That's a talk that keeps coming back ten years now.
My take, If we ignore the writers forgetting Klaus has superhearing, super-scent, and the paranoia of a thousand-year-old hybrid who sleeps like a cat with PTSD…
The scene is actually framed to show something very specific. Klaus isn’t trying to remember hurting her. He’s trying to understand the impossible. I don’t think “did I do this?” ever crosses his mind. Klaus may be impulsive and violent, but he’s not delusional.
He knows exactly what he is and what he’s capable of. And hurting Camille is the one thing he would never do. Even if they had slept together (they didn’t), even if he’d gotten carried away, she is not “just another lover.” She is his only exception.
The whole point of the scene is that being with her made him feel safe enough to do something he never does: he actually slept. Like, fully let his guard down. And then he woke up to his worst nightmare.
That’s why he’s pacing and breaking things, not because he thinks he killed her, but because someone managed to get into his home, into his bedroom, and kill the woman in his arms without him noticing.
It’s the horror of realizing his fear was right: being with him had cost her life. At that point Klaus is not thinking anything else but the obvious. She is dead; she died on his watch; he failed her… he is not expecting that she would wake up in transition.
Compulsion is not even a wild idea in his mind. That's why when she wakes up, the first thing he says is, "Tell me what happened."
For compulsion was another huge hole …the show never addresses it. She was missing for three days, kidnapped by Lucien and then Aurora, and no one checked if she still had vervain in her system or considered compulsion. Which is crazy because that’s literally Klaus’s go‑to move. He drains people from vervain and compels them to be his spies. But in the moment, he’s not thinking strategically. Klaus, he's in shock. Emotionally, the scene is about Klaus realizing the one thing he tried to prevent — losing her because of him — has happened in the most intimate, devastating way possible.
