Did we ever know who I was?

The repercussies

The faintest sounds of the downpour just outside the large study window, hidden behind a heavy, familiar curtain, was not quite enough to distract from the almost suffocating energy of the room. The candlelight usually produced a cosy, welcoming atmosphere, but now it just seemed to stretch the shadows out to impossible lengths, uncanny and twisted as they flickered and danced near independently from the movements of the two men. There was something to the silence they shared, far from their usual comfortable silence, one formed from years of familiarity, but instead left a peculiar uncomfortable ringing in their ears. 

"I know that it is difficult for you, Henry," Utterson spoke as the silence grew unbearable, his tone cool to the point of a near disconnect, "But I must ask you to talk straight for once. Tell me now, and I swear to you nothing shall leave this room, what have you done?"

In the most kindly way possible, the man across from the lawyer looked frankly awful. Gabriel, over the many years the two had known each other, had come to expect certain things from the doctor. He prided himself in his appearance, a firm believer in the notion that as long as one can maintain a presentable face then the world was at their fingertips, for people rarely cared enough to look beyond the surface. Even when he was in one of his peculiar, erratic moods, he still had a certain fastidious care for his appearance that was almost excessive.
The Henry Jekyll that sunk into his chair, housecoat drawn tight around him, was lacking in this. Heavy bags weighed at his dark eyes, his salt and pepper hair unbrushed. It seemed he could barely bring himself to straighten his undershirt, and it was enough to leave Utterson feeling a little nauseous in a way he could not quite explain away further than a body reaction to the uncomfortable situation.   

"Do you recall, Gabe," the doctor began, his voice heavy with an existential exhaustion, "When we were younger, Hastie called me a confounding variable? I cannot quite remember what it was that I had said to annoy him back then, but I feel that is rather trivial in the long term. Isn't it a shame? That he was proven to be quite right, and now we cannot see how smug he was sure to be if he were to know this?"

"Henry-" Utterson began with a warning.

"Not to worry," the good doctor returned, hands raised in a pacifying sort of fashion, "There is a point to all that I am saying. You've asked me to be honest, Gabriel, and I shall, but you must humour me a moment. It is true what you've said, honestly like this is rather unfamiliar for me."

"You're quite right," came the reply, the statement left intentionally ambiguous as to what part of this the lawyer found the more evident truth within, "Do continue."

Despite his previous protest at having been interrupted, it was Jekyll himself that delayed the continuation of the conversation. His hands shook somewhat, some strange mixture of exhaustion, anticipation and that of which once distilled in glass before it was sent to shatter and spill as it was when he had been found, no doubt playing havoc on his nerves. The tea, tea that Utterson had called for when he realised how alarmingly cold the doctor was to touch, had been left to cool to near-lukewarm, but he still sought some degree of comfort in drawing the cup up to his temple. It was a habit that the lawyer recalled from their youth, an attempt to soothe an ache in his wretchedly busy brain, and he found his heart ached in sympathy over what unspoken torment the man before him must have been suffering through at that moment. 

With a sigh, Henry Jekyll finally spoke. 

"As I said, it is an established fact that I pose a confounding variable in my life, but it seems I ought to have taken Hastie's words as warning, advice that I made the fool's decision to not heed as I ought. You see, while I refined my work to the finest degree, I made the mistake of relying upon my calculations without factoring in any external factors that might influence the eventual success of my work." Henry paused, taking the sort of sip from his tea that suggested he was seeking out the words he needed from what he could gather from the response. "Had the formula been presented to a pure, untarnished subject, the Hyde - do you appreciate that? I hoped you'd find it amusing, I know you've always had an appreciation of terrible puns - would have remained within the boundaries of a manageable cognitive and aesthetic shifts without the risk of a total loss of individual identity in the process."