The Glass Scientists micro-fanfictions

Un/reality

"I just want to be real, and you're doing everything you can not to be. What an unfortunate pair we make!"

Henry Jekyll did not think that Edward Hyde was quite right in his assumptions. It was not that he was trying not to be real, that seemed, well, unrealistic as an aim and so it was not something he ever intended to even attempt. He had simply seen what came of those who dared to be too unabashedly real. Too sincere in themselves. Too alive for anyone's good. So no, he wasn't trying not to be real, he was simply trying to be alive above anything else, and so whatever might have needed to be carved away and sacrificed for the cause was simply, as he saw it, a necessary evil in order to achieve something that was far better. He had cultivated an existence that was safe, and to be safe was far more important than embracing some silly notion of reality could ever be, because one was a path to life and the other was a path to ruin and almost certain death. Or so he rationalised it to himself. 
Rationalised it in those long nights where he stared for hours on end to try and recognise the face staring back at him, only to give up the effort when the burning pit in his stomach threatened to engulf him and scorch him away until there was absolutely nothing left in his place but an ash of the same unrecognisable nothingness that he saw in himself. It was not always a stranger's face that stared back, but that did not mean he knew the man in the mirror. This was worse, he was sure, because it made a mockery of himself. 
Rationalised it when the well meaning and well intended complements fell flat or worse, seemed to cut deeper than if it had been an insult. An insult was easy to accept because they were, at least, completely true. A false - they all felt false now. False and undeserved - complement was the worst thing in the world because they were obligatory and so meant less than nothing. But perhaps they were the only complements that he truly deserved, as they were no more real, no more genuine than he was as a person so it suited him to be treated in the same way even if it caused an uncomfortable ache in his chest,
Rationalised it when he felt like a stranger thrown into a life, a world, a body that should never have belonged to him to begin with. After all, real people were supposed to feel real and like they really did exist but he didn't, couldn't feel that anymore. He would have wondered if he ever even knew what it was supposed to feel like, if he had ever had the chance to know, but that was a thought process he knew it was important to cut off and drown out before it had the time to make root and bring with it the horrible sense of longing for something he could not fully understand. 

"Surely you think its embarrassing that nobody even realises that they don't know who you are? But then, if you don't know then why should anyone else bother to try?"

It wasn't true that he didn't know himself, he would try to tell himself, and he never asked anyone to try and know him, to understand him or anything grand like that. It would have been easier for him, really, to genuinely not know who he was because then he would not have to deal with the thought that what he was doing, how he was living and the path his life had taken, was wrong somehow. It was easier to pretend to be the same false thing that everyone seemed to consider agreeable enough to be worth keeping around, that way nobody would ever have the need to try and look further and realise they were wrong. Wrong about him, and that he was, deep down at his core, absolutely and wretchedly wrong. He was sure he was wrong, everybody else managed to seem so much more right than he was.
Everybody else managed to get through conversations without worrying that they had roamed away from some unwritten but well known script because they knew it by heart before he was even given the chance to try and learn. So it was just easier to pretend, to follow everyone else and pretend the words felt as real to speak aloud as it did for everyone else. It had to be real for everyone else because they spoke it so easily, so well that they never put it in doubt. There was never the risk of saying something so wrong that they would know that he was so wrong and the world would then fall about around him.
Everybody else managed to move so naturally it was like a dance they were given the privilege of rehearsing before they were sent out onto the same stage he was so unceremoniously thrown onto to dance the same dance. To dance to a song that everyone else could hear but he could not even begin to imagine. Perhaps it was a right that one won when they were real, and so was lost to him because he so brazenly dared to not be real in a real society. It couldn't be easy for him because it simply was not a world that existed for him.
Everyone else made it so easy to exist and yet he was stuck there, struggling to manage what he was sure was even the barest of bare minimums. It wasn't as tragic as it seemed though, of course, because he was used to it and so the fact that he needed to take the extra steps to pretend to be real before he was to pretend to be capable of anything at all simply came as a natural progression of something that was altogether unnatural.

"Why do you make so much of an effort to surround yourself with people if you're so determined to not let them see you? It would just be so much easier to be alone rather than playing some stupid part."

It wasn't stupid. This, at least, he knew with as much certainty that he could give to anything at all in the world. There might not have been any real truth to his connections with others but it was still enough to keep himself around others and there was a safety to groups. A single gunshot into a flock of birds gives less of a chance of hitting one specific bird than aiming at a solitary bird ever could. There was no way to narrow anything at all down to just him if he was in a crowd. There would always be enough going on around them to prevent a person from realising that there was nothing even remotely sincere about him no matter how long he might be around a person. It was an easy game of misdirection, like a slight of hand magician. A game of self preservation that was born of a place of tragic necessity. Nobody needed to see how he really was.
Nobody needed to see the way his hands shook by his sides even as he balled them into fists to try and combat the crawling discomfort that raced up and down his spine in waves. He had gotten very good at combating this, to maintain the absolute stillness that was expected of him and so it would be truly disastrous if he were to let himself slip now. Now when he was supposed to be better than that. Now that he was supposed to carry things off properly, like everyone else managed to with an ease that felt unnatural to him and him alone.
Nobody needed to hear the waver in his voice, the uncertainty that he couldn't manage to train out as smoothly as he should have. Talking was always so easy for everyone else, so it was supposed to be the same for him and yet it never was, no matter how he tried. No matter how many times he addressed a crowd, a gathering of potential sponsors, those who were willing to put their faith in him and what the Society could do. It was wrong of him to try and convince anyone to listen to him if he couldn't even manage to speak without his voice threatening to betray him.
Nobody needs to see just how close he was to simply breaking behind every smile that he could curl across his features. If he could simply hold whatever false pleasantry that was expected of him at any given moment then it would be alright to not be real, because only he would know while everyone else would believe his lies. Or at least would believe them right until the moment he couldn't hold them anymore and he would finally snap like some overworked metal and ruin everything he had worked for.

"What's the use in even trying to be anything at all? If you aren't even real then there is no point in trying to convince anyone else that you are."

He wanted to be real. By whatever god out there that had not abandoned him completely, he would swear his voice hoarse if it could convince even himself that he wanted to be real. That he didn't want this. He didn't want the falseness, and that he hated how the absolute unreality of his life. But he couldn't. There was no point in it. He knew, deep down within his heart, that it was too late, that he let any chance to simply exist slip by him and so the ruin he lamented was one that he had so efficiently woven for himself. That did not mean he did not hate it. That he did not silently resent those who he saw living their life as freely and as real as they wanted, while hiding this bitterness beneath a perfectly shaped smile. They were always perfectly shaped, of course, he couldn't dare let it be anything more than absolutely and completely perfect because then everyone would see him. See that he was wrong. See that there was nothing real about him anymore. See that he was lying to them all by even pretending to be real. See that see was some wretched, selfish thing that wanted to live even if it meant he lost any and everything about himself that he could lose. There was nothing about him that was real anymore. There was no true Henry Jekyll, but he wished there was. He wished there was something to him that he could recognise as himself but he had been so willing to abandon this in favour of seeming exactly how he was supposed to seem that he was quite sure he had lost all chance to regain it even if he tried. But there was no use trying to regain it because he had already accepted that it was already gone. Irreparably and completely lost to him, and so there was no point wondering if it was ever going to be possible to try and find himself again. 
But he was alright with this, really, because it was necessary, and so because it was necessary he had no choice but to tell himself that he was alright with it otherwise the fact that he really, really was not alright with it would become so heavy that it would crush him completely. As long as everyone else thought that he was alright, though, that was all that mattered in the end. If he was not real, then how he felt about things weren't real either, so they did not matter. Or so he needed to convince himself of otherwise he would simply give up and let himself be lost to intoxicating allure of the same reality that he had so denied himself.