The Glass Scientists micro-fanfictions

A pitiful state

"And I can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, this venture shall be mutually beneficial for all parties involved." the doctor concluded, each and every word that rolled from his tongue having been well rehearsed to the point where all sincerity had been quite crushed out of it. It did not matter if there was even a lick of truth in anything he said, what mattered to him was that what he had said was what the others that sat before him on the table had wanted him to say. He let the smile that had adored his features linger even after his speech had reached its conclusion, feeling significantly safer behind the falsities than dare slip into something even slightly more sincere.

Henry would like to think that things were going quite well, so much so that he could almost ignore the uncomfortable throbbing in his temples and sinuses that had plagued him from almost the very second he had sat down before his audience. Headaches, migraines and all manner of aches and pains were not uncommon for him, even with their frequency increasing in the last few months, and so he knew that he was capable of grinning and bearing it.

As the murmurs and mumbling carried on, the good doctor, and inconspicuously as he could, brought his handkerchief to his nose. It was feeling oddly wet and he felt as if it would be wildly improper to leave unchecked. Unfortunately, however, as he brought his hand back down he discovered the little cloth was dotted with a speckling of blood. He didn't know for sure if the blood was real or just a vivid hallucinations brought on by a mixture of his headache and the influence of his chemicals lingering in his body. This was not altogether out of the question, it would not be the first time his mind - if he could really still call it that - had conjured up strange visions of blood in impractical moments of stress and discomfort, and so had no real way of determining whether what he was seeing was truly real. 

"Are you quite alright, doctor?"

He must have been looking down for too long. He could have kicked himself, cursed himself through all the layers of hell and right back again. He could have crumbled away into dust right there and then to avoid having to acknowledge his glaring social faux pas. But what did he do? Why, Henry Jekyll just repeated the same tired old shtick he always did. He forced the smile right back onto his face, just as stable as it would have been if it hadn't fallen away at all.

"I'm quite well, my good lady," the man lied with such perfect sincerity, "I must apologise if I did something to worry you."

Even to his own ears, his lie seemed obviously false, but he was a master of insincerity and so it seemed that those in attendance took what he said at face value. He was not the only one there that was hiding away under a layer of masks, even if it might feel as such to him, and so they understood the importance of a necessary lie. Why, each and every one of those fine folk gathered there had spoken their fair share of lies to dismiss any concerns for their condition or to draw a conversation back to a more comfortable topic. There was a sort of necessity to lies, especially for those of higher classes, there being something altogether unseemly about pure and complete sincerity.

The truth was, Jekyll was far from alright. He could not really recall the last time he was alright, but this was something more. It felt almost as if he had been hit over the head with a shovel not once or twice but a good half a dozen times - how did he know the specifics of this? He really did not want to think of the implications of this little bit of knowledge - and was left to manage the results himself. He took a deep breath, tried very hard to ignore the way this shuddered uncomfortable, and threw himself back into the moment, his tapped smile hurting the corners of his mouth. 'Tapped' being a quite literal description of his smile given that he had trained himself into it by tapping his cheeks to try and mirror the shape of the smile he saw upon the faces of the gentry.

"My god! Doctor Jekyll?"

What?

Had something happened to him?

His head felt fuzzy, as if it was not quite his own, but not in the way it felt before he outright lost himself.

It was quite a shame, really, the pretty white tablecloth that they had brought out just for the dinner was quickly being stained a terrible red. Oh, Henry had to hope it would not stain, he would hate to have been the reason the cloth could not be used again, it was a delicate thing, and a waste of good lace to have to dispose of it so soon. And his gloves...

"Would you excuse me a moment?" asked the doctor when he realised that it was his own blood that had ruined not only his gloves when he went to investigate and the evening itself.

With his hand to his face, a fruitless attempt at stopping the flow of blood that dropped from his nose in a slow buy steady stream, he rose to his feet, staggered weakly as his head span dangerously, making it all too likely that if he did not let his other hand clutch at his chair he would have fallen right over. With an awkward bow of his head, apologetic and mortified, he swallowed not daring to speak again, not trusting his voice, but wincing a little at the metallic taste of his own blood that followed this . 

The last thing that those good folk that had come out to meet the doctor and hear what it was he had to say saw of him was a pitiful, shaking shape staggering off in the direction of the bathroom in an attempt to clean himself, or at the very least slow the bleeding down to something more manageable.