That sure is a whole lot of confusing things, one right after the other.

Zelos doesn't know Pepper well enough to guess if she's always this weirdly persistent, or if she actually did get context from somewhere. People don't care about him for him without knowing some of the truth. And even then, he'd always assumed the truth would be a dealbreaker. Leave it to Lloyd and the others to prove that wrong.

Pepper... probably means it, to be fair. But Zelos still can't help feeling like she knows.

"You," he says eventually, "are a doll. Okay, fine, you win. I'm not telling you the whole story. The... what did you call it? The darker bits of me. But unless you want to try to guess what I'm hiding, that's as far as you'll get."

He's grinning again. It's an invitation, sort of. It would make for an interesting game. "But you'll still care about me, right?"