who wasn't as broken as Caroline was. She had been broken in special ways. And her nightmares were about everything she went through in foster care. She dreamt of the abuse, and she dreamt of Mike Jones.

He was always going to plague her dreams, she had figured that out a long time ago. He had tortured her while she was awake, and, after everything, he now tortured her while she slept. There were just so many levels of wrong about what the two of them had done, but the most fucked up thing was the fact that she felt guilty. It had been almost thirteen years since she had gone into foster care, but she wasn't sure that she would ever get over what he did to her. She tried talking to a therapist, but spilling her guts to some stranger just felt weird. She would get better therapy by just talking to one of her friends. But, on the other hand, she didn't want to talk to her friends about this, because she hated it when people found out about the abuse. They treated her differently after they realized just what she had survived. The only person that didn't do that was Elena. She was so thankful for Elena Gilbert, nobody would ever know just how much. Elena never treated her differently; she never treated her like she was fragile or going to break at any second. And Caroline loved that about her.

Caroline was embarrassed, however stupid it may sound, though. She was incredibly vulnerable last night, and had shown Damon a side of herself that she wished would have stayed hidden – at least, to him. She knew that she was dating him and therefore would have to show her vulnerability in front of him eventually, but she knew that she was broken and figured he'd go running eventually. Her track record with guys just…well, it wasn't very good. And if you take out Mike Jones and Tyler Lockwood, it was pretty much nonexistent. No guy ever showed interest in her. She figured she'd die alone.

But then she thought about how Damon treated her. Ever since he found out about her life – the little bit that she had opened up to him about – he didn't treat her any differently. She knew it made him angry – but then again, everything she had been through made the Mikaelsons angry, too. She wasn't sure how to react to that. She was kind of flattered, felt kind of adored about the fact that they were angry on her behalf. She figured that they wouldn't be like that if they didn't love her, so she felt loved, and most of the time she thought it was a twisted view on everything.

When she came back around to Elijah's house, she felt a little more relaxed. A good run was one of the things that made Caroline happy. It had started with cheerleading in high school – that was when she found out that she liked to run. She used to do it every day, even in the off season, but then, after high school, she just didn't do it anymore.

She entered the house to see Elijah, Rose and Damon sitting at the dining room table. Damon had a bowl of cereal in front of him and Rose and Elijah were drinking coffee. Caroline avoided Damon's gaze as she mumbled something about needing a shower.

When she was finally clean and dressed, she felt like a human. Her muscles were pleasantly sore from the run, but it felt good. She had missed the relaxed feeling she got after she went for a run, and made a mental note to run more often. With April helping out at the shop, she'd be able to take a little more time off. When she made her way downstairs, Damon was sitting at the dining room table alone.

"Where's Rose and Elijah?" she asked him, going into the adjoining kitchen and pouring herself a glass of orange juice.

"Den," Damon answered. "Elijah's working on a super special project and Rose said something about painting."

Rose taught a painting class at the rec center, and painted and sold her stuff on the side. That brought in more money than they even needed, but a lot of it went to charities. Rose had always been an art lover, even going to art school, and Caroline almost forgot how much Rose loved it. She could talk about painting and color combinations and everything all day long if you let her.

Caroline remembered the first time she ever met Rose, and to this day, it stuck out in her mind. After meeting Elijah's little sister, Rose had stuck out her hand and said, "You're beautiful."

"Thank you," Caroline had replied.

"I wanna paint you," Rose said, and Caroline was kind of taken aback. Rose could tell by the confused look on Caroline's face, so she explained, "I'm a painter, and you've got the best complexion. It would be great to paint you."

Of course, Caroline had never taken her up on her offer. She wanted to get more comfortable around Rose first, and they never really did that. But she was starting to warm up to her. Yeah, Elijah and Rose had been married a couple of years, but Caroline was bracing herself for the time when Rose would leave. In her experience, everyone left. The Mikaelsons had just been the exception. But Rose stuck around, and Caroline knew that she loved Elijah.

What surprised Caroline the most about what Damon had said, however, was the Elijah part. "A super-secret project?" she asked, interested. "What is it?"

Damon shrugged, "I don't know. That's what makes it super-secret."

Caroline nodded, sipping at her orange juice.

"Caroline, if you decide that you want to talk about last night – "

"- Which I don't," she said, interrupting him.

"Well, if you do decide you want to, you can always come to me. I'm an excellent listener."

Caroline nodded before taking a seat beside Damon and saying, "I know I should put a little more trust in you. And I trust you not to hurt me, Damon. I haven't trusted anyone enough to sleep in the same room with them since I came to the Mikaelsons. For a long time, I only trusted family. But I trust you."

"Thank you," Damon said. "I feel like that's a compliment."

"Definitely," Caroline answered. "It's definitely a compliment, and I know things between us are a little…tense…but I think if the two of us work together, things will get better. I want to be with you and I love you, but I have issues that other people don't have."

"I know," Damon said, getting up to put his bowl in the dishwasher, "but I love you and I'm not going anywhere. I'm in this for the long haul."

Caroline watched him carefully before asking, "Are you sure?"

"I've never been more sure of anything else in my entire life," Damon answered honestly. "I know how I feel about you, and I'm not going anywhere."

-x-

"Do you know anything about Caroline's nightmares?" Damon asked Elena on Monday. He was tending bar at the Grill so Kol could have a night off, and Elena needed a change of scenery so she took her laptop down to the Grill. She had been writing for about an hour when Damon started talking to her.

"I know she has them," Elena answered honestly. She asked Damon for a beer and he popped the top of the bottle and handed it to her. "She's never really talked about them."

"To anyone?" he asked.

Elena shrugged, "I dunno. I mean, after she comes out of them, I suspect she talks to someone about them to calm herself, but then she just drops the subject. I've never seen her have one, but I know that she does. Esther talked to me about them a long time ago, asked me to talk to Caroline about them, but every time I bring them up, Caroline kind of gets anxious. She tells me that she doesn't want to talk about them, that she's fine. I know that she's not, but you can't exactly make someone talk about something when they don't wanna."

"She had a really bad one when we were at Elijah and Rose's," Damon admitted. "Afterward, she didn't want to talk about it. She mentioned briefly what it was when Elijah pulled her out of it, but that was that."

"Well, what was it about?"

"Nobody wanted her," Damon said. "She said that nobody wanted her and nobody could want her."

"You have to remember, Damon," Elena said, taking a swig of her beer, "Caroline's been through hell. And before she met the Mikaelsons, everyone told her that she was unwanted. Even her case worker said it to her once or twice. She told her that nobody could want her and that she was unadoptable. Caroline was fourteen when she found the Mikaelsons, and she was broken. The first foster family she had been with broke her. They told her a lot of bullshit that wasn't real, that wasn't true, so she would be like she is now. They didn't expect her to survive. My guess is that they thought she'd kill herself and that would be the end of that."

"But?"

Elena sighed, "But she didn't die. She survived. Caroline's always been a survivor. I mean, as long as I've known her, Caroline's been a survivor, a fighter. She doesn't go down easily."

Damon nodded silently.

"The only thing we can do is remind her that we do want her. You may have to do it every day, but she's worth it, Damon."

"Yeah, I know," Damon answered. "If I have to remind her every day that I love her and I want to be with her, I will."

"You're a good man, Damon," Elena said after a moment of thought. "You may need to remind her that you love her and want to be with her. She may forget. And I'm not saying anything bad about either you or her, but she's used to people either hurting her or wanting to abandon her. You've got to remind her that she's worth more than that."

"I just feel so helpless," Damon admitted. Elena nodded as he continued, "I see everything she's been through, I see what happened to make her the way she is, and it makes me wanna kill someone."

"Well don't do that," Elena said. "She'd never forgive you if you killed someone, even if it was for her. My advice is to be there for her. She might wanna talk about it eventually."

"I'm always gonna be there for her," Damon answered honestly. "It makes me angry when I think about what happened to her, but I'm always gonna be there for her, and I'm always going to be there to talk to her when she needs it."

"You may need to remind her," Elena said.

"I don't care," Damon said. "I love her and she's worth it."