AN: Here's another chapter for your reading pleasure. Once again inspired by Mumford & Sons. If that band hasn't rocked your world yet, you need to look them up. Because they should be.

Four. Broken Crown

"So crawl on my belly 'til the sun goes down, I'll never wear your broken crown." ~Broken Crown, Mumford & Sons

Rebekah had been right about Silas owning a vehicle.

Klaus managed to follow Caroline's scent for about two miles before it simply disappeared, replaced by the stench of rubber and remains of tire tracks from a vehicle doing a burn out. Klaus tried to follow the scent of rubber, but it only took him to the highway before even that disappeared.

For a man who had been unconscious for two millennia, Silas was doing an excellent job of using modern conveniences to keep his tracks hidden from vampires.

Klaus had been forced to return to the catacombs empty handed. When he got there, he was greeted by the sight of the Mayor and his undead ex-wife confronting Bonnie and Rebekah.

"I told you Expression is dangerous!" Abby thundered. "But you were too addicted to listen!"

"I know, Mom!" Bonnie yelled back, and her breath caught on a sob. "I know. Don't you think I know that I messed up? Jeremy is dead, Liz is dead, Matt is dead, and Caroline is AWOL in the hands of the bad guy, so trust me, I know. You can't possibly make me feel any worse than I already do."

"And the twelve witches you killed for Silas? I notice that they don't make your list," Abby pointed out, her voice cold.

"That would be because Bonnie didn't kill them," Klaus interjected coolly, making his presence known. Both Rudy and Abby stiffened when they realized another Original was present, and Klaus sauntered towards the group. "It turns out that your daughter does actually have friends that put her life above all others. Caroline killed the witches to save Bonnie."

Abby looks shocked at this news, and torn. Should she be thankful Bonnie lived, or upset with Caroline that she killed twelve witches to keep Bonnie that way?

"You didn't find her," Bonnie said, her eyes looking almost defeated. "If you can't track her, then how are we ever supposed to find her? Silas is the freaking bogeyman who can wear anyone's face, and as long as Caroline is with him she might as well be a bogeyman too."

"Did she kill Matt Donovan?" Rudy asked, trying to take control of the situation. "Caroline, I mean?"

"Why would you even think that?" Bonnie demanded, glaring at her father. "Matt was the first boy Caroline ever really loved. She would never hurt him!"

"I don't know," Klaus said, over top of Bonnie's angry rant. Bonnie stopped and stared at him in shock. "We weren't there, witch, we don't know what happened. All we know is that Silas can make his victims see whatever he wishes, and that Elizabeth Forbes died from a stake to the chest whereas Matt was, quite clearly, attacked by a vampire."

"You think it was Caroline," Rebekah whispered, her eyes widening with surprise. "But why? Why would she kill Matt?"

"If you watched someone kill your mother in front of your very eyes, wouldn't you wish them dead? You wished it for me, no matter how briefly, after you found out I killed Esther, and that was one thousand years after the fact, Bekah. What better way to break Caroline than to take everything from her in one stroke? Liz was all the family she had left, and I doubt that Bonnie here will ever look at Caroline the same way if my theory turns out to be true. Unless you're going to surprise me, witch, and actually see the world as more than simple black and white," Klaus sneered the last at Bonnie, not suspecting much from the self-righteous witch.

"I would have killed those twelve witches if Caroline hadn't, just to bring Jeremy back. I've gone against the sprits time and again to keep the people I love alive. I was willing to watch every vampire in Mystic Falls die once because my Grams was killed helping one." Bonnie's eyes were locked on the black body bags that held Liz and Matt as she spoke, but her eyes turned to Klaus' as she finished, a fierce light inside of them. "I made the mistake of turning my back on Caroline because she was a vampire once, and she was still there for me every time I needed her despite that. Bring her back to us Klaus. Let me prove to her that at least one of us is still here for her."

Klaus was surprised by the strength in the witch's voice. He actually believed the tiny little Bennett.

"She won't be the same girl she was before," he warned her, feeling the need to stress that Caroline wouldn't immediately be the bright sunshine girl they'd all known. "I've seen people break; I've broken many of them myself. It's messy, and dark, and more often than not it's a path from which you never return. Caroline may never be the girl you once knew ever again. Can you love her anyways?"

Bonnie took in Klaus' words and weighed them, then she gave him a searching look.

"Can you?"

Damon had been handling Elena with kid gloves ever since the news had come in that Liz and Matt were dead, and Caroline still missing. He acted as if she might implode at any moment.

It drove Elena a little bit insane, and for the first time since she had been turned, Elena could actually appreciate Stefan more than his brother. Stefan had given her one look, decided that she'd be okay, and then once more thrown himself fully into the search for Caroline.

That was what they all needed to do, and yet Damon acted as if Elena was the one to worry about.

"I'm not the one who is experiencing psychological torture, Damon," Elena snapped, slamming a glass onto the counter and pouring scotch into it. "My humanity switch is flicked firmly to off. Try worrying about someone else for a while. Like Caroline."

"Blondie will be fine," Damon replied with a wave of his hand. "She always is."

Elena snorted at that and tossed back the scotch. It burned on the way down and made her eyes water, but Elena welcomed the sensation. The longer she kept her humanity off, the more she welcomed anything that made her feel something other than… nothing.

"She won't be this time," Bonnie replied from where she sat on the couch across the room. Klaus and Rebekah had dropped the witch off when they came to deliver the news of what had been in the catacombs, before they took off once more with Stefan. Bonnie had been unusually quiet ever since. Elena knew what it was like, to see the bodies of your dead loved ones. She could almost sympathize with Bonnie, if she could feel anything. "If Klaus' theory is right, I don't think that Caroline will be okay ever again."

"And what is Klaus' theory, Sabrina?" Damon asked, pulling out the file of Katherine's identities that he had found in New York. "My least favorite Original didn't say much beyond watch the witch and they're dead."

"He thinks Care might have killed Matt," Bonnie explained, looking at Elena as she spoke and completely ignoring Damon. "After she watched Matt kill Liz under Silas' influence."

"It would make sense," Elena mused, looking at the situation from a cold, distant perspective. "She was ready to shove a stake into me after I attacked Liz, and the sheriff hardly even had a scratch. Plus, if Silas really wants to break Care, what better way? I don't get why Care would just leave with him after he was the catalyst for it all though. That doesn't make sense."

"Why wouldn't she, Elena?" Bonnie asked, her voice helpless. "Why would she think for a second that we would support her after she killed Matt? I nearly cut her off when she was first turned for killing a complete stranger when she had no idea what was going on. You slept with the guy that abused her for weeks and then took his side when Caroline said she didn't like him. Stefan and Damon have always had your back, and the rest of us were expendable, and Tyler's gone. Really, why would she think that we would welcome back Matt's murderer, no matter what circumstances the death occurred under?"

Bonnie words made Elena pause. She had never considered her relationship with Damon from Caroline's point of view. She had always been full of too much emotion, rushing head long into whatever might come, or feeling guilty about what Stefan must be feeling. Now that Elena could push all that aside, she supposed she could understand why Caroline might be unhappy with their relationship.

"You really were a douchebag to her, weren't you?" she asked Damon. The words weren't judgemental, more just a statement of facts that Elena had never considered before, but Damon still looked away with guilt.

"Blondie knows I didn't mean any of that," he said. "I was just in a bad place."

"You were an ass," Bonnie replied scathingly. "And you're still an ass who's more worried about finding Katherine and the cure for Elena than helping us find Caroline, who knows a lot about us, by the way, and could give Silas information he needs to kill us all. In case you need a reason beside the fact that it's Caroline, and she's always fought for all of us, even you."

"Plus, I don't want the cure," Elena added with a smirk. "So really, you're just wasting everybody's time. Especially your own, since Katherine is possibly even more difficult to find than Silas."

"Did it ever occur to either of you that I am looking for Katherine and the cure for Caroline?" Damon muttered, leaning over the folder once more.

Bonnie and Elena looked at each other with almost identical frowns.

"Nope."

"Definitely not."

"Well I am!" Damon replied defensively. "Look, Silas is older than even our friendly neighborhood Originals, and Vaughn spent most of our time together on the island telling me all about how the cure is the only way to kill Silas. If he is anywhere near as obsessive as Klaus, he won't give Caroline up without a fight. That means we need to kill him. The cure equals killing him. We shove it down his throat, and that's it. Blondie is free."

Bonnie stared at Damon in shock, and Elena sat down, feeling something close to shock herself.

"Wow," she muttered. "So, you're seriously not trying to give me the cure anymore? You're actually doing something for Caroline?"

"I put her through hell," Damon muttered. "And she still revealed herself to Liz to save me, and Stefan, but me as well. I'd rather give the cure to you, because without your emotions you're a cold, hard bitch, but I figure Silas is more dangerous, and if we lose Caroline, then even giving you back your humanity won't fix you, so… we'll kill Silas, get Caroline back, and maybe the two of you can work on fixing each other."

"I don't need to be fixed," Elena replied heatedly. "I'm happy the way I am!"

"You say that now," Damon replied, not removing his eyes from the folder. "But even Katherine had to let the humanity in every once in a while."

"I'm. Not. Katherine!" Elena hissed, and then she stalked away.

She would find a use for herself somewhere else.

Silas was right.

Phase two was anger.

But Caroline didn't think it was the anger he wanted. She didn't want to suddenly go and kill her friends and paint her home town red. Matt was dead, and nothing would bring him back. Her friends had every right to hate her for that. They had already lost too many loved ones.

No, Caroline was angry with herself.

What was it about her that always brought forth only the worst? Damon had strolled into her life, and then left her with covered with scars and haunted by a multitude of self-esteem issues that not even becoming a vampire could heal. Her father had come back into her life to torture the monster out of her, and then died rather than become what she was. He could give her all the pretty words he wanted, but it was cold comfort when he was dead. Stefan had strolled into her life and called her his Lexi-replacement, but he always abandoned her the second Elena was in need. Alaric had seen her as an easy target and used her words, words meant to comfort him against her. Katherine had also viewed her as an easy target, easy and expendable as soon as she was sacrificed for Klaus.

And there was Klaus. Klaus who killed Jenna, Carol, hundreds of innocent people, then turned around and told her she was beautiful and full of light, and made Caroline want to believe in redemption. Because he did love her, even if it was in a kind of twisted way, and if you could love, you could be saved, right?

Only Silas had loved once, but there was no saving him. He was a broken, twisted shell of a man, and he was determined to remake Caroline in his image. If he had his way, she would be broken and twisted, too. His dark queen.

And Caroline had let him break her.

Caroline had let him manipulate her into killing Matt, and then she had let him manipulate her into believe she had nowhere else to go.

So yes, Caroline was mad. Caroline was mad that she had let him shove her into that abyss. But Caroline was thinking clearer now. Her humanity was firmly shut off, and if Caroline still felt a little empty, the anger had at least removed the listlessness. Caroline was tired of being used and abused and waiting to be saved. It was time for her to save herself.

"Good morning, Caroline. Ah, I see the fire is back in your eyes. Is it time to proceed to phase two, then?" Silas asked as he entered the room. He carried a cooler, and he pulled two bags of blood out of it and tossed one to Caroline, before tearing into the other himself.

"You haven't explained what phase two is, beyond my feeling anger," Caroline pointed out, sipping carefully from the blood bag. She had been messy yesterday, with Matt, and could look at it with some level of embarrassment. There was never a good reason for being a sloppy eater.

"Phase two is revenge," Silas replied. "I want to show you what real power feels like. You hold the fate of every person we meet in your hands, and what ultimately happens to them is entirely up to you."

"I thought you wanted to remove all the light Klaus loved so much from me," Caroline said, looking at Silas contemplatively. "This doesn't really sound like a light removing exercise."

"Your light is your humanity," Silas explained. "We're already well on our way to getting rid of it. All you need to do is realize how much more enjoyable having power over everyone is than being powerless. Surely you want that? To never be a victim again? Damon, Alaric, Jules, the hybrids, your father, even Klaus. They've all made you their victim at one point. With my help, you will be more powerful than them all. You'll make them beg for mercy, and then you can refuse to give it to them."

"That will be difficult, considering that all but two of the people on that list are dead," Caroline pointed out. "I'd say I'm doing pretty well, thanks."

"But you never got to kill them," Silas explained, tossing his blood bag aside and coming to join Caroline where she was lounged on the bed. He stretched out next to her, facing her on his side and tangled his hand in her hair. "Once I get the cure, we can open the gates and they'll all come back. Then it will be up to you; do they live or do they die? That wolf-bitch Hayley, as well. She slept with Klaus, you know. You can show her what happens to traitorous little whores."

The news of Klaus' indiscretion with Hayley surprised Caroline, but she couldn't say she was entirely shocked. Hayley was attractive, and it's not like Caroline had exactly been hopping up and down, volunteering to scratch Klaus' itch. Perhaps, if her humanity was still around, Caroline would feel some hurt over the matter, but at the moment she was just contemplating Klaus' reaction were she to show up and offer to show him what hot hybrid sex should really be like.

"Hayley isn't a whore," Caroline commented. "This is the twenty-first century. We're trying to eliminate slut-shaming. You're setting our cause back. She's a traitorous bitch I'll agree, but not a whore."

"Who cares what names you call her, her life will be in your hands," Silas tugged her face up to his with her hair. "All the power you could want, Caroline. All you need to do is take it."

Silas pressed his lips to Caroline's. Her first instinct was to shove him away, or bite him again, but logic quickly caught up to instinct and prevented such hasty action. Caroline wanted to get away from Silas, but he was two thousand years old, whereas Caroline was only eighteen, and only one year of that had been spent as a vampire. She couldn't outmuscle Silas, but she could outsmart him.

Caroline knew men. She had enough experience, good and bad, to be confident of that.

"You know, you call Hayley a whore, then you expect me to just fall into bed with you," Caroline said, rolling so that she was on top of Silas, and his shoulders were pressed into the bed. "I'm really not sure what that says about what you think of me."

"I think you're majestic," Silas replied, his hands gripping her hips hard enough that, had Caroline been human, it would have bruised. "You go to my head, Caroline."

"I'm not stupid enough to fall for lines like that," Caroline said with a snort. "And I'm not sleeping with you."

"Perhaps not now, but you will. You'll realize that I can give you what you want, and you'll give in to me."

Silas rolled them so that he was on top, and he pressed his mouth against her neck. Caroline had to admit that, as far as technique went, Silas' was very good. Her body responded to his touch, and Caroline imagined that he could play her like a well-polished fiddle given the opportunity. And she hadn't had sex since Carol had died; things had been tense between her and Tyler in those final days. Caroline almost regretted that she couldn't take advantage of one quick rush of lust with Silas.

Sadly, she had a plan. And it didn't include sex.

"You're good," Caroline admitted. "I could almost give into you. It is very tempting."

"Then do," Silas murmured, leaning down to catch her lips once more, and Caroline let him. She let him explore her mouth with his tongue, and it was a talented tongue, and the whole time her hands creeped up until they were placed just right.

Then, with a quick twist, Caroline snapped the neck of the oldest immortal in known existence.

"What I want, you asshole, is my mom," Caroline snarled as she shoved Silas' dead weight off of her.

To further slowdown Silas's awakening, Caroline broke the leg off the bedside table and shoved it through his chest. As she suspected, it didn't kill him, but she hoped it would slow him down. She dug in his pocket and pulled out her cellphone and a set of keys. Caroline smirked as she left the room and used the keys to find the vehicle Silas had acquired, a simple black Sedan with tinted windows.

It felt good, she decided, this saving herself thing.

Caroline through the car into reverse with one hand and dialled Klaus with the other.

She could save herself, but who didn't like a little help from their friends?

AN: So, in my AN last chapter I said that Klaus suspected what had happened in the cave… yeah, that was in this chapter. My bad, guys. Spoiler alert?

For the few reviewers that have said they kind of ship Caroline/Silas (Carolas? Sioline?), you may have enjoyed the moments leading up to Caroline's escape. Silas is attractive (see prologue for physical description) and would probably be good in bed, but Caroline had a plan, so you just got some making out.

Many people kept on leaving me reviews saying that Klaus needed to save Caroline. Well, I planned it all along that Caroline would save herself. Why? Because she needed to. She's been a victim too long. She'll need help coming back from the place she's at, but more than help, she needs her own strength. So in this chapter, Caroline got one over on Silas. Of course, that doesn't mean he's done tormenting her yet, but it does give her a bit of fight.

And my comments on Hayley… that's how I feel about it. I dislike Klayley sex, and I dislike Hayley in general and do think she's a bitch, but not a whore. Feel free to agree or disagree as you will.

As always, please leave a review. I'm currently working on chapter 6 of this story AND Part II of my other story, Conversations With Myself. It appears six is my unlucky number as there have been many versions of the chapters started and discarded, but I think I'm finally making progress, so yay!