Fire On Fire | The Vampire Diaries [1]

15

After the council bombing, the town was all in a state of grief of the people they lost so Ashley and Elena were laying out memorial pamphlets on the rows of benches in the church.

"How are you feeling? A little strung out?" Ashley asked handing Elena more pamphlets.

"I'm fine. It's just my emotions are all over the place. Everything's heightened. I mean" She opened up one of the pamphlets, "Just the sight of all the names of the dead makes me want to cry for a week."

"You didn't have to volunteer." Ashley stated.

"People died. People we've known our whole lives, so yeah, I did." Elena said glancing over at the front of the church seeing April sitting on one of the pews.

"Is that?" Elena asked as Ashley nodded, "April Young. Yeah."

"Oh, wow." Elena gabed before joining the brunette.

Ashley, Caroline, Elena, Stefen, Matt and Jeremy were all sitting at the picnic table outside of the school waiting for Damon and Bonnie to show up, "Stefan, what are we doing?" Damon asked once he approached the group.

Stefan had some of the paper lanterns in his hand, "We're finishing the memorial we didn't get to have earlier." He stated handing Elena a lantern.

"We need to start healing, Damon. We've all lost so much, especially recently. I think we're numb to it. We push it away, we make a joke out of it, ignore how we feel. We've never just let ourselves grieve." Stefan explained.

Damon frowned, "So, you're lighting lanterns?"

Stefan nodded staring at his brother, "Yeah. Yeah, we need to do this."

Damon scoffed, "What we need to do is find out who this hunter is and what he knows about the death of the Council. We have more important things to be doing right now than this."

"Not tonight, we don't." Stefan said lighting the lantern, "This is for my uncle Zach and my friend Lexi and for Alaric."

Stefan handed the lighter to Matt who lit his lantern, "This is for Vicki."

Ashley got up taking the lighter from Matt, "This is for my dad and for Caroline" She said lighting her lantern.

Caroline took the lighter after that, "This is for my dad. And Tyler's." She lit her lantern.

Jeremy looked at Elena, "This is for our parents." then he looked at Matt, "For Vicki. Anna. Jenna. And Alaric."

He lit his lantern looking up at Damon trying to hand him the lighter but Damon refused, "No way. I'm not doing that." He scoffed before leaving.

Jeremy handed the lighter to Bonnie who took a lantern out of the box and took the lighter from Jeremy getting up and standing next to Ashley, "This is for my Grams."