Henrietta was left standing on the steps of Gabriel's lavish home, the smallest fragment of whatever excitement left within her shattering in an instant. She had come to him so hopeful, so vulnerable. She'd opened a part of herself and he'd allowed it to be torn to shreds in front of her very eyes.
It wasn't a defense he gave, it was a speech. He'd swept her aside and taken the reigns of her ideas, her work, and thought himself to be in the right for it. He'd flattened her voice the moment he assumed she was incapable of standing up for her own beliefs, and she hated him for it. It was as if she'd vanished in that room, the men too ignorant to notice.
For a moment she stood remarkably still, letting the rain slip off the sleeves of her dress, cascade down her face.
It helped to disguise her tears at least.
The walk back to her family home was long, and though she was thoroughly soaked to her skin upon arrival, she didn't change her clothes. She wouldn't have use for that - not when her mind was soon to be changed instead.
Through sheer luck, she was able to avoid the attention of Poole, her light footsteps masking her presence. She passed her fathers study - still in a mild state of disarray that she'd attempted to fix - and headed with bated breath towards her family library.
A makeshift lab had been set up there by her own hands, hours upon hours of manual labour. Bookcases were hauled to the side to make room for a large table, and a plethora of glasses and scientific equipment littered the thing with a level of organisation only Henrietta could hope to understand. Papers were also strewn about, filled with reams of writing and half drawn out diagrams.
This was it. Her dream immortalised.
She felt her hands curl around the moth pupae Gabriel had so dutifully bestowed upon her - like he was some pompous god answering her prayer. She'd wanted to conduct her research alone, but given he'd shown interest that morning, taking advantage of that was the quickest way to complete her experiment. And she truly needed this done fast.
The conversation she'd witnessed between Gabriel and Hastie had all but killed any hope she had left of waiting for change. If this festering anger - this hatred she held for those men, for all men, for herself, her body, her spirit, remained unchecked, she'd lose herself - and potentially her life.
Living had not been fun for her thus far - but perhaps this would finally give her the transformation she needed. Reduce her to the docile creature society expected from her, that she was beginning to fail to project.
She imagined herself years from now. Bouncing a child on one knee, tracing a hand over her stomach to feel the gentle bump beneath. Sitting still for portraits with Gabriel by her side and an emerald ring adorning her hand - the one Gabriel's mother had so dutifully offered to her when she was just nine years old. A family heirloom, she'd said, for her son's future bride.
She couldn't stop the bile from rising in her throat.
In one sharp motion she crushed the moth pupae, holding it over a vial filled to the brim with a putrid, black liquid, and allowing the crumpled body to sink into the glass. It was deeply unappealing, and she knew this well. It didn't stop her.
After giving the concoction a thorough mix, she sifted between papers for a large needle she'd stolen from the medical equipment Poole kept in his quarters - plunging it into the vial and drawing up every last drop of its contents.
For a long moment, she simply stared at it sitting in her palm. Tears pricked her eyes in nothing short of relief. She would be free of her folly, she'd succeed - or she'd poison herself.
She had no other choice but to try.
Lifting up her dress and underskirts with one hand, she exposed the skin of her inner thighs, the soft skin she despised, the porcelain skin, the woman's body, and rammed the sharp end of the needle as far as it could go, dispensing the liquid directly into her veins.
It couldn't be helped - she screamed.
The pain was immediate, and her hand quivered as she wrenched out the needle and dropped it to the floor. Shuffling backwards, she did all she could to get a handle on her heavy, laboured breathing, her chest rising and falling in unsteady bursts.
The panic that gripped her didn't exactly help matters. Besides the pain in her leg she felt nothing. No emotional change, no sudden shift in her wellbeing. She felt precisely as afraid and angry as she did moments ago.
She was almost ready to write off the experiment entirely, to topple over her table of equipment and shatter her hopes with it, when her head exploded in searing agony.
It was sharp, like a stoker taken from a fireplace and jammed directly into her skull. She screamed again - though far louder than before - gripping her scalp and staggering to the table, slamming her hip against it in her uncoordinated state. Her notes and calculations were useless as she scanned her eyes feverishly across them, the blurred lines saying nothing of a side effect this intense.
What could possibly be happening to her? What had she done wrong?
She barely had time to think before the pain had travelled all the way throughout her body, bringing her to the floor and wracking her with heavy, uncontrollable sobs. She gingerly looked up, hardly able to lift her head as she caught her reflection in the full length mirror across from her.
Something truly horrific was unfolding. Moth wings to be precise. They sprouted from her back in leathery, coarse tufts, piercing through her dress and shrouding her form in an abyss of night. Her hair had come loose from its usual neat bun, spiralling out over her shoulders in what was now sickly, pale white strands. It fell unkept over her face, concealing the horror in her expression but doing little to disguise the ensuing transformation.
Her dress was becoming tighter. The wings weren't the only new growth she was experiencing - her limbs too had begun to extend, her bones and muscles screaming at her as they elongated and stretched to accommodate her newfound height. The pain was unbearable. She could hardly breathe, hardly think, and eventually the fabric of her corset split in two, and her dress followed with it.
Beneath were black robes that immediately swallowed the white that had laid before it. They hung off her frame like gaunt shadows, and all at once the agony began to recede.
What was left behind?
Who was left behind?
After a long moment, the cloaked figure shifted to stand, unbalanced, almost akin to a toddler. It stretched out its arms unsteadily, its wings following suit one after the other. It - no, he decided this form was quite adequate. In fact, it had felt more like home than anything he'd ever experienced. He turned, admiring himself in the mirror as if he'd emerged fresh from a cocoon.
A new form needed a new name.
He twisted in the mirror, pulling at the concealed skin of his face. His body was hidden by thick folds of black.
Edward Hyde would suffice.
---
[new chapter hooray !!! its been over a year im sorry gang. transformation time finally though yay !! reminding yall quick this is a silly passion project and im not a proper writer so hold onto your critique please :))]
yall i can feel my j&h obsession coming back i just read over my au notes of where i was planning to take the story and MAN i gotta continue this
wdym drunk lanyon breaks into henriettas manor and SEES HER TRANSFORM INTO HYDE ?? THEN HYDE BRUTALLY MURDERS HIM WITH A FIRE STOKER BECAUSE OF ALL OF HIS (and henriettas) PENT UP RAGE ??? im crashing tf out i cant believe i abandoned this for so long
theres so much more too aaHHFHG i dont wanna spoil it but i love reinterpreting these characters sm. gabriel being supportive but still enabling lanyon and speaking over henrietta- and lanyon being a stubborn single minded bastard who only cares about himself aaHGH it makes me ill
and henrietta. holy. shit. my egg. my beautiful darling i wish you could have been a trans man so bad. *you* wish you could have been born a man so bad. but thats why hydes here !! to be her identity and her anger and her release and her (his) FURY
just you wait until ive submitted my uni work istg im gonna continue writing this and do comic pages and get back on it again cause i LOVED it
silly doodle i did in retaliation for @plantsarecooleh 's wonderful fanart i didnt see for SEVEN MONTHS
your j&h are awesome and i really appreciate you taking time out of your day to draw something for my little au (that i may or may not be trying to get back into soon) so heres your guys !!
deltarune fandom im planning an animatic that i wanna do so bad but i dont have TIMEEEE (im in the final year of my animation degree) so im staking my claim to this idea before someone cooler gets to it first
devil town but its noelle and kris
if someones already done this tell me ill cry and also laugh
currently rewatching aot s4 with my friends and this may be a controversial opinion but the eren manbun was NOT it
wdym he shows up with long hair and a scraggly beard looking the best hes ever been then he SHAVES ??? and sLICKS THAT SHIT BACK ?? babe we dont need to see your forehead pleaseeeee
i was 15 when i was reading the manga/s4 dropped and i genuinely dont know what i saw in that guy what was wrong with me
wake up dnp fandom i found screenshots of a wattpad fic i wrote when i was twelve that was dip and pip, loki (mcu) and BLURR TRANSFORMERS. also me and my school friends self inserts were there ig
anyway im actually pissing myself i cant even tell you the context of any of this its just insane
--
--
--
--
--
--
shamefully tagging @danielhowell and @amazingphil because i need to repent for my crimes