After what happened between Nik and me, I decided to give a relationship between the two of us, a shot. We agreed to keep it a secret. No one will know, except Jenna and Rebekah for now. Nik left town for a few days with a promise to come back soon.
After I came home after deciding to give a relationship with Nik a chance, I found out that Pastor Young blew up himself and the rest of the Council members in his house due to a faulty gas leak. Now, because of that the entire town is in mourning. Elena has started her vampire 101 lessons and she is being thought by Stefan. I tried telling her that she should be thought by someone who knows about control, like Jenna, Care or hell, even Damon, not by ex-ripper who has no idea what self control is. She ignored my warnings saying that Stefan is perfectly capable to teach her himself. Stefan decided it would be best to make her go on a bunny diet and he brought her to the woods to eat as many bunnies and squirrels as she can eat.
"Wait, so you can't keep the animal blood down?" I ask Elena in disbelief as we are getting ready for the funeral for the council.
"Maybe it has something to do with me being a doppelganger?"
"Katherine transitioned just fine, from what we know."
"Well, then maybe..."
"Elena there isn't anything special happening with you. There must be a reasonable explanation."
"What is the explanation?"
"I don't know, but maybe that's the problem. You shouldn't be feeding off of animals, you need human blood. You need fresh blood, or blood bag at least."
"You sound like Damon."
"I hate to say this, but he's right. You should have him or someone else teach you how to be a vampire, not an ex- ripper."
"Stefan thought Caroline." Elena points out.
"A much as I love Care, she was already a control freak. Once she knew what she needs to do, she could do it perfectly. I mean she only killed one guy and that was before she had any training."
"Stefan's way will work, I just need to be patient."
"If you say so."
"I do. I can't be a monster, a killer. I just can't." She says becoming upset.
"You won't. I promise."
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Elena wanted to keep herself busy, so she volunteered the to of us to help set up the church for the funeral of Pastor Young and the rest of the council. As we are laying out memorial pamphlets on the rows of benches in the church, Matt walks up to us. "How are you feeling?" Matt asks Elena. "A little strung out?" He hands us more pamphlets.
"I'm fine. It's just my emotions are all over the place. Everything's heightened. I mean, just the sight of all the names of the dead makes me want to cry for a week." Elena says.
"You we're the one who wanted to volunteer." I remind her.
"People died. People we've known our whole lives.. so yeah, I did."
"Is that?" I ask and Elena follows my gaze.
"April Young. Yeah." Matt answers. Elena and I head to pay our respect like she did at our parents funeral. We walk over to April and sit down next to her.
"Hey April." I greet her.
"Hey. Long time, no see." She greets back. "Not since..."
"Our parent's funeral." Elena finishes for her.
"Yeah." Elena and I bring her into group hug.
"Are you gonna survive this?" I ask her.
"They want me to speak. I guess all the kids who lost somebody can. What am I supposed to say? I'm sorry my dad didn't fix the gas line? But, if I don't say anything then...I mean, what if nobody does? My dad and I didn't always get along or anything but, everybody still deserves to have nice things said about them at their own funeral, you know? I mean, for my mom's funeral, everybody said these really nice things."
"You say what you want to say or you don't say anything at all." Elena tells her.
"And don't worry about your dad, everyone in this town loved him." I remind her.
"Yeah." April starts to choke up. "Until two days ago."
"Even still." I assure her and Elena starts acting weird. She excuses herself and with quick goodbye to April, I follow after her.
"Elena?" I call out to her as I follow her to the bathroom and I am shocked when I see her puking her guts out as blood ends up everywhere in the bathroom. She goes over to the sink and pukes even more blood. On my mind is only one thought. What the hell, is happening to my sister?
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I make Elena sit down as I start cleaning the bathroom as we wait for Damon to come back with clothes for Elena. Someone is knocking at the door but we just keep telling the will be out in the minute. Elena is freaked out about her puking blood but she relaxes as she hears Damon's voice on the other side of the door. I open the door and Elena says. "Oh, Damon, thank God." I take the dress from him and hand it to Elena.
"Sorry, I spilt coffee all over my sister's dress dress." I say then add. "I tried saving it, but only made it worse." I explain.to the man who was waiting in front of the bathroom. He looks suspicious and I step out of the bathroom to let my sister change.
"We have not met. I'm Connor. Jordan." He holds out his hand for us to shake.
"Damon. Germaphobe."
"Ana." I shake his hand and he smiles weirdly. "Everything okay in there?" I ask my sister.
"Yeah, just a minute!" She calls out.
"So, what brings you to Mystic Falls?" Damon asks breaking the ice. "Bible salesman?" He jokes.
"No, actually I'm in environmental clean up." Connor explains.
"Oh." Damon and I say together. I honestly am not getting a good vibe from this guy. And after thinking a bit it clicked me that this must be the hunter that shot Tyler last night.
"Heard you had a bit of a pollution problem."
"Huh, well, I was unaware. I breathe pretty easy." Damon says as Elena comes out and I take her bag from her and hide it from Connor.
"I'm so sorry that took so long." She tells Connor.
"No problem." He tells her.
"Well, enjoy your stay. We love visitors and the scenery is to die for. " He gasps and puts his hand to his mouth.
"Damon!" I scold him.
"Funeral pun. Too soon. Sorry." He mocks and we leave making sure to avoid Connor.
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I leave Elena alone with Damon to talk about her bloodlust and her inability to keep blood down, I go and take my sit. Elena soon comes back looking pale. "You okay?" Matt asks her. She nods her head as a way to tell us she's fine but none of us believe her.
"Hey, April was looking for you. She wanted help with her speech." Jeremy states.
"Where is she?" I ask as we look around but we don't see her anywhere.
"Before we begin the mass." Carol interrupts us from looking where April is and we focus our attention on her. "We'd like to open the floor to anyone who would like to share a memory about our late friends on the town council. I know that April Young wanted to say a few words about her dad. April?" Carol calls out and no response. "April? Are you still here, honey? Is there anyone else who would like to share a recollection or memory about Pastor Young?" From the corner of my eye, I see that Elena starts to stand up. "Come on up, Elena." Carol says with a smile.
It her some time to get to the stage and I ma at the edge of my seat afraid that hunter will target her or that she will accidentally expose herself as a vampire. "I uh – when I talked to April earlier she was kind of nervous about coming up to speak. And now that I'm up here, I'm kind of nervous too. The worst day of loving someone is the day that you lose them." Elena starts her speech. "I um..." Stefan comes up to the podium and wraps his arm around her. Stefan leads Elena off the stage and back into the row next to Matt. The priest goes over to the podium.
"Please turn to page 42 in your hymn book." We all stand up getting ready for the rest of the mass. "Let us join together in song. The choir begins to sing and I look over to Elena who is leaning against Stefan.
"What's wrong with her?" Matt asks trying not to draw attention to himself.
"She's hungry and hasn't fed." I answer as I pretend to be invested in the ceremony.
"So, get her out of here." Matt says.
"I can't. There's somebody watching us." Stefan tells him.
"Stefan, I'm losing it." Elena says.
"Wait, wait Elena. Feed from me." Matt offers which surprises us all. "It's okay. Everyone will think you're upset so feed from me." We all try to act as natural as possible as Elena proceeds to feed from Matt. Elena is convinced the blood that all vampires could smell is from April and wants to look for her in the middle of all the chaos.
"Excuse me. I just wanted to say a few words about Pastor Young." I turn my head and see Tyler standing on the podium.
"What do we do?" Elena asks.
"Back in first grade, I was a brat who couldn't be bothered with team sports. Didn't care much about anything that didn't affect me. But he was the one who made me understand how important it is to be part of a team; a community. Of giving yourself up for the sake of..." Tyler speech gets cut by him being shot and screams are heard through the church. People starts evacuating. We rush towards Tyler and Caroline rips the bullet out of his chest.
"Oh my God." Carol says shocked.
"I'm gonna kill that bastard." Tyler declares coughing.
"Damon's way ahead of you. Stay here, I have to help him." Stefan orders.
Stefan starts to leave, but Elena grabs his hand. "What about April?" She asks.
"I got it. Go." Caroline says and Stefan leaves.
"I have to call an ambulance." Carol states.
"No, he's fine." care protests.
"Care, the whole town just watched him get shot. Even if he doesn't need to go to the hospital, he has to." I explain and she understands that we have to keep up the image. Normal human wouldn't be perfectly fine after getting shot.
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After admitting Tyler into the hospital and calling Jenna, who thankfully wasn't at the church thanks to her being on some seminar for work, Stefan gathered us all at high school. "What are we doing here?" Damon asks as he walks up to us.
"I don't know. Ask Stefan." Bonnie answers.
"Stefan, what are we doing?"
"We're finishing the memorial we didn't get to have earlier." Stefan passes us all 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."
"So, you're lighting lanterns?"
"Yeah. Yeah, we need to do this." Stefan justifies.
"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." Damon argues.
"Not tonight, we don't." I tell him. "Stefan is right, we all lost so much and we never allow ourselves or have time to grieve, with everything going on. We need this now, to mourn everyone we lost."
"This is for my uncle Zach" Stefan starts. "My friend Lexi and for Alaric."
"This is for Vicki." Matt says lighting his lantern. Caroline gets up from the picnic table she was sitting on and takes the lighter from Matt.
"This is for my dad. And Tyler's." She says as she lights her lantern. Jeremy gets up and takes the lighter from Caroline.
"This is for our parents." He looks at Elena and me. Then he looks at Matt. "For Vicki. Anna. And Alaric." He lights his lantern and looks up at Damon. He tries to hand him the lighter but Damon refuses.
"No way. I'm not doing that." Damon leaves. Jeremy hands the lighter to Bonnie. She takes a lantern out of the box and takes the lighter from Jeremy. She gets up and stands next to Caroline.
"This is for my Grams." She says as she lights her lantern and I take lighter from her.
"This is for both set of my parents. John, Alaric, Sheila and Vicki." I light my lantern.
Elena gets up and stands next to Stefan. She takes the lighter from me and lights the lantern. "This um – is for my mom, my dad, John, everyone that you've all lost, everyone that this town has lost. And for me, I guess." Elena steps forward and releases her lantern. One at a time, we all begin to release our lanterns as well. We watch them as they float off into the night sky.