Disclaimer: I do not own The Vampire Diaries nor its characters. They belong to L.J. Smith, Kevin Williamson, Julie Plec, The CW Network, and whoever else.
Note/Warning: Written after rewatching the season one finale during the summer.
Dust From a Moth's Wings
He isn't certain why he's here. He isn't sure what he thought coming to see it for himself would do. He thinks that perhaps he didn't have any real expectations; just vague hopes, faint wishes of something. Maybe a little closure; like staring at the gravestone that read off the dates signifying when his parents began and when they just...stopped.
But the ash and rubble offers him nothing. Just the emptiness. The ruined wreckage; the ravaged, new hole in his life. There is no closure, only a visual reminder of all the things lost to him, both old and new.
Jeremy stares and wonders if she's mixed up in all the ashes. Is she nothing but dust lost amidst all the other dust? Remains swept up into a pile of ashes that are the end of lives that lasted decades and centuries longer than his, his parents' - all the damned lives his uncle's lived and lost and gained back because of the ring Jeremy's now wearing. He wonders if there's anything more - was it buried? Taken away with any other leftover parts to be destroyed so all the ignorant masses never learn the town's dark secret?
A familiar parn flares up in his stomach. He hates the thought; it was bad enough when he found out Vicki was dead and discarded like the trash she wrongly thought she was. He can't bare that it's the same for Anna, with only him to mourn her.
One hand touches what's left of the framework of his father's office - of her mother's little shop. Chunks crumble under his fingertips, and he pulls his hand back only to stare at the smudged ash; like the dust from a moth's wings. All he wanted was to catch her, keep her for himself; her wings were just so beautiful. He never meant to pull her too close to the light.
If only he hadn't been so afraid of the dark.