"You said ten years. You also said a hundred years but I can't even think about that."

"I said ten years because you said you'd be thirty with cats," she waves her hand. "I also said it wouldn't take that long."

"You don't know that, you're making it up."

"As much as you're making it up that it will. Less, even."

"You don't have a real reason to think I'd ever be able to find anybody but Master and I'm just going by my entire life so far."

"More than half of your entire life so far you spent as a child, and trying to predict what your life will be based on the few years of adolescence you've had so far is... tunnel vision. The reason I have to think you'd be able to find somebody is that most people do, regardless of how awful their life is when they're teenagers, especially when said awfulness has a name and a treatment."

"I don't know why you don't believe me about how the whole depression idea is circular anyway."

"Circular?"

"I think I was sad all the time because I was lonely and now I have a - different problem but it's not that one. And you think I was lonely because I was sad, but if they're both causing each other you can't just fix it like it's a medical thing."

"Oh. No, I think you're just wrong about that. You're not the first depressed person to think something like that, why do you think your case would be different?"

Jackson glares at her.

"Look, Jackson, the world isn't a nice enough place that solutions to problems just pop out when you need them. I haven't taken over it yet. I'm not sure what you want me to say, and I really don't understand your reluctance. In the very worst-case scenario, you two break up and therapy doesn't work and you find someone else, which like you yourself said was just a matter of actually going to town. And, again, the worst-case scenario won't happen because therapy and pills and psionics will help."

"You don't understand because you don't listen."

"There's a difference between not listening and listening but disagreeing with you. What things have you said that I haven't listened to, as opposed to listened to and argued with?"

"Lots of things!"

"Okay, give me one example."

Jackson folds his arms on the table and mumbles into his elbow.

"Didn't catch that."

Jackson declines to repeat himself.

She sighs. "Jackson..."

"What."

She shakes her head. "Is there anything I can say to convince you to go back to therapy?"

Snort. "Yeah but you're not gonna say it."

"What is it?"

"Hi, Jackson, Isabella dumped me, call your master and tell him it's over and you're mine now, also go to therapy," mutters Jackson.