how easy you are to (figuratively) need -- Sanders Sides fanfiction

Double Standard

TW: food, telling a teenager to eat, crying

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The week after that day where he'd run off, Logan had been barely conscious. The humans had brought up small doses of over the counter healing potion. Still not understanding why they'd waste a resource like that on him, he took it at their request anyway, and slept through entire days. He had a theory that they just wanted him to heal quickly so they could get rid of him faster, and that since the healing potion left him incapacitated, they gave it to him to take care of the two problems easier than otherwise.

Perhaps on the ninth day of his stay, they weaned him off of it.

It was an emotionally conflicting time for Logan. Normally, the guy didn't make it a habit to dabble in emotions as such things were a quick way to die, but given the circumstance when his death was more or less sealed by the end of the month, he'd make an exception - as long as he remained logical and as unbiased as he could in his emotional processing.

Sure, at first glance, one might say that emotions and logic have little to do with each other, but Logan knew better. Emotion is a type of logic after all, just one where the reasoning is more often than not apparent after the conclusion. Working backwards from emotion to reasoning, Logan figured he could adjust how he viewed the situation and thus adjust how he felt about the situation.

Easy. What could go wrong?

To make this task less grueling and less - well, feelingsy, he cunningly stole (read: slowly reached for and took while staring Patton dead in the eyes much in the way a cat pushing a glass of water off of a desk does to a human) two sheets of blank paper and a pen Roman had been planning to use for his writing, and wrote out the following list of his emotions on his second day of healing, while sitting before the humans' fireplace:

sadconfusion^2resignedsad (again)

...

happy?

He shook his head irritably. No, he wasn't happy at all. Why would Logan be happy with this situation?

...

Yeah, he knew why...

He sighed discontedely and clicked the pen to its sheathed state. Pulling his knees to his chest and resting his chin over them, ignoring the ache it brought up in his leg to stretch like that, he gazed into the bright flames.

He'd observed the smoke of this very fire not very long ago, billowing from the chimney. He has watched so sorrowfully, perched on a freezing hill in a freezing world. The way watching had hurt so badly inside... he hadn't really understood it back then.

Then again, when he'd come closer, when he'd been almost directly above where he sat now, he'd done it again with the observing. The way he listened to the... lovely fire. And it was lovely, he'd known that intrinsically. Yes, though he couldn't look at the fire, he could still see its light; though he believed he could never interact with the fire, he knew its worth.

How worthy it was to light up the clearing, to help him stay alive. To help him want to stay alive. It really took something powerful and all inclusive to make creatures from any walks of life feel that.

He hadn't really understood it back then.

And now he was here. Before the fire, gazing at it fully, feeling its warmth embrace his skin and sink into his once frigid bones. And he was right before, Logan confirmed this now. The fire was lovely, lovable, loving, loved.