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They left him.
They. Left. Him.
They.
Left.
Him.
Him! Their captain! How dare they leave him on some backwater planet? One that wasn’t even fun, at that!
No wars, no revolutions. Hell, all the fun shit was so underground that there was no way to find it unless he’d been ‘in the know’ for years! Not to mention that the technology was severely lacking.
And they left him there!
Bastards, the lot of them.
The first thing he did was a few good long years of a crime spree.
But after a century, he ran out of steam, and got bored.
Anyone who knew him knew that the biggest sin that one could commit was to allow him to be bored.
But this was uncharted territory for him.
Usually, his boredom was caused by a lack of violence.
There was always that… Far off lullaby. A bagpipe dogging his every step, the electric taste of copper weighing his tongue. Chaos ran through his fingertips the way blood ran through his veins, and the only way to satisfy it was violence.
But there he sat, covered in gore and debris, and the thought of continuing with his carnage filled him with a deep, ugly dread.
So, he decided to do something else.
Oxford University did not do background checks. Not for their medical program, and most certainly not for their law program.
Really, the only reason he decided to get any type of doctorate at all was incredibly trivial. But if one truly needed to know… well, there might have been a bit of an argument between him and Marius before they all left him. In which Marius claimed that as he also did not have any university education, he couldn’t judge Marius for lying about having one.
If nothing else, he was known for being petty.
But the narrative digresses.
He was going to be a doctor, under the name of Henry Jekyll. Mostly because ‘Dr. d’Ville’ just didn’t sound right.
But there was also the fact that, ever since he realized that violence didn’t sing to him like it used to, his name just… didn’t fit right anymore.
And so, Henry Jekyll was born.
He knew that his Mechanism didn’t actually skip its ticking as a person dove under the desk he habitually camped at in the library every day, but he was sure that if it did have the capability, it would have happened.
Robert Lanyon lied to his minder, and basically forced Henry into being his tutor for one thing or another. Honestly, he was lucky in those first few minutes that Henry was taking time away from the violence.
Even so, Robert was fascinating. The same type as fascinating as Alchemy. He could spend minutes and hours staring at the ceiling and have his mind tumble around chemical compositions, fire temperatures, and concepts of things like the human soul as a tangible thing, and never get bored.
Robert– with his perfect smile, easy eyes, and terrifying charm –was much the same.
On some level, Robert felt similarly about him.
Bafflingly, the man seemed to have become quite certain that he could turn Henry into a gentleman.
And the odd thing was– Henry wasn’t opposed to the idea.
It terrified him, at first, the power this mortal man held over him. With a smile or frown, Robert could change his whole outlook on a topic he’d been set on for centuries.
Like dancing.
The concerts The Mechanisms held weren’t really the scene for something as particular as ballroom dancing. Not to mention that Dr. Carmilla had never been much for teaching what she believed a drolltopic.
Thus, learning had never been a priority.
However, it was apparently something that every gentleman knew how to do, and Robert wasn’t going to allow him to stop halfway. At that point, Henry didn’t think he could deny Robert anything. Not if he asked with those beautiful eyes.
He learned to dance. He learned to smile and laugh just right. He even went so far to learn how to talk to annoying and boring people that didn’t end in a fight, or worse, gunfire.
(Wasn’t it something, that gunfire wasn’t his preferred outcome anymore?)
More pressing, was that he was good at it. Same as he was good at the Sciences, at Medicine, and at Law, he was good at being a gentleman.
But being good at something had could not compare to the taste of Robert’s lips.
The first time he and Robert had spent the night together was the night he told Robert the truth about himself. It’s not like he could hide his Mechanism.
He told him everything.
The violence that used to sing in his veins. The things he did before he came to this planet. The things he did on this planet.
The entire time, Robert’s hand never left the warm bronze embedded into his chest.
And still, Robert stayed. And that was enough.
Robert left him.
Robert. Left. Him.
Robert.
Left.
Him.
It was devastating than him having the Others leaving him.
For months, he wallowed in misery, unable to do the most basic of things for himself.
And yet, Robert was still there for him, but wasn’t with him.
He was a married man, after all.
Henry supposed that he just
Hadn’t
Been
Good
Enough.
Becoming ‘good enough’ was harder than he thought.
At first, he thought that all he needed to do was pretend that his thoughts never turned to violence. To just stop thinking about things that were against the morals of the society he was trapped in. All he needed to do was follow every rule of polite society he could, with a perfect smile as wine-sweet words coated his lips.
But it didn’t work.
He could tell that it didn’t work. From the way that Robert occasionally cringed at a joke that didn’t land, or the way his hands shook when he had to keep himself in check when Miss Eligible Bachelorette would flirt too much at some gathering.
If that wasn’t working, he needed to try a different way.
Edward Hyde was created years before he had his own form.
He was only a concept, then. Scraps of what had been left when Jonny d’Ville had been first abandoned, half-formed and hurting.
The violence that Henry thought still only existed in errant thoughts existed in him. Nothing compared to who he had originally been as Jonny d’Ville, but enough for bar fights and bloody knuckles to sing his name. Enough that jumping from roof to roof was exciting. That reputation didn’t matter, because everyone who cared about them would be dead before he would be.
He was still less violent than he originally was. Robert had left a permanent mark on him, a sculptor leaving fingerprints behind.
He was created so that Henry could be good enough, so that meant that the more he indulged those bar fights and blood soaked hands, he was doing his job.
The Society took a lot of planning, and more time. Even more patience that he barely had. Actually campaigning for sponsors and not just pointing a gun at them and making them give it to him was an entirely new experience to him.
It was slow, annoying, and he wasn’t sure how Ashes managed to do it so often.
But he managed. Through the debts and bills and that fact that The Lodgers only tolerated him because he kept them out of prison or an asylum, he managed, with Robert by his side the entire time.
Everything was almost perfect, it would be perfect if he could just make it through the Exhibition.
When he first heard that The Blackfog Bazaar was partially run by a ‘Carmilla,’ he hadn’t taken much thought to it. It was generally a common name, and it was only a rumor that she was a vampire, not a proven fact.
He doubted that the Carmilla he was acquainted with would be very interested in running any sort of bazaar, anyway. She often told him that she thought commerce– even the black markets of the universe – were ‘terribly unimaginative,’ and ‘isn’t it more fun to steal what we need anyway?’
Any doubts that they were different people, however, were dashed the second that she walked through The Society’s doors like she owned the place. She’d taken a look at him and raised an eyebrow.
“I wasn’t expecting you here.”
And that was fair, a society for rogue sciences was rarely the type of company he had wanted her to perceive him keeping, last they saw each other.
Robert had looked between them sharply, confused and agitated.
He wasn’t sure why the other man always seemed to get upset when there were women coming to see him, but it almost always left him flattered, in some way he wasn’t able to identify.
He sighed and began introduced them.
“Robert, meet Dr. Carmilla,” he curled his nose as if trying to get a bad taste out of his mouth, “My mother.”
They had a short, private conversation. She’d already connected him to Hyde, was looking for him, even.
He told her some of it, in the barest, most curt details he could manage.
Somehow, he felt as if she still got more from him than he wanted her to.
The fire wasn’t his fault!!
How was he supposed to know that a broken flamethrower would explode?
…
Well, now that it was phrased that way it sounded obvious.
But even then, was Dr. Jekyll expecting Edward to just let himself get set on fire? They were immortal not impervious to pain!
It wasn’t fair! He was just doing what he knew Dr. Jekyll would like! Helping someone who needed it was supposed to be good, and His Other Self had been doing it a lot, lately. He really thought it would be appreciated.
But there was no use to paint in the shades of grey when no one wanted the details it would give. He was blamed for the fire, despite it obviously being Dr. Moreau’s fault.
Not that Dr. Jekyll fucking cared about that. He’d always hated Edward, even though he was the one who created him.
In retaliation, he’d go to The Blackfog Bazaar, if it was the last thing he did.
He hadn’t hallucinated in decades, but Hyde did always have the ability to bring out the worst in him.
They’d never been so… visceral before, thought.
The older men who haunted him had never been anyone other than One-eyed Jack or his Father before, but he had to admit…
Dr. Moreau fit just as well between the two of them.
The Blackfog Bazaar was amazing, one of the many highlights in his immortal life!
Sure, he could feel Dr. Carmilla following him around, like a parent watching their toddler try and follow a grocery list all by himself for the first time, and sure. he was playing a high stakes version of Hyde(haha) and Seek with Rachel, but it was fun!
So many sights and sounds and colours and feelings and—
Then he got tackled by Robert Fucking Lanyon, and the night went down hill.
He’d managed to get Dr. Carmilla to help him get away from the people who weren’t happy with him. She seemed so amused by the whole situation.
“I don’t think you’ve ever been on this side of the Sciences,” She looked so smug about the whole situation after they’d managed to lead the coppers away from the Bazaar. Oddly enough, she seemed just as possessive of her capitalist daydream as she did her scientific creations. “How does it feel?”
He was sitting wrong in the chair, and was almost surprised that Dr. Jekyll wasn’t pestering him about it. Dr. Jekyll hadn’t pestered him at all, actually. It was unnerving. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if I did, I wouldn’t admit it.”
She smiled her sharp-toothed grin, the one that convinced him to kill Jack run away from all his problems and travel time and space with her.
“It’s just as well, I’m sure you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you did.”
Getting rid of the potion was rash. It was irresponsible. It was too much Jonny d’Ville, and not enough Henry Jekyll.
But Hyde was hurting them. What if the police had found the Bazaar? What if Rachel had gotten hurt?
What if they’d gotten caught?
Robert had managed to catch them, after Carmilla had let him back out on the street.
What he had admitted to Hyde of all people…
What Hyde had admitted to Robert of all people…
Well, it was enough to ruin a reputation.
They were too close to their goal of letting all that happen.
So out the potion went, and in came the pain where his heart was supposed to be.
He had thought that his Mechanism had broken, at first. The pain was similar to that of when he desperately needed maintenance and had been putting it off for far too long.
And he had been putting maintenance off! With so many things going on at once, it had fallen to the wayside.
He still had too many things to focus on instead of that.
The Exhibition.
His fainting spell.
The celebration of sponsors.
Kissing Robert in the rain.
He didn’t pay attention to the pain.
He should have paid attention.
If he had had anything to say about Hyde’s body, it was that it was wrong to inhabit.
Too small, too bendy. The ticking of their Mechanism wasn’t the quick, constant ticktick–ticktick he was used to, but a slower, inconsistent Tick–Tock–Skip–Tock.
The legs that weren’t his own stumbled underneath him as he tried to make it to The Society before anyone noticed him.
Jekyll’s body was long. Unwieldy and unstable. Too predictable and restrained. Every muscle fought against Edward as he tried to push himself.
It hurt to be this again.
The Society was close.
He punched Frankenstein.
He hadn’t meant to! It was just– The first reaction he had.
He was cornered, threatened.
She knew about him and Hyde. She wanted to know more.
If he let her know more then she would find out about their Mechanism, if he let her find out about their Mechanism she would want to—
See it
Look at it
Experiment on it
So he turned to the violence singing in his veins, louder than it had been since Hyde became a physical form. Then, he ran and locked himself in his office.
Destroying everything in there had always been an inevitability. He just hadn’t expected there to be an accompaniment of questions regarding his existence.
At least he was in his own body again.
Being tied to a chair was unpleasant, but it had happened before, it would happen again.
But being called incompetent?
Unacceptable.
Absolutely, completely, irrevocably Unacceptable.
He would Not allow it, No matter what Jekyll said.
Admitting that he wanted to be Good enough.
The idea that Robert could be cruel enough to send him to a hospital.
Trying to sink into the subconscious permanently.
Actually communicating with Hyde.
Escaping to the safe house.
Everything happened so fast.
They were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking Darjeeling and having breakfast.
Edward didn’t really like Darjeeling, but Robert always looked so happy that he remembered Jekyll’s ‘favourite’ tea and made it just the way he preferred.
‘It has many health benefits, even if it is more bitter than I prefer.’
Edward scrunched his nose.
“He says thank you.” was what he said instead.
Robert smiled, his eyes soft and warm, but his mouth wavered slightly. Like he was troubled greatly.
Edward wasn’t good at this part, but he still had to try.
“What’s got you thinking so hard?”
It sounded harsher than he intended, but his voice was so rough that everything that left his mouth was harsher than he wanted it to.
‘You sounded concerned enough to me’
Which barely meant anything to Edward, other than– for some reason –Jekyll was good every social interaction. Better than they had ever been as Jonny d’Ville.
Robert sighed and his eyes drifted to his hands, wrapped around his much larger mug of coffee. He bit his lip.
For the longest time, they had both been infatuated with how much the other man looked like he had always just walked out of an idealistic painting. Seeing him upset was wrong.
“Why didn’t you tell me? In the beginning?”
He tilted his head to the side.
“Tell you? About splitting ourself in half?” At Robert’s nod, he sighed and set his tea down. “The only thing that Jekyll has ever wanted since he met you, was to be good enough for you. He’s never wanted that before, you know.”
“To be good enough?”
Edward shrugged.
“What do you think pirates traveling time and space do?” he grinned crookedly, “It’s not the most morally pure thing to do with your time. When we were Jonny d’Ville, we were more violence than human. Then… we met you.”
He sighed and his grin melted into a smile.
“You’re just– You’re the first person who we’ve loved, you know, in that way, and I wanted to be just as deserving of your love as you already were of mine.”
He stared at his hands, that had the blood on them, invisible to everyone but him.
“But I wasn’t, and if you knew that I was a part of him… would he have ever been good enough?”
Robert grabbed his hand and squeezed hard enough that it could have hurt, if he wasn’t used to much worse pain over millennia.
“Edward, you and Henry have always– will always be good enough. Even when you forget me long after I’m dead, please remember that you’ve always been more than good enough.”
“As if we could just forget you.” Edward snorted. “And, well, there’s always The Option. Immortality isn’t something I would wish on my worst enemy, but I—”
Edward’s voice grew rougher than before.
“I couldn’t deny you anything you’d want.”
“Let’s do it.”
“We understand if you don’t– what?”
Robert’s eyes were bright and determined. He’d never seen him look like that before. It was like meeting him for the first time all over again.
“Let’s talk through what that means first!” Henry managed between coughing up viscous green globs, “Not that I don’t want you with me– us forever, but I don’t want you, a thousand years down the line, regretting your decision and hating us all the same.”
Robert huffed through his nose impatiently, rolled his eyes, and smiled at him, fondly exasperated.
“Alright, let’s talk it through.”
Talking it through included a lot more than he wanted to discuss in a single sitting. Robert’s feelings, Hyde’s and his own feelings, where they overlapped and diverged in fears and insecurities.
The hardest part was discussing how Mechanization happened.
“It’ll be painful.”
“And what surgery isn’t?”
He had to admit that Robert had a strong point.
“I don’t know how to do it myself,” he bit his lip and shifted nervously. “I’d have to ask Carmilla to teach me how, but there’s a chance she won’t. She’s very particular about who she tells these things to– its something I didn’t used to understand, but we do now –she might demand that she do it instead.”
That caused him to hesitate.
“… I’ll think about it.”
Months passed, and neither of them brought up the topic. It wasn’t that the conversation was over, just put on the backburner for a little bit longer.
There was a crater in the garden, one that hadn’t been there the day before. It was still smoking from the heat of entering the atmosphere, what ever it was that did so.
Edward was currently alone, Robert had his reputation to upkeep, The Lodgers had their sponsors to keep happy, and Dr. Frankenstein and they couldn’t stay in the same room without there being some type of mischief about, so it was for the good of everyone else’s sanity that their activities were somewhat supervised.
And an alone Edward was a bored Edward. A bored Edward would do just about anything to not be bored.
So he went to investigate.
‘It’s not a good idea,’ Jekyll reproached. ‘What if the police sees us?’
“It’s been months, who would even be looking that long? Besides, it’s the middle of the night and in our back yard.”
As he leaned over the lip of the crater to get a look, he saw a figure.
It looked like a human, but between the wispy smoke and the cloud covered sky, it was hard to take in specifics.
Edward did the next most obvious thing. He started to climb down to get a better look.
‘How are you planning on getting out? It’s not like there are stairs!’
He scoffed and waved his arm in a random direction. “I’ll figure it out, I’m good at figuring things out.”
‘We’re really not.’
He didn’t dignify that with a response.
Getting down the the bottom might have involved tripping over a rock– or was it a branch? It was too dark to see – and rolling the rest of the way down.
He really tried to hide the fact that it hurt, but there wasn’t a good way to hide from himself.
You really should have thought it through a bit more before going down. I think that one of the bones in our leg is broken.’
He scoffed as he stood unsteadily, his leg refusing to hold the amount of weight it usually did. “It’ll be find in a couple of hours, a day at most.”
What was important was that he was finally at the bottom, and that mattered so much more to him than a measly broken bone. He knew that Jekyll was more curious than he let on, too. He just refused to admit it because he was just being obstinate.
‘You forgot that I can hear your internal monologue again, didn’t you?’
Edward rolled his eyes and got closer to the figure.
It was definitely a person, though he still had no idea how they ended up in a smoking crater, or if…
“Are they even alive?”
‘Just what we need! A murder blamed on you!’
“How does any of this look like a murder? We’ve seen a good many over the millennia, Henry, and if you can recall any that look like this and have been blamed on the owner of the property, I’ll be impressed to bits.”
Jekyll didn’t reply. Winning an argument against him felt nice.
‘Let’s just… get closer already. I can’t tell anything about them at this vantage point.’
Edward rolled his eyes, but obliged all the same.
The person sprawled at the bottom of the crater was thin and so sickly pale that she almost appeared grey. Her thin square glasses were crookedly perched on the tip of her nose, and her long, dark coat was too warm for the summer weather.
There was no doubt for who it was they were looking at.
Nastya.
Dragging her out of the crater and inside involved far too much of struggling to climb out of the crater. Enough that, as much as he hated to admit it, his leg was most definitely broken enough that their healing factor was going to slow down to that of a mortal length of time for healing.
Of the two, giving himself a cast was twice as difficult compared to treating Nastya’s injuries, as hers were mostly radiation damage from being out in space with no protection.
He had no clue how he was going to explain this whole issue to Rachel when she visited in the morning.
He’d already broken her trust with the whole ‘him and Jekyll were the same person’ fiasco. Breaking down that he was an immortal former space pirate, and that the random woman staying in one of his medical guest rooms was his adopted sister felt like an insurmountable task.
She would ask questions if he didn’t, though. If not about Nastya, or about his suddenly broken leg, then the giant crater in the back garden would force her hand.
Rachel was much more accepting of the situation than he thought she’d be, thankfully.
“Is there anything, and I do mean literally anything, that you have been keeping from me that might come up in the near future?”
Edward made a show of actually thinking about it before answering.
“No, I don’t think so. Any issues from here on out are either Issues with the Society, me issues, or immortal former space pirate problems!” he grimaced, “If any new issues aren’t caused by any of those three things, I’ll also be surprised.”
She rolled her eyes and delicately patted his cast.
“Well, I suppose you aren’t going to be transforming back and forth for a little bit.”
He dramatically flopped back onto the fainting couch he’d been using to keep himself upright. “I should have thought it through more before jumping into the crater, but as soon as I thought there might be a person down there– I didn’t even know it was her –we couldn’t just leave her down there.”
She hummed softly as she opened the curtains a bit, he hissed a bit at the sudden onslaught of light and she laughed.
“It was very nice of you. I’m sure she’ll thank you once she wakes up.”
She did not, in fact, thank him when she woke up.
Rather, the second that she was awake enough to register that someone was checking her normal sluggish pulse, she shot him.
When he was alive enough to think, he could hear Jekyll laughing at him, and people call him the bastard of the two.
“Rude of you,” he muttered, irritated. “Not like I fucked up my leg to need a cast while pulling you out of the crater.”
She was stone faced and said nothing.
There was, he thought, the issue of the fact that he did not look very much like Jonny d’Ville, other than his hair being an unruly mess. The only way to clear up the misunderstanding would also get him shot again.
“Mom says hi, by the way.”
He thought that it was worth it to see the realization in her eyes and the way her nose scrunched up in annoyance, before she pulled trigger.
He woke back up to his Mechanism being tinkered with. The only reason he didn’t start to panic was because of the torrent of never ending Sprussian (space Russian). He’d never fully learned the language, but he could make out the annoyance in her tone.
Well, that and several insults that were heavily used against him regularly.
“What’s got you so worked up? I’ve been taking care of it my best!”
She made eye contact with him, and he noticed that she had used welding slag to fix her glasses. It was a fix that hadn’t been needed earlier.
‘When did she have time for that?’
He didn’t have an answer for Jekyll, unfortunately.
She raised one of her eyebrows in disproval.
“There’s been no maintenance for the past century and a half, at least, not to mention that the tempo is all wrong.”
She was huffed and stuck the screwdriver she had been using back into his Mechanism. He was pleased to note that she had numbed the area before she started, at least.
“Oh! The tempo! Well, if you hadn’t shot me twice, I could have told you about that. Due to circumstances that were my fault but had completely unforeseen consequences, that’s the normal tempo when we look like this. It’s working fine otherwise”
She moved a gear that had apparently slipped at some point back in place. “‘When we look like this?’ Explain in more detail now of I will shoot you again.”
Ugh. Why was she being so annoying?
‘You are leading her on for answers.’
Not the point!
“It’s a long story,” She glared at him coldly. “but long story short, I split my soul in half. One half of me looks like this, and my Mechanism sounds like that. The other me– Henry –looks exactly like you’d expect, if a bit more neat. Mechanism sounds what you’re used to as well.”
She stared at him for a long time, long enough that Jekyll started to get antsy. Granted, that didn’t usually take very long for him, but Nastya wouldn’t hurt them, not in a way that mattered, anyway. There was no reason for them to get antsy.
The narrative digresses, though.
“Where are the others?” The way her tone sounded was like she was expecting Marius to waltz in at any moment. “They must have thought that you doing that to yourself by accident was hilarious.”
“Not here,” he didn’t like to think about them often, but when it came to vague answers, she could be worse than a dog with a bone. “They left me on the planet a century or two ago, long before I managed this. They haven’t been back, and it isn’t like with what happened with Brian, where we actually sent a message when we were getting ready to leave and he wanted to stay and we just forgot to go back for him later.”
He sniffed, and was half horrified to realize that his eyes were watering.
“You’ve been alone?” he frown deepened at his nod. She screwed the bronze casing of his Mechanism back into its rightful place. “Well, I’m here now, and I’m not going to allow you so long between maintenance sessions again.”
He hadn’t had the chance to introduce Nastya to anyone before Carmilla sent him a letter.
The letter stated that his ‘lovely paramour’ was ‘incredibly brave’ and had an ‘amazing surprise’ for him, waiting at her Yorkshire home, whenever he felt like ‘Dropping by.’
Followed by the fact that no one had seen Robert since he last left, and the letter was his only lead.
Getting from London to Yorkshire as a wanted man with a broken leg was going to be difficult without factoring in a four hour carriage ride.
At least Nastya was willing to order a carriage. Shoving him into a an overly large suitcase was ‘Just the stress relief she needed,’ apparently.
Spending a handful of hours in a suitcase was boring, but Jekyll came up with enough worst case scenarios to occupy themselves with them.
What if Robert was hurt? Why were he and Carmilla in contact? What was the surprise?
None of the scenarios were very productive or positive, but arguing with his Other Half about each option would have been very fun, if Robert hadn’t been so nerve-wracking.
The suitcase was tugged from the carriage and tumbled to the ground roughly. The carriage was long gone by the time he was let out of it. At least Nastya was kind enough to help him up from the ground.
He was sure the only reason was that the cast made him look more than a little pathetic.
Knocking on the door was a quick affair.
Standing there, however…
The seconds stretched into minutes. His leg ached from the odd angle the suitcase had put it in, his weight pressed against it at an awkward angle or two. Once five had past he had knocked again
Eventually, after half an eternity, the door opened, and it was not Carmilla who opened it.
“What on Earth happened to you?”
Robert looked… fine. More than fine, even.
Ever since Jekyll had told Robert about the whole issue of his immortality, the other man had always looked lost… Grief-stricken, almost. Edward wasn’t quite sure when they’d stopped noticing it.
But that grief hadn’t been hanging around him when he had opened the door. No, he looked excited, enough that he almost didn’t notice Edward’s cast at first.
He most definitely didn’t notice Nastya at all.
“Oh thank God you’re okay!” He attempted to jump into Robert’s arms, “What are you– Did Carmilla– What happened? All we heard was that you went missing, and then we get a letter about you and her having a ‘surprise?’ Do you know how scared Jekyll was?”
Robert wrapped his arms around him, squeezing him tightly for just a few seconds.
“Oh darling, I didn’t mean to worry either of you,” he murmured softly into Edward’s ear. “I know that you both wanted to talk about this more, but the last time I brought it up you just… there was this look on your face. Like you were forced to weigh what you wanted against what you were supposed to say.”
His arms tightened for a moment, “I thought an executive decision would be more appropriate for this, anyways.”
Edward buried his nose against Robert’s neck. For some reason, His Mechanism sounded like it was in Jekyll’s tempo and his own at the same time. “What does that even mean?”
Jekyll was pacing. It was less of a physical pacing, and more flickering against the myriad of reflected surfaces around them, his and Edwards emotions knotting together like a frayed jump rope as he muttered to themselves. ‘How could he– Why would he– He said that he would be okay with talking more about it first!’
“You were right about the amount of pain, I’ll admit, and I wouldn’t go around telling any of your Lodgers about where your mother lives. I think she was a bit too excited to continue making immortals again, and if they found out that they could talk her into it?” He scoffed, “I’m afraid that we’d have and uncountable number of undying rogue scientists skulking about London forevermore.”
“You didn’t think to tell us before you did it?!” He half yanked himself out of Robert’s grip, the attempt was mostly ineffectual due to his stupid leg. He ignored the part of himself and Jekyll that was afraid Robert would just disappear if he let go. “You said that you’d be okay with talking it through more before going through with it, we—”
He bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.
“We promised not to lie to each other again.”
Robert softly wiped the red away from his lips, with soft fingers that Henry had hoped to never bathe in blood.
“I’m… I didn’t think about that.” he didn’t apologize, admitting he hadn’t thought about their perspective was the apology. He grabbed one of Edwards hands and squeezed “It won’t happen again, darling, but…”
Edward’s erratic Tick–Tock–Skip–Tock-ing of his Mechanism felt louder in his ears than it should have, for some reason.
“What the hell happened to your leg?”
He could have done without Nastya and Carmilla having what could have passed for their version of a tearful reunion as Robert held him like a beloved stuffed toy after he had explained what had happened to result in needing a cast in the first place.
He didn’t mind being held, though. So casually as if it was breathing.
Robert had his Mechanism in the same place as him. The exact same place.
His heart.
It felt…
He wasn’t sure.
On one scale, he knew how painful it was, to have your heart taken out of your chest, replaced with cold bronze and rigid gears. how it felt for carbon tubing to attach to fleshy arteries. How it hurt even when the area was numbed as much as medicine could allow, and sometimes even the medicine needed to do even that was too limited to give such a comfort.
On the other… this was proof. Clear, undeniable, irrefutable proof, that they were connected. That Robert loved him. Loved him enough to go through that type of pain so that he would never ever leave them.
“I could have held your hand, if you’d have told us.”
He was getting vulnerability everywhere. Eugh. Did he really need to do that in front of Nastya?
Speaking of, he heard her snort behind them.
Robert looked up at her and raised an eyebrow. “And you are?”
“Disgusted to see my brother being saccharine.”
He scrunched his nose up. “Nastya, don’t be mean to him.”
Robert’s eyes lit up in recognition, and he gave his most charming smile. “Oh, I’ve heard quite a lot about you. I would offer you my hand, but that would necessitate letting Edward go.”
Despite Robert’s efforts working on Edward and Jekyll, Nastya was unaffected, as immune to men and their otherwise irresistible wiles as always.
“Pleasure to meet you.” despite her tone implying otherwise.
It was most likely not the best first impression.
Meeting a man who would submit himself to what could be classified as torture, just for the guarantee that he wouldn’t be forgotten by one person, when she actively gave up that happy ending centuries ago with her own lover…
Edward wondered if she had ever allowed herself grieve.
Like many things he did, Edward impulsively blurted out “I think you’ll both find something you can both agree on. Especially once we’re out of this stupid cast.”
Robert’s lips curled into a more genuine smile. “Oh? What could that be?”
Edward huffed, annoyed that he had to spell everything out.
“You’ll both love to scold me about being too rash and impulsive.”
Robert laughed, only loud enough for Edward to feel the breath of it ruffle his hair, and Nastya rolled her eyes.
‘I don’t… think I’ll mind this, if this is what the rest of forever is like.’
Edward was willing to agree with Jekyll on that.