I don't want to believe him. Ever. I know what he was, who he really was. Everything logical within me tells me to leave that behind and move on. But I still hear his voice in my sleep, I still... feel his eyes bearing in to me as he tells me over and over again what a failure I am!

[Her tears don't surprise him, but they also don't help him either. He feels that rare welling of intense emotions within his gut, rising in to his chest.]

Hilda, he made me believe in one sentence that no one could ever love me. You've said something I thought I would never hear, and yet all I can think of... all I can even see is all the ways I could possibly fail you, from now until the end of our lives...