Sincerely Yours [Stefan Salvatore]

[83. Memorial]

Caroline giggled. "I'm dragging him to our hometown graveyard bell-ringing ceremony."

"Ew," Lucy frowned; she had never liked that certain Mystic Falls annual event. "What a mood killer."

"Get your head out of the gutter. It's a study date," the blonde scolded her. "And while I'm there, I might as well ring a bell for Tyler and me, considering our relationship is on its death bed."

"Care..."

"Don't give me your sympathetic voice because if I think about it too much, I'll start crying," Caroline warned her before she perked up again. "Will I see you there? You could bring Stefan. I mean, it is ironically called Remembrance Day."

"I don't know, I might," Lucy hesitated. "Right now it depends on how he's doing with everything that Elena and Damon are telling him. 163 years of memories are a lot to handle."

"I know," Caroline sighed. "All right, well, I'll talk to you later."

"Okay," Lucy smirked mischievously. "Use protection."

"I hate you, Lucy Eleanora!"

"Love you too, Care. Bye."

Lucy sighed as she shoved her phone in the back pocket of her jeans. She walked back over to her bed and plopped down amongst her three grimoires, trying to find anything that may help Stefan get his memories back. She also had to keep trying to get a hold of Bonnie, which was proving to be more difficult than she previously though.

She opened her Mikaelson grimoire and started reading; she had a lot of work to do.

-

-

The bell that was temporarily situated at the door of the bar Damon and Elena brought him to was rung once again. A man called out a toast to his uncle and then everyone drank. Stefan had no idea why these people were drinking, but it wasn't bad. It certainly gave him an opportunity to get drunk and forget about the fact that he had no memories.

Everything that Damon—who was apparently his older brother—and Elena—who was Lucy's older half-sister—were telling him jogged nothing upstairs. His own damn journals, which he had read thoroughly, gave him nothing but dramatically written phrases about his so-called ripper binges and his feelings.

Right now, he knew a couple of things for sure. One, the girl he woke up to was Lucy and she was a witch-vampire hybrid who was also somehow a reincarnation. Two, he was a vampire and a doppelganger of some ancient immortal named Silas. And third, he was thirsty.

Stefan sank back the shot that Damon had placed in front of him. "Wow," he inhaled deeply once he swallowed down the liquor. "Is this town always so upbeat about dead people?"

"No," Elena assured him before taking her own shot.

"It's a morbid town tradition," Damon explained. "See, if you go back to the 1820s, that was when everyone was so paranoid about the Cholera thing that they would occasionally bury a body a wee bit before its time."

Stefan furrowed his eyebrows. "So, we have a holiday dedicated to burying people alive?"

"Well, they were so paranoid that they would actually request to be buried with a string attached to a bell above ground. Then the whole family would hang around the grave for twenty-four hours in hopes of hearing the bell and that their loved one would come back."

"But now, it's a great excuse to get drunk," Elena finished.

A waitress walked up to their table, then, setting down new shots for each of them. Stefan didn't pay much attention to the alcohol, though. His eyes were on the artery in the waitress' neck where he could hear the rush of blood and the wet thumping of her heart. His mouth filled with saliva even though he felt thirstier than before.