Work Text:
The nanite event hadn’t had much of an effect on Six’s life - his marks got a little uglier looking, that was all. Sure, there was a risk that maybe someday he’d be the next unlucky son that turned into something out of a kaijuu movie, but being the sixth deadliest man in the world had never been a smart long-term career choice. If he died, he died.
It wasn’t like there was anyone who would miss him but the other five.
It never occurred to him that the next unlucky son might be someone he’d miss, let alone the one he’d miss most.
Suddenly, EVOs - and the cure for them - mattered more than anything.
Rebecca’s field of interest had always been nanotechnology. Some days she thanked the higher power she hardly believed in that she hadn’t had to start her career over to save Beverly, that she’d already been one of the three dozen people in the world that understood the scope of what had happened.
Some days she cursed it, because understanding what had happened didn’t mean she knew how to cure it. But she needed to cure it. Every day she didn’t find one was another day Beverly had to spend like… that. Every failure, every setback, every delay meant more people were turning into creatures that could hurt, or kill, their loved ones.
And that would be pressure enough, if she wasn’t the only one at Providence looking for a cure. The rest of her colleagues were concerned with short-term goals - short-sighted goals, really, all about containment and extermination. She tried to show them why they needed to find a cure, but because she was young, and a woman, and because they thought she was attractive, no one would listen to her.
Not that that stopped her.
She kept working at it, longer hours and deeper research and further study than anyone else, because she knew she had to. Because there was nothing else she could do, and because no one else could do it. Because if she didn’t - if she abandoned the project, or took too long and turned into an EVO herself - there’d be no one left to save Beverly.
And that was not an option.
They never said it in as many words, but when Six and Rebecca met there was an immediate understanding between them. They were both after the same thing, working for Providence: a way to save someone (the only one) they loved.
Anything more than that didn’t occur to them until long after they’d already found it.