[ He doesn't pull away from her. If she wants to sit there, she's perfectly welcome to do so. But her stubborn insistence that the man who'd been there previously was him makes him sigh in frustration. ]

Pepper. I didn't leave. I didn't give you anything.

[ Quiet though his voice is, the tone is firm. He knows who he is. At least, he knows what his memories tell him, and he has never been here. He knows that, no matter what anyone says. ]

The man who was here before wasn't me. I was never here. And I don't need an identity crisis dumped on me in the middle of everything else right now. I know who I am.