Robert Callaghan // ʏ๏кคเ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pushtheboundaries) wrote2014-11-21 08:44 am
pushtheboundaries) wrote2014-11-21 08:44 am
fic; a hundred thousand little pieces BONUS CH
It doesn't go quickly, but it does go, and by the end of his first year he's meeting with her regularly.
He has his own place, by now, and is freelancing in some scientific journals under a pseudonym. Callaghan is well-enough known to remove himself from any potential employers' lists, and he considers the sacrifice of his true name a small price to pay.
Mostly, he writes about safety. As well as pitches regarding ever-present threats still out there, suggestions on how to deal with them and protect those who most need it.
Once or twice, he receives a comment from someone he suspects he knows, but can never confirm it one way or another.
Once or twice one of the Six show up at his doorstep and tell him that he needs to stay with them for a while. He does not protest, and he does not ask why.
But he is not idle, either.
The Six may serve as unofficial parole officers as well as protectors, but they cannot watch everything. They do not see him making his own safeguards, his own protections, both for himself and for his family.
They perhaps see him focusing a bit more on to cybernetics, and they may see him pioneering a device for the disabled, but they do not see him when he meets his grandchild for the first time in ages, and, very subtly, hands them a small box with the murmur of 'keep it safe'.
They do not see the microbots that survived their 'slaughter'.
Robert Callaghan intends to keep it this way, because while he does not yet have enough to reform the mask - and why would he want to? Yokai was a face with no substance, the product of rage and fear and unfocused power that proved to be so useless in the end - he has enough to accomplish what he needs, and while he does not question their persistence, as far as he knows, these are the last in existence.
And perhaps it is better this way, not having a hundred thousand of them at his beck and call but only tens of them but considering he has still never come to understood why they yet respond to him...
This time, he will simply use them as they were designed.
And when he is done, so will his family.
He has his own place, by now, and is freelancing in some scientific journals under a pseudonym. Callaghan is well-enough known to remove himself from any potential employers' lists, and he considers the sacrifice of his true name a small price to pay.
Mostly, he writes about safety. As well as pitches regarding ever-present threats still out there, suggestions on how to deal with them and protect those who most need it.
Once or twice, he receives a comment from someone he suspects he knows, but can never confirm it one way or another.
Once or twice one of the Six show up at his doorstep and tell him that he needs to stay with them for a while. He does not protest, and he does not ask why.
But he is not idle, either.
The Six may serve as unofficial parole officers as well as protectors, but they cannot watch everything. They do not see him making his own safeguards, his own protections, both for himself and for his family.
They perhaps see him focusing a bit more on to cybernetics, and they may see him pioneering a device for the disabled, but they do not see him when he meets his grandchild for the first time in ages, and, very subtly, hands them a small box with the murmur of 'keep it safe'.
They do not see the microbots that survived their 'slaughter'.
Robert Callaghan intends to keep it this way, because while he does not yet have enough to reform the mask - and why would he want to? Yokai was a face with no substance, the product of rage and fear and unfocused power that proved to be so useless in the end - he has enough to accomplish what he needs, and while he does not question their persistence, as far as he knows, these are the last in existence.
And perhaps it is better this way, not having a hundred thousand of them at his beck and call but only tens of them but considering he has still never come to understood why they yet respond to him...
This time, he will simply use them as they were designed.
And when he is done, so will his family.