Greetings, readers. Time to respond to reviews.

To Mina: Poor Jekkie-boo is right. By the way, who says vampires can't have children? At the end of the "Dracula" novel, Mina and Jonathan have a son. I wanted to include him in this story, but it would complicate things even more.

To Clez: I'm really not sure if one can dehydrate from crying. You might want to talk to Lucien about that *smiles at Lucien*

To Starlight16: It's nice to know that Dr. Jekyll is dazed from your frequent kissing. You might want to keep it up after this chapter (if that isn't a warning of things to come, I don't know what is.)

To IDUNWANNA: Hunt me down and beat me with a rubber chicken? Go ahead, I dare you. In fact, I have a rubber fox that will EAT YOUR RUBBER CHICKEN!!!!!

To Lucien: Thanks for clearing that up for me. I heard that you could get sick from crying, but I wasn't sure if it was true or not. I just thought it would be neat to have in the story.

AND NOW FOR A VERY IMPORTANT WARNING. I'm seriously thinking about bringing the rating of this story up to "R" just because of this chapter. If you thought Mina vomiting in Jekyll's presence was bad, then please do not read this. If you are grossed out by suicide, PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS. This is your final warning.

However, if you're interested to see how the story goes (and I certainly would be if I were you all,) then please proceed.

*

A few hours later, Henry Jekyll awoke in his own bed. At first, he was confused; he thought he had given himself a powerful sleeping potion. Surely then, he would be asleep for more than a few hours. However, he figured that he must have made a mistake in mixing the ingredients together. After all, his hands had been shaking terribly.

Jekyll had had a weird dream. In it, he had been talking to Mina. Mina was well again, and smiling as she talked. She told Jekyll that she was very happy with her husband.

"But Mina, your husband has been dead for about ten years," Jekyll had said to her, confused.

Suddenly, Mina's kindly face began to sob. She clutched Jekyll's coat, fell against his body, and began crying horribly. "I loved you, Henry," she sobbed. "I loved you! But then you had to kill me!!! Why did you let me die, Henry??"

"Mina, you just told me that you were happy!! What's the matter??"

"I AM happy with Jonathan, Henry. But I would be even happier if I was with you."

Not knowing what to say to her, Jekyll just hugged her against his chest. Mina continued to sob. Jekyll held her in a tight embrace, and her salty tears touched his cheek. Suddenly, everything was blurry again, and he was awake. Awake in his own bed.

Jekyll wanted to go visit Mina's body, but he couldn't for two reasons. One, he didn't know if she was still in her room. Nemo or somebody might have moved the body somewhere else. Two, he knew he couldn't look at it without crying.

How could he go on this way? How could he possibly go on like this, with a guilty conscience and a heavy heart? By his foolishness and lack of medical knowledge, he had killed someone. Not only someone, but a lady. A teammate. A member of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Jekyll knew he couldn't go on this way. But what could he do about it? His first thought was to quit the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But if he quit, he knew he wouldn't get his pardon from the English government. He would have to spend the rest of his life in Paris, where Hyde would terrorize one neighborhood after another.

And if he were in Paris, how would he support himself? He was a doctor, but he couldn't go back to work. Not after Mina died. What if another vampire landed upon his doorstep, suffering from the vampire influenza? What would he do?

Hot tears ran down Jekyll's cheeks. No, he couldn't move back to Paris. He couldn't move anywhere, really. No matter where he lived, he would have to support himself. To support himself, he would have to practice medicine again. Jekyll wasn't very fit to do anything else; he was very weak, and he didn't have any body strength. Medicine was the only thing he really could do.

The Nautilus was the only place where Jekyll could live without financial worries. On the Nautilus, he was provided with food, shelter, and clothing, as long as he served for the League. But with Mina dead, how could he possibly go on with the League?

Allan Quartermain had died while serving with the League. But he was killed by the Fantom. Jekyll hadn't killed Quartermain. After mourning his death, the League found it easy to go on fighting. But they still missed him very much.

Jekyll took a deep breath, his chest trembling, and thought. From his youth, he was always taught that suicide was very foolish. It was the coward's way to die. A real man stayed alive and faced his problems.

But was Jekyll a real man? No. Hyde was a real man. Hyde was strong, and Hyde knew how to face his problems; he just killed somebody. It was necessarily the right thing to do, but Hyde did it. And Hyde was always nagging at Jekyll to be a real man. Jekyll was just a baby, Hyde often said.

However, Jekyll didn't see any other options. It was either live with pain, or die with pleasure.

This time, he was going to be happy. He was going to die with pleasure.

* * *

In his own room two doors down, McCane was rummaging through a trunk at the edge of his bed. He was looking for something important.

He finally found what it was and replaced the lid of the trunk. In his hand, he held a small, black velvet jeweler's box. Opening it carefully, he discovered a ring. In was just a plain, gold band, but it was made of pure gold. Mina had given it to him on New Years' Eve of last year. It was a token of appreciation for being so nice to her, when Skinner and Sawyer had been especially nasty.

At first, McCane had been grateful. Then, he had grown suspicious.

"Mina," he remembered saying to her. "Would you really like me to marry you?"

Mina looked at him, shyly. "Well, no," she began, "but I just love you, Andre. Not like I would a husband, but like a friend. You're so nice to me!"

McCane had worn the ring that night, but afterwards, he had taken it off and never really worn it again. But he looked at it several times. And each time, he remembered sweet Mina.

The ring in his hand, he left his room and tiptoed across the hall to Mina's room. Approaching the bed, he gently lifted one of Mina's slender ring fingers and placed the ring around it.

"Mina, I can never look at this again," he muttered to her, admiring the ring on her finger. "It reminds me too much of you. And I'm sorry, but I don't want to have a broken heart, not unless I must."

Mina just lie there, dead and helpless. Carefully, McCane bent down and kissed her cheek. "Oh, Mina," he said sadly. "You died of influenza. What an especially painful way to go!"

* * *

His hands trembling, Jekyll flipped through a book of deadly poisons that had been on a shelf in his bedroom. He could not believe he was going to kill himself. But he was.

"Can I really go through with this?" he muttered aloud. "Can I do this without chickening out, as usual?"

"Think of Mina," a voice in the back of his head said to him. "Think of Mina. You killed Mina!"

"Okay, yes, I can do this," Jekyll said quickly.

Fidgeting, he closed the book and put it back down on her desk. Hands trembling, he reached into his medical bag and pulled out a thermometer. In fact, the very one he used to take Mina's temperature.

The thermometer still read one hundred and four degrees, the temperature of the painful fever that Mina had suffered. Picking up an empty beaker and a small knife, he held the thermometer over the side of the beaker and started cutting off the end of the thermometer with the knife.

He was going to empty the thermometer of its mercury.

*

Okay, by this point, I'm crying. I just want to give Jekyll a nice, big cuddle and tell him that everything is going to be okay.

Sadly, though, I can't. But don't worry, folks, the story isn't over yet. Just remember that! We still have a long way to go.

Excuse me, I have to go find my Mina and Jekyll plushies.

~ Alisonia