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Shadow looked at him for a moment. "All right. If you're sure it will be okay." He exhaled a small cloud of wispy shadows. "I hope Nate doesn't hurt you again. You don't deserve that."

Shadow smiled back at him with a couple of wags of his tail. "That's good! I'm glad we got to talk, too. Even though there's not a lot of time left." He hesitated a moment, looking back towards Nate's table. "Is he going to hurt you if you go back there?"

Shadow took a small step back and tried to discreetly make himself smaller, less threatening. "I say things he won't. Like how you apologized for Nate when he won't. And Dave hates that, but sometimes I think it's better that I said it." He paused. "I'm glad you're here, and that you said that."

Shadow thought back, to the fight where he'd first emerged. Everything was fuzzy back then, just blended together with Dave's own memories. Brisa rushing into danger, him powerless to stop it once again. "That's true," he said softly. "But you're here anyway. And... I think since we got here...

There it was. Shadow glanced back towards Nate's table. How far could a Shadow get from their original, anyway? "He shouldn't hurt you. You haven't done anything wrong." He paused. Wanted to offer to protect him, somehow, but he couldn't protect anyone, and he had an awful suspicion that Dave...

Shadow looked at him in incomprehension. Lots of friends? (In a flash, the sensation of punching Brisa, trying to make her attack him.) "So you... haven't come out, until just now?" He cocked his head. "Then why are you hiding here, now?"

Shadow looked back at him, blinking slowly. "So do I," he said, quiet. "I think... we're similar. In some ways. We both hurt people we don't want to hurt." He glanced back at where Nate was, again. It was hard not to wonder why his Shadow was here, hiding under tables. Hard not to guess. "Where...

"Well, uh, thanks for before. It helped." He thought fleetingly again of just going in for an attack and getting to the fight part, but without the hormonal rush of a threat or challenge, the idea just felt dumb and vaguely uncomfortable. He sensed Shadow congealing into existence somewhere...

Dave stepped into the therapy offices for the third time, raising a paw briefly to the receptionist. "Here for Fugu." He'd made that second appointment, in the end. Brisa would've never let him hear the end of it if he hadn't. Who knew if it'd accomplish anything, but at least Fugu'd get her...

Shadow pulled back immediately, like he'd been stung, shrinking away. "Sorry. Never mind." Stupid. Why did he do that? "I just wanted to... help." He looked away. Had the Mudkip just called him a nice shadow? "I still don't think you seem like the bad part."

"Yeah. Let's find you that happy ending, huh?" Dave stood up and bumped gently against her shoulder as they headed for the door. Yeah, he could definitely use a movie right now. So long as they could find one that'd make Brisa happy, they were golden, for at least a couple of hours. And that...

It took a while before it subsided into exhausted quiet. It took a few more careful, restrained breaths before he could start to relax his grip on her. Dave couldn't quite meet Brisa's eye as he pulled away. "Fuck." He composed himself, rubbed his face with his paw. A couple more deep...

Suddenly Brisa was throwing her arms around him. Not the reaction he'd expected to 'Spite the fuckers.' "Love you too, kitten," he said, muffled by her mane. There was a warm, pleasant glow of Radiance spreading from her paws, her arms tight around him, and after a moment he raised his free paw...

Dave grinned. "That's the spirit. Spite the fuckers."

"He knows. But that's a lot of why he doesn't like me. He doesn't like himself very much." Shadow paused to gather his thoughts. "But I remind him of his daughter sometimes, and he loves her. So if he just doesn't think about me being him, he doesn't hate me as much. I'm just some other...

"Ah, but," Dave said, lifting a paw, "see, your genes don't give a shit about the long-term survivability of life. They can't plan for the future. Your genes can make you overspecialize until you're wiped out by the slightest sneeze of a natural disaster, or cause regular overpopulation booms...

"Oh, sure. Altruism evolved because it's advantageous for our genes, too. But we don't care, because it just made us care about other people, and we don't give a fuck that from the gene's hypothetical point of view the point of all that was ultimately to propagate itself. We just do that stuff...

Dave raised his eyebrows. What did Brisa know? She had heard about genetics, he remembered, and read a bunch of science from when humans were a thing in Cowboy World, right? "Well, the coolest thing about life is when you get right down to it it's all just a bunch of molecules. No magic, no...

Dave grinned at her quip, finishing the last of the coffee before setting the cup back down on the table. "I could get behind that. Talk her ear off about genetics until she physically shuts me up."

He raised an eyebrow, sipping a bit more coffee. "Yeah, still not a big fan of the whole fighting for sport thing. Beats sitting and talking about feelings, though."