What she doesn't realize - what he is completely uninterested in telling her - is that there's a part of him that's programmed to obey human orders, too. There's a whole subsection of his programming devoted entirely to the superiority and preservation of human life, and he is at the mercy of it still. He likes humans. He always has.

So she reaches for him and tells him to look at her and he goes still, goes quiet, and looks back. He listens, and he knows she's right, he knows he made the right call, he does. He does.

(You imagined it was you? Oh, you did.)

"That doesn't make it easy," he manages, brow furrowed, only barely managing to keep meeting her eyes.