A/N: A tag to Robynne's lovely Sweeney Todd AU fic, In the Dark Beside You, which you should read immediately (at least up to chapter 14) before attempting to understand this. Anything not in the original Sweeney Todd canon belongs to Robynne (Saime Joxxers), including but not limited to the character of Frederick Waters and plot.
Barbers, Freddie was certain, knew absolutely everything about everyone and then some. So long as they had clients, they knew the gossip that came with them. Something about a barber inspired confidence in their clientele—it never failed that every man and the occasional overseeing wife felt that their barber was their person silent secret-keeper. The worst barbers were the ones that spread the gossip and failed their clients' sacred trust.
Freddie was a quiet and efficient barber. While most gossip excited his fellows of the trade, it simply bored him the majority of the time. Scandals were irrelevant to his business, and unlike most barbers, he was in it for the business and not the socializing that came with it. Needless to say, he paid little attention to the news from the more gossip-prone of his clients and found it to his advantage to forget it as soon as he left the house, to avoid strangling the fifth person that told him the same story in the same week. Gossip was inane, repetitive, and useless.
And gossip from Lord Stanford was all of the above and more. Lord Stanford could turn a worm in a bowl of soup into a snake purposefully planted as an assassination attempt—in addition to being hard of hearing, he was guilty of conspiracy theories and over exaggeration. Freddie only consented to keep him on as a client because the man was quite old and would not likely be around for many more years. The man was a parasite of English society.
But on his mother's grave, he couldn't have explained why his hands started to shake when Eleanor Lovett's name came up in Lord Stanford's greasy vat of useless gossip. Tobias's usually jittery left leg stilled where he sat, instructed to observe the more delicate operations that the curve of the neck required, and Freddie knew that the boy's attention was no longer on the razor.
And the barber did not blame him. For all Nellie Lovett was not his birth mother, Tobias' love and devotion allowed for no argument on her matronly status in his life. And Freddie had seen nothing less than the same, if not more, from Mrs. Lovett. Their bond was stronger than any natural parent and child he had ever seen.
Mrs. Lovett, though, had no relation to the barber himself, besides being the mother of his apprentice. He had no allegiance to her, no opinion of her except as it came through his interaction with Toby. He saw the woman once a week every week or so, if the weather suited her. Rarely did those meetings involve anything more than polite conversation and an update for her on Tobias' progress. He felt nothing for her besides some respect for the way she had raised Toby.
To be safe, Freddie quickly removed the lather-coated blade from Lord Stanford's throat before his shaking hands delivered a stroke that was long overdue for this blathering idiot. What did the man know of Mrs. Lovett's doings? Why did he even care what Eleanor Lovett did? And why were Frederick Waters' hands shaking, when he had never known his hands to shake at any other time in his life?
Toby's mother. Toby's mother, he told himself firmly when they clattered toward home in the carriage. The boy sat sullenly across from him, avoiding conversation as he had since they had departed. Freddie doubted that he would be able to solicit more than a few words throughout the rest of the ride. Any jibe at the baker was a jibe at her son, and Lord Stanford had been liberal with the details, half of which Freddie was convinced were false. But the rest of the story rang disturbingly true, now that he compared it with the tales of a few of his other clients. Those men had been clever, keeping the woman's name out of their accounts. Judge Turpin was the only common variable.
Freddie didn't know what to think of it. Professionally, perhaps, he knew: keep away from Eleanor Lovett. No more tea, no more pies; cease the visits entirely. If anyone caught the woman known to be consorting with Judge Turpin at his doorstep, apprentice or not, his practice would be thoroughly ruined. Others believed the stories that he did not.
But the professional aspect of his predicament was far too callous for him to dwell on for long. What should he do, personally, as Freddie, the one whose apprentice would be the undeserving victim of so much gossip as soon as everyone made the connection between the baker's Toby and the barber's Tobias? Too much could go wrong, and Freddie wanted to shield Toby from as much of it as he possibly could. And he wanted to know the truth, because his interest in Mrs. Lovett's doings affected his profession.
At least that was what he told himself solidly on that ride back to his home. Professional only. He had no personal relationship with Mrs. Lovett; no personal opinion of her tainted his duty as a barber. It was all simply because of the boy. For a brief, fleeting moment, though, he allowed himself to hope fervently that the rumors were blatantly untrue, because a woman like Eleanor Lovett deserved something a hell of a lot better than whatever Judge Turpin could give her. And that was his personal, untainted, entirely unprofessional opinion.