Ethan does hear the hurt in Elena's voice, and it makes his chest ache with it, but he can't calm the rage and the violence (and the guilt and the grief and the hurt and the regret and the fucking visuals that Damon put in his head that he can't get out of it). He's still trembling with it all as he stands there with muscles tense all over, and his jaw locks so hard that he is certain it is half certain it is going to crack. It's hard to breathe.

He can't even feel the pain of all the parts of him that are bleeding (and the parts that may be broken now for all he knows, they went at each other hard, and he knows he heard bones crack, Damon's healing so much faster than him and that makes Ethan even angrier). Ethan wants to make him bleed again and leave him fucking bleeding-- tear him apart with it.

It's Elena's hand against his arm that stops him. It's the hurt in her voice, and his eyes burn with that emotion and that rage and he can't swallow it. And he still can't find any words like his voice has been swallowed up. He isn't even sorry about doing this even if he knows he should be. He is fucking tired of being treated like shit by Damon.

He knows what Damon is doing, trying to show that it was Ethan that started it like that somehow makes him better in all this. Maybe it does. Ethan doesn't give a fuck.

There are the words.

"And I attacked him."

He can own it.