i. Cú Chulainn

Afternoon sunlight flooded through silvered stormclouds, casting each flagstone of the shattered courtyard in sharp relief as Cú Chulainn watched yet another man die. This one had a broken shield still bound to his arm, and he supported his bulk with the greatsword driven into the earth as he gasped for breath. Blood streamed from numerous wounds where Cú had struck around his shield, but the worst wound, the one that had split his sternum, had gone directly through the shield. Cú had been bored by then.

This one had been so eager to fight, too. He hadn't even bothered giving Cú his name first. Perhaps he'd assumed Cú had already known it. He'd had that kind of arrogance.

In a way, he still did. Even as he died, he spat at Cú. "You fool! My queen will know I've fallen. I have a dozen brothers waiting to take my place!"

With a cold grin, Cú said, "Do you still? I've killed five of your so-called brothers already."

The knight's eyes flashed and Cú watched in mild interest as he surged forward a step. "You are but one man and we are many. You will never reach her."

Cú whirled, kicking the remains of the man's shield away from him. Then he knocked him down with an agonizing kick to the chest. "Oh, die already."

But even sprawled on the ground, the knight, his eyes blazing with hate, seemed determined to draw out his own suffering as long as possible. He had no hope of rescue or reinforcements; his only motivation was pure spite. It was the kind of defiance Cú could respect, even honor, so he leaned on Gae Bolg to wait however long it took.

"Where did you come from?" the knight whispered. "Who… who do you fight for?"

Cú slitted his eyes, for a moment seeing himself from the knight's perspective. A hero appearing from nowhere, cutting his way through an elite corps of warriors. It seemed like something out of a fairy tale. But such stories didn't touch the core of Cú's rage that his Master had been stolen away.

"I fight for my lady," he told the other. "I came from her wish."

This seemed like answer enough for the dying knight. He closed his eyes, breathing shallowly. Then, opening them again, he said, wisfully, "Does she praise you?"

Memories washed over Cú: the warmth of her mouth against his, and the softness of her body nestled in his arms. Although she'd been comfortable leaning on him, letting him hold her, he'd only tasted her once since she sent the magus of flowers away, on a quiet evening a few days before she'd been snatched away. She'd come to him, desperate for distraction from her thoughts, knowing he was the only one she could rely on to take only what he was given, and give her exactly what she wanted.

He'd almost laughed at the time. He, Cú Chulainn, was the safe one. But he'd welcomed her, too. There had been praise a plenty in her little moans as he kissed and touched her. And while he hungered for more of her body, it was nothing compared to his drive to bring her complete and total victory. He wished for nothing more than to return to her when she called and place in her arms all the crowns of this dying world.

"She trusts me," he said softly. "That's all the praise I need."

The knight nodded painfully. "That is why you won, then." He closed his eyes again, breathing slowly.

Cú chose not to disturb the man's last moments by dispelling his illusions. The truth was that the knight never even had a chance. Cú hadn't even needed his Noble Phantasm. His opponent may have been imbued with the supernatural strength of an oak tree, but ultimately he'd been only human, just like his brothers.

As the knight's breath became more labored, Cú's thoughts returned to his Master. She considered him the safe one, but at least his rivals were an incubus and a psychopath. But was rivals even the right word? He didn't want her heart, just to make her queen of the world and also to have her gasping his name. Hyde didn't even want that much, while the Magus of Flowers wanted… something else. Something that made him smile like a clown when she chastized him, something mad and blind and dangerous.

Merlin would find her, though. Cú wasn't even bothering to investigate her disappearance anymore. He'd destroy her enemies. If he could, he'd take down this Witch Queen, too. The runes would lead him there eventually.

At his feet, the knight of the broken shield gave one final gasp before breathing no more. Cú nodded to himself and crouched down, dipping his fingers in the man's lifeblood. With wet fingers, he drew several burning runes in the air and watched how they moved for a few moments. He realized he'd absently begun sucking the blood off his fingers whe he felt the tiny flicker of magical energy in the blood merge with him.

Scowling, he yanked his fingers from his mouth. It was a miniscule amount of magic, but even being careful, even using only his skills, the previous six fights had drained him enough that he noticed. But drinking blood for magical energy wasn't a path he was ready to pursue. After all, he liked a challenge in his fights and the more drained he became, the better he had to be.

He wet his fingers again, drew another set of runes, and wiped his fingers on the dead man's cloak. These runes burned and grew, fading as they did. But when Cú shifted into spirit form, he could still detect them, still follow them. They would guide him to his next target, to whomever the knight would have passed his sword and his grudge onto. It might be the Witch-Queen. But, considering the man's expression before he died, Cú suspected he died resenting her, so probably not.

He'd find out soon enough.

ii. Jekyll and Hyde

It took Jekyll a moment of timeless suffering in utter sensory deprivation to realize he'd never actually experienced Hyde truly angry. His alter ego switched between malicious boredom and sadistic glee with some regularity, with bursts of violent frustration when his pleasures were thwarted. But anger required caring about something and Hyde had always left that part of things to Jekyll.

But Hyde was furious now. His rage crackled off him as he loomed over Jekyll in their shared headspace. With their sense of their physical body annihilated by whatever had captured them, Jekyll had no escape, no distraction for his other self's punishing wrath. He backed away, trying hard to think. He'd always been better at thinking than Hyde, but it was a challenge right now. Panic at what had happened still fogged his thoughts. He'd been so afraid of what Hyde would do to the injured Serendipity if he 'rescued' her. He'd taken control, stumbled at the shock, and they'd instantly been captured by the awful blankness that the enemy wielded as weapon and shield.

"You think you hate me that much?" growled Hyde, his nails long and inhuman. "So much you'll leave our Master to be cut by somebody else? Let somebody else open that smooth skin, lick the blood away, hold her close after? Oh no, I might touch her, better that she suffer with them so your hands won't get dirty? You hate me that much?" His growl smoothed, becoming the searing pain of a rusty scalpel. "You haven't felt anything yet."

A small framed painting appeared in his hand: a landscape from near Edinburgh. A young lady had sent it to Jekyll once, courtesy of her brother and his schoolfriend, after he'd escorted her on some pleasant afternoons at a house party one summer. He accepted it as a token of their brief friendship, but he'd laughed when her brother had bluntly told him she was sending those miniatures to everybody who couldn't politely refuse them. The story of the gift, and those days with Miss Violet remained one of his precious memories even now.

Hyde tapped the painting against one palm. "I know what it is. You don't think you can hold me back anymore. Even with that flowery bastard's magic little rings." Jekyll watched helplessly, unable to deny it. "Can't even do the basic job you were born for."

With a sudden violent twist, Hyde broke the painting from its frame. Then, almost gently, he spread the painting on the table of their mental parlour. "Pretty little lies." He traced his finger over stylized hills, and paint flaked away. "Let's see what's underneath!"

The memory that swept over Jekyll was breathtakingly visceral—the soft breeze, the scents of greenery, the lady's perfect expression as she gasped. Jekyll's precious memory, but tainted with the wicked filth of Hyde's fantasies. "I always did think she'd scream so well. Mmm… And I was right!"

Jekyll whimpered and realized he'd knotted his hands behind his back, as if he could hide them from himself. He tried to remember the purity of her smile, but all he could see was Hyde's vision of how she'd squirm.

The other man tossed the ruined painting aside and picked up a leatherbound book, a collection of riddles. Delicately he opened it to the inscription inside. "To my favorite student, from Doctor Johnson," he read aloud, and Jekyll remembered his mentor from university: a kindly, white-haired man with an eclectic collection of books and an open door for a troubled young man.

Hyde scratched his nails across the inscription and once again his fantasies crept into Jekyll's memory: the books, tumbled everywhere. The inscribed page, splattered with blood. Doctor Johnson would have struggled and thrashed, but Hyde could have easily held him down until he tied him into his chair.

Jekyll pressed his red-stained hands against his eyes, as if that would shut out the visions. Hyde's laugh was edged like a knife. "Stupid, weak Henry. Ruining everything for us. And I thought you were useful."

Swallowing painfully, Jekyll whispered, "Stop blackening my memories."

"Your memories?" Hyde bared his teeth and tangled his fingers in a locket Jekyll's sister had treasured as a child, given to her by her beloved governess. "Is it you who remembers Miss Tennyson, you who spent hours spying on her through the hole in the schoolroom wall?" The cheap metal tarnished and the clasp of the locket flew wide. Blood dripped from within. "These are my memories, Henry. You just colonized them when you moved in. Stripped away all the vitality and flavor from them like the goody-two-shoes you are."

Hyde dropped the locket carelessly on the table and then bent to pick up the discarded painting, placing it precisely beside the book of riddles. His hand, as crimson as Jekyll's, trembled as he adjusted the book's position. "All these memories I let you steal from me, so you'd feel real. So you'd feel strong. All these lies I reinforced, for you." He gave Jekyll a twisted grin. "It always ends like this, doesn't it? You hating me more than you love anything else?"

Jekyll stared at the patterned carpet of their parlour: dark red patterns on a cream background. In some places, especially on Hyde's side, the pattern was almost the black of old blood. One of them was obviously lying about who'd known Miss Tennyson and Miss Violet, but which one? Suddenly Jekyll wasn't so sure. But he knew that wasn't important right now. Ren was still in danger. Ren, who had found them within their parlour by accident once. He'd pushed her out before Hyde could capture her there. For her sake? For his? Or simply to thwart Hyde?

Pressing his fingers against aching temples, Jekyll glanced up into the mirror in the mantlepiece before him. The lust he'd felt for Serendipity throbbed in his veins, and he tasted her blood on his lips still. For a moment, the taste of her seemed like the only thing in the world that was real.

It is, Hyde whispered. She wants us, she accepts us.

The mirror cracked as Jekyll slammed his hand into it, shattering into a thousand pieces. "You would have killed her yourself if you'd gotten her away! All I wanted to do was save her!"

Bouncing shards reversed their path, flowing back into the mirror again until Hyde glared out at him. He leaned forward against the glass that separated them. "Liar."

You are me and I am you.

What was a man? Flesh, thoughts, emotions. Just as the heart pumped blood through a circulatory system, the brain passed thoughts through identity, personality. Where in all of that was he? Was there anywhere Jekyll was that Hyde was not?

Was there anywhere Hyde was that Jekyll couldn't be?

He tasted Ren's blood again, and then felt the softness of her lips against his. A shudder ran through him as he remembered when he'd first touched her. That initial night after he'd been summoned, in the Great Hall, when she'd inadverdantly tempted Hyde to the surface and he'd forced a kiss on her. That night, when Jekyll had yanked Hyde back, and then stepped into his place and kissed her again, driven by a hunger for intimacy that had followed him beyond the grave.

He'd made a medicine to eradicate his own evil (pretty lies a cherub's face the best mask doesn't know it's a mask) so that the self-control all men struggled with would no longer be necessary. So that man's goodness would come naturally. So that being good would be easy.

What a fool he'd been. He'd always had a bad habit of reaching far too high.

Play God and get the devil's gift, Hyde whispered. The magical power to say, "That wasn't me. I'm no monster." And if it's a lie, you can still blame the devil in the end.

Jekyll looked up, meeting the other's crimson gaze in the glass.

The book of riddles on the table beside him opened to a page inscribed with: I only exist when you are here. Where you never were, I can never be.

Hand to hand. Eye to eye. Jekyll stared at the man before him. Mask, or mirror. He could be one, or the other. There was no room for anything else. And he knew he wanted to exist. He found his existence good. Yet was it right? It was potentially a complex ethical problem.

Oh god fucking dammit.

Obscenities notwithstanding, he was Doctor Henry Jekyll. He thought. He measured. He analyzed. He compared. It didn't take too long before he discovered an interesting fact: they'd be more powerful as partners.

For a frozen moment, Jekyll faced a struggle between his principles. Ren needed protection, salvation. Him. The little voice that demanded zero tolerance for evil raged against his aching desire to improve himself, to find a way out. To save her. It took Hyde's growl to jolt him out of it, Hyde's growl to remind him that they shared that one singular passion, that drive for self-improvement, though it was greed in one and ambition in the other. It was the root from which they were born, and, once considered made the idea of partially merging irresistable.

Images overlapped.

Jekyll reached within himself and pulled out Hyde's memory of the not-quite-last time he'd touched Serendipity. For a moment, moon and shadow flickered around him and he held the curve of her breasts as she clutched at him. He felt the trill of her throat against his mouth.

That was all it took. Jekyll blinked in surprise as he suddenly understood why Hyde cared. "Oh."

Yep, said Hyde.

"Oh my, she's so much warmer than I expected." Jekyll wrapped his arms around himself, but it was as nothing compared to the comfortable fire that had flickered in Ren. That uncanny sense of two hearts pounding as one. It was, after too long alone, a connection—

He frowned. "It's magic, that's all. It's the summoning."

Who the hell cares? It feels good. I want more, and so do you. That's why you keep forgetting each time you touch her.

That was… plausible. Absently Jekyll continued following the memory until he'd experienced every moment of it. Then he thought of what he knew of events after Hyde's memory. After some contemplation, he realized he had mixed feelings about them.

He adjusted his glasses and said thoughtfully, considering their merged memories, "Merlin is undeniably wise in many ways."

He's a moron.

"I've always known I couldn't possibly compare to him in any way. I respect him, despite his… personality quirks."

C'mon, stop fucking around.

"And yet how can I hope to improve myself if I don't reach beyond my grasp?"

Damn straight. Let's save her first.

Jekyll smiled, opened his eyes, and began to deconstruct the unnatural emptiness around him.