AN: I had a tumblr prompt for a story where Caroline was made an Original with the others and was with Klaus. Then she finds out Klaus cheated on her with Hayley, who wound up pregnant. Be warned all ye who enter here… there is no happy ending.

Let the flames consume

She is bathed in blood – blood of the girl and the fetus that had once existed within in her. She sits in the house in New Orleans, not caring that she is getting blood all over the fine furniture. The red is splattered everywhere anyway, and Caroline wants the proof to be stark in the room.

Proof of his infidelity, and its consequences.

The door opens, but Caroline does not get up. Instead, she sits in the chair, covered in blood, a file in one hand. She inspects her fingers with a thoughtful expression before setting to fixing the nails that were ruined by Hayley's blood. She doesn't look up when the footsteps come to a halt in the doorway. She doesn't need to. She already knows who it is standing there, that it's not the brother she wants.

"Hello, Elijah," she says simply, finally looking away from her nails to her brother-in-law. He gapes at the mess of the room, the corpse on the floor, his expression aghast.

"What have you done, Caroline?" he whispers in shock, and Caroline leans back, resting her arms along the back of the overstuffed leather chair she is sitting in.

"Klaus embarrassed me with his infidelity. I took care of the matter," Caroline replies, as though it's the simplest concept in the world. To her, it is. Why should Hayley be allowed to carry her husband's child to term when her own mother- and father-in-law and taken her own from her before its time?

"Hayley was an innocent-"

"Hayley killed twelve beings she called friends in an attempt to find something she could have simply googled the answer to," Caroline spoke coldly, her voice just loud enough to drown out Elijah's words. "Hardly and sweet little innocent. And she should have known better than to sleep with a married man, Elijah. That she didn't? Well, that's her own fault, isn't it?"

Elijah steps into the room, his expression managing to be both distant and disappointed. He walks up to the body and begins to bend down, planning on removing the corpse, to give it the peace he feels Hayley deserves. He reels back with a shout of pain when he finds Caroline's file in the hand he had reached out to Hayley with. He looks at his sister-in-law with surprise as he yanks the metal out of his flesh. She sits on the chair, legs crossed, arms resting on the armrests, looking every inch the queen Klaus had always claimed she was. Her expression is so very distantly remote, and Elijah searches for the girl he had once known, the bright, happy young woman who had brought life and laughter to not just Niklaus' life, but his whole families'.

He can see nothing of her in the woman who sits there, looking at Hayley's corpse as though it's a termite she has squished.

"The body remains where it is," she says, her voice cold. "Let him see this. Let him see what his indiscretions gain him."

She can see Elijah contemplating his next action. Trying to decide what he should do – back down or fight. For a moment, Caroline wants him to attack. She has such anger in her, and killing the girl did nothing to quench it… but Elijah is her brother, and she doesn't want to hurt him. So she reaches behind her and pulls out a stake and sees Elijah's eyes widen when he realizes what it is.

A white oak stake.

"He left me in Mystic Falls, to watch over Katerina and his potential investment in her. He shouldn't have… not when they had this simply lying around." She turns the stake over in her hands, the only weapon that kill them, and watches Elijah with solemn eyes. She wonders if her grief, the betrayal she feels so strongly, is written there as its written on her heart. She wants Klaus to pay, but should Elijah push her too far she'll make him pay the price instead.

"Is Katerina dead?" Elijah asks, his throat working frantically. For five hundred years he had loved and hated and chased the woman, and Caroline wonders what he will do now that she is gone, now that Hayley and the supposed second chance she carried is gone. He has no one left to save.

"Not by my hand," Caroline replied with a shrug. "But I don't wish to speak of Katerina Petrova, Elijah. You lied to me. I could almost expect it from Nik. He hardly knows what the truth is anymore… but you? You were the honorable brother, yet you allowed him to hide me away in Mystic Falls, as though I were the dirty little secret, not his werewolf whore."

"How did you find out?" Elijah asks, closing his eyes against the horror of the blood and the corpse and all his hopes of his brother's redemption laying in them.

"Rebekah let Tyler Lockwood go. The whelp couldn't wait to tell me all about Klaus' infidelity."

"And the boy still lives?" Despite himself, some humor enters Elijah's voice at the question, and Caroline gives a harsh bark of laughter that is void of any actual humor.

"Yes," she replies, and gives him a smile that shows too many teeth and holds absolutely no happiness. "In fact, I rewarded him."

"How did you do that?" Elijah asks, and all the humor is gone, because he knows where this will lead, and he can only imagine the response Niklaus will have to what Caroline has done.

"How do you think?" Caroline responds, holding the stake carefully between her fingers and surveying Elijah over them. "I fucked the boy's brains out."

"Then he will die."

The words could have been made out of ice for how cold they are, but Elijah is not the one who speaks them.

Klaus enters the room, looking between Caroline and the stake she holds and Elijah and then Hayley's blood soaked corpse.

"You've been busy, Love," he says, stepping cautiously into the room.

"So have you," Caroline replies, leaning back once more. "I apologize, but you won't be a daddy after all."

Elijah looks between the two, but neither pay him any mind. Their eyes are focused solely on each other, and there is sharp electricity crackling between them.

"Leave, Brother," Klaus says, his voice low and dangerous.

"I'm not sure that is wise, Niklaus," Elijah responds, and his eyes dart to the stake still held so cavalierly between Caroline's fingers.

"This is between me and my wife, Elijah. She will not kill me."

"Won't I?" Caroline responds, twirling the stake between her fingers. "I am not so sure, myself."

"Put it away, Love."

"Pity you didn't do that yourself, before you got your whore naked, Husband," Caroline sneers the word. Klaus growls and flashes in front of her, his hand clasping around her neck. He freezes the moment their skin makes contact, and Elijah is confused for a moment before he realizes that Caroline has moved as well. Klaus stands with his hand on her neck, but Caroline holds the stake with steady hands against his chest. The two stare at each other, Klaus' eyes full of fire and anger, Caroline's cold and distant.

"Leave, Elijah," Caroline says to him. "You don't want to be here for this."

"He is my brother, Caroline. I can't allow you to kill him."

"Why not?" Caroline responds, and her eyes dart sharply to him, stark question written there. "Why shouldn't I kill him? He daggers us as though we're his toys. He acts as though he is lord of all. Were he dead, we could be free. A thousand years of marriage to him feels more like a thousand years of servitude."

The words are said to Elijah, but they're meant for Klaus. They hit true, and he winces at the anger in them, at the ice in her eyes. She feels like there is ice in her veins. She has never felt so cold as she does in that moment, a stake poised over her husband's heart. She had stood by him as he sought to end his curse, as he daggered his siblings one-by-one until only the two of them and Elijah remained. She had remained with him even once his siblings were released and the truth of Esther's death had been revealed. A thousand years of loyalty and love, repaid with a cheap one night stand and lies.

Caroline is weary of it all.

"If you're going to kill me, best do it now, Caroline," Klaus says, his grip on her neck loosening, becoming a caress against the tender skin. "You'll only get one shot."

She wants to, God does she want to. She wants to shove the stake so far through his black heart that it comes out his back. She want this to be done.

But for a thousand years, she has loved him. For a thousand years, she has followed him to Hell, and now she no longer knows who she is without him. Loving him has been part of her for so long, that without him she thinks she may wither away to nothing.

"Tell me why," she whispers, and she feels so weak in that moment and hates herself for it. Her voice is pleading, begging, and she hates herself for it, just as she hates herself for still loving him after everything. "You owe me that."

"You betrayed me," Klaus replies simply. "You released Rebekah, lost us all the cure, and then acted as though you were the one wronged. The girl was there and willing when you were not."

She feels a shriek rising in the back of her throat, scratching and clawing its way out, and she wants to scratch and claw his face for being so very cruel. She loves him, but she loves his family as well. He who always speaks of family, looks down on them when they show loyalty to any member of it but him.

"It was my chance for an heir," Klaus remarks, looking at Hayley's body and eyeing it as though it's an unsavory bug crushed under his shoe. "You took that from me."

"As Mikael and Esther took it from me?" she responds, her voice like ice, and it makes him pause for a moment. She doesn't speak of the child they lost. Not now, not for centuries, and never to him. That she brings it up now makes him pause and reach out, cupping her face in his hands.

"She was never you," he tells her, his voice firm. "She was a distraction, and she never even compared. What I feel for you… regimes would be crushed before it. She was nothing, just a girl who carried a child, and I would have done anything for it to be yours instead."

She believes him. She has always been able to tell when he spoke the truth and when he lied, it was how she knew there was something wrong in New Orleans, beyond just Marcel's rebellion. Right now, he speaks the truth, and Caroline closes her eyes in weakness and surrender, her arm falling to her side, the stake sliding from numb fingers. She wants to kill him, she wishes she could.

But she is not capable of it.

The stake gone, Klaus steps up to her, pulling her into his arms and kissing her. She has missed this, the feel of his mouth, of his hands. A thousand years later, and she has yet to grow tired of how he makes her feel.

"I'm so very sorry, Love," Klaus whispers against her lips, and for a moment she feels a warmth, because Niklaus rarely ever apologizes.

Then she feels frozen, because Niklaus rarely ever apologizes.

And it wouldn't be about this, not when he viewed himself as in the right. Not when he feels vindicated by his actions.

She doesn't have time to move away from him, before the dagger is sliding into her back, finding its home in her heart. She opens and closes her mouth, nothing but a shocked croak coming out. A thousand years of passion and fights and love, and she is the only one he has never done this to.

Until now.

She stares up at him in betrayal, hears Elijah's shocked, angry voice behind her, but her eyes are only for her handsome, traitorous husband. There is regret in his eyes, they tell her that he didn't want this, just as his voice says the same.

I didn't want this. I wanted us together, to raise the child together. But you reacted brashly, and I can't afford brash.

She wishes she still had the white oak stake in her hand. If she had that, she could shove it into his cold, dead heart. In that exact moment, she would have been able to do it. But her weakness had already lost her the chance, and now the world is fading to black.

Her last moment of awareness is of him pressing a soft kiss to cold lips.

She thinks she hates him for that most of all.

AN: The next two Klaroline one shots I have planned will be much happier, I promise! But this is one of the first prompts I've gotten in a while for Klaroline that really got the creative juices flowing, so I had to write it. This is not connected to A Thousand Years and Hunter's Curse, which also include a Caroline who knew the Originals way back when. In that, she was turned by Klaus after Esther's spell, in this she was part of Esther's spell. So yeah… don't say I didn't warn you about the lack of happy ending.