Mrs. Lovett pushed open the door of her shop and circled around to the side wall. There was the old wooden stairway that led up to that rather sad-looking barber pole, the one she'd implored him to replace. A brighter red, she'd informed him, would attract more customers. Bright colours inspired confidence in their customers, she'd lectured, and customers are always more likely to flock to an establishment they feel they can trust.
"Bright colours, you say," he'd repeated, very slowly, without even giving her the slightest glance. He'd said every word with deliberate sluggishness, staring at his own reflection in the side of the razor he was holding before him. "I suppose that explains the state of your establishment when I first arrived here."
She smiled blithely, pretending that the insult had merely glanced off her. It was no secret that the interior of Mrs. Lovett's Meat Pies on Fleet Street had been dreary, dark, moldy, cockroach-ridden, and devoid of customers only a few weeks ago. "Well, I just think it's worth makin' a bit of an effort now, now's business's gotten so good. Just didn't seem quite worth that effort before, when meat was so scarce, an' all."
And then she'd busied herself with kneading a fresh lump of dough, keeping the smile plastered on her face. She looked up only when she heard the bell over her door ding; and she saw that, without so much as another word, he'd finished his gin, tucked the razor back into his vest, and was leaving.
"Where you 'urrying off to this time, eh?" she'd called, digging her fingers into the dough, hard enough that tiny slivers of it made their way up under her fingernails.
He kept his hand on the door, holding it open, and replied—growled, was more what it was—without turning back. "I must find a way to the Judge."
And that, counting the previous two he had made in response to her "bright colours" speech, made three whole sentences he'd said to her all day.
As the door closed behind him with a heavy clunk, she pounded the dough and grumpily visualized that it was Mr. Todd's head.
Now, as she made her way to the wooden stairs, she mulled over just how many times he mentioned that bloody judge every day. Not that 'e ever speaks to me much, she thought to herself as she put her foot on the first stair, but nearly every time 'e does, it's about ol' wots'isname, Judge Turpentine, or whatever the bloody 'ell 'e's called…
The stairs looked a sickly blue in the moonlight. With every step, she began to count up his annoying little habits, how all he ever seemed to think of was the Judge. That, or his little Johanna, but he seemed to speak less of her these days. Mrs. Lovett had begun to suspect that all that mattered to him was to catch that Judge and bleed his life away; whether or not Johanna was then returned to him seemed of little consequence. Personally, the thought didn't bother her terribly, although she had been rather fond of the idea of taking care of a child. They'd be a right proper family then, the two of them and a child. But she had Toby working for her now, so she supposed she didn't really need the girl as well.
With each thumping step she took up the stairs, she recalled more instances when he'd refused to have a normal conversation with her. Thump. Over breakfast just the other day she'd asked him if she'd prepared the scones to his liking; he'd just stared blankly at a piece of dust. Thump. When they went to the market on Tuesday she'd asked him if he liked this hat or that hat better on her; he'd grunted. He was scanning the crowd for any sign of the Beadle. Thump. A woman who'd come to buy several meat pies a few nights previous had caught sight of him gliding down the stairs—his feet barely seemed to touch the ground sometimes—and asked him, how was he that fine evening; he'd turned his head an inch or so her way, then turned back, and muttered something that sounded like "Judge."
"Wot's that?" the woman had asked, nonplussed. " 'Grudge'?"
"Somethin' like that," Mrs. Lovett had replied as she handed the woman her pies, simultaneously stomping on one of the last remaining cockroach refugees. Some of the little buggers had refused to die off, even now that she had Toby helping her clean the shop. "Somethin' almost exactly like that. Don't mind him; 'e's had a trying day."
The woman took the pies, but added one last thing before she departed. "Real secretive, he is. He keeps things close to the vest, that barber, doesn't he?"
"Thank you for your custom," Mrs. Lovett had answered blandly, meanwhile thinking to herself, Ain't that the truth! She thought of the razor lying under his vest, next to his heart.
His heart.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
She reached the top of the stairs suddenly, so caught up in her thoughts that she hadn't realised she had made it to his door already. But there it was, and there was the pathetic little barber pole, mere inches away from her nose. The drab thing certainly belied the craft of the skilled artist within.
Shaking her head as if to clear her mind a little—though it was still filled with her mental list of Mr. Todd's annoying traits—she pushed open the door. The ding of the bell—a twin to her own bell, the one that hung over her shop door below—greeted her.
It was the only thing to greet her. When she stepped into the room, she stepped into almost absolute darkness. She saw no one. Holding her hands out to ensure she didn't crash into a wall or stumble into a trap door (the latter was more likely), she plodded blindly into the little room until her eyes adjusted to the blackness. That never took very long.
As the dull objects in the room began to sharpen, the first things she was able to focus on clearly were her hands, still outstretched. Her black lace gloves, she noted, were coated in a fine dust of white powder. Flour. As her face must be, she realised. She hadn't tidied up at all after her baking.
Something blurry and white was lying on the little nearby table, underneath a shaving mug: a rag, she surmised. Just the thing she needed. She pulled it out and rubbed it across her face, not that removing the flour would make her skin look any less pale. Looking up, she caught sight of herself in the shattered mirror. Why he kept that useless thing around after all these years, she'd never know.
True enough, her face was still pale, except for her big dark eyes and the dark circles beneath them. And…except for…. She frowned. What was that?
There was a red smear on her skin, just next to her mouth. But what…. Her eyes widened even further, if that was possible. Blood! The rag was covered in blood. With a grimace she couldn't stifle, Mrs. Lovett stuffed the rag back under the shaving cup. She sighed. Perhaps it had been silly to want to tidy herself up, but just in case he had been in here, she would have wanted to look nice for him. She always sort of wanted to look nice for Mr. Todd, for some reason. But he was probably too concerned about his plans for revenge, and that blasted judge…. She turned around, still thinking, Great useless thing, Mr. Todd….
Mr. Todd was there, after all, asleep, and the noise she made entering the room hadn't wakened him. At the sight of him, her mental list of wrongs dissolved into nothing. At once, with no warning, she felt only tenderness toward him. She took a step back, bumping into the edge of the table, but she continued to stare. Mrs. Lovett was drawn to the sight. She put a hand to her heart, still watching. Thump. Thump. Thump.
He was sleeping on the floor, on a pallet of some sort. He never stops working, never stops to sleep. She had never seen him sleep before. Of course he would sleep on the floor, mere feet away from That Chair, close enough to his "work" to say that he hadn't really left it. Close enough to his "friends," so that he wouldn't be lonely. Sure enough, the velvet-padded box of razors sat on the table near him.
"But they couldn't possibly keep y'from being lonely, could they, Mr. T.," she murmured softly, almost unconsciously, to herself.
They were only silver. Even he had admitted that that's what they were. They were cold pieces of metal—they weren't alive, didn't have life pulsing through them. And life was for the alive, after all; that was something in which she firmly believed. And while it was entirely possible that he did feel life of some sort coursing through them when he held them in his hands, it was only a life he imagined them to possess. They couldn't really give him anything, could they now? They weren't alive, plain and simple, she mused. They couldn't give him love, the way a real friend would.
A few strides forward and she found herself leaning over him, scrutinizing him more closely. She blinked a stray curl of reddish-brown hair away from her eye. It was so much easier when his eyes were closed, when she could be sure staring wouldn't earn her a rather murderous glare for her trouble. Even sleeping, he looked depressed. Although, unless she was mistaken, his face had a slight vulnerability to it now, something it seldom showed during the daylight hours. His bony cheeks looked sunken; he was the very picture of melancholy. Mrs. Lovett supposed she should pity him, but pity isn't at all what she felt, deep in her chest. Something ached, and she inhaled deeply, so deep a breath that her ribs strained against the whalebone stays of her corset.
It wouldn't hurt. No, it couldn't hurt to do it, and perhaps it would stop her chest from thumping, hurting, killing her. Leaning there, and not trying it, was killing her; she was certain of it.
Carefully, gingerly, she kissed him on the cheek. Then, scarcely breathing, she tilted her face the smallest fraction to the side, and let their lips come together. Of course she had kissed him on the cheek before, in a friendly sort of way, to which he had exhibited very little reaction—oh, all pretenses aside, even a corpse would have been more responsive to that kiss on the cheek. Even one of his victims, some body that had tumbled down the chute and cracked on the hard floor below, would have been more responsive.
But touching his lips was quite different. They were warm, alive—and typically, to look into his face was to see ice personified. She'd half expected them to feel like ice as well, but this wholly opposite feeling made her stomach flutter.
She lifted her face away, staring down again at the most beautiful vision she had ever beheld on this earth. Proof of heaven, she thought breathlessly, as you're living.
His face, to her, was utterly without flaw; even the dark smudges of exhaustion beneath his eyes looked perfect to Mrs. Lovett. Then, with a start, she noticed something that hadn't been there moments ago: a slight stain of blood on his paler than pale skin, blood from the rag, blood from her face, blood rubbed off from the kiss. A stain of blood, rather than the soft rosy lipstick that a kiss from his wife would have left behind.
But that somehow seemed fitting. She nearly smiled. As she knelt at his side, she allowed herself to stroke the white streak in his hair that blazed back from his forehead, tangling in stark contrast with the rest of his black locks. Her other hand rested on his shirtsleeve. I'll take care of you, she wanted to say, holding him like that. This time she did give a small smile. The feeling swelled within her—something like contentment. It filled her up, and for an instant she was sure that the feeling was all she would ever need; she didn't even need a child to complete the ensemble. This was enough. The two of them, that was enough for Mrs. Lovett.
Very much asleep, he shifted a bit in her arms and, clumsily, wrapped an arm around her waist. Her breath caught in her throat. His eyebrows drew together over his closed eyes, and he wore a troubled expression, frightened almost as he unconsciously shifted toward her, rather clingingly. It was as if he was in search of comfort, afraid of something, and needed to be close to her.
It perplexed Mrs. Lovett. It was so unlike him. It…was…so….
The heady rush of that moment left her incapable of further thought and she pressed her lips to his again, sighing in rapture, knowing that as much as she may have wanted to deny it on occasion…. Since they'd met, every time he really looked at her with those magnificent eyes, she'd wanted to do this. How could Toby have ever said that his eyes were scary? It hadn't made a lick of sense to her then, nor did it now. Every time she and Mr. Todd had sat in her kitchen together, scheming, smiling cunningly at one another whenever they concocted a new plan, she had wanted this moment. Even when he'd held his razor to her own throat in a moment of confusion and chaos, as he'd shouted to her about how he'd lost his faith in mankind, she luxuriated in his touch and it overpowered any fear she may have had about what he might have been, might be, capable of.
With his arm already around her, she hugged him close, pressing against him, feeling his heart thumpthumpthumping against hers, and her lips trailed gently down his neck; his grip tightened around her, his lips parting in a rare sigh of pleasure; his eyes were squeezed shut even more tightly and he grit his teeth, lip curled back in something resembling a snarl; how odd that that the look of pleasure on his face was a little like the look that came over him when he was slashing throats.
She could not remove her eyes from Benjamin Barker's beautiful face—she had always had a fondness for him and that had only grown stronger over time—but would she have ever loved Benjamin Barker as much as she loved Sweeney Todd?
Her mind was far from that as she trailed kisses along his jawline and snuggled against him—paradise, she thought dizzily. But he shifted again, and then a little more, and then less clumsily, until he was raising his free arm and resting his hand on his forehead. His eyes remained closed, but he seemed somewhat less unconscious, and the troubled look had settled again on his features. A word escaped his lips; "Lucy…?" he muttered, mumbling and groggy.
She froze, all the muscles in her arms stiffening. Mrs. Lovett felt like a criminal, ridiculously, all because of one little word. The room seemed to spin and tilt around her. Curse that word, a little word that held some great power over him and kept him from seeing anything else…kept him from seeing what a wife she would be….
Small wonder she'd decided against telling him the truth about Lucy.
His eyelids fluttered and she drew back immediately, nervously kneeling on the dusty floorboards in her admittedly dusty dress, her palms flat on the floor in front of her, supporting her, as she continued to stare down at him. She was wary of his every movement, trying to imagine his every possible reaction.
The instant he fully awoke, he bolted up, sitting upright in a movement so quick it would have made her dizzy to even attempt it, his brown eyes darting around him, around the dark room, right hand grasping the air convulsively for a razor that wasn't there.
I am not envious of a razor, she told herself firmly, struggling to breathe despite the pounding in her chest. Not envious of something that is not alive.
His gaze eventually fixed on her. Not accusingly, as she'd feared—no, but he looked wild-eyed, on edge, as if the slightest indication of motion from her would set off some hair-trigger reaction. Mrs. Lovett wanted him to look vulnerable again, pleaded silently with him to look childlike or innocent or something like his former self, but Mr. Todd couldn't possibly have looked further from his old self than he did at that instant. He was wild and pale with eyes that appeared to be at once blazing and dead, as if every last shred of sanity had left them for good. He was leaning on his hands, like her, on the palms of his grey knitted gloves, except they were positioned on the floor behind him. In the dark, with the white in his face and his hair, he most distinctly resembled a ghost.
"…What is this?" he hissed. In a matter of seconds, his voice transformed from menacing, to worried, to perplexed. "What's going on?" It transformed again, changing from threatening and gravelly to near-breaking. Like her heart.
Mrs. Lovett felt the seconds ticking by—Thump. Thump. Thump. "Nothing," she squeaked, at last, smoothing her dress anxiously. "I…just came up 'ere to check on you. Y'didn't ever come back downstairs—ain't seen you nearly all day, like. I was beginnin' to worry," she stammered, trying vainly not to look at him.
His eyes flitted about the room a few more times. She had no inkling of what he was thinking. Did he remember? Did he know? Did he remember who he was dreaming of, just then?
He did not meet her gaze again. Staring off at That Chair, he was still wild-eyed. "Leave me." The words were almost a whisper.
Awkwardly, she struggled to her feet. It was painful not to be able to touch him. "Are you…sure you're…."
"Go. Get out," he mumbled, and although the words were chillingly quiet, she knew how quickly a whisper could turn to a scream.
"If that's what you really want," she murmured, not entirely believing that such a thing could be true.
-o-o-o-o-o-
As she swirled a wooden spoon around in a pot full of gravy, Mrs. Lovett wasn't sure what stung her eyes more: the heat from the fireplace or the morning sunlight. When Toby had peered concernedly at her and asked what was wrong, she'd replied, "Not to worry, darling; I didn't sleep well last night. It's nothing." If she replaced "well" with "at all", she would have been closer to the truth. No night could be worse spent than one spent alone and awake.
She was never more grateful that she had lied about Lucy that day when he first arrived. She could scarcely bear to contemplate how much more miserable she would be now if she hadn't. Better for him to think all that remained of Lucy was ashes; if he knew she lived, Mrs. Lovett feared he would be lost to her for good. He was so close to being lost to her as it was.
He came downstairs once that day, without looking at her. It was all she could do to keep from rushing to him and grabbing him to her. There was a tension between them, or so she imagined. Plucking up courage, she asked, "What are you thinkin', love?"
Of course, he still wouldn't look at her. "When will I exact my revenge upon the judge?" And the door slammed shut behind him.
Mrs. Lovett threw her spoon at the closed door.
She couldn't bring herself to force any smiles for her customers that afternoon. In hindsight, she should have kissed him in That Chair—how pulse-poundingly exhilarating, to have done that while leaning precariously backward over the trapdoor, over the face of death…and mocking it.
Like she had mocked death by sending his wife there before she was even in the grave. Yet she had begun to wonder if it had all been a pointless endeavour.
Perhaps it had been different once—of course it had been different once—but the only thumping, the only pulse-pounding sensation he was aware of now, she thought to herself sadly, was the sound of victims' bodies falling to the floor below his feet.
-o-o-o-o-o-
He carefully avoided looking at Lucy's photo, sometimes, when he picked up the razors from the table where the frame sat. There were moments, particularly when a customer was in the room, when he couldn't put himself through that. Mr. Todd knew he must remain focused once a man was in the chair.
If he let his eyes linger on the photograph too long, his chest would ache and his face would become one blank, vacant stare; no, that certainly wouldn't do when there was work to be done. It had seemed that the only times when he felt anything, anything at all, were when he saw the photograph or when he sank a razor into some useless drone's throat.
And yet, if he allowed his mind to linger over what, and who, was downstairs, he felt…. Not what he felt when he stared at the faded image of Lucy. Nothing quite so strong. But somehow, distressingly, his heart did begin to pulse a bit quicker.
Mrs. Lovett was, after all, the only one to fully know his identity, his past, his secret. And none of it ever appeared to bother her. There was no risk at all of her running to the law; no, she was, in fact, a partner in his crimes. In a strange way, she was the only one he could truly trust. She was the only one he could ever possibly…even think of feeling….
Mr. Todd gazed at the floorboards, knowing that she was below. Why was his pulse quickening? It was horrible. He considered going back down there; but the last time he went into her shop, he hadn't even looked at her, and he doubted he could behave any differently if he tried again.
What was he thinking? He didn't want to behave any differently…did he? But it was enough knowing that she was there. Maybe…eventually…he could feel…feel….
Because Mrs. Lovett was loyal, and caring in an odd sort of way, and reliable, and most of all, more than anything, he could trust her. Perhaps he could even grow fond of her presence downstairs….
Because after all, he thought to himself, that was what could make him grow fond of her: unlike the Judge, unlike the lawmen who dragged him away years ago and pretended to think him guilty in exchange for a gold coin pressed into their palms, unlike the jurymen who'd told him he would have a fair trial, unlike the rest of the filth that was mankind….
She would never lie to him.