So, much like when I wrote chapter 3, I was writing up a storm, finally finished, got the editing and formatting done, and then looked at the page and word counts. 21 pages, 9,154 words. That's long enough to qualify as a novelette. As such, I got some advice from a fanfic writer who I greatly admire and was advised to chop it into two chapters so long as it did not disrupt the flow of the writing. Given the way that I wrote it, this unfortunately this means – much like with chapters 3 and 4 – this chapter is shorter than the last one. Not by much, just over a page. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe it isn't, but there's really nothing I can do about it.

Anyway, leave a comment if you like! (p. l. e. a. s. e.)

The warden had other ideas.

Later, the fairy would wonder how she failed to hear the struggle as she finished her water and changed out of her dirty dress. She would remember how surprisingly soft the sweater Jekyll had given her was and how the trousers were just a little too loose. But the sound of the doctor himself attempting to escape from the impossible strength of Hyde's orderly somehow never drifted up the steep staircase to her small room. (She refused to think of it as a cell.) Jekyll's confused shout, wondering why the warden wanted to make a reappearance so soon went unheard. And she would certainly have remembered hearing Poole force a clear blue serum down his throat, if she had.

All she knew was that when she had fastened her new old boots, she found herself descending the stairs to an eerily hushed hallway. The ceiling of the hallway was almost as high as the one in the room that housed her former cell. The whole floor seemed to be filled with silence and even the lightest of her steps echoed all the way from one end to the other. She must have made her way through here the night before, but she still could not remember how.

Most of the doors along the hall were closed. Jekyll had told her she was free to roam as she wished, however she had no desire to press her luck. Nor did she have any real desire to see what might be behind some of these doors. Hyde was a warden, this was a mental institution – or had been, as the case was – and the fairy was willing to bet her, typically hidden, wings that there were some nasty sights to behold in more than a few of these rooms. Which made the room she had awoken in even more peculiar. And had she chosen it, or had the sinister warden actually done something…almost considerate?

The more she thought about it, the less sense it made. Hyde had shown nothing short of complete disregard for her health, her safety, or her feelings from the moment she arrived in this Land of Untold Stories, so why suddenly decide to help her? He had always shown a decided interest in how and why she had arrived. He had even entertained the possibility that his initial assumption – that she was working for the Dark One – had been incorrect. The warden wanted the truth, and he would have done anything to get it.

Using the memory spell had been clever; the fairy was unsure that even she would have thought of that. But his execution had been either sloppy or purposely uncaring. Cutting a spell off before it was finished running its course was dangerous, even for the most seasoned of sorcerers. She doubted even Rumplestiltskin would try that. Magic, once released into the world, had a mind of its own. Whether Hyde knew that or not, she did not know. But assuming he did not, it was plausible that he was trying to help the both of them.

As she pondered this, the fairy drifted down the hallway. Suddenly, a scraping noise pulled her out of her reverie. It was a singular scratch, most probably the heel of a shoe being dragged across the stone floor. In the cavernous hall, it might as well have been a large metal chain being dragged across a room. She jumped, both feet actually leaving the ground for a second, and when she looked to where the sound seemed to have come from, she saw the first open door she had noted since reaching this floor. There may have been more that she missed, but she had no real desire to turn around and look again. Though there was cold sweat beading on her forehead, she knew if she continued on down the hall, she would be looking over her shoulder after each step. So, she took a deep breath and stuck her head into the room.

It was a coldly decorated parlor. Two armchairs, a short table, a large desk. A few feet away from the window over the desk sat a fireplace that had clearly gone unused for at least a century. She did a long visual sweep of the room before actually walking into it. When she looked to her left again, she saw a tall bookshelf in the corner. It must have been the warden's; all of the books and baubles were on the top two shelves, above Dr. Jekyll's eye level and probably Poole's as well. There were one or two interesting-looking instruments sitting up there, but not interesting-looking enough for the fairy to get too close to them. There were no other doors that she could see, though she would not have put it past anyone she had met so far to have a secret passageway or two. Nothing seemed out of place in the parlor, but then, she supposed, she wouldn't really know. The window was closed and she knew nobody had walked by her, so where had the noise come from?

She fidgeted with the ends of her sleeves, attempting to fight off the draft from the window, shooting through the fireplace. Drifting farther into the room, she heard a soft flapping noise coming from a small table between the armchairs. Glancing over sharply, the fairy saw the pages of a book rustling in the drafty air. She pulled her sleeves down, more completely wrapping the cuffs around her knuckles and twisting them between her fingers, and stepped carefully over to the side table. It was a hardcover, perhaps one hundred pages of stiff, unrefined paper, and she could sense a dull energy floating around it. The aura itself almost felt grey. The cover had been flipped open, possibly by the draft running through the room. That may have been the scraping noise she heard. As she looked on, two more heavy pages flipped their way over from one side of the book to the other. When they settled, she could see a lightly sketched drawing of the candle Hyde had used to cast the memory spell. But that was not what caught her eye.

Just over the sketch rested a light beige ribbon, attached to a red, cameo oval set inside a detailed golden frame. A small voice in the back of her mind told her that she should walk away. That she had no business being here and she should simply go outside. It had been too long since she felt grass, and this was not healthy. More than that, it was dangerous here. And the fairy could not shake the feeling she was being watched, whether by Poole or by the ghosts of patients past, it hardly mattered. She knew all of these things. But her interest kept her rooted in place, and her curiosity forced her hand to reach out. With more care than was likely necessary, she lifted the necklace away from the spell book's pages. It was strangely warm, and upon closer inspection she could see that the ribbon had small gold flecks. There was no clasp, and it was tied in a tight knot. Whoever this belonged to must have had a very slender neck.

And a fairly small head, unless they never took it off. The fairy shuddered to think of what may have happened to them that had caused them to leave this behind. But the warden was clearly taking good care of it. She knew the aura of the spell book she had found it in, it was protective. There was only reason she had not been thrown through the air and landed in what she was sure would have been a rather nasty position: spell books liked her. It had always been that way, and she had never known why.

When she and her sisters had decided to start one, she had been the one to find the journal they used. She had spent hours writing in it. It was almost a hobby; she reached for it when she could not sleep, when she was feeling inspired, when she simply had a free moment with nothing else to do. And she understood spell books. They were temperamental. The magics recorded within them had to play nicely with one another or it would be chaos. If the magic flowed well, it was more powerful than any one spell on its own, and it could ensure its own safety better than any locked cabinet door could. That, she had learned the hard way.

Lost in thought, the fairy did not realize she had been standing still and staring at the necklace. She was holding it at eye level, visible to anyone who may have happened by. So when Poole walked past the parlor door and glanced inside, he got a clear view of her gazing at one of the only three things in the world that the warden cared about.

"What are you doing in here?" She jumped when she heard his sharp voice, feet once again leaving the ground, neck nearly snapping with how rapidly her head turned up to look at him. Her pointer finger and thumb closed even more tightly on the ribbon of the necklace, pulling it in towards her body, almost defensively. Involuntarily, she started stepping back.

"I-I was told I could…Dr. Jekyll said–"

"Put that down!" Poole ordered. The fairy should have set the necklace back down. She should have dropped it. She should have run. But she could not seem to force herself to do any of those things. Her legs refused to obey her, her fingers would not loosen on the creamy ribbon. Even as she saw him flick the switch on the baton he had used on Jekyll just weeks earlier, her body would not obey her will. "Did you hear me, girl?" She flinched, eyes wider than they had ever been. He advanced on her, practically charging her. She continued to stumble back, but there was nowhere to go. Her back hit the mantle. He raised the baton. The electricity crackling across its surface would have been visible from yards away.

"No-no, please don't," she squeaked. Poole looked no less murderous. His own eyes were bulging, his knuckles tight on the weapon, his jaw rigid. She slid down the wall, still somehow clutching the necklace. "Please?" It was no use. She curled into a ball and she drew her hands to her chest. A breath she could not release burned within her lungs. Her ears rung with the blood rushing through them.

"Poole," called an almost pleasant voice. If the fairy's eyes had been open, she would have seen a pair of shoes in the doorway. "That's quite enough of that."

"I've got her. She was trying to escape."

"From the fifth floor? That hardly seems practical." There was a pause. She opened her left eye, daring to peek up at the orderly. His feet were still turned towards her, but the top half of his body was twisted to face the other way. Slowly, she opened her right eye as well. If she bent her neck just a little farther, she could see under the side table. And when she looked, she saw…

What?

"I believe the good doctor informed her that she was free to roam. That is, after all, what I told him to do," said Mr. Hyde, rambling casually into the room. He had his same smirk – a nasty, miniscule turning up of the corners of his pale pink mouth, just wide enough to cast shadows underneath his cheekbones. He was gaunt in the daylight, as if he did not belong to it.

"Sir?"

"I left him a note-oh, look at her, Poole. You've frightened her," he observed, glancing down at her over his orderly's shoulder. But instead of looking down at his almost-victim, Poole turned fully to face his employer. Hyde's eyes bored into the fairy's. She could not help but stare right back. His seemed more bloodshot than they had been the night before. "I hardly think she's capable of escaping in this state, do you?" With that, he swept his gaze away from hers and returned it to Poole, who seemed not to know what to say. The fairy could not see his face, but if his movements when he switched off the baton were anything to go by, he was half as frightened of the warden as she was. This would have perplexed her, had she not been so focused on slowing her heart rate to its normal, more or less steady beat. Hyde blinked once, slowly, and looked at the fairy on the floor again. "Now, get out." Poole only hesitated for a moment, just to make sure Hyde was still talking to him. He was.

The fairy heard Poole leave, but she was not looking at him. Her wide eyes were fixed on Hyde. There was an infinity in those few seconds wherein every thought she had had out in the hallway ran through her head all at once, at least thirty times. Was this all a trick? Had he known how dangerous cutting spells off early could be? Or was he really trying to help her? Help the both of them? And where had he gotten that spell book on the table?

The wheels were turning in his own mind as he studied her. There were a number of options available to him now that he knew she was no threat to him. Knowing that what was likely the only family she had was now dead made it even easier. He could kill her, if he wanted to. It would be easy, all he would have to do would be to throw her out the window. He had once lifted a three hundred pound strongman, the struggling fairy would be no great challenge. Had he not stepped in when he did, Poole – he was sure – would have done it for him. Why had he stopped him?

Maybe he did not want her dead. Locking her away in a cell somewhere for the rest of her days seemed redundant, but if there was even a chance she could be useful, he would still want to keep her around. Perhaps…perhaps he could use her. In her memories, her sister had told her she was the strongest of the three of them. Even her tears had seemed to shimmer with magic. He had spent the days following her arrival solving the problem of her. Might she be able to help him solve the problem of Jekyll?

The answer, he knew, was yes. And to do that, he needed her alive and only just as afraid as his orderly was. Decision made, he broke the silence.

"Apologies, I believed my orderly knew of your new freedom, such as it is. He has always seemed so well-informed." The fairy could not tell if that was meant to be a quip. Either way, she decided it was not funny. Once her mouth began responding again, it seemed to only want to know one thing.

"Where is Dr. Jekyll?" she asked timidly, voice still bouncing off of the dirty walls. That, Hyde seemed to think was funny. He chuckled darkly, stepping closer. He was still beside the armchairs, more than eight feet from her, but the fairy pressed herself farther back into the wall all the same. Seeing this, he actually stopped.

"You needn't worry for the doctor, he is quite safe. I assure you." There was something malicious in the way he said safe, he had practically hissed it. But Hyde had respected her fear. He had likely just saved her from Poole. And the fairy was becoming increasingly certain that he had somehow carried her to her room and tucked her in the previous night. Pressing the issue of his groundsman was clearly not the most tactful move to make at that moment. Instead, she cleared her throat quietly, wiping at her clammy forehead with her empty hand. Come to think of it, she probably should do something with the necklace still pressed between her fingers.

"Could you open the window a little?" she asked. "It seems warmer out there than it is in here." From the floor, the window over the desk looked extremely wide. The panes themselves were thin, undistorted glass framed by cylindrical steel bars. The metal bars were flush with the window and perhaps twice the thickness of the glass. Gentle reinforcement, so that the glass would not shatter too badly if it were struck.

"As you wish," he nodded to her, almost respectfully. Then he turned his back to her and moved to the window. Without looking down, the fairy stuffed the necklace into the pocket of her trousers. One of her fingertips brushed against something else in there, smooth and warm, but she had no time to look. She would have to find someplace to leave the necklace later. Or perhaps…

Hyde, it seemed, was not quite done with her. His arms were stiff when he opened the window, barely needing to lean over the desk to reach it. After a brief moment of wrestling with the locking mechanism, he pushed it open. It creaked loudly, and the fairy flinched again. "Now…" he took his hands back from the window and turned to face her, standing beside the desk, "…on your feet." Slowly, almost arthritically, she stood. She found she did not know what to do with her hands, so she pulled the sleeves of her sweater down over them again, twisting the soft fabric between her fingers. "I imagine you must be suffering a bit of confusion as to exactly where you are."

The Land of Untold Stories, her mind immediately supplied. But she could not tell him she knew that without risking Jekyll's safety, so she swallowed it back and nodded.

"You have an excellent imagination." Dignity. Grace. The warden raised an eyebrow.

"No, you're not. Jekyll told you." He spat the doctor's name, breaking from his normal rich drawl to do it. The fairy tried to force a wrinkle into her brow, but she was simply too afraid of him. Regardless of what he may or may not have done for her over the past twenty-four hours, the fact remained that Mr. Hyde was a fast, strong, formidable warden who had kept her caged for weeks.

"I–" He took a step forward and she fell silent.

"Don't lie to me." She swallowed again and nodded quickly. "Your sisters' portal misfired and with nowhere else to bring you, it brought you here." She nodded once more. "And now you are terrified, confused, and alone." Her silence was enough of an agreement for him. Hyde's tone was deliberate. Each word fell like a hammer striking her eardrums. This had to be the lead for something horrible. An announcement that she was to remain here forever. That there was no escaping this land or, worse, he would not allow her to. That he no longer had any use for her, now that he knew she was not his enemy. So what he told her next nearly sent her tumbling back to the floor. "I know exactly how you feel."

…what?

"The doctor and I faced a similar predicament when we arrived in this glorified cage," he ground out. The fairy's breathing was returning to a more regular tempo. In…out. Push…pull.

"Why are you here?" she asked. This Hyde seemed less likely to leap for her jugular if she let her guard down than the Hyde who had locked her in that cage down the hall. Perhaps it was the light through the open window, or the fact that he had just saved her life. He was all imposing banter, always ensuring that his back was to the parlor's door and his eyes were on her. But he was not quite as feral as he had seemed to be. There were no more desperate silences wherein he left her to figure everything out for herself, often to no avail. And there were things that she needed to know. Still, it was surprising that Hyde seemed all too prepared to answer her.

"Jekyll." He spat the name again, as if he could not wait to get it out of his mouth. Then he began pacing; he went wide but the fairy still noticed he was moving closer. He could not have expected that she would fail to see it. "We had a home, a life, work," he enunciated, watching her slowly counter his steps, "everything to live for." He stilled, standing just behind the armchair farthest from her. She had moved across the front of the fireplace and was now standing a short ways down the wall from the window, barely touching the plaster. "And then Jekyll destroyed it."

"…how?" Hyde gestured to the desk, indicating that she should look. Reluctantly, she risked a quick glance away from him. Sitting atop the dark, scratched wooden surface was a single beaker of clear blue liquid. The fairy frowned. "I don't understand. What is that?"

"That," Hyde said, "is a serum. It separates one from all the parts of them that they would prefer to ignore." It could have been a threat, but it did not sound like one. Her frown deepened. "The good doctor's creation."

"So…so, Dr. Jekyll created a potion to separate good and evil." She looked back up at Hyde, who had not moved. "And that's a bad thing?"

"It can be." That sounded like a threat. "He used it before it was finished, and one cannot have light without the dark. So, when light finds itself without darkness…" he took a step nearer to her, and this time she could not will herself to step back, "…it makes its own." She did her best to make it seem like he had all of her attention, and he did have most of it. There was, however, a part of her that was very interested in the open window to her right.

"And, what, he did something bad?" she inferred. Hyde took another step closer; one that carried him to the armchair nearest her. There was still a decent distance between them, but not as wide as the fairy would have liked. She needed to get away. She needed to find a way out. But how could she make it past him? All he would need to do in order to stop her would be to reach out an arm.

"Something that can't be undone." She had been mistaken. This was the same Hyde who would attack her if she let her guard down. And he was drifting closer. "And now he's paying the price." With that, the warden reached up and lightly tapped the back of his head. The fairy's mouth dropped open before any sound came out as she finally understood.

"The serum," she gasped. "You use it to control him." Her voice was nearly a whisper, eyes so wide they were becoming glassy. "That's why he's so afraid of you." If it was at all possible, Hyde's irises grew darker, the redness grew more bloodshot. She did not know when he had gotten this near to her, but he was barely three feet away and she could now feel the warmth radiating from him. From this close, and the way he was gazing down at her face, she doubted he would notice that her fingers had ceased their twitching, or that she was now curving her hand to reach two fingers into her sleeve.

"As well he should be." Her focus flittered all over his face. "But the serum isn't complete. That's where you come in," he told her. His tone was hushed, but he did not seem to know how to truly whisper. She hardly took notice. "You are a powerful fairy, I've seen it. And I need your help." As inconspicuously as she could, she took a deep breath, then nodded, eyes wide. Perhaps it was out of nervousness that her voice leapt back to a normal volume for speech when she spoke.

"Interesting," she deadpanned. Hyde hardly had time to note that her tone did not match her expression because, at that moment, she whipped her wand out from her sleeve and slashed at him. The movement was violent, even in the limited space between them, and the warden found himself sliding back across the floor. This predicament would not have been too drastic, except that the skid sent him into the bookshelf by the door. And that shelf was tall. She strode forward to face the desk as he was propelled into it. Hyde managed to shield his eyes before the shelf's contents crashed down upon him, followed shortly by the structure itself. He might have cried out, but she was not paying attention. She had turned away, toward the window. Then she raised her wand.

Update days are gonna be on Mondays, most likely Monday nights, from here on out (hopefully).