Title: Neither Angel Nor Beast
Author: Carmarthen (lacorneille@earthlink.net)
Fandom: Jekyll & Hyde (musical)
Disclaimer: Jekyll & Hyde, the musical, and the
character of Lucy Harris belong to Frank Wildhorn. I am making no
profit. The original book was written by Robert Louis Stevenson and
all other characters and situations were created by him; I believe the
novel is now in the public domain. The epigraphs are William
Shakespeare's.
Rating: PG for mildly disturbing imagery
Summary: Dr. Jekyll has nightmares.
Archive: My personal site (http://thewritegirls.populli.net/carmarthen); others ask.
Notes: This is an expansion of a scene from a fanfic I never
finished (one of my early Mary Sues), wherein Mary Sue herself has been
relegated to faceless, nameless servant -- a listening ear for Dr.
Jekyll. You need not fear her.
"O, what may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!"
- Measure for Measure, Act III, Scene 2
"I had a strange dream last night. A nightmare."
It was dark there, and cold. The thick smell of damp earth surrounded him, clinging to his lungs and the back of his throat. As panic rose, he screamed and beat his hands against some invisible barrier. And he knew he was naught but a child and he would die there alone, and unmourned. They would never even find the body.
"Shall I tell you about it?"
"If you like, sir."
Then the door opened and he saw the face, the face of a fallen angel, laughing and beautiful and cruel. It was a boy, he realized, perhaps twelve years of age, dark-eyed and hard-mouthed. He knew the boy.
The boy collared him roughly, dragging him out of the darkness.
He blinked, his eyes watering in the cold sunlight, and his vision cleared. They were in a garden, he and the boy, an ordinary country garden, like dozens of others in the English countryside.
The demon-boy taunted him, striking his face and shoulders, calling him coward. He ran.
The boy followed.
When they came to the cliffs, he paused, feeling a terrible mixture of fear and anticipation.
"What happened next, sir?"
"Water, please."
"Here you are, sir."
The coffin was plain black, too short, too narrow to hold the body of an adult. He watched the earth clods rain down on it and knew the demon-boy's body lay inside, broken and bloody from his fall from the white cliffs.
The darkness returned.
He washed his child's hands in the basin, watching the blood running down, down, never staining the white porcelain, never leaving his hands. His hands changed before his eyes, grew older. The blood remained.
"Too much blood...always blood...."
"Sir, you are tiring yourself. You don't have to finish."
"No -- I will finish."
The woman's body lay before him. She was young, dark and pretty, dressed in a shift that had seen better days. She could have been sleeping, yes, she must have been sleeping! Then he saw the blood staining the neckline of the shirt and the way her head lolled to one side like a broken doll and he knew she was not.
"Lucy Harris. He killed her, didn't he? She's dead."
He heard the boy's fallen angel laughter and knew he had killed her, as he had tried to kill the boy so long ago. And he knew that he had failed.
"Yes, sir, she is."
"But I am in so far in blood that sin will pluck on sin."
- Richard of Gloucester, Richard III, Act IV, Scene 2
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