Hello, It's Mrs. Hyde

Prologue - Montage: The Four-Month Accord

Jessica (Narration):
"Healing doesn't arrive like a sunrise.
It's slow. A stitch. A thread. A breath.
Four months passed in the Land of Untold Stories, and though I didn't quite belong yet...
I wasn't running anymore."

I. The Lab: Fire and Iron

The scent of scorched metal and mugwort filled the air as Jessica leaned over a stone table, carefully grinding roots into fine powder. She wore her sleeves rolled up, hair tied back, smudges of ash on her cheek. Hyde stood across from her, carefully measuring a vial's weight before sealing it with wax.
"No," Jessica said, glancing up. "Too much saffron. You'll kill the stabilizer."
Hyde raised a brow. "And here I thought poison was our fallback strategy."
Jessica gave a faint smirk. "You poison someone with saffron, at least do it on purpose."
He adjusted the measurements without protest.
Over time, their dialogue became its own kind of rhythm — curt, sharp, respectful. Not affectionate. Not yet. But built on trust, piece by piece.
Some nights they worked late, barely speaking, focused on building a serum that could dismantle duality without damaging the host.
"Still think we'll destroy him?" Jessica asked once, wiping sweat from her brow.
"If fate is kind to us," Hyde murmured.
She met his gaze.
"And if fate isn't," she said softly, "I'll help you end him myself."
He didn't thank her.
He didn't have to.

II. The Kitchen: Whispers and Warmth

Jessica leaned on the prep table, laughing as one of the cooks, a gruff woman named Sola, handed her a roll still steaming with honey.
"You're the only one who actually eats the leftovers," Sola said. "Even Hyde avoids them."
Jessica grinned. "Please. I lived off hedgeberries and moss stew for a year. This is paradise."
Guards greeted her by name now. A tall one named Bram often escorted her through the upper halls with his dog-eared notebook in hand, asking for tips on herbal treatments for insomnia. The younger stablehands waved from the yards. Some of the lower-level archivists brought her trinkets — a locket, a cracked spell coin — asking if she could identify them.
She no longer felt like a ghost.
And that alone was enough to scare her some nights.

III. Lessons and Lore

By candlelight in the alchemy wing, Jessica sketched sigils with a charcoal pencil while Hyde copied formulas into a thick ledger.
"That's the healing glyph," she said, tapping the parchment. "Layer that into the serum, it softens recoil damage."
Hyde studied it. "You draw faster than I think."
"You think too much."
He chuckled, just barely.
In return, he taught her the language of other realms — the dialects of the Broken Isles, the portal flux patterns of the Shattered Coast, the myths of the Forest of Glass.
Their lessons bled into late hours.
And one night, after cleaning up a burned-out cauldron explosion, Hyde led her not to the mess hall... but deeper into the fortress.
To the library.

IV. The Library: Where Silence Lives Softly

Books stacked from floor to ceiling, leather-bound and humming faintly with age. Jessica's breath caught as she stepped inside.
"You built this?" she asked in awe.
Hyde nodded. "Every soul who's ever lived here has contributed to it. Including me."
They began sitting by the fire after hours — each with a book in hand, sometimes reading in silence, sometimes trading stories.
Jessica would kick off her boots and curl up on the couch. Hyde sat upright, always reading at a desk first before slowly joining her. They never discussed it. It became habit.
"I didn't think I'd ever feel safe again," she whispered once.
Hyde didn't look away from his book. "You're not only safe. You're stronger now."
She smiled for real that time.

V. The Fear That Lingers

Hyde watched her sometimes when she wasn't looking.
At the lab table. At the fireplace. In the mirror as she adjusted her coat.
He didn't fear her weakness — he feared his own.
The cracks in his control.
The pressure behind his eyes when sleep was thin and thoughts too loud.
He wrote Jekyll's name at the top of a fresh page every week.

Do not let him near her.

He'd circled it a hundred times.
But fear has teeth.
And control has limits.

Jessica (Narration):
*"He tried so hard to protect me.
So hard to be nothing but what I needed.

But monsters don't knock when they enter.

And Hyde was only human after all."*