Hello, It's Mrs. Hyde

Prologue Scn.3- The Land of Untold Stories (Part I - The Silent Girl)

Jessica (Narration):
*"There are places where time forgets to move. Where reality doesn't quite breathe.
I don't remember hitting the ground. Just the sound of gravel shifting under my body and the cold sting of wind that smelled like stone and rust.

Wonderland had been a fever dream.
The Enchanted Forest — a home stolen by grief.
But this place... this was exile."*

When Jessica's body hit the dirt, her breath punched from her lungs like a prayer she hadn't meant to speak. She lay still beneath the jagged sky, blinking up at a world so gray and hollow that even the clouds looked as if they'd given up trying to move.
There were no trees.
No color.
Just iron gates that loomed before her — wrought with ancient carvings and barbed with cruelly twisting thorns — and two armored guards who looked as if they hadn't smiled in centuries.
She didn't try to run.
Didn't even try to speak.
"Another one," one muttered, nudging her side with the butt of his halberd.
"She awake?"
"She's breathing."
"Name?"
Silence.
Jessica stared ahead, unblinking.
The taller of the two bent down. "Oi. Girl. Name. Origin. Offense."
Still nothing.
Her mouth was dry. Her limbs felt like dust. Everything inside her — every name, every reason, every word — had turned to ash.
"Is she mute?" the shorter one grunted, grabbing her arm roughly to pull her to her feet.
She stumbled but didn't fight.
"Resister?" the other asked, pulling out a parchment.
"No. She's just... empty."

They dragged her — wrists bound, eyes dull — through the black-iron gates and down a long corridor of cracked stone. The prison fortress loomed around them like a living thing, its walls whispering in a tongue she didn't understand. Torches flickered against damp gray walls. Chains clinked somewhere deep in the distance.
The guards didn't speak to her again. They didn't have to.
This was a place that didn't require introductions.
She was nothing here. And that was fine.
She had nothing left to be.

The doors to the Warden's chambers creaked open with a groan that echoed like a beast rousing from sleep.
Jessica was shoved to her knees on the worn tile floor of a chamber lined with tall glass windows that showed only mist beyond. A vast desk stood at the center — papers and scrolls neatly stacked, a decanter of deep crimson wine half full, a single candle flickering near the edge.
And behind it stood Hyde.
He wore a long black coat with silver detailing, his hair pulled back neatly, the lines of his face carved in practiced control. His eyes, however — sharp and shadowed — flicked down to the girl before him with a subtle furrow of the brow.
Jessica didn't look up.
She stared at the floor as if the cracks might swallow her whole.
The silence stretched.
Hyde took a slow sip of his wine, then set the glass down with a soft click.
"You're new."
Nothing.
"I'll ask once, and only once, out of respect." His voice was smooth, confident. Almost bored. "Who are you, and why were you dropped like a sack of bones at my front gates?"
Jessica's eyes flicked slightly — just once — to his boots. Then back to the floor.
Hyde narrowed his eyes.
The guards shifted awkwardly.
"She hasn't spoken since we found her," one offered. "Won't speak. Won't blink, barely."
"Is that so?" Hyde mused, circling the desk. His boots echoed on the stone. "We don't get many volunteers in the Land of Untold Stories. Most are running from something. Or someone."
Still nothing.
He crouched, bringing himself eye level with her.
And that's when he saw it — not defiance, not fear — but the unmistakable void behind her gaze. The hollowed-out grief of someone who had lost the very last thing tethering them to the world.
It was a look he knew well.
Hyde stood slowly, exhaling through his nose.
"She's broken."
The guards nodded.
"Shame."
He turned to them, already bored again. "Put her in the North Wing. Third level. Cell 3. Solitary."
"And if she refuses to eat again?"
Hyde's eyes flicked to Jessica one last time. "Then let her starve. I don't coddle ghosts."

Jessica (Narration):
*"They shoved me into a cell barely big enough to lie down in.
I didn't care.
No light.
No warmth.
Just a single thought spinning endlessly like a wheel I couldn't break free of:

'He said she would live. We had a deal.'"*

She didn't speak for ten days.
Didn't eat.
Didn't cry.
She replayed Rumplestiltskin's smirk in her mind like a cursed lullaby. The warmth of Alice's hand on her shoulder. The weight of Jefferson's eyes full of betrayal. The sound of the vial, red as blood, being corked and pocketed.
Over and over again.
And still, every night, without fail, the door to her cell would open at precisely 8 PM.
And Hyde would be there.
With a tray of food she didn't touch.
And a glass of Syrah, deep red and fragrant.
He'd sit outside her cell. Never asked questions.
Sometimes he'd read. Sometimes he'd talk to her about politics, or magic, or the idiocy of the Red Queen.
She never answered.
Until one night... something changed.
The scent hit her first — dark chocolate, sugar, and cherries.
She looked up.
Her eyes found his.
Hyde smirked behind the bars, holding a small silver dish with a single cherry-filled chocolate inside.
Her breath hitched. It had been so long.
"So you do like sweets"
he smirked, casually.
Jessica blinked at him — then, slowly, for the first time since she arrived, her lips parted.
"How... did you know I liked cherry chocolates?"
Hyde didn't falter. "Call it a hunch. I thought... perhaps a change in approach was in order."
He handed her the dish through the bars.
Jessica hesitated... then took it.
She didn't eat it.
Not yet.
But she held it in her hands like it was something sacred.

Later that evening, after a long pause, she asked softly, "Do you have showers here?"
Hyde raised a brow. "Not quite. But the Land has hot springs unlike anything you've ever known. Soothing. Cleansing. The kind of place where silence doesn't hurt as much."
Hyde leaned forward. "You're free to bathe, my dear. However, in exchange Would you consider telling me who you are? What you've seen?"
Her eyes grew glassy.
"I don't even want to say his name."
"Whose?"
"...Rumplestiltskin."
The word hit the air like a curse.
Hyde's eyes darkened before asking her
  "What did he do to you?"
Jessica swallowed thickly. "He said he could help me control my powers. Said he could save my sister. But instead he.. took everything from me..and now..I have nothing."
One tear slipped down her cheek before she turned away.
"I don't want to talk anymore."
Hyde didn't press.
But when she looked up again, her cell door was open.

He stood just outside, his coat catching the flickering torchlight, and smiled at her — not kindly, but with curiosity. With something that resembled understanding.
"Then don't speak. Just listen."
She stared at him.
"A word of caution upon residing here.There's another part of me," he said. "A man called Dr. Jekyll. A coward. A monster in the body of a gentleman. He lives inside me like rot in my bones. I fight him every day."
Jessica didn't move.
Hyde's eyes sharpened.