Though he knew a lot of things, without knowing why, and had an ability and curiosity to learn, though he had an intuition about people and their motives that had proven prescient so many times, the reality was that, when it came to hearts, he was dumb. Dumb as a rock. As much as he loathed what people tended to do, how shallow they were, and how vindictive, he always gave them the benefit of the doubt. Even when it should have been the last straw, he folded and sought peace over conflict. Even when he had been betrayed by a childhood friend, he had forgiven. Even those who showed no remorse whatsoever … forgiven. But he was dumb in that he expected them to be the same way, for their hearts to work the same way … and they simply never did. 

And now he had been proven stupid once more, believing that the unnecessary conflict most fresh in his mind was fixable, believing that her heart was like his. It wasn’t. There was no forgiveness there, no need to make things right. He had believed in her, and he had been a fool … again. He had overestimated the depth of her heart. She felt no compunction to heal anything, to admit anything, to make even the slightest gesture, or to mend a closeness once had. It meant nothing to her. She was not like him either. No one was it seemed. 

But, in the end, it made no difference. Life had passed and death was close enough to taste now. She could die happy, having no qualms about what had happen or what she had done. And there was nothing he could do about it, nothing he could say. It made no difference that his actions, as bad as they may have been, had been a desperate product of sincere love. She had mocked that love. She did not love him and never had. She’d never even thought of him as human, just an annoying bug, while she danced off into the night with roaches. 

But they would both die one day, and then none of it would matter anymore. The worms would have them both.