It's a beautiful day, as I stand in the living room with Elena. Elena is pacing the floor, worried sick about her brother, whom is lying on the couch on his back. He's dead. She accidentally stabbed him in the neck. She told me that it was an accident and I believe her, because it's Elena. She wouldn't hurt her brother on purpose. She also told me that she saw Connor, the guy she killed, before she saw Jeremy. That tells me that she's starting to hallucinate. Hallucinations aren't good, because it can make vampires do and say crazy things that they normally wouldn't do.

"I can't believe this happened. What am I going to say to him?" she says to me.

"Thanks for not ditching my family after I drove Ric crazy?" I say.

Elena glares at me.

"You should have called Stefan," I add to her.

"I don't want to talk to him. He has been lying to me and hiding things from me. He compelled Jeremy to forget God knows what."

"In all fairness, I mean, I think you killing him kinda trumps that. And you should have called Stefan."

"I don't trust him right now, Damon."

Just then, Stefan walks in and we both look at him.

Speaking of, I think to myself.

"Hey," Stefan greets.

"P.S. I called Stefan," I inform her.

Stefan walks over to Elena.

"What happened? Why did you call me?" he asks.

"I just-I need to go upstairs and shower. Clean all the blood off my hands," she says, before walking out of the room.

A moment later, Jeremy wakes up.

"Welcome back. How are you feeling?" Stefan asks him.

"What happened?" Jeremy asks.

"Long story, buy the e-book," I answer him.

I'm in the kitchen cleaning up the blood, when Stefan walks in.

"Where did Jeremy go?" I ask my brother.

"School. Bonnie has him volunteering for some occult exhibit," he answers me.

"Or maybe he didn't want to linger in a house where his sister just jabbed a knife in his neck," I say.

Stefan's phone rings and he tells me, "It's Klaus."

"Ooh, time to face the music. Pay the piper, dance with the devil," I comment.

"You know, I'm glad you find this amusing. If he finds out I told you about the cure, he'll kill both of us."

"Quit avoiding him, that means shady. Shady people get outed."

Stefan takes my advice and answers it.

"I don't want to talk about it," he says.

I ignore Klaus' part of the phone conversation, but listen to what Stefan says.

"Well, it wouldn't have happened, if you hadn't sworn me to secrecy," he tells Klaus.

He looks at me and I nod.

"You're using your calm voice today. Who's getting killed?" Stefan says.

"What do you know about that?" he asks Klaus.

"I'm at her house," he answers Klaus.

Stefan hangs up when Klaus knocks on the door. Stefan then leaves the house with Klaus.

I ignore their conversation outside and start finishing up with cleaning up the blood.

A few minutes later, Elena walks into the kitchen.

"Damon..." she starts to say to me. She trails off and instead, yells, "No!" and backs away.

"What wrong?I I ask her.

Elena runs to the front door and I follow her.

"Elena!" I say.

Stefan and Klaus are still outside talking, when Elena runs out of the house and onto the porch. She stops in her tracks, though, seeing both of them there. Then Klaus disappears with Elena at vampire speed.

I look at Stefan, whom looks around with a worried face.

Bonnie, Stefan, and I are in the kitchen. Stefan called her over.

"You lost her?" she asks me.

"Well, lost is a very strong word, we just technically don't know where she is," I answer the witch.

"I'm more worried about what Klaus said about this hunter's curse," Stefan informs her.

"How does Klaus even know about this?"

"How does Klaus know about anything? Guy's like a billion years old," I reply.

"He said it was a witch's curse," Stefan informs us.

Stefan looks at Bonnie.

"You know if I could do anything to help, I would. But I..," she starts.

"But nothing, wave your magic wand, hocus pocus, begone hunter ghostus, whatever," I tell her, worried about Elena.

"The spirits won't let me do the magic I'd need to break the curse. But I can ask Shane for help, he knows everything about everything," Bonnie tells us.

"Great, you two do your thing," Stefan says to us both.

"Where are you going?" I ask him.

"I'm gonna get her back," he answers me, before leaving.

Bonnie and I walk to where Shane is and stop not far away in the exhibit, after listening to his speech to some students.

"You go this?" I ask Bonnie.

"Yeah, I'll bring her to you," she assures me.

The students laugh and then Shane lets them go off on their own.

I watch, as Shane walks up to Bonnie.

"Hey, you made it," he greets her.

"Nice cautionary tale. Qetsiyah sounds like a bad ass," she greets him.

"Nothing compared to Silas," he tells her.

I go to Mystic High and walk into the history room where Ric used to teach History at. I sit at his desk and open a drawer where I find a bottle of Bourbon. I then smile and prop my feet up on the desk.

"You're missing all the adventure, pal," I say, as if Ric is still here. He's not though. Thanks to Esther, Klaus' mom, Ric became a vampire. Thanks to Rebekah killing Elena, Ric died a vampire.

I hold up the bottle for Alaric and then take a swig, before Shane and Bonnie enter the room.

"Shane, this is my friend, Damon. He's kind of an expert on this stuff too," Bonnie says, introducing him to me.

"I audited your class. Very enlightening," I tell him.

"That's right, I remember you. What's your specialty?" he says to me.

"The origin of a species," I reply.

"Ah, I think Darwin would arm wrestle you for that distinction," Professor Shane says.

"Not that species," I inform him.

"You're into the monster stuff. Alright, awesome," he replies.

"I was kind of hoping you might have stumbled upon this at some point, maybe."

I pull out a piece of paper and hand it to Shane.

Shane takes it and looks at it.

"This is a Hunter's mark. Where did you get this?"

"Came to me in a dream. Do you know anything about the Hunter's curse?"

"Why? You got a dead hunter in the trunk of your car or something?"

"Metaphorically, speaking."

"Legend says that if a hunter is killed by that which it hunts, then that person will be cursed to walk the Earth in torment until…."

"Until?" Bonnie presses.

"Until the new hunter is awakened and their legacy is passed on. They're called potentials," he informs us.

I take out my phone, as Shane continues to speak.

"Listen, I have a bunch of research on it. Why don't I go grab it for you?" he says.

"That'd be great," I reply, before Shane gives me the Hunter's mark and thanks me.

He leaves the classroom and Bonnie looks at me.

"How are we supposed to find a potential hunter?" she asks.

"Yeah, about that," I comment.

I call Jeremy and he answers it.

"Damon."

"Little Gilbert, your services are needed," I inform him.

I give Bonnie a sly look.

Bonnie brandishes papers about The Five at me, as Bonnie and I stand in the hallway by the artifacts.

"How did I not know any of this stuff about Jeremy?" she asks after I tell her everything.

"The witch who loses her powers gets left out of the important conversations."

Jeremy runs into the room.

"Is everything okay? Is it Elena?"

"We figured out how to help Elena. You need to kill a vampire," Bonnie tells him.

"Great, give me a stake, I'll kill Damon right now."

"Easy, Van Helsing. We'll get you one. Don't worry," I tell him, not wanting to be killed.

My phone rings.

"Before you do this, you need to know what you're getting yourself into," Bonnie tells him.

Bonnie gives Jeremy the papers and I answer the phone and speak to Stefan.

"You can rest easy, brother. We figured out how to solve our little Elena problem."

"Yeah, well, now we have a bigger one. I lost her," he informs me.

"What? Again?"

"She's in bad shape. I tried to help her, but she attacked me. Listen, you go find her, alright? Talk her down, she'll listen to you. Just tell me what I need to do to end this."

That night, I find Elena on the Whickery bridge and approach from behind her.

"Elena," I greet.

Elena turns to look at me.

"Damon?" she says.

She turns back to look at something I can't see. She's clearly upset, but looks back at me again.

"How did you find me?" she asks me.

"Didn't take a genius to figure it out. Third time's the charm," I reply.

"You were right, Damon. Vampires kill people. Stefan was right too. I can't live with myself."

"Look at you, being all glass is half empty. Let's just go talk about this before you do something stupid, okay?" I say, standing next to her now.

Elena turns her head again to look at something I can't see.

She nods and looks back out at the water.

The sun starts to slowly rise and she looks down. I then look down at her hand.

"Where's your ring, Elena?" I ask, scared of what she is probably attempting to do.

She doesn't answer me.

"We need to get you inside," I say to her.

She looks at me.

"What you're going through is a curse. We know how to break it, but we just have to get you inside," I inform her.

I look at the mountains to see that the sun has risen higher in the sky. I then look at her.

"Damn it, Elena," I say.

I rush at her at vampire speed and grab her, but she rushes around me and stays a good distance away.

She closes her eyes.

A moment later, she breathes heavily and opens her eyes again.

"He's gone," she informs me.

"It's okay," I say.

We both start to hear a sizzling noise and Elena looks down.

I look over at the mountain to see that the sun has risen. I then look at her face and see that she's starting to burn.

"Damon?" she says with fear.

I rush at Elena, grab her, and throw both of us off the bridge to save her life, and the water splashes as we land in the water. Being under water keeps her from burning in the sun. Then she blacks out and I gently hold her against me, as I swim deeper in search of her ring. I'd give her mine, but I don't feel like burning myself and dying or almost dying.

Once I find her ring, I put it back on her finger and surface with her. Then I get us out of the water and gently pick her up in my arms, before carrying her, heading for her place.

A few hours later, Elena wakes up in her bed and looks at her hand at her ring. I'm leaning against her window. When she wakes up though, I go to stand by her.

She slowly sits up in bed.

"Fished it out of the river for you," I let her know.

She looks at me.

"A little tip. Vampires hate to swim. How are you feeling?" I say.

"My head's clear. I can remember everything, but not like I lived it, like it was a really bad dream." She pauses for a few moments, before saying, "You saved me. Thank you."

"Well, you know what they say about teenage suicide," I say. I sit on her bedside. "Don't do it," I add.

Elena smiles at me.

"I just can't believe I almost..." she starts, but trails off.

"You weren't yourself," I tell her.

Elena takes my hand in hers.

"Yeah, but if it wasn't for you..."

I look down at her hand that's holding mine and she does likewise. I then hold her hand up and start rubbing my thumb in circles over the back of her hand.

I sigh, before saying, "I'm about to take a very high, annoying road and tell you something." I take my hand from hers and put my hand on top of hers. "Because I know that you think Stefan's been lying to you. Which, yeah, he has, but this rough patch that you two have been going through is not what you think. Everything that he's been doing, he's been doing for you. To help you. And after he kills me for telling you this, I want you to throw my ashes off of Whickery Bridge, okay?" I continue.

Elena laughs at the killing and ashes part.

"There may be a way out of this for you, Elena."

Elena gives me a confused look.

"There may be a cure," I inform her.

Elena gives me a surprised look.

That night, I go to the Mystic Grille for a drink. I take my jacket off and sit down.

"Bourbon," I tell the bartender.

I look at the seat next to me.

"Make that two."

Matt walks up and stands on the other side of me.

"Still saving a seat for Mr. Saltzman, huh?"

"I'd say I'm in the market for a new drinking buddy. You're not qualified," I answer.

"I know that you don't like me," he replies.

I move one of the Bourbons in front of the empty seat next to me.

"But I dug up some stuff about the explosion at the Young farm, I kind of need to tell someone about," he continues.

I non-verbally encourage him to tell me about it.

"So, April mentioned that her dad knew that Professor Shane guy. Which wouldn't be creepy, except, he had all that info about the hunter's curse, and we live in a town where, you know, anybody who knows stuff is creepy until proven otherwise," he continues on.

"You're on the verge of impressing me. Drive it home," I comment.

"I got the sheriff to dig up the pastor's phone records. Turns out, he made like a call a day to the same number the last month he was alive. And on the day that the Council got blown up at the farm, he called it ten times. The office of Professor Atticus Shane," he finishes.