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Anyone who had ever laid their eyes upon both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde could, with confidence, tell anyone who asked that the two men were as different as could be.
Dr. Jekyll was tall and well-built, with curly brown hair that often fell over his right eye in such a charismatic way that any lady within eyesight would swoon and sway. His eyes were as red as rubies, much like most of his neat and stylish clothing that weren’t instead the darkest shade of black. He held himself up with such pride and dignity that he immediately was in the centre of attention when he entered a room. He was beloved and envied, and most people who saw him couldn’t help but feel a fondness deep inside their chests, making them feel like the doctor was a man of honour worth looking up to, worth trusting.
Mr. Hyde was, without a doubt, his exact opposite.
He was short and lanky, with fluffy blond hair that shot out from his head like the mane of a lion, which was also cut by the bangs to keep it out of his bright green eyes. There had always been something that felt uncanny with him that made the skin of every passerby crawl when they spotted him in the dark streets of London, and while his clothes were kept stylish and fitted, he always wore a ragged cape. His demeanour was firey and he never hesitated to jump into a bar fight with an intent of wounding and harming, which made him quite disliked by most and yet, somehow, he still had a small hand-full of people that actually cared about him, even if it was only because they had something to gain from it.
In almost all aspects, Dr. Henry Jekyll and Mr. Edward Hyde were radically different, which made the fact that they seemed to have such a close connection to each other even more perplexing. Not to mention that no one had ever seen the two of them together in the same place. And yet, despite their differences, they shared a few similarities that both of them would dismiss at the mere mention of it.
Both of them were straight-backed, with curved noses that stood out in contrast to their much more neutral facial features. Sharing a similar clothing style, the only differences were their primary colours with red against green, and yet they both shared a refined style of black in most of their wear. While Dr. Jekyll often hid his emotions on his facial features, those which did end up showing would remind most people of the way that Mr. Hyde would exaggerate his expressions in an almost comical way. The eye-rolls, the soft sneers, the huffs reserved for private conversations with those they liked; it all just accounted more to the belief that they were almost trying to be as different as possible. Nevertheless, one of the differences that always were consistent were their voices. The doctor would always have a steady, light and yet deep voice that demanded attention. His accent was as generic as a posh Brit’s accent could be, while Hyde’s voice was far more rigged and jagged while still being smooth, with an accent that easily matched him in with the ruffians of East London. Voices which, to their surroundings, were easily picked upon. Any Lodger would be able to separate Dr. Henry Jekyll’s voice from a crowd of thousands while everyone in all of East London could simultaneously groan when they heard the voice of one Edward Hyde. While their behaviour and looks could go back and forth in similarities, their voices were always different, and very much so.
Which made one Rachel Pidgley even more confused as the blond man strutted around the kitchen with a near-perfect imitation of the doctor’s voice.
“Look at me! I’m the perfect doctor Jekyll! I’m so much better than everyone else but don’t look at me funny or I’ll die!” The blond man mimicked, putting the tips of his fingers against his chest while bending his back over the kitchen counter that he stood against, “I’m just a Scottish git and an industrial slut, woe is me!”
The cook stared, blinked, and then put the saucepan she had been holding back onto the stovetop. The older man didn’t seem to notice her confusion, however, as he just continued to swoon dramatically on the countertop, completely ignoring the groan that erupted from his shadow at the cheap imitation.
“How’d... How did you do that ?” The cook said then suddenly, struck with awe as she furrowed her eyebrows at the blond man. The question seemed to catch Mr. Hyde off-guard, as he stopped his charade and looked back at Rachel.
“What?”
“You sounded exactly like Henry! How’d you do that?”
The older man raised an eyebrow at the cook, before clicking his tongue and grinning.
“We do sound quite alike sometimes, yes?” Mr. Hyde said, his voice right back at mimicking the voice of the doctor. “Rachel, my god, Lanyon looked at me today! Can you imagine? Wow, Lanyon spoke to me today! Wow! Lanyon, oh, take me, my prince charming!” The blond man moaned, placing his hand against his chest as he dramatically swooned over the countertop like a lady whose corset was tight enough to limit her breathing. The imitation quickly broke off, however, as the blond man began to cackle maniacally, almost as if he was trying to mimic a swamp witch instead of the Scotsman.
Despite the insults being aimed at one of her very best friends, the Romani couldn’t help but immediately break down in a mix between snorting and laughing in surprise, clutching the edge of the countertop for support so she wouldn’t fall over. While most of her laughing fit was due to surprise, just processing what the blond man said got her laughing even harder.
“S-stop! I can’t breathe!” She managed to press out between her fit. She could feel her stomach clutching as she desperately tried to calm down, but Hyde’s continued laughter that soon enough went from cackle to a genuine laugh didn’t help the situation at all. Luckily, it only took a few moments before she managed to get her breathing under control, although the giant grin on her lips never left, even though she wheezed a little bit.
“You cannot tell me that it’s not how Jekyll speaks, like, all the time.” The blond man snorted, grinning even more as his shadow facepalmed, even though both counterparts were well aware that Rachel could not see it.
“I never denied it!” She giggled softly, her cheeks rosy from all the laughing as she went back to the cooking, doing her best to control her breathing. “I swear, it sounds exactly like Henry! If I had not known it was you, I’d sworn it would have been him!”
“What tells you that it’s not?” The blond man continued, his voice still a perfect imitation of the doctor. The deep tone and the posh accent of his counterpart slipped off of his tongue like a piece of butter, and in all fairness, it was just as native for him to speak like Jekyll as it was for Jekyll to speak in his Scottish drawl; he felt a home-like familiarity at using the doctor’s voice, even if their natural voices were vastly different, and yet it felt foreign and weird as he had made up his own, East Londonian accent for so long.
“Because I can see you right in front of me, Master Hyde.” The cook huffed, although she never stopped giggling as she began to mix her wooden spatula through the stew that was simmering on the stovetop. “Make up your voice as much as you’d like, but not even you can turn into Henry! That would be downright impossible. Not to mention weird. I can keep one Henry and one Hyde in check, but not two Henrys or two Hydes!”
The blond man continued to snort, although a teasing grin never left his thin lips.
“Oh yeah? And what kind of troubles does little Mr. Perfect give you?” It wasn’t until now that the blond man let go of the accent, although he jumped up and sat down on the countertop he stood against, placing his elbow on his knees and resting his head on his palms as he waited for Rachel’s answer.
“He doesn’t give me trouble, to say. But have you seen that man? He would probably have worked himself to death at this point if it wasn’t for me and Lanyon. Two Henrys? That’s basically a death wish. Not to mention two yous . I can barely keep track of you and all your ruckus. How do you expect me to keep track of two Hydes?” The cook shrugged, although she was then struck by a thought, which just got her to shake her head softly, “Unless, of course, there were two of me, but I’m content with just being one of myself, thank you very much.”
“Can relate to that.” The blond man said, doing a halfway glare towards his shadow who just rolled its eyes. It would have been so much better if he was alone, if he was his own person and not constantly had to share mind and body with a posh, holier-than-thou git, but noooooo, he had to be a part of Jekyll. Ugh.
‘Stop complaining, just be happy you exist at all.’ Came the voice of the doctor through their shared mind. Of course, Hyde could not respond right back to the doctor, but that didn’t stop him from rolling his eyes. ‘Don’t roll your eyes at me! What are you, a toddler?’
“What are you, an annoying git?” The blond man hiss under his breath, glaring at his shadow as he clutched his teeth together. The shadow of Dr. Jekyll merely rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Did you say something?” Rachel then hummed, turning towards the blond man as she could have sworn she had heard him say something.
“Nothing! I said nothing. Must’ve been the wind or somethin’.”
It was not hard to see that the older man was lying through his teeth, literally, and yet Rachel just shrugged a bit to herself before turning back to the food. It wasn’t like she had heard what he had said anyway, and it wasn’t like it was unusual for her to hear the man whispering and muttering to himself whenever he felt like it, too. The blond man was far too weird as it was for such behaviour to concern her.
Dr. Henry Jekyll loved spending time with the Lodgers, he really did, even if he didn’t often catch himself with enough free time to really sit down in one of the communal areas of the Society, wine glass in hand, and truly spend time with the residents. Today, however, was pretty different.
The light blue duvet of sky and heaven that had covered the city during the day had long since turned into a giant mass of black, consuming the light of London and drenching the town into the late evening. The doctor had stayed inside his office for most of the day, having been flooded with paperwork and dreaded with exhaustion, despite the quite easy night that his counterpart had spent with Rachel the evening before, so the Lodgers took their chance to scoop him up and force him to socialize with them the moment they saw him on the way to the kitchens for a late-evening snack, having skipped dinner tonight too. Henry normally wouldn’t have minded all that much, had he not had thousands of more things to do and had he not had the fact that the Lodgers all turned on him just a few weeks prior fresh on his mind. However, now that the Exhibition was out of the way, the Lodgers took it upon themselves to make it up to their leader... In their own ways.
Currently, the doctor had practically been forced to sit down by one of the larger tables in the game room, where most of the Lodgers who were too restless to sleep could be found playing everything from bar games to poker during the late evenings. He had been graciously blessed with a glass and a bottle of red wine to make up for the fact that he was forced to ignore his work for now, and despite it being quite cheap, he could still feel himself loosen up little by little as the evening went on and he continued to sip on the liquid. At least the atmosphere was pleasant and warm, despite the slight hesitation as he had been forced to join the evening in the beginning, but either the tension had gotten better or he was just drinking more than he realized. The fact that he almost pressed his nose into the wineglass to keep himself from snorting as the alter ego’s spectre flew around the room, making silly faces behind the Lodgers and making cheap imitations out of them seemed to be a good indicator that his facade wasn’t as strong as it normally was, at the very least. The worst part came when his inner demon floated around Mr. Archer, who was sitting quite close to Mr. Bird that particular evening, while making sure to make as obscene noises as possible. The doctor had choked on his wine, his cheeks had flared up and he was quite sure that he almost would have suffocated if he hadn’t regained his breathing so quickly, even if that didn’t stop the blond man from laughing like a maniac while the Lodgers around the doctor immediately got concerned for him.
After a few hours of Hyde doing his best to get the Lodgers convinced that the Scotsman was constantly choking on nothing, and after a few hours of Dr. Jekyll wondering if Hyde was trying to murder him, the evening got rowdier and rowdier as more Lodgers began to pile into the game room and as more of them began to drink. The fact that the doctor was Scottish only got more and more apparent as more time passed, having been the one to drink the most and yet be the least drunk out of the whole group. Yet his cravat laid untied around his neck and his jacket hung lazily on the back of his chair, as the doctor soon ditched the glass and began to sip straight out of his bottle of wine. The other Lodgers were not looking any better, nor could they care any less about the doctor’s appearance, but the doctor was the one that seemed the most collected, mostly because he was only listening to the conversations with half an ear.
“I’m telling you all!” Dr. Helsby said, waving his pint of beer around like a missus waving goodbye to her sea-bound husband with a tissue, “Hyde’s like... He’s like... What’s it called?... A quisby!”
After the fire that had broken out during the battle with Moreau a few weeks prior, it was clear that the Lodgers -while they didn’t necessarily hate Mr. Edward Hyde- were pretty upset about the whole ordeal, which was obvious, as Dr. Helsby’s drunken slurring soon was met with murmurs and nods of agreement.
“Yeah!” Peeped Mr. Sinnett, whose face was just as sooty as it normally was, “Why’d you even hire him, Jekyll?”
At suddenly being addressed, the doctor let out a soft huff of surprise before he focused his attention on the question and the actual conversation, despite getting caught quite off-guard, although he still took a moment to take another sip from his wine before answering anyway.
“I had my reasons.” Was all that he said, leaning back on his chair before unbuttoning the first few buttons on his collar. If he would have been sober, he probably would have been horrified by the thought of getting confronted about Hyde and being this open with the Lodgers, but honestly, his collar felt tight and it wasn’t like he was all that drunk, anyway, “Sadly, there is not much any of us can do about it. So just let it be.”
“Are you not tired of him, though?” Miss Lavender spoke up, standing in a corner a bit further away from the table together with Virginia Ito, Miss Flowers and Mrs. Cantilupe, all four of them drinking tea rather than alcohol... Although Henry couldn’t be sure if it was actually tea and not a disguise for something, “you keep complaining about him and all the things he gets up to. Who don’t you just fire him?”
“It's complicated.”
“Ohhh, we see how it is.” Mr. Pennebrygg mused, resting his elbow on the table with his head on his palm as he watched the doctor, “You and Hyde are hiding something.”
“Keep dreaming, Pennebrygg. Just because half of this lot thinks Dr. Jekyll and Hyde are a thing doesn’t make it logical, much less true.” Huffed Ito, rolling her eyes as she refilled her teacup.
“How else would you explain it then, Ms. Smartass?” Pennebrygg shot back immediately, glaring back at the junior neo-alchemist, who glared right back at the man.
“I... Uh... What are you two on about? Should I be concerned?” The doctor suddenly spoke up, cowering a bit in his seat. He had, frankly, no idea what accusations got thrown around right now and he was honestly sure that he didn’t want to know either. The laughing that echoed through his head as his alter ego began to cackle didn’t help his worries, either.
“Nothin’ to worry about, my good man!” Mr. Luckett quipped, patting the doctor’s back since he was sitting right next to him. The alcohol in almost everyone’s bloodstreams really shined through right now, and it was not hard for anyone to see as Mr. Luckett continued to almost violently pat the doctor’s back.
“O...Kay. Either way, I can assure everyone that if I could, I would get rid of Mr. Hyde-”
‘Lies! You’d never get rid of me, doctor.’
“-Because, frankly, he’s been getting on my nerves.”
“Oooh, what has poor lil’ Edward done to get on the good doctor’s nerves, huh?” Mr. Mosley hummed, and despite still wearing his goggles and his mask, the doctor could certainly see the teasing look that the younger Lodger was giving him.
“Existing, for an instance. Not to mention that he takes my gracious hospitality for granted.” The doctor sneered softly, glaring down at the reflection of Hyde in his wine glass, although only for a split second so that no one would notice. “Not an ounce of gratitude in that man. I give him what I can offer and he throws it to the road and is just downright rude to me.” The soft groan of complaint that rose in his throat was clear in his words and his voice, although he still did his best to block out his mind so he wouldn’t have to listen to Hyde anymore.
“Oh yeah, what does he say, then? Can’t be worse than Frankenstein.” Remarked an, surprisingly, almost sympathetic Mr. Tweedy. It was a rare case to see Henry so open and actually speaking about Hyde, so it was not surprising that most of the Lodgers took advantage of that. Not to mention that it was quite rare to see Henry speak so negatively about someone.
“For instance,” the doctor started, clearing his throat to give his best imitation of the ‘younger’ man, “It usually starts as something like ‘Jekyll, by god, are you seriously doing paperwork again ? Don’t you have a life and things to do? ’, then it turns into something like; ‘Aww, Dr. Jekyll is busy? Can’t do what he wants to ? Oh wow, woe is you!’ , and then he starts up again with; ‘Poor little Dr. Jekyll, the aristocracy’s favourite puppet . While you go to fancy banquets trying to keep the Society alive, I am the Spirit of London at Night, the debauchery and desires of all of mankind!’ , and the cycle repeats.” The doctor groaned, not noticing that the movement around him stopped and all the Lodgers looked at him. Or, well, he didn’t notice for more than just a moment, before he furrowed his eyebrows and looked over the crowd. “What?”
“You sounded exactly like him!” Mr. Archer gasped, “I swear, I almost thought that he had broken in right here and now or something!”
‘Lies! I sound nothing like that!’
“Yeah! Wait, say something more!” Mr. Sinnett added, suddenly watching the doctor with great interest. As if controlled by a hive-mind, most of the other Lodgers followed suit and focused -to the best of their ability, at least- at the doctor.
“Uh...” The doctor hesitated for a second, before clearing his throat. Technically, this would be a great way to get back at Hyde for yesterday... So he quickly put on a grin and continued to mimic his alter ego, although a lot more mockingly this time, “Oh wow, look at me, I’m Edward Hyde! I’m an annoying git and a brat, don’t tell me what to do, I’m the spirit of London at night!”
No one could be sure if it was the alcohol, the late evening which more or less was just an early night by now, or Henry’s actual mimicking of the blond man that got them to laugh so hard but the room soon erupted in howls of laughter. It sounded exactly like Hyde, although with a much whinier voice, and yet hearing the insults in such a way just got the drunkards of the Society to roar with laughter. The doctor was quite sure that he could even hear Mr. Griffin wheezing somewhere in the corner.
“Do it again! Do it again!”
“My name is Edward 'yde, butcher's hook a' me funny an' I’ll kill you wi'h my bare mitts! who are you lookin a'? 'aH DARE YOU CALL ME SHORT?”
‘JekYLL I SWEAR-’
More roars of laughter. Even those who weren’t drunk, such as the misses by the tea table, began to almost shriek with laughter at the doctor’s perfect imitation. No one was sure if it was the words, the voice, the accent or the fact that it was Dr. Henry Jekyll who was dragging Hyde through the mud that made it so funny. Truth be told, it was most likely the alcohol in the end. At least that’s what was most affecting Dr. Jekyll, who couldn’t help but to laugh along too, especially when Lil’ Mister Hyde in his head kept complaining and whining.
“How do you do that?” Miss Lavender then asked, being the first one to calm down from her fits of giggles. The doctor just grinned brightly and almost smugly.
“I guess I might just have heard enough of his voice to mimic it.” He shrugged, although he then snorted softly and continued to make up his voice, tilting his head from side to side as he made his voice extra whiney, just to annoy his counterpart, “Oh my god, I 'ave 'o stay inside faw 'wo weeks cause I’ll ge' arrested o'herwise? dis is 'errible! 'ah dare you expec' me 'o no' wan' 'o ge' absolu'ely murdered by 'he copper because I li' an en'ire neighbourhood on fire!”
Despite it not being all that funny, the drunkest of the Lodgers continued to laugh. Miss Lavender just shook her head and tooted softly but not even she could hide the smile that was on her lips. Not even she could remember the last time they had seen their Henry Jekyll so happy and open with them, which said a lot because she was one of the longest staying residents of the Society for Arcane Sciences. Even then, she wasn’t complaining at all. Although she definitely could complain about the amount of noise that erupted from the table with the Lodgers who were drinking as all of them began to pile on requests of things for Henry to say in Hyde’s voice, ranging from words to bizarre phrases to things she would not want to recall.
Of course, it was much quieter for them than it was for Henry, who was currently getting thoroughly chewed out by the spectre that was currently floating around the room, incredibly pissed at getting mocked like this, and yet the doctor didn’t even acknowledge him. He just continued to smile and laugh and mock his counterpart, much to the Lodgers amusement.
They both might be grown men -or even the same man, depending on how you saw it- but it was obvious that neither of them were above making fun of the other.
After all, what was some bickering but mockings and mimicking?