A fail-safe

:3

The tinkling of the piano just downstairs, screeching just a little from the occasional off-key note, floated through the air with every mockery of sophistication that it seemed capable of. Even as grating as the sound was, however, it served as a cover for the sounds of the midnight hour that one would be just a little less pleased to be given little other choice but to overhear. It, too, served as a buffer to mask the sort of conspiratorial conversations that were designed to be kept utterly and entirely confidential. This was the very role that the music, if one were to be kind enough to call the unskilled strikings of the keys to be music, played for the pair.

"But how'd we know it'll even work?" the first of the two, one Lucy Harris, asked, as the half-silence had begun to creep up. again.
The woman was pacing the floor with such an intensity that it was a wonder she had not carved her path into the bare wood beneath her feet. Her dark curls had been tied back into a mess of a bun, having gotten sick of feeling it brush her neck and, perhaps more poignantly, all the more sick of people touching it.

"We don't," came the reply from the second, Edward Hyde, as he managed to play the role of the more still of the two by sitting cross legged on the floor, or would be of one were to offer the dignity of ignoring the way his knee was bouncing with a pent up energy that seemed entirely impossible, "But at this point we either have the option of trying or leaving things as they are now, and I cannot imagine either of us are particularly content with this?"

The man was, at that moment, leisurely rolling a knife in his hand, the tip of the blade resting against the floor. This was taking the majority of his spare attention - he was not entirely capable of giving anything at all his full attention, and so found it easier to consider his attention to be just that, and to try and maintain it he would expend his spare attention on something that required little actual thought - until the moment he glanced up at his friend. In the poor lighting of the room, the odd green tint of his scleras seemed to glow, making his irises appear perfectly black. It was an alarming sight, so it was fortunate that over the time of their friendship Lucy had been able to get a little more accustomed to the sight than most would have. Or even most would have been willing to try for.

"Lucy my darling," Hyde continued a twitchiness to his lips as he poorly managed a series of emotions he was not entirely sure of himself, "If you spend your whole life questioning things then you doom yourself to a life of wretched stagnation and I, for one, would hate to imagine that for you. Living out your days like this, here, surrounded by naught but lecherous fools who don't - no, can't - even understand why it is that you are so much better than they are. That is why you have to trust me. On one hand you've a dance with death to survive, and keep on surviving afterwards and forever, and on the other hand you have, what? The opportunity to rot away here until the very daylight itself forgets your face?"

"All due respect," Lucy began with the sort of tone that suggested no respect was due, "That's decent enough advice if the odds are whether another drink'll leave your head achin' something fierce in the morning, not if it could get me killed."

"Do you not trust me?" the odd little man asked in a way that was remarkably sincere sounding, all things considered.

For all the sincerity, however, that did not detract from the fact the woman met this with an artful, sceptical raise of one eyebrow.

"Alright alright, but don't you forget, m'love," he returned theatrically, "I have the steady hands of a doctor!" As if to prove this he raised a hand, a hand that shook so very much that it was almost embarrassing and so he dropped it before any validity to his comment was proven false, "And a knife so sharp you'll barely feel a thing."

"Was that supposed to make me feel better?" the woman asked, her voice heavy with sighs.

"Does it make you feel worse?" came the reply.