Blame

4x16 Reaction drabble. AU from Elena and Caroline's fight. Angst. Multiple character deaths. It might be a little dark, but I have no idea honestly.

Blame. Such a simple word. And it was so easy to assign to whomever he wished. He had done it for centuries; blaming his mother, his father, his siblings, Katerina, anyone to escape his own guilt.

And right then, he wished it on the world. Including himself. Because he deserved the guilt that he felt this time.

Elena staked Caroline, Stefan explained on the phone, and they had gotten there too late to save her.

Klaus crushed the phone in his hand as the wolf girl looked at him, a victorious glint to her eyes that Tyler was free for her. She was the first, his first victim in retribution for the murder of the only girl that wasn't his sister that he cared about, because she was the reason he had not been out, not been trying to win Caroline over. Caroline's blood was, at least partially, on Hayley's hands. And she had paid with her life for the crime.

It was easy from there, methodical. Damon and Stefan, for not getting there in time to save his girl. The human Matt for showing up and trying to stop him from his vengeance. Didn't the loss of Caroline's deserve revenge? He thought it did, and he would kill anyone who got in the way of him getting his revenge.

Oh, he took his time with Elena though. The combined crimes of Kol and Caroline's murders warranted that. There was no quick removal of her heart; it was torture, torture that lasted for decades, forcing her to turn her emotions back on so she could feel every bit of pain, every bit of guilt that she deserved to feel. He enjoyed tormenting the doppelganger, laughed as he did it. She meant nothing to him anymore. Then, one day, he drove a stake through her heart.

He found Tyler after that; the man who had gotten his girl, who had held her heart so that she never gave Klaus a chance. He celebrated Tyler's death because Caroline wasn't alive to hate him for it. Then he killed the entire bar because Caroline wasn't alive to hate him for it.

Klaus became worse than he had ever been, killing randomly for any reason. This person could have discovered Caroline and killed her. That person could have fallen in love with the girl that was his. Another person looked too similar to her, and he would not abide by any imitators.

Katerina was next; he found that in his anger he had a much easier time finding her than he ever had had before. She had to be killed because if she had not escaped him, none of what had happened in Mystic Falls would have ever occurred; Elena would have been dead, Caroline would have survived, and maybe fate would have brought them together one day. He relished the most in this death; all of his pain, his anger, his guilt, could be traced back to Katerina, and so he made her kill herself, made her live her worst fear by her own hand.

And soon he had no one else to kill, had run out of reasons to blame people for Caroline's death, and he had to face his own guilt. She was dead; he was too worried about the cure to protect the girl that he had loved.

So he hunted down the white oak stake. It was as easy as killing all the thousands of people Klaus had killed in Caroline's name. A simple move thrust the stake into his chest, and he joined her in death.

Blame. It was hard to escape. Especially when you blamed yourself.