Title: Brand New
Author: Zath Chauvert
Summary: This is my take on Hyde's first night of existence.
Rating: K+/PG
Feedback: Yes, please! Any and all feedback, positive or negative, would be greatly appreciated. Just hit that Review button to make me smile.
Disclaimer: I have no legal claim on Jekyll or any of its characters. That honor goes to the BBC, Stephen Moffat, and other assorted British people/entities.

Brand New
By Zath Chauvert

The stars seemed to lie scattered across the clear sky. The wind blowing in from the sea was cold and in the process of getting colder. No one knew it yet, and the select few who suspected that it might happen soon were too far away to do anything about it, but the world had just changed. Something brand new took its first steps upon the earth.

There had been the euphoric feeling of release after an interminable confinement. There had been a notepad and pen in his hands. There had been the faint taste of champagne lingering on his lips until it was overpowered by salt spray carried on the breeze. There had been a window, opened and slipped through in a single motion. There had been a pair of glasses, unneeded and discarded in the bushes as he passed. There had been all of those things, but he wouldn't consciously remember them later, because he hadn't exactly been there himself, not entirely, not quite yet.

He awoke to find himself running silently through the night with easy, distance-eating strides. He slowed to a jog and then to a full stop, looking up and down the darkened boardwalk, trying to figure out why something felt wrong. And speaking of wrong, now that he was holding still, he noticed that there was something, several somethings in fact, in his mouth that didn't belong there, inorganic-tasting foreign bodies with a mix of sharp edges and rounded surfaces. He spat them out into his palm and saw three metal fillings and a porcelain crown glistening wetly in the moonlight.

On some cognitive level that wasn't exactly instinct but wasn't firsthand personal knowledge either, he knew that they weren't his. Probing around with his tongue to verify this fact, he discovered a mouth full of teeth that were slightly crooked but lacking any gaps or cavities that would have held the now detached pieces of dental work. He had no idea why they would have been in his mouth, but they weren't the source of the initial feeling of wrongness, so he didn't care. With an unconcerned tilt of his hand, he let the four small objects fall. He didn't even bother to watch long enough to see them bounce and scatter across the salt stained wood at his feet. His attention was already elsewhere.

Something was missing. Actually, the more that he thought about it, the more he realized that everything was missing. He knew the name and function of all the various objects in the surrounding area as soon as he looked at them, but he knew virtually nothing about himself, not even a name. He had only the faintest idea of where he had been heading so intently mere moments ago and no idea at all of where he had been before that. Where his mind should have contained information about who he was and why he was running around in an expensive yet ill-fitting suit, a tie, and shiny black shoes that clearly weren't designed for running, there was only a blank slate and the sense that he was missing something.

No, he was more than just missing something. He was leaving it behind. Whatever it was, it was important, and he was abandoning it when he shouldn't. The feeling was annoyingly vague but strong enough that he couldn't shake it.

He almost turned around to retrace his steps, to try to reclaim what he had lost even though he had no idea what or where it might be. After all, it would have been easy enough to follow his own scent back to wherever he had started from. However, at the same time that he wanted to turn back, there was another equally unexplained desire urging him in the opposite direction, the direction in which he had been traveling when he first became aware of himself. He had a slight notion of what lay in that direction. If he continued on that way, he knew he would find the far end of the boardwalk and shadowy figures dancing drunkenly around a burning rubbish bin, but once again he didn't know how he knew any of that or why it should be important to him.

For a moment, he teetered on the razor edge of indecision. The vascillation lasted seconds at most, but a span of seconds was a long time to someone who thought as quickly as he did. Just as he chose to find whatever it was that he was missing, the wind shifted, bringing with it the scent of the distant revelers. It was the scent of prey. In an instant, the nagging sense of loss was forgotten, and he was on the move again, with a voice that wasn't quite his own whispering from the back of his brain, demanding the humiliation and pain of those who were currently bathed in the warm light of the fire.

It would be half a year before he discovered what, or rather who, he had left behind that night.

The End.
Or, if you prefer, The Beginning.

Author's Note: This is just a little something that fell out of my pen while I was sitting in a laundromat waiting for my clothes to dry. If the part with the fillings confuses anyone, I wanted to play with the idea that, when Hyde emerged for the first time, Tom probably got a few other little upgrades in an addition to the improved eyesight, some of which he might not have ever even noticed himself.