Chapter Text
When he had first woken up, Henry had been certain he would be back on his feet within the day. A few, at most.
Two weeks later and he still lingered in the infirmary. He had done no work in that time. Every time he woke, he felt worse--more tired, more guilty, more distant. Every time he woke, he felt less himself and more consumed by paralyzing panic.
People drifted in and out of his view. Jasper. Rachel. Even Ito and Tweedy. Their whispered conversations when he was pretending to sleep would normally have spurred him into a frenzy of comforting placation. No need to worry about me! I’m fine! I’m right as rain! But in the wake of a loss he could not name, he couldn’t muster the strength to look any of them in the eye, let alone make a convincing show of his usual perky facade.
Most of his days were spent in a daze, both drug-induced and otherwise. The laudanum helped the pain in his chest, but it did little for his mental state. The accompanying euphoria barely lasted; another cruel prank the divine devised just for him. When it wore off, he was restless, but too fatigued to do anything more than rise and sit in a chair before the window that overlooked the back gardens. Sometimes the lodgers would be in the small yard, laughing and enjoying the sun. He watched them numbly. Then, he would return to bed.
Robert stopped visiting. Henry hadn’t seen him since the first time he woke. It hurt worse than the healing punctures on his chest, but Henry said nothing about it. Once, he thought he had heard Robert’s voice just outside the door and Rachel entered shortly after with a tight smile and a dose of laudanum. He had meant to ask, maybe even request Robert come in if he was waiting in the hall, but the words escaped him by the time she had stopped her concerned rambling.
It was in the fourth week of his recovery--though debatably, not an entirely fitting term for what little progress he had made--that Rachel and Jasper entered with a different air about them. Jasper fidgeted with the seams of his clothing. Rachel’s voice pitched too high to be casual.
“Dr. Jekyll? How are you feeling today?”
He didn’t lift his head from the pillow. A long silence preceded Rachel coming into his line of sight and putting a tentative hand on his shoulder.
“Do you think you might like a walk? Might be good for you,” she said with forced cheeriness. The crease between her brow spoke more truth than her tone.
“We’ll come with you,” Jasper chimed in uneasily from somewhere behind him.
“Why don’t you sit up and tell me how you’re feeling?” she said too gently. Her hands guided him upward and he obeyed the physical command, not even thinking to pull away from the touch. Propriety seemed such a trivial thing to him now.
“There,” she said, her smile too wide. Too forced. Henry looked away. “Are you in any pain?”
He was. He had been. The punctures in his abdomen had begun to heal, but far slower than all of them seemed to think was normal. Worse, though, was a phantom pain in his mind. It felt real--a ragged, wretched pain in his head that never ceased. Laudanum made no difference. Nor did any other method of relief Rachel tried. He had stopped telling her it hurt because her expression crumbled with every failure to remedy it.
“No,” he lied.
“Are you sure?” She didn’t believe him. The glance over his head was proof enough.
Henry didn’t reply.
Rachel hummed, disappointed. “Dr. Jekyll, please.”
He sighed, already tired. “The usual.”
She frowned. “Do you think you’d like a walk, then? I don’t want to push you, but it might help to move around a bit if you can manage it.”
“Very well.”
Another glance over his head. “Really?”
“Yes.”
Slowly, she guided him to stand and Jasper came around the bed to hover near his other side. He knew he should wave them both off and walk unaided--if the lodgers saw his state, they might think the worst of him.
The panic that clawed up his throat nearly kept him in place, but he couldn’t find the will to resist the gentle current of Rachel and Jasper’s hands. Lately, when his heart would race and his blood pounded loud in his ears, he was trapped in his own body. Unable to give voice or expression to what he felt. As if the half of him that could express his most base emotions had up and left. In the loss, he only felt the wretched things in his body but couldn’t process through it in a way that left him anything but fatigued and floating distantly from himself.
By the time he returned to his body, his mind relenting on its sudden panic, they were walking slowly through the main hall. A few of the lodgers stopped to watch them pass and Henry made a point to keep his eyes to the floor.
“Oh, Dr. Jekyll,” Jasper murmured beside him. “I’ve kept an eye out for Mr. Hyde, but I haven’t seen him. No one else has either. I don’t think he’s been at the Society lately.”
“Who?”
Jasper went quiet for a moment. “Mr. Hyde. The night manager of the Society? A bit chaotic?”
Each piece of information was spoonfed to him like the dose would cure his failing memory. Henry didn’t say anything. He only searched his mind for a face that would fit the description, but he couldn’t.
“Messy blond hair, green eyes, usually in a cape?” Rachel added.
She’s describing me. I look like that. Henry furrowed his brow and dismissed the inexplicable thought for foolishness. He most certainly did not have blonde hair or green eyes.
“Right,” Henry offered blankly.
“You were asking for him,” Jasper tried again and Henry could feel his eyes staring holes into the side of his head.
Henry said nothing. His head ached.
He was trying to remember the words to ask to return to the infirmary, when voices on the second floor pulled everyone’s attention. Raised and angry. At least, one voice was.
“--dare you! This is reckless!” Robert stormed from one of the closed doors out onto the open hall. Behind him, Virginia stalked after him.
“We know what went wrong. Just because there was an accident doesn’t discredit the entire project, Dr. Lanyon,” her voice was cold, not angry. Though perhaps those were the same and Henry was having trouble reading the situation properly. “Just because it was him who--”
“Him!” Robert whirled around, posture tight and lip nearly curling into a snarl. “By ‘him’ do you mean Doctor Henry Jekyll? The man who is responsible for this entire place? For taking in you and every single mad scientist from here to kingdom come? Giving you a place of safety and the resources to continue whatever projects you feel so inclined to putter about on? The one you nearly killed? That ‘him’?”
Silence settled over the entire hall. Every eye had turned to witness the uncharacteristic outburst that radiated from Robert like he was the sun, blinding and blistering to watch. He had a reputation of being aloof and curt, but never outright explosive. Even Henry couldn’t help lifting his eyes from the floor.
Virginia shifted, but squared her shoulders and did not cow to his anger. “I was referring to your attachment to Dr. Jekyll that is clearly clouding your judgement. If it was any of the other lodgers who had gotten injured, I doubt you would be knocking down my door to berate me for my work.”
“If it was anyone else,” Robert seethed. His outward propulsion reversed. Anger coiled tight through his body, but he had passed the point of showing it recklessly. Like holding a magnifying glass to the sun, he focused all of his ire at Virginia. “Henry would have confronted you himself. But he cannot. Because of you.”
“And you would know the state of his health, how? Last I heard, you wouldn’t go near him. So, if you’d like to talk about failing devotion and loyalty to Dr. Jekyll, I suggest you find a mirror, Dr. Lanyon.”
With that she turned and calmly walked back into her workshop. Robert stared after her, his expression leeched of all emotion. Only a dazed shock widened his eyes until he seemed to remember himself. He turned and looked out over the railing only to find the entire room watching with unabashed focus.
Then, his eyes landed on Henry.
He counted to five--five full seconds where they regarded each other. Henry’s head ached horribly.
Robert’s walls flew up and shuddered the rest of his emotions from his face. He took a quick breath that Henry could see from his place on the ground floor, then turned and walked away.
Henry took a step forward. Rachel and Jasper jumped at the sudden movement, their grips tightening on his arms momentarily. By the time they had relaxed, Robert had turned the corner and was gone.
“Dr. Jekyll?”
Reality felt too far for a moment. He could only stare at the place that Robert last was. His mind ached and his pulse raced beneath his blank expression. If he could scream or cry, he thought he would. At least it would feel better than the emptiness of his current state. The pain of being abandoned--again--by Robert radiated through every sinew and synapse, but Henry couldn’t make his body feel it.
A new kind of torture.
“Dr. Jekyll, are you alright?”
“Yes.”
He started walking again, and the grips on his arms tightened again.
“Perhaps we should go back to the infirmary.”
Henry nearly allowed himself to be pulled away, but his eyes lingered on the open door of Ito’s workshop. Another pang of empty something he couldn’t name flooded through him.
“Might we see how they fare?”
Looks were exchanged. Henry resisted the petulant urge to roll his eyes.
“I’m not sure that’s wise, Dr. Jekyll.”
“Why not?”
A long silence.
He added, “I’ll be careful.”
They relented, however begrudgingly. Their hands flexed on his arm as they climbed the stairs. Henry had to stop every few steps to catch his breath, the ache in his chest oscillating between annoying tightness to outright pain. He brushed off the fussing and managed to make it to the laboratory door with little incident beyond a persistent stitch in his side.
Virginia was at a worktable that had been dragged to the center of the room. The curtains had been drawn over the windows and some small part of his mind snickered. It appeared they’d learned their lesson after all. A bit of sunlight would be enough to change the environmental temperature of volatile mixtures. He had to learn the hard way once.
Twice, apparently. Though the second time he already knew the lesson and was the unfortunate one caught in the repercussion of someone else learning it.
“Oh.”
He swept his eyes over to where Ito had stopped to stare at him. Her focus crumbled and something uncomfortably guilty flooded her face. Beside her, Tweedy turned from where he had been elbow deep in a new piece of machinery. A panel had been pulled away on the side of what looked to be a half arch. It bolted to the floor. Its twin, a few feet away, had wires spilling from the same open panel.
Tweedy cleared his throat.
“Dr. Jekyll. Good to see you up and about.”
“What’s this?” Jekyll ran his eyes over the machinery.
The room stilled.
“An upgrade,” Ito said. Her voice remained serene, but her fingers tightened around the beaker she held. “The small archway we built was a prototype to test our theories. This will be utilized for the full experiment.”
“The full experiment,” Henry mused quietly. The empty part of his mind seemed to grow heavier. The room faded from Henry’s attention as he picked through his memories of the incident weeks ago. Every voice, every movement he recalled, all of them belonged to someone he could name. A familiar face.
All, but one.
His chest tightened to the point of suffocation.
“I’ll test it.”
A chorus of dissent fell over him like shrapnel.
“We aren’t ready for human trials, Dr. Jekyll and even if we were, I don’t think--”
“Why not?” Henry wrenched his focus back to reality and met Ito’s gaze. She shrunk a bit under his intensity.
“For one, Dr. Lanyon would see us both killed for endangering you a second time, no matter if it was with your permission--”
“Dr. Lanyon has no concern for my well-being. Therefore, he has no right to an opinion on my participation in this trial.”
Someone cleared their throat.
“That is not entirely fair,” Ito started.
Henry cut her off, “You did just mention his lack of presence during my recovery, did you not?”
Her brows raised. “You heard that?”
“As I can corroborate that as fact, I think it is entirely fair that Dr. Lanyon keeps his opinions to himself. I’ll be your test subject for the trial when you are ready.”
Ito took a step toward him. “Can I ask you why you’re so eager to offer yourself for what could be a very dangerous position?”
Henry pressed his teeth together. He couldn’t say--not because he did not want to, though that was true, but because he did not have the words to describe his situation. The longer he thought about it, the more he became convinced the mixture that burned him, that pierced his skin and nearly fused shards of glass to his body, had also taken something from him. He couldn’t say what, exactly, but the strange sensation of loss--the mental toll of grief without a nameable place to set it down, it all pointed toward the experiments. Perhaps the only way to reverse the effect was to be in proximity to whatever concoction they were brewing again.
“Dr. Jekyll.”
“The pursuit of science.”
Ito frowned. “I don’t think you’re in any state to be making decisions of such…magnitude.”
“I am fine,” Henry insisted, though his stooped posture and constant pained pull of brow likely didn’t paint a convincing picture.
“Focus on your recovery. Then, perhaps, we’ll discuss your offer.”
Henry scowled. “I am well enough to make decisions regarding my own life.”
Again, no one spoke.
“Let’s get you back to the infirmary.”
A gentle hand tucked beneath his elbow and Henry, despite his better judgement, did not pull away. He was guided back through the halls and away from the laboratory, but still his mind whirred over the prospect that whatever happened to him those weeks ago, had had more effect on him than physical. The piece of himself that he felt was missing, perhaps it was missing. Gone. Taken from him, only to be retrieved through as unorthodox a method as it was ripped away.
Ripped. Torn.
Henry recognized these words. He had felt them before. Not the acidic burn of failed experiments, but the truest form of them. The basest definitions. He tracked backward through his memory like a game of hopscotch--pieces missing or buried as he jumped from one to the next. Eventually, he found himself standing at a precipice--a vial in his hand, journal of notes in the other.
He gasped.
“Hyde!”
Jasper jumped. He had been folding sheets on the empty cot beside Henry’s.
“What?”
“Hyde!” Henry said again, wildly meeting his eye. “You said you haven’t seen him?”
“Uh,” Jasper shifted nervously. “No, sir. I haven’t.”
Henry dropped his gaze and tried to slow his breathing. If what he posited was true, he had found his missing half.
“Is everything alright, Dr. Jekyll?”
Henry sucked in a short breath and stared at Jasper for a moment. He searched for an excuse, but his pained mind felt like a surgeon wearing woolen mittens. “Just tell me if you do.”
Jasper nodded slowly, his wariness consuming him.
He hoped it would be enough to cover his sudden strangeness, but he doubted it. Jasper’s furtive glances bore holes into Henry’s back as he lay on his side. Despite the fatigue pulling at every fiber of his body, Henry could not sleep. Not when his missing piece finally had a name. One he knew.
What happened to him? Henry prodded the wound in his mind until it hurt too much to bear. Where is Hyde?