A/N: I love Johnny Depp. I love horror films. I love musicals. Therefore it is only fitting that I love Sweeney Todd. This just had to be written. There are spoilers. --
Disclaimer: Don't own Sweeney Todd, and if it's in italics and more than a single word, I don't own that either. I just had to throw in some lyrics/quotes in order to make the fic fit into the story more.
She knows who it is the minute she hears the familiar tinkle of the bell above her door. She makes herself appear busy, surprised at how easily she manages to fall back into the role of an overworked baker, all the while hoping the illusion is enough to fool him. Haven't seen a customer in weeks, she sings, and although it's not entirely untrue she still feels bad for lying to him. In all honesty it had been fifteen years since her last unsatisfied customer walked out the door, and she hadn't had the heart to open up shop since. Not after...
The crash of her rolling pin snaps her out of her reverie, and she realises that she's been acting on auto pilot since he walked in, singing meaningless words in an attempt to appear nonchalant, or whatever it was the French were calling it these days. He makes no sign of recognising her from the old days, and she does not bring it up, preferring to let sleeping dogs lie for the time being at least. Something brought him back to London, and she knows the reason why will become clear in time, but for now she just wants to maintain the idea that it is her he has come for, nothing or no-one else.
Would you like a drop of ale? It's not a question, and she doubts she'd get an answer even if she had been expecting one. A couple of times he opens his mouth to speak, but she doesn't notice, or rather won't notice. She's not yet ready to return to the harsh reality that she knows he'll present her with, and so she carries on singing, making up pitiful excuses as to why her shop has fallen into disarray. Worst pies in London, she admits, but she knows that's only half the truth. She rattles on about Mrs Mooney and her pie shop, making false accusations that she knows he'll never remember anyway. Her first proper look at him since he entered the shop comes when she realises she has nothing left to sing about, and she leaves her final note hanging in the air before she finally admits defeat. His eyes are emptier than she remembers, and a shock of white runs through tousled raven black hair - a far cry from the neat brown waves of all those years ago.
When she finally brings herself to speak to him, actually speak, she cannot prevent the pity from showing itself in her voice. She hopes he does not notice, and indeed as he follows her into the back room he seems more interested in the stairs leading upwards than to anything she might have to say to him. She had had the doorway bricked up years ago, could not bear living with the ghosts of happier times that threatened to consume her, but even she cannot imagine how he must be feeling as he looks up at what used to be his home. What could be his home again, should he so wish, although she won't voice her idea out loud. Let him be the one to suggest it, she decides. As with his past - if he is not willing to divulge it, it must remain buried. He can start over. They can start over.
She knows, however, when he asks about the room upstairs, that as much as she may want to keep the past in the past, it is always going to be with them. Behind every word she says, every move she makes, shadows of the past will appear until it is plain for him to see that all she has said to him has been a lie. And where would that leave her? Fair as it may be for him to ignore his past, for her to ignore it alongside him, acting all the while as though she does not know who he is...she knows she is not a good enough actress to pull off a role that demanding.
So once again, she falls effortlessly into song as she recounts events she knows he has probably never managed to erase from his memory. Poor thing, and she means it as much about him as she does the girl in her song. As the words fall from her mouth she watches him carefully, sees the horror in his face as she reaches the denouement of her tale until he can take no more and shouts for her to stop. She knows now that all her dreams will amount to nothing. His pain for events that happened fifteen years since is fresh, and she realises finally that it is not her he has come for. It is Lucy. So it is you, Benjamin Barker. Not even years spent in exile have changed him from the doting husband she once pined for. Not even years in exile have been enough to help him realise what he had in front of him all along.
And now comes the question she has been dreading. Where is Lucy? She could tell him the truth, of course. Tell him that his darling wife went mad after a failed attempt to take her own life, and has been seen wandering the streets ever since, muttering to herself words that no-one has dared venture close enough to decipher. She knows it is the right thing to do, but manages only to say that she poisoned herself before something in her mind forces her to stop. Why give him that extra burden to overcome? Surely it would be better for him to believe Lucy to be dead than to have to live with the knowledge that she is alive, but not the woman he once knew. Once loved.
So she does not tell him. Not that day.
--
She watches him, knelt upon the floor in the flat, arms outstretched as he gazes at nothing. He sings of vengeance, of murders to be committed by his hand. He sings of him, and he sings of her.
Innocent people will die, and she knows it is her silence that has led him to this, but she is still convinced that she has done the right thing. Judge Turpin may not have caused Lucy's death, but he has sent hundreds of undeserving people to the gallows, and justice is justice, no matter how misguided it may be.
So she does not tell him. Not that day.
--
She sees the realisation dawn in his face as he kneels on the bake house floor, clutching the body of the old beggar woman to him. He stares upwards, and she is surprised that he can bear to look her in the eye after what she has done. What he has done. For the first time since he returned, she regrets maintaining her silence.
"Don't I know you, she said. You knew she lived."
Couldn't he see why she had done it? Couldn't he tell that this moment was hurting her as much as it was him?
"You lied to me."
His eyes are not filled with hatred, but disappointment. Disappointment that the one person he had trusted had betrayed him in the worst way possible. She thinks she would prefer it if he hated her. Then at least she would be spared the guilt that she feels. No, no not lied at all, no I never lied. Said she took a poison she did, never said that she died. Again she finds it easier to sing her way out of the hole she has dug herself into. She hopes the familiar melody will calm him, help him to see how what she did was not wrong, but for the best. Poor thing, she lived, but it left her weak in the head. She knows the words are coming too late, but she has to try. All she did for months was just lie there in bed. And try. Should've been in hospital wound up in Bedlam instead, poor thing. And try. Better you should think she was dead, yes I lied 'cause I love you. But her words seemed to incense him more. I'd be twice the wife she was, I love you. He still didn't get it. Could that thing have cared for you like me?
"Mrs. Lovett, you're a bloody wonder, eminently practical and yet appropriate as always. As you've said repeatedly there's little point in dwelling on the past."
His sudden change in attitude scares her, and she backs away slowly until she has nowhere left to go.
"Now come here my love, nothing to fear my love."
His expression is hateful, but she has learned to take him at his word and not his appearance. As they waltz around the bake house she once again shares her vision of their life together by the sea Mr Todd we'll be comfy cosy. Just as she had done in the park that day. By the sea Mr Todd where there's no one nosey. Something she said has finally gotten through to him, she thinks. Lucy is the past. She is the future.
"Life is for the alive my dear..."
She fails to notice that they have been dancing ever closer to the large oven, so entranced by his voice that they have become the only two people in the world. The only two that matter, anyway. It comes as a shock when he pushes her towards the flames, and her eyes widen in agony as she feels her flesh burn yet still she manages to keep her consciousness.
The last thing she sees is his cold eyes looking through the small window in the door before he closes the steel shutter and she is but a memory.