Where Lilacs Last Bloomed Part II

*******PLEASE READ: So someone requested that I write a second part to Where Lilacs Last Bloomed. I'm not going to be nice to Elena and Damon here; within the canon of the first part, I just can't write this without Caroline being angry, and I feel that on a level she has a right to be. This is going to be dealing with the aftermath of someone you love committing suicide. You have been warned.

When a man died, there had to be blame.

― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

Sadness and rage. Despair and anger. Tears and the call for blood.

For the first time Caroline understood. She understood Klaus' need for revenge, to get back at the people on who she placed the blame. The simple truth was that Stefan had killed himself, and she blamed three people; Silas, Damon, and Elena. Klaus understood and even agreed with her position on the matter.

They had been there for him. They had watched him dive deeper and deeper into his sadness. They had been the ones to try to help Stefan get better. They had been the ones to find the body. Not anyone else. They were the ones that had cared for him the most when it mattered.

Caroline was angrier than she had ever been in her life. A small part of her knew that it wasn't completely logical, or fair, to place all the blame for what Stefan did on Damon and Elena, seeing as Silas was dead, but a much larger part of her wanted to blame them, wanted them to have to atone for what they did, for the role that they had played in his death. Even if all they did was apologize, she just wanted them to admit that they had been wrong.

The couple had left soon after Silas was dead. They did not stick around to see how Stefan was, what his mental state was like. It wasn't even necessarily about his former relationship with Elena; it was that he needed his brother and the girl that he cared about to be there for him and support him.

Still, neither Klaus nor Caroline made any effort to find the two; they didn't want to see them, as much as they wanted to confront them. Because, they were alive and happy and they didn't care enough to call to see how Stefan was. It was a small petty revenge, withholding the information of his death, not that they had the contact information of either Damon or Elena, but the thought was still there.

The years passed, then decades, and the sadness eventually faded, but never the anger. Because they could both imagine living a life with Stefan, what they would be doing if he was still there. He'd probably tease them both for acting like a couple and finally getting together. And Caroline would probably worry about him and try to find him a nice vampire girl to be with so that he wouldn't be alone. And that would never happen now.

Caroline and Klaus traveled the world together. But every year, every anniversary, no matter how dangerous it was to them being potentially discovered, they returned to Chicago and then to Mystic Falls. The first time Klaus had suggested it, but from then on they went by unspoken agreement. They ran into many of their old friends and Klaus' siblings through the years, Rebekah and the now vampire Vaughn, Elijah, Tyler (Caroline suspected Klaus only let him survive the encounter because she kept her hand firmly in his the entire time), and Katherine (Caroline didn't know why Klaus had let her survive the meeting, but it might have had something to do with the utter despair that crossed her features when she told them she had been to Mystic Falls and that she knew Stefan was dead). Never the two that they really wanted to see, or yell at, though.

It had been sixty years. To be honest, Caroline was surprised that Klaus was still with her after all this time. She had thought, all that time ago, that he just wanted her for the thrill of the chase, to claim and own her, to win one over on Tyler. That had been part of the reason she had never given in to him. He was this mystical being of a mystical being, and she was Caroline Forbes, cheerleader and high school student. There wasn't anything special about her. She had been scared, not of him, but that he would make her fall in love with him only to leave her in the dust. Well, she had fallen in love with him, but he had fallen in love with her first, and he appeared to have no intention of letting her go.

She savored the feel of his hand in hers- another thing about him that had caught her off guard, he seemed all too happy to perform 'couply' things like holding hands, strolling on the beach, kissing in public, though he still retained the 'I'll kill you if you look at me funny' part of his nature- as they walked through the cemetery, placing flowers first on her father's grave, then her mother's, his brothers', Alaric's, Bonnie's, Matt's, before finally coming to Stefan's. There was something worse about losing someone to suicide. The others, whether they died through natural circumstances or murder... well, there hadn't been anything they could have done to stop it. With Stefan, the guilt that they should have done more to make him happier, should have stayed home that night instead of leaving him, it made the loss of his life harder to accept.

The crunching of leaves behind them, followed by a sharp feminine gasp, alerted them to the presence of people behind them. They turned together, finding Damon and Elena, tears already streaking her face. Then Elena was yelling, screaming at Klaus something about 'how dare he kill Stefan?'. Caroline quickly stepped in front of him, sensing he was about to pounce. "He killed himself Elena."

Damon's face fell but she wasn't done yet. "He died sixty years ago. Where were you two? How could you just leave him like that? This is your fault." Her anger had built as she spoke, and the last sentence was spat angrily out.

"Caroline, it's not like we did it on purpose."

"No, but you still chose to leave him after he was tortured, Elena. He needed you two, he needed you to be there for him, and you weren't and now he's dead. Klaus and I tried to be there for him, we tried to help him get better, but we weren't who he cared most about. What do you think Silas used against him? The two of you. He needed the two of you." She paused, gathering her emotions, wiping away the few angry tears that had gathered on her face, "Klaus, take me home?"

"Of course love."

Getting out how she felt, she found part of her anger to be gone. Some was still there, she had not gotten exactly what she wanted, but she felt better for having expressed her feelings. She could feel guilty later for how she delivered the news to them (she realized how much she had changed. If she had still been the teenage girl living here, she never would have dreamed of treating them as she had. Caroline had grown a lot in her life, she wasn't the same person that had left Mystic Falls so long before), for now she would be happy in Klaus' comforting arms. Tomorrow, she could deal with the fall out. Tomorrow. Today, today of all day's, was for mourning Stefan.

"But I don't blame you anymore, that's too much pain to store...it left me half dead...inside my head. And boy looking back I see I'm not the girl I used to be."
― MoZella