Hello you lovely readers! I hope you will all enjoy this Klaus installment I have for you :) WARNING it is a tad more gory than I usually write, so please just be aware of that (but don't worry, it's not too too icky)

Please please please let me know what you think in the review box, you all know how much I love em! Remember, your imput on my story, or any other story you might want me to write is always appreciated!

Cheers! -M

Klaus's point of view

The car's engine burns loudly as the trees blur past the window. Caroline's words fester in my mind as she yelled them at me as I drove away. I'm naive to think I can keep her away from this, that I can keep her separate. She has made herself a part of each thing I've done since I failed in my attempts to let her die out of my life all those years ago.

I press my foot further down on the pedal, the car lurches forward, my ears open to anything and everything around me.

"Please, I don't even know who you are!"

Instinctively, my foot lifts from the gas pedal, the ignition giving a heavy sigh as I watch the speedometer fall quickly. The familiarity in that voice sends chills down my spine. Clara's efforts to hurt me in any way seemed feeble at the time. Given that there were only a handful of people in the world I am unwilling to part with, and two of them were immortal.

I didn't realize the lengths she was willing to go... How low she is willing to stoop.

Grabbing fast to the steering wheel with both hands I wrench it to the side, reaching down and pulling the emergency break, the back end of the car spins around, turning 180 degrees before flattening the gas pedal to the floor as I speed towards the sound of Liz's panicked voice.

The Forbes home is dark, and quiet, except for the panicked breathing of some distant victim of Clara's vengeance.

I'm out of the car before it's come to a complete stop. The noises are coming from inside the house. The hinges snap as I throw the door open, finding the two women in the living room, Clara's fingers wrapped around the sheriff's neck. A fire burns in the fireplace, but has now spread to the curtains, thick smoke choking the air.

"Where is your daughter?!" Clara's shrill voice is loud over the sound of the flames consuming the small home.

I act before I can fully register the scene, grabbing the savaged vampire by her hair and pealing her away from Sheriff Forbes, and use my hold on her to throw her across the room.

She lands on her feet, a smile playing with her bloodied lips, her dark eyes narrow in my direction.

"You're out of your league Clara," she straightens, wiping Liz's blood from her mouth with the back of her hand, "leave the woman alone." Venom seeps through my words, drips from my distended fangs.

She lets out a single, bitter laugh.

"Klaus Michaelson, trying to play the hero." Taking a stalking step forward, I plant my feet in front of the now collapsed sheriff, striving to catch her breath as the oxygen in the air is slowly eaten away as the flames lick the ceiling.

"Even sent your girlfriend away so she'll be safe. You must miss her." She darts towards the flames, the smoke obscuring her body as I keep my eyes open and on her. "Just because I can't kill her." She's in front of me now. I grab her throat, lift her onto her tiptoes. "Doesn't mean I can't hurt her."

Her hands move fast, manifesting a long, jagged piece of mantel from behind her back and sinking it between my ribs, breaking through the skin of my back, sliding against my spine.

My fingers loosen on her neck, and I hear her feet hit the ground.

"You used to be so strong." Her voice is close to my ear, her skin hot from the flames. "You shouldn't let emotions get the better of you. They only make you weak."

The end of the steak is deep in my chest. I'm paralyzed for a moment as the blood pumping viscously from my heart falls from my chest as I feel it drench my stomach and the top of my jeans. Reaching back I find where it protrudes just bellow my shoulder blade, and pull hard.

"Ahhh!" I shout; the wood leaving behind shrapnel that is now quickly healing into my flesh.

Throwing myself forward, I know I'm too late. Clara's hands have already found the crumpled woman's neck once again, and in a moment, her neck is broken, and she is falling.

Her eyes are open as she lays motionless on the ground in front of me. Clara slowly stands, her hands wet with the fresh blood. I can't remember the last time I felt this pit in my stomach. Perhaps the night when I watched Marcel hold tight to Caroline's body, nearly tearing her heart from her chest. Only this is worse. This is cannot control. I can't go back and be faster, be stronger. This happened because I didn't care enough, and it makes me sick.

The fog of my mind slowly lifts; but as my emptiness begins to morph painfully into rage, she's gone.

Backing away from Liz's corpse, I can't decide whether I should carry her with me out of this burning house. I make the decision that I don't want Caroline to see her mother. Not like this.

Walking out of the burning house, I stop on the steps as familiar faces come out of the bushes. The Salvador's, and the Doppelganger. My burning chest tightens at the sight of her.

"Where is Caroline?" I spit out, taking a heavy step down, the wood aching under my anger.

Both brothers take a protective step towards me.

"…She's on her way." Elena says quietly, sounding a little guilty.

I take another step down, ready to fire my rage of these imbeciles for doing exactly what I asked them not to. Bring Caroline back before Clara was merely a pile of bones. My words are on the tip of my tongue as I catch movement in the trees on my left.

She can run. But I am faster.

My lip curls and branches are whipping at my face before she's taken another step. I catch on to the first thing I can; her wrist, and wrench her back, pulling her against me until my mouth is at her ear. She lets out a surprised shriek as my fingers dig into the tops of her arms.

"Where do you think you're going?" I can feel the fear my words inject into her, and savour the tremble that wracks her spine.

With one hard tug I throw her back towards the house, into the clearing, in view of the burning house and the three waiting vampires.

"What?" My voice fills the area, her smirk is gone, "Nothing to say?" I stalk forward as she stumbles back.

"Klaus," Stefan's warning voice is low, hopeless. Like he wants to do something but know he can't. Smart man.

"You wanted to hurt her, to hurt me!" This is familiar. This feels right. She did something wrong. And now she's going to pay. She opens her mouth to say something. Whether it is to beg, taunt, I will never know. My hands find her shoulders as my fangs find her neck. Closing my jaw around her throat I tear her apart.

She screams. It's not enough. Not enough for what's she's done.

My hand finds her heart, and closes around it. I crush it until I feel it stop beating in her chest.

"Marcel would be proud."

The silence is deafening. The beating of my own heart in my ears as I feel the weight of her fall against me. Her blood mixing with my own as it drenches my white shirt, turning it a deep crimson. No one breathes, no one moves.

I let her shoulders fall onto my arm as my other catches her behind her knees, I lift her from the ground.

I walk the short distance up the back steps, pulling the door ajar; smoke flowing from the open space. Stepping inside, I place her lifeless body on the floor of the kitchen. I back out of the house for the last time, fishing for my phone in my pocket I punch in 911.

"911 what's your location?"

I try injecting fear and panic into my voice. The sound of someone caught in a house fire. I try to sound less like an empty shell of a man who just watched the woman he loves lose the last family she has left.

I try to sound guilty for the death of someone, whose life I didn't even care about, but the negative impact that person's death will have on someone I do care about.

They assure me they will dispatch someone right away, and after double checking that I am out of danger, they hang up.

My feet won't take me any farther than the steps. Sinking down I prop my elbows on my knees, interlacing my blood coated hands as I let my head bow and my eyes close.

Caroline's friends are still here. Watching me, waiting… for something, I don't know. I can hear them breathing. I hear Damon mumble curses under his breath.

And then I hear her.

"Nik…"

It's strangled and hoarse, but it's her.

Raising my head slowly, her eyes assault my own, the tears that pool there, a mixture of agony and horror causing my lungs to burn and my eyes sting painfully.

"Where's my mom?" Her voice is barely a whisper. I watch Elena close her eyes and shake her head. Stefan is watching her with so much pity I'm nearly ill.

I unclasp my hands, my fingers stick a little as the blood has begun to dry, and I try to stand.

"I couldn't—" My voice is choked, feeble under her stare. "I couldn't stop her." My eyes burn, unfamiliar tears blur the shattered woman in front of me. "I tried, I—" didn't try have enough. "I'm…"

She sinks to her knees, her hands in the grass. Elena is at her side in an instant, telling her that it's okay, that's everything's going to be okay.

Once I'm sure I can walk without wavering, I walk to my fiancé with cautious steps. Lowering myself to my knees in front of her, I don't want to touch her with my bloodied hands, but how can I not?

I quietly lift my hand into her view, offering it to her, allowing her the option to push me away, to reject my outstretched weapon, my ugly self. It's a painful moment while she merely stares down at the ground, at my offer, not moving a muscle.

Her ice cold fingers clasp around mine so tightly it takes me by surprise, her other hand searching for my other hand as she lets out the sob she's been holding in. Elena stands, covering her mouth with her hands, backing away into Damon's chest.

Her hands hold strong to mine, her tears falling from her bowed head into the grass between us. In a second she grabs a handful of my shirt, pulling my close, and sobs into my chest. Hard, rocking sobs. I close my eyes, lowering my head onto her shaking shoulder, breathing in her sadness, her raw pain.

"I'm so sorry Caroline… Love… I'm so sorry." I say it again and again, as if saying it may heal her wounds. May make her whole again.

We stay this way until the distant sirens begin to get closer, and the murmurs of neighbours out front begin to reach us.

I can't be here, looking the way I do when the emergency team arrives. Not unless I'm going to compel the entire block.

Leaving her is the hardest thing. My shoulder is drenched with her tears as I walk away, leaving her in the arms of her friends and the fire department, to tell them that her mother has died in a horrible accident. Unbuttoning my shirt, I shed it quickly, the piece of material more proof of my failure, and the monster I am, hiding just below the surface.

XXX

My eyes open before my alarm sounds. The light of the morning has hardly begun to lighten the curtains. Checking the clock, I sit up, running my hands through my hair; my heart beats a little too hard in my chest. Replaying that night once again in my head, and everything I could have, should have, done differently.

Elijah will be here in four hours. I could try to sleep, but that would only risk re-living that nightmare once more; not something I am interested in doing today.

Today. My wedding day.

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