No one so young should carry so much weight on their shoulders, Ric thinks.

Standing at a respectful distance, Ric watches Bonnie kneel on the patch of grass between the two freshly dug graves. Her head is a bowed and one hand rests on each mound, scattered with wild flowers because braving the streets of downtown on the hopes of finding live flowers in a florist couldn't be risked. Her slight shoulders wobble and shake, and if he strains his ears enough, Ric can hear the soft sobs rising up from the young girl.

He's torn between going to her, offering support and sympathy or just letting her grieve and come to terms with it in her own way. Ric doesn't know Bonnie any better than he does Caroline, and everything he does know has come through their common struggles with and against the supernatural that inhabits their world. His link to Elena was much more tangible, even as tenuous as that was - connected through the threads of the two women he loved.

What links him now to Bonnie and Caroline is that they've all lost the same people in Elena and Jeremy, whom Ric tried hard to find a way for whom to be some sort of support. He thinks that he failed and did it quite miserably, not lifting his head beyond his self-pity and the bottle of alcohol until they both fell ill.

He knows that he would have crawled right back into that bottle after they died, if there had been time. If Bonnie hadn't fallen ill, and Caroline hadn't worried, and Bonnie hadn't gotten better instead of worse. If Damon hadn't hovered, watching him like he thought Ric would be the next thing to slip away.

Ric tries not to wonder why he never fell sick, and why he is still standing when so many more useful and productive have fallen. When he does, he looks at Damon, who seems to be only as connected to the world as it is to him, and right now, that connection comes from the last remnants of Mystic Falls. He considers Caroline, when his faith falters, who might be a predator and a killer, but is still Caroline, the cheerleader, the peppy one, the girl without a mother who is struggling to find her way. Now, too, he sees Bonnie, the one who tried to be strong, who made tough choices and was willing to give up everything for her best friend who now lies beneath the ground anyway.

He's still here for a reason, and Ric thinks that the patchwork rag tag team that they make are his reason and his tether.

The lift of Bonnie's head and her glance back over her shoulder in his direction interrupt his thoughts. Ric casts the maudlin aside and makes his way over to the younger woman - a still learning witch, his former student, and mostly a little girl as lost as the rest of them are. Laying a hand gently on his shoulder, he offers silent sympathy and support.

Bonnie reaches up to touch his hand, and he likes to think that she is taking something from that touch. From his presence. "Are you sure that they were both -"

"Yes." Ric doesn't allow her to complete the question. He still has far too many nightmares and sleepless nights where he watches Elena and Jeremy rise from their homemade burial shrouds, empty eyes and clawed fingers reaching for him. That is one thing that Ric has never doubted or second-guessed in those initial days of madness and societal collapse. "We were sure, Bonnie. Damon and I made sure."

The witch nods, and slowly makes the rise to her feet, easily accepting Ric's outstretched hand for assistance. She smooths her palms down the front of her black dress she'd insisted on wearing. It wasn't a funeral, or even a memorial, but Bonnie wanted to say goodbye properly. Even Damon, who'd given her several once overs with an unreadable look on his face and careful neutrality in his eyes, hadn't hassled her about the decision.

"But not everyone . . ." Bonnie trails off, her gaze slip-sliding around the empty cemetery. Ric mimics her, if only because he is constantly on guard these days unless they are safely ensconced in the boarding house. The dead walk everywhere these days, but oddly they don't come to the one place where they would be most welcome, and where they should be.

"No, not everyone turned into a zombie," Ric finishes for her. "Some people died and stayed that way." He wonders if they were the lucky ones, if their souls are at rest, or if even the souls of those who sat up again are restful. Ric isn't much of a religious man, but the days spent in and out of Baptist church and Bible school some days come back to taunt him.

Bonnie pushes her hair over her shoulder and purses her lips. She falls into step with Ric as they head toward the car. "Sometimes I wish that -"

"No, you don't." Ric stops and looks down at her. Again, he knows what she was going to say because he's been there before. Those thoughts aren't alien. "That's called survivor's guilt, Bonnie. I've had my fair share of it, but you can't think that way. I don't get into all that comforting religious stuff, but I have to think that maybe there's a reason we're the ones left. I don't know what it is. But maybe we'll figure it out someday."

For a long moment, Ric thinks she will challenge him or argue the point. Instead, her shoulders slump with a sigh, her green eyes heavy with sadness and resignation.

Her eyes are old. It's something that Ric used to hear the old folks say when he was growing up and he never understood what it meant until recently. When he came here, these kids were kids, they went to football games and hung out at the Grill and snuck off to have secret keg parties in the woods. Within months they were still wearing the bodies of teenagers, but they had all aged. They all had old eyes.

"It's weird." Bonnie cants her head and toys with the necklace she wears. "I was taking care of them. I fell asleep and when I woke up the whole world had changed." She sighs and frowns. "Ended. It ended. And it had nothing to do with vampires or hybrids." There's a pause as a breeze blows, whispering through the grass and carrying the remnants of the old world - a page of newspaper, a leaflet, the petals of dead flowers - across the ground.

Bonnie half-kneels, half-leans over and picks up the leaflet. It's religious scripture calling on people to repent because the time of judgement is near. "Seems weird to imagine it happening . . . almost overnight."

Ric almost argues but then changes his mind. He peeks at the leaflet. "Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows. Seems fitting." He continues walking, leading the way to the car. Every now and again, he looks back around them, constantly alert for an incoming, shuffling zombie. "It did happen fast. At first the sickness moved slow. People would be sick for days. Feverish, and then they'd hemorrhage out . . ." Stopping, Ric clears his throat and realizes that she probably doesn't want the details. She can read them in the newspapers, what there were of them before the presses stopped.

"It started happening a lot faster as the sickness mutated. People lived two, maybe three days. Near the end, when the hospitals were shut down . . . it was maybe a day." That was when soldiers roamed the streets, sick and dying themselves, shooting anything that moved, because the dead weren't staying dead. When the news reports started telling people to stay inside until the madness died down, when martial law became synonymous with shoot-on-sight and chaos. "It took those left a while to figure out that the dead weren't just walking, but that they were infectious too. By then, it was too late."

"It must have been horrible." Bonnie shivers and Ric suspects that it has little to do with the light summer breeze.

"It wasn't a picnic," Ric tosses the words out jovially, hoping to bring some lightness to the conversation. "That was how we know that you weren't sick like everyone else, though. Days passed and you didn't get worse. You didn't get better, but you didn't get worse. Then Caroline said that you smelled different. Not as sick." It was one of those moments that reminded Ric that just because Caroline looks like a bubbly blonde cheerleader, she's a vampire beneath it all. "That's when we moved you to the boarding house."

"And put me in Stefan's bed?" Bonnie lifts a brow, and for the first time since arriving, there's a touch of humor in her eyes.

"Would you have rather woken up in Damon's bed?" Ric teases.

Bonnie shudders and pulls a face. "No."

"You really don't like him." It's not a question as much as it is a statement. Ric knows there's history between the witch and the vampire, an established relationship that was forged before he came onto the scene. Off her look, Ric holds up his hands, "I'm not judging. Damon is . . . difficult to like on a good day, never mind his bad days." God knows the vampire has a lot of bad days.

"I know he's your friend, Alaric." Bonnie stops, worries her lip and seems to think about her words. "I don't know how I feel about Damon. I don't actively hate him anymore because at least when it came to Elena he could be human. But he's been such a loose canon and hurt so many people . . ."

"It's hard to see the good in him."

Bonnie pushes her bangs back from her forehead. "That's just it. It's not, not anymore. The problem is, he embraces the part that isn't good. I know that we're all in this together now, and he'll watch my back if only because he thinks it's what Elena would have wanted." She sighs as they reach Ric's SUV and he holds the door open for her. "But I can't forget the things he's done. Or what he is. He's not Caroline. She struggles. Damon just goes with it."

Ric can't argue with the witch's assessment. He holds the door open a moment after she's climbed inside, waiting until she turns those too old eyes to him again. "Good for you. Stick with that. I think I give him a free pass too easily sometimes. If we're all going to do this thing together, Damon needs someone calling him on his shit." He closes the door and crosses to the driver's side. "Call me on my shit too if I go to easy on him."

"I'm good at calling shit."

The vampire-hunter turned teacher turned not-quite-mentor laughs at her frankness. "Yes, Bonnie. I think that you are."