Third Person
The words hung in the air, almost challenging someone to cut through the tension they had created. After what had to have been hours, the girl he had spoken to fled, tears in her eyes. Logan stared after her blankly, he had only stated the truth, it was unreasonable for her to be so upset. In a world as dangerous as this one, wasting resources to find her second cousin was simply short-sighted and foolish. She already had her brother and father, more family than most of others in this camp.
Once Patton, the resident empath, heard about the incident, he immediately went looking for Logan. It wasn't the first time he had to talk to him for upsetting yet another member of their camp. The other just never seemed to fully grasp the concepts of empathy and emotion, much as Patton tried to help him learn and demonstrate them. He thought it was getting better when he had gotten the colder to smile, but apparently that wasn't the case.
He found the bookworm in the decrepit library they had begun to restore once they moved into the underground settlement, walking down the isles absentmindedly as always, "Logan, wait up!" Patton calls out, "Did you tell Chrissie that going after her cousin was a stupid idea?" He didn't want to accuse the academic of their little group outright, especially if she was lying, but it was unlikely that she would.
"No, not in those exact words," Logan informs the usually bubbly man. He had stopped to gently run his finger over the spine of a book, The Wizard of Oz, "I did tell her that we couldn't afford to waste resources searching for her second cousin. Right now our priority should be establishing a hospitable environment."
"I know that we should really focus on that, but you can't just crush Chrissie's hope like that," Patton attempts to explain.
"So you would rather I lie to her?" Logan asks, confused. She would eventually learn that they couldn't help her if they continuously pushed back the search party.
He sighs frustratedly, "No, but you gotta let someone down gently in that situation. This is part of her family we're talking about, and losing a family member really upsets people, no matter how much they've already lost."
"Well how was I supposed to know that?" He states coldly, "I am not human, I never was, so why do you expect me to act like one?"
It was no secret that Logan was an android, a very well made one. Most of the combat androids had been destroyed during the war, but Logan served as a robotic medic. Violence was not programmed into him, instead he was equipped with the instructions to perform almost every single surgery or general procedure that humans had ever come up with. Because of this, he was not forcefully put out of commission with the combat androids, when their programming inevitably failed and they attacked their own side's armies.
The only downside to his creation was that instilling empathy into androids was a science that had not been perfected, given the more important issues of making them last as long as possible while being as strong as possible. Understanding human emotion, especially when it went against reason, was not his strong suit. And Patton, deciding to go against the odds, had been trying to teach him because he honestly cared for the android, maybe more than he'd care to admit.
"I'm sorry," Patton says glumly, "It's not fair for me to judge you over something you don't really have control over. But for future reference most people care deeply about their friends and family, so hearing that they can't do anything to help them hurts. Not physically, but emotionally," He adds the last bit quickly, not wanting the android to take it literally and go into medic mode.
He nods, "You don't need to apologize, Patton. I understand now that I should have been more...compassionate with Chrissie earlier. If you are available, I wouldn't mind another lesson in empathy?" He suggests.
The human perks up, "Oh, well I don't have an exact schedule but I should be off-duty after dinner tomorrow?"
"Better yet, we could meet in here with our dinner?" Logan offers. Efficiency was one of the only things that could be considered as a 'love' of his, right behind the word falsehood, and the more time he could spend at once learning the intricacies of human emotion, the better.
Patton smiles, "It's a date," He declares without thinking, turning red immediately after.
Logan looked just as surprised as him after he said that, "I suppose it is."
Who would've thought that the android would score a date in the middle of a post-apocalyptic wasteland?
A/N: This ending is really abrupt and bad, but I needed to finish one of these. I'm hoping to get a request done next, but my motivation has kashooted itself.