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“Is that a letter? Who are you writing to, my dear?”
Lisa readjusted her position on the stool, pointedly ignoring the man pestering her. In the past month since her disastrous wedding, she’d not said a single word to Edward Hyde. And who would blame her? The man dropped in uninvited, promptly murdered Simon Stride (she never liked the man, but still, who does that at a wedding reception?), and then threatened her own life! Like any sane person, she immediately decided she wanted nothing to do with the man.
Even if he was technically her husband.
“You want to know how it happened,” the creature pointed out, rather unnecessarily. “You want to know why your good, respectable doctor became the very face of evil, of malice, of everything he wanted to erase from mankind. Everything he claimed he wanted to erase, that is.”
She stood up unexpectedly, throwing the man off balance enough to fall backwards onto the floor, effectively cutting off his monologue. She suppressed a smirk as she grabbed the now-finished letter and placed it on the mantle, just out of Hyde’s reach. A low blow, sure, but she was rather in the mood to hurt his pride, and he clearly had plenty of that to spare.
With as much dignity as the short man could muster, he picked himself off the ground and bounded over to the mantle, giving a huff of frustration when he discovered himself too short to reach the letter.
“Henry,” he read out from the front of the envelope after a minute of squinting at it. “Oh, so that’s how it is now,” he grumbled at her. “Anything you want to tell either of us will go through Jekyll, even if I’m right in front of you? Well–” He cut himself off, a sly grin crossing his face that Lisa knew could only mean a scheme. “I can tell you what happened.”
“How what happened?” she asked innocently, earning a scowl from Hyde. A part of her regretted breaking her vow of silence towards him, but most of her drew satisfaction from irritating the man further.
“How this happened, obviously!” He gestured toward himself. “What drove your dear Henry to the point of splitting his own soul! I can tell you, if you agree to treat me as more than a common household pest.”
“And what makes you think I want to know why he did it?”
“Who wouldn’t?”
After a brief moment of battling with herself, Lisa gave in, sitting herself on a couch. “Fine,” she said, “I’ll listen to you.”
“Finally!” Hyde tried to sit down beside her, but quickly redirected his course to a different chair at the sight of her death glare. “Where to begin? Well, I suppose–”
“I’ll listen to you,” she interrupted, “ after we get some things straight.”
Hyde gave her yet another scowl (he was certainly proficient at scowling) but made no objections.
“First of all, I am not ‘your dear.’ You will refer to me as Mrs. Jekyll, Ma’am at the very least. No pet names, no ‘Lisa,’ nothing.”
“But–”
“No. You are not my husband, you are not my friend, you are nothing but a nuisance I occasionally put up with. Is that clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he sulked.
“Very well. Now, before I hear your story, I wish to test my theories.”
Hyde gestured openly. “Don’t let me stop you. Test your conjectures on me.”
Lisa shifted in her seat, straightening her back. “I suppose it all must have started the night after the Board rejected his proposal. Well, if we want to get technical, it all would have started seven years ago, when he decided to start developing his formula. But that is neither here nor there. In any case, he was so put out by the Board’s refusal of a test subject that he decided to use the one volunteer he could get. Himself, that is.
“Of course, his formula clearly did not work as expected, thus creating you. You then proceeded to give yourself a name, which I suspect you came up with while passing by Hyde Park.
“Then, come the next day, Henry decided he was too dangerous to be near anyone, neatly explaining his isolation in the weeks before our wedding. However, he must have continued his experiments, or else you wouldn’t be standing here today.
“And now, for the finishing touch. Henry was so enraged by the Board’s decision against him that, when you came into being, the temptation to punish them was too great. You proceeded to murder each and every one of them that voted against you, with Stride’s death being the finishing touch.
“Am I correct?”
Hyde stared at her, mouth hanging open in surprise. “Well,” he eventually said. “That’s– that’s a pretty good guess.”
“Thank you.”
“How... how did you figure that much out?”
“Really?” She raised an eyebrow. “Henry was working on a formula to ‘separate good form evil,’ and he turns into you, the supposed ‘manifestation of all evil in mankind.’ Add the fact that every victim of yours was a Board member – which, I’ll admit, I probably was only able to realize that quickly because my father is Chairman – and it really is quite simple to figure out. I’m more than a pretty face, you know.”
Several moments of silence followed, in which Lisa uncomfortably watched Hyde’s slack-jawed face, attempting unsuccessfully to read his expression. “What?” she asked after several long minutes of silence.
“Nothing,” he answered, all of the teasing and bravado in his voice gone. “It’s just... I’m finally starting to understand why Jekyll fell for you.”
Oh.
“Well, there’s one thing I still don’t understand,” she said hurriedly, hoping to distract herself from the less-than-unpleasant pounding of her heart. “How did you transform at the reception? From what Henry told me, the formula needed to be ingested.”
Hyde was obviously just as grateful for the change in topic. “It did, at first. But, as he kept taking it, I got stronger. After a few weeks, I could force a transformation without the formula. Jekyll never figured out how to do the same,” he added, in a downright shabby attempt to make himself look better. He winced as he said this, as if he had heard a loud noise. “Not yet, I mean,” he corrected reluctantly.
“So... you took over knowingly, fully intending to ruin my day.” How perfect.
“I wish I could say yes.” Well, that’s a comforting statement. “It’s nothing personal. I love to ruin Jekyll’s life, and what better way than to crash his wedding reception?
“But,” he sighed, “that’s not entirely true. I knew Jekyll probably took measures to protect people against me, like giving Utterson that stupid gun. Still not sure why exactly he wouldn’t shoot it, but I’ll take what I can get. I was planning to stay in the background and wait until that night to meet my lovely bride.”
Lisa suppressed a shudder. “But...?”
“But I started transforming. I don’t care why in the slightest, but Jekyll thinks it was the high-running emotions. That was the first time in weeks he’d been truly happy, and since I was the embodiment of all his suppressed desires and emotions, the transformation started on its own.”
Lisa knew she should have been mad at Hyde, at his ruining the happiest day of her life. But her mind only took in a single phrase. The first time in weeks he’d been truly happy...
She pushed herself up off the couch and made her way towards the door. “Thank you for the clarification, Edward. I’ll be out for a while, don’t wait around for me.”
Hyde jerked his head in acknowledgement, then froze. “What did you just say?” he asked. “What did you call me?”
Oops.
“You called me Edward!” he exclaimed gleefully. “Did you hear that, Jekyll?” he yelled towards a mirror of all things, as if Henry could hear his shouts. “I’m winning her over, no doubt about it!”
Well, no better time to leave. She quickly opened the door, almost immediately closing it behind her. Only then did she allow the broad smile to cross her face. Maybe the life ahead of her was filled with less disaster than she had at first anticipated.