It was in the late evening. The sky was dark, some stars already to be seen through the typical London fog.
A young woman was on her way back home from a friend's place where she had studied the whole afternoon. She walked through the streets and alleys she knew so well until she suddenly heard a man's scream. She decided to investigate what had caused a man to scream although it was probably just some drunken man that got in a fight with each other.
As she carefully looked around the corner into an alleyway where the noise seem to came from she saw a single man standing in the street. Due to the limited light from a lantern in the next street she couldn't make out more than the silhouette of this relatively small man would he be compared to others but not too small that it would be an extraordinary difference.
The man stared down at something at his feet and as she took a few steps into the alleyway to get closer she saw that there was another man lying on the ground.
She thought the man to be unconscious but soon she saw how a red liquid slowly but steadily spreading out from underneath him.
As she approached the other man suddenly looked over to her; his green eyes wide open that they nearly seemed to shimmer a bit in the dim moonlight coming through the clouds. Strands of pitch black hair were partly hanging into his face; even more underlining his pale skin. His eyes held a look of terror as he took a glance to the presumably dead man, then to his hands and finally back to her again. He seemed to want to utter some words but he couldn't bring out anything clear.
Suddenly shouts were echoing around the street corner, the heavy footsteps of police boots announced the soon arrival of the authorities.
The man's eyes widened as he realized what the sound was. He turned in her direction and started stumbling to her, still more staring at his hands than the actual way he was going.
For some reason she felt pity for the man and, although he probably just killed another person, she grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the alleyway and through the streets of London. He didn't resist or say anything and just followed where she lead. Confused by herself and by her reflexive action to save him from authorities she brought him to her apartment and bid him to sit down when they arrived.
She took a closer look on him in his simple but still kind of expensive looking clothes that were obviously tailored to fit him perfectly, which gave his appearance this strange combination of elegant clothing yet somehow untrustworthy look. In the better light she noticed splatters of blood on his face and knuckles and he was slightly shaking. She fetched a bowl of warm water and a cloth and began to clean his hands. He tried to hold his hands still and let her do so without saying anything. When she was finished with his hands she carefully began to clean his face. He looked up from his hands and into her eyes, not understanding what was happening.
"Why?", he asked in a hoarse voice, breaking the silence between them.
She wiped off the last drop of blood from his face before answering.
"I don't know."
He looked down at his hands again.
"Will you hand me in?"
"No."
He nodded barely noticeable.
"I should go."
He stood up and walked to the front door where he stopped for just a second to look back to her again over his shoulder.
"And thank you."
"You're welcome."
He left her apartment and disappeared into the night.
She didn't think she would ever see him again until he kept coming back to her apartment from time to time. Most times he was fleeing from the police. She never asked what he had done or where the blood came from she took care of. They didn't talk much and it was okay for both of them. Without words they had come to the agreement that he could always come to her when he needed to hide for some time. This went on for several weeks that turned to months. Sometimes he came for no apparent reason other than just to visit her. For some reason he seemed to have decided to trust her, but she herself wasn't so sure about him. She saw that he killed someone and yet she wasn't really afraid of him. Most people would see that as naive or dumb but she didn't feel the need to fear him. He could've harmed her many times by now and yet he was peaceful around her; ignoring the fact that she could always tell the authorities. But she didn't. There had formed this strange kind of trust between them that they both were aware of yet they did not talk about it.
Until one fateful night...
She didn't notice it but a man had watched her apartment for a few days. He desperately needed money and she was the perfect victim. A woman living all alone might not have much to steal but even if she saw him he would have no problem to fight her and escape with whatever he could get. He broke open her door late in the night and started to collect whatever seemed of worth to sell.
However, he accidentally kicked over something that fell to the floor with a loud noise. A second later she came out of her bedroom to check what it was. When she entered the room the man stood right before her threatening her with a knife. He hadn't planned on using violence but now she had seen him and could report him to authorities. If he got rid of her now he could flee the city before someone would even notice.
Without a word he stepped towards her, lifted the knife in the air and suddenly he fell to the ground.
Behind him stood her strange friend. He had kicked the man's legs to make him fall. Now he had one foot on the man's back, pushing him to the ground and making it hard for him to breathe. The man wanted to get to his knife again which he let fall when crashing to the ground but the bones in his hand were immediately crushed under the heel of the young woman's saviour who made a few disappointed clicking sound with his tongue. Then he tapped on the floor once with something before lifting it up in the air and bringing it forcefully down on the man's head who cried out in pain. He repeated this action a few times. It was some kind of walking cane he was swinging down on the man again and again with a sheer endless amount of force and violence. In the beginning the robber still tried to scream but soon the only sound remaining in the apartment was the sound of hard wood hitting flesh and bones.
When even that sound stopped the robber's head was crushed, his face unrecognizable, blood spreading on the floor. He was undoubtedly dead.
Her saviour looked up from the corpse and right into her eyes. There was still a murderous sparkle in them that only slowly faded away. She hesitantly nodded to him in an order to tell him thank you and that she was fine and unharmed. He turned around and went back to the front door. Just when he was about to leave she spoke up:
"I never asked for your name."
He turned around and grinned at her in a devilish way.
"Hyde. My name is Edward Hyde."
Then he disappeared once more into the night, a somewhat cheerful whistling on his lips.
A/N: Written for a role-play I'm doing with my best friend. I liked our idea and wrote it out a bit. Hope you like it. Love you and Merry Christmas, honey.
