"No sudden moves, no tricks, and no Katherine-ing," Damon shoved Kathrine forward while he had looked around, "wow, a quilt and a fish tank. Who the hell are you?"
"A very old lady with dreadful taste," Rebekah commented as she watched Katherine walk over to a bookshelf and begin pulling books off and pushing others to the side.
Damon moved closer and saw that she had a hidden safe behind it. Katherine opened the safe and was shocked when it was empty.
"It's gone!" Katherine exclaimed semi-convincingly, "The cure, it was in the safe, now it's gone!"
"Bzzzzz," Damon imitated a buzzer, "not falling for it, where is it Auntie Katherine?"
"I swear, it was in the safe," Katherine continued to insist.
"What, just like Elijah's really your boyfriend and this is really your life? And for all we know, this isn't even your house," Rebekah put her hands on her hips.
"Yeah," Damon agreed as he looked down at Katherine, "it doesn't look like the Katherine I know."
"Maybe you don't know Katherine at all. Did it ever occur to you that you have no idea who I really am?" Katherine tried to look pitiful.
Damon looked back at Katherine with malice, "Did it ever occur to you that you're not that deep? This whole small-town girl thing, we all know it's an act."
"Where is the cure?" Rebekah asked through gritted teeth.
Katherine smirked at Rebekah mockingly. In retaliation Rebekah charged at Katherine but Damon held her back.
"Whoa, whoa, hang on, we need her alive. The cure's not here; you check upstairs. I'll check down. I got this," Damon said confidently, Rebekah relented and walked away, he rubbed his hands together as he looked around the room, "so if I was a paranoid, distrustful sociopath, where would I keep my most prized possession?"
Katherine folded her arms and laughed, "This ought to be fun."
"Because I'd want it to be close, but not on me; accessible but not obvious. I'd want to keep it safe, but not so safe that it'd be too difficult to grab and run," Damon looked around the room and his eyes landed on the fish tank, "well, that is a fancy little treasure chest-in a tank with no fish. I think I'm gonna have to check that out."
Damon put his hand in the water and immediately gasped in pain, it was scorched red as if he had put it in boiling water.
"Vervain water, looks like we have a winner," Damon began to bend over to grab a net that sat next to the tank when Katherine blindsided him and shoved his head into the tank.
Damon let out a scream as his skin made contact with the water, alerting Rebekah to the scuffle. Katherine grabbed the chest and quickly turned for the door, but Rebekah was right there to stop her.
"Give it to me or you're dead," Rebekah growled.
"You're gonna kill me anyway. So what's more important to you, huh? Killing me, or getting the cure?" Katherine took out the small pill shaped object that was in the chest and tossed it behind her, knowing that it would lure Rebekah out of her way, she dashed out the front door as soon as it was clear.
Rebekah managed to catch the pill before it hit the ground, she looked at it victoriously.
"Look, Rebekah...don't even think about it," Damon was still on the ground, healing from the vervain, "let's just talk about this, like the two rational vampires that we are. Rebekah?"
Rebekah stood up and continued staring at the cure, "Oh, give it a rest; me taking this cure is the best thing that will ever happen to you."
"Don't do anything stupid," Damon warned as he prepared himself to get up and get the pill away from her.
"Why? So you can go have your happily ever after with Emma without Elena stalking you? Killing her seems like a much easier solution to me," Rebekah challenged.
Rebekah pulled the pill apart and downed the red liquid inside.
"No!" Stefan shouted from the doorway as he ran in.
Rebekah gasped and fell to the floor, unconscious from whatever the cure was doing to her. Damon let his head fall back in frustration. Stefan picked up Rebekah and placed her on the couch.
"Did you even try to stop her?" Stefan accused Damon.
"I'm sorry, I was a bit busy bobbing for boxes in vervain water," Damon said sarcastically as he began to stand up.
"All you had to do was stall her Damon."
"Sorry, it's Rebekah, I didn't have a pony to distract her."
"You let her take it, didn't you? You were never on my side. Is this part of your master plan to make me miserable? To keep Elena a vampire forever," Stefan yelled at his brother.
"I want Elena to leave me the hell alone!" Damon fired back, "I want whatever I had with Emma back. Everything that I have learned about that time in my life tells me that I was much happier. Emma never tried to change me, Emma picked me up every time Elena would try to knock me down, Emma is the one; not Elena."
"Damon..." Stefan hesitated.
Rebekah suddenly gasped and sat up. She began inspecting herself as if she expected everything to look differently.
"How do you feel?" Stefan asked.
Rebekah smiled, "I feel...good. I feel great, I feel alive!"
"Slight problem with being alive," Damon grinned, "I can kill you now."
Damon picked up a letter opener off of a near by table and threw it directly at Rebekah's head, who managed to grab it mid-air before it hit her in the face. She opened her palm and watched sadly as the gash on her hand healed. Stefan let out a quiet sigh of relief.
"I'm still a vampire," Rebekah said confused, "the cure didn't work."
"It worked just like she wanted it to. The cure was a fake. It must've been a concentrated shot of vervain or something," Stefan put his hands in his pockets and shrugged.
Damon shook his head and smirked, slightly impressed, "Katherine, that psycho bitch never fails."
"I really don't think you understand who you are messing with, hell I barely know him," Emma gasped as she tried to catch her breath after so much power being drained by Bonnie's pull.
"Who? Metatron?" Silas asked mockingly, "Why do you think that wanna be God scares me? I taught him."
"Well, at least you're humble," Emma said sarcastically as she adjusted the chains on her wrist, having become numb to the burning.
Silas drained another blood bag and tossed it aside as he stepped closer to Emma before kneeling down and grabbing her chin, forcing him to look at her. He studied her face for a long moment, rummaging around in her thoughts before letting her go and standing.
"I can bring Damon back," Silas offered, "every single little memory."
Emma shook her head, "So he can mourn me after you kill me?"
"I have no intention of killing you Emma."
"What exactly do you think happens when a Phoenix is drained of all of her power?"
"All you need a small bit of a little orange stone, which I happen to have, and within an hour you'll be right as rain. So, if you want to cooperate and play nice, I'll give you back your Damon."
Emma stayed quiet for a moment. Even though everything between her and Damon had been re-blooming, she still hadn't been able to rebuild that tight trusting bond that they had shared before. She bit her bottom lip, unsure of what she should say.
"I'll give you some time to thing about it," Silas said as he turned on his heel and walked out of the small cavern in the tunnels where he had her pinned.
Emma held back a silent sob, refusing to give Silas the satisfaction of breaking her. She put her head back against the wall and took a deep breath, trying to regain her strength, she was trying to formulate a plan of escape in her head.
The ride back to Mystic Falls was quiet. As Damon pulled his Camaro into the driveway he noticed that Emma's motorcycle wasn't parked anywhere.
"Did Emma ever avoid me like this before when she was mad at me?" He couldn't help but ask Stefan.
"Uh...no, no, she didn't. I don't think she was ever mad at you, except maybe when you pulled her away from Alaric before he turned," Stefan told him honestly.
Damon pressed his lips together at the thought of the tampered with memory, "So then where in the hell is she? Should I call that Dean guy?"
Stefan shrugged and tried to play down the situation, he needed his brother focused on the severity of Elena's humanity loss, "I'm sure she is fine, she is probably at the Grill right now with Matt."
Damon shook his head still uneasy as he got out of his car, "I don't know. Everything I know about her tells me she isn't someone who would just take off like this."
As they walked through the door of the boarding house Damon's phone pinged. He pulled it out of his pocket and saw that he had a voicemail, he pulled down his settings bar and saw that his phone had been on WiFi calling, it had only reconnected once the phone connected to the internet at the house. He called his voicemail and listened in horror.
"Shit, Damon I don't know where I am but someone is chasing me; I turned down some side road. It's probably going to be too late by the time you get this. Damnit!" Damon heard the panic in Emma's voice followed by the sound of her bike sliding and hitting something, Emma was breathing heavy as it sounded like she tried to stand, but then he heard something that shocked him.
"Be careful," he heard someone say, the voice sounded all too familiar.
"Stefan?" Emma confirmed Damon's suspicion, "Did you see that bastard in the truck?"
"Yeah, come on, before he comes back," Stefan told her.
Emma had been quick to question Stefan, "We aren't going to fight him?"
"No, we aren't going to fight him," Stefan said cooly before Damon could hear the sound of a gun shot going off.
"What the hell?" Damon heard Emma gasp in pain, "Iron?"
Another gun shot when off and the voicemail ended.
Damon lowered the phone slowly, his jaw slightly dropped in shock of what he just heard. His head turned towards his door where he could hear Stefan downstairs speaking quietly to Caroline about Elijah's plan to give Rebekah the cure if she could be 'human' for a day. He took a step forward, his anger so overwhelming that he wasn't even sure of his next step. Then he heard it, Caroline brought Emma up.
"Did you find her yet?" Caroline asked Stefan.
It was quiet for a moment, within that moment Damon decided to confront his brother on his own. He ran downstairs and as soon as Stefan was within his reach he grabbed his shirt and had him pinned up against the nearby wall.
"Yeah Stefan," Damon growled, "did you find her yet?"
"Damon," Stefan gasped in shock, Caroline let out a yelp of surprise behind him, "I was going to tell you..."
"Save it! Where is she?" Damon yelled.
"I don't know!"
"You were the one that attacked her!"
Stefan looked at his brother confused, "What?"
Damon shoved his brother harder against the wall before letting him go, he looked at him, daring him to move as he reached for his phone and played the voicemail for Stefan and Caroline.
"Stefan," Caroline's voice was barely above a whisper, "what did you do to her?"
"Nothing! I haven't seen or heard from Emma since Damon left for New York with Elena," Stefan defended himself, "maybe Elijah was right, she got tired of being sidelined by Elena."
"What in the hell does Elena have to do with this?" Damon asked angrily.
"You ran off to New York with her without telling anyone where you were going or why."
"Elena had managed to piss off everyone in Mystic Falls quicker than I ever had, I got her out of here to avoid more collateral damage."
"And yet you caused even more. Admit it, you let Rebekah take that cure!"
"How did you just turn into the victim? Emma is missing! And if I find out you had anything to do with it, I can guarantee you that I will let whoever the hell ask take the damn thing. Anyone but Elena," Damon threatened Stefan, "I'm going to make sure that bitch stays a vampire just to make sure you are stuck with babysitting her! I am going to make sure that she never turns her humanity back on! She'll be Katherine Junior forever."
Damon shoved his brother one more time before storming out the front door. Damon tried to think of where Emma would have gone after leaving the boarding house, he ran his hand over his face while trying to clear his head enough to think.
"She was coming over to my house," Damon turned around when he heard Caroline behind him, "she never showed up. I just assumed she got distracted by you, but when Stefan said he hadn't heard from her either..."
Damon didn't let her finish, "Let's go."
Damon led the way as they walked down the driveway and to the highway, they walked south towards Caroline's house, the way that Emma would have come. Two miles down the road Caroline pointed out where a side road was.
"There are two sets of tire marks," Caroline bent down and pointed to each set, one was clearly belonged to a motorcycle.
Damon took off running down the path until he came up to exactly what he was afraid of finding, Emma's bike. It had landed just short of hitting a brick and concrete pillar that marked the beginning of an old pathway. Damon could see the dried blood splattered against the rust red bricks, the smell told him that it was definitely Emma's. Her helmet was next to it, a bullet had pierced it and the inside was covered in her blood.
"Here of all places," Damon said to himself as he shook his head.
"Where is here?" Caroline asked.
Damon looked up the trail to where a large mansion used to sit a hundred years ago, "Where I grew up, the original Salvatore property."
"Did Emma know where she was?"
"Not according to the call, I think she just saw the path and tried to shake whoever was chasing her."
"Is there somewhere around here she could be hidden?" Caroline suggested.
"No, it's long gone."
"But your memory doesn't have to be," both Caroline and Damon tensed at the voice behind them, it belonged to an older man with grey, curly hair and a short beard.
"Let me guess, Silas?" Damon asked.
"No, thank goodness," the man replied, "but that is who has my little Phoenix."
"Metatron," Damon said accusingly.
"Bingo," Metatron almost mocked him.
"Cool," Damon nodded but pressed his lips together, "so you're the prick that is the reason I can't remember damn near a year worth of my life."
"Honestly, you repress so much, what's a year?" Metatron shrugged.
"Where is Emma?" Damon asked in low threatening voice.
"That pompous prick Silas has her, I think," Metatron told him, "at any rate, someone has her hidden from me; and considering your merry little band of mess ups woke him up, that would be my first guess. You get her back and kill him, and you can have your memory."
"Memory first," Damon demanded, killing Silas was already on his to-do list.
"Have it your way then," Metatron snapped his fingers and Damon fell to the ground unconscious.
"Damon!" Caroline knelt down next to the vampire to check on him, she looks up to Metatron for an answer to what was happening.
"When lover boy here wakes up, tell him he has a time limit to find them or I take everything back," Metatron stopped to think for a moment, "and this time I'll erase him from Emma's head too and send her packing."
Metatron disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared.
Caroline looked back down at Damon who gasped as he sat up, Caroline fell back in shock. Damon suddenly felt like his heart was going to burst through his chest.
He took a deep breath, "Em."