"Because that makes you so much better than me, is that it?" He lifts up his hands one either side of himself as if speaking to a crowd. "Anna owns trying to kill Elena, everyone! She is a paragon of virtue here."

Damon doesn't back away as she strolls up to him. It is no less harsh than he is with himself, but he is already upset from what just happened, already tangled up in his emotions from that particular fight.

"Newsflash, I am perfectly aware of what I have done. I am a terrible vampire. We're vampires in case you've forgotten. We do terrible, horrible things." It's the reason. "And when you've done as much as I have, you can't afford to feel it." He cannot afford to feel the guilt of hundreds of years of doing and being the terrible person that he is (guilt is a human emotion, and he is not human, he is not). He has to be terrible.

He has to be worthless and terrible. It is the reason behind everything. It's the reason Katherine didn't want and love him after all. It's the reason that he became a vampire, that his brother made him one even when Damon didn't want to be one anymore (he had betrayed Stefan for so long and been so jealous of him that it was the least that he could do to not leave him alone).