You're getting even more ruthless than usual, dude.

[So many hard questions. Hm.

Dirk cannot steal an apple from the branches, so he goes for a random leaf. He traces over its veins with the pad of his thumb, and when he speaks, he speaks slowly.] One thing, that I've thought to be true all of my life, even as I feared I did it wrong, and that your Bro feels like he calls into question, is simply that I love my friends. I've been afraid that I don't love them properly or that my emotions are corrupted and self-interested, and I've been afraid of my love as something corrosive and toxic. At the same time, love and loyalty towards them, and now to you and Rose, is something I'd never want to lose. Even if, apparently, one version of me wasn't capable of loving anyone at all.

Does it... [He stops again. He rephrases.] Do you understand why I'm worried that maybe love and loyalty aren't an essential part of me, and maybe are somehow... fake? Even though it doesn't feel fake, at times I worry about it. I worry that I'm just the emotionless, rational machine everyone seems to see me as. That, I guess, some splinter of me was.