The Glass Scientists micro-fanfictions

Pestering

"How come you're allowed to go around calling yourself a doctor when I can't?"

The good Doctor Henry Jekyll paused, the tea cup halfway to his lip, one of the seemingly endless papers he was leafing through left hanging limply in the air. His brow furrowed a little. Sure, it was too much for him to think he was actually going to left to work in peace, but he was hoping to, at the very least, avoid the terribly inane questions that evidently lurked somewhere in the deeper recesses of his mind that he did not have any real need to explore unless he was really, truly and totally bored. In all fairness, however, he was presently really, truly and totally bored.  

"What?" was all he offered in reply to this, sighing just a little as he finally took a sip of his tea. It had cooled a little more than he would like, but it was tolerable and he had long since trained himself out of the ordeal of wincing or shuddering over unpleasant beverages. 

"I mean, it's a bit hypocritical, isn't it? If I get stabbed its always 'our stab wound'. If I somehow, by some great and impressive effort on my end because you are not a well man, I manage to drink more than even you are comfortable with, its 'our hangover'. Its always 'our well-being' but its only you who can go around calling himself a doctor! It's a bloody double standard and a half I tell you!" 

"You're being dramatic. It's because there is only my name on the legal documents." With this perfectly rational reply over and done with, he rested his tea cup against his temple with the particular emphasis of this being him trying to ignore any potential complaints this perfectly reasonable explanation. 

"What actually are we? I mean, we aren't exactly human anymore, are we? But we're not completely something other than human too."

It was at most an hour before Edward Hyde broke his silence again. Henry was halfway down the stairs on his way to deal with a delivery of various supplies that had been ordered directly to the Society. For one superstitious reason or another the delivery man would not enter the building, which the doctor felt was a little dramatic. Considering he would like to handle the matters directly, and the man would not enter the building, he had to put his work down to hurry off to sign things off before ensuring things could be taken off to the various parts of the building that they needed to go.

"What?" offered he in reply to this, his footsteps down the stairs not even slightly faltering to suggest his attention had shifted from what he was doing.

"People don't suddenly start crunching up and rearranging into the aesthetic form of a totally different person. I mean, I don't think they do. Not on a physical level like this. Plus I am pretty fucking incredible and regardless of what the hell you are, I know as a fact I am a great deal better than any mere human could ever hope to be! Hell, have you seen me? Could you imagine one of those proper people trying to do anything I can do without thought?"

"I would think you are arguably more human than anyone. You're a manifestation of all those little human traits one would need to release their inhibitions to even access." With this perfectly reasonable conclusion stated, he carried on his way, not particularly wanting to reflect too much on the nature of the question or where it had been drawn out of. 

"What did you really hope to get out of all this? There's no way this can be what you were hoping for, this is just dreadful really!" 

The doctor had been part way through the task of opening the door to his office again before he found himself to be caught off guard by the question. He let his hand drop from the door, and it swinging back shut again with a click that he often found satisfying in the context of it meaning he was left alone and would not need to be perceived, but instead left him staring at the closed door in front of him. There were several safe assumptions towards where this specific line of questioning had come from, and he did not want to entertain any of them because there was a reason he had left it pushed off to the side in the way he had. Simply, it was not a question that he wanted to think about because there was no particularly convincing answers he could give himself that did not feel like a blatant lie to the finest degree.

"What?" his reply was offered with all the effort he could go to in trying to not sound like the question had bothered him in the way it had, for as much as he wanted to play it off as something perfectly normal. 

"Look at you, look at your life! There is no way you went into all this bullshit with the intention of spending your days as some boring puppet smiling on command before getting locked back snuggly into a goddamned glass cabinet where they can still goddamned see you? I've spent long enough stuck in your head to know that this is driving you mad because - fuck! - its driving me up the wall! You don't want this! I don't want this! Literally nobody can want this so why the hell won't you stop playing this stupid game and accept that this isn't working? That there's more than this to the world, a world that you have actively cut yourself out of in the pursuit of something that doesn't even exist to find at all!" 

There was no way he could reply to this with any degree of rationality, and so he did what he usually did when backed into a corner. He reached for the bottle he knew would dull his thoughts for a while.