Title: To Kiss the Devil's Advocate.
Rating: T
Genre: Romance/Character Study
Author's Note: I've been trying to find it in myself to write this piece since I first saw Sweeney Todd back in January. Well now it's April and here it is. Reviews equal love. This is my view of Mrs. Lovett's motives in helping Sweeney cover up his murders. My view is that this is entirely a one sided affair, on Mrs. Lovett's side, all her delusions of what they could be or even what they currently are. This is the only way I could envision a kiss between them.
Disclaimer: If I owned Sweeney Todd, why would I still have to have a math class? I don't own it.
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The silver sword of the devil's advocate glimmered with the ornament of a thousand rubies. And her hands alone washed clean the evidence, washed clean the sin, washed clean his filthy hands. Her thumb was pressed poignantly, precisely against the cloth upon the barber's weapon of choice, swirling in a continuous, vigorous motion, polishing away cryptic stains of red death. Trapped in her widowed heart was the motive behind her madness; a love. A love so pure, so beautiful, for a man who's only remaining love was the ghost of shattered past, the rush of vengeance and the drops of corrupted blood drained from a world beseeched to die.
Mrs. Lovett was taken by him. Lost in the charms of what used to be, refusing to face the reality of the depths of oblivion and hell he'd stumbled into. Delirious with passion, deranged with hope she was. With each swipe over the silver blade, his crime faded to a mere fiction in her mind. As long as the blood disappeared from her sight, no wrong was committed in this room. For in her sight, he could commit no wrong.
Clearer, clearer grew the silver, till purified, gloried they became. Not instruments of death, but an artists tools, a finery. A mirror of antiquity.
Reflect. Her russet eyes reflected in the light upon the blade, a vision of herself in the foolishness of absolute devotion. A picture of her soul as she knew it to be, a paragon of loyalty. No putrefied blackness, no immorality, no venality. Her actions justified in love for him. For Benjamin Barker as he once was, as she still believed him to be.
Closer she held it. Closer as if this mere symbol were the seamless, flawless barber himself.
Prick. Pierced her lip did the knife and with a gasp of horror her own blood tainted her safe haven, her phantom of the world, of him, of herself. And poor Nellie Lovett was forced to face the demon he'd become, and her own wickedness, a witch that held her captive in a chamber of love.
The smoldering dampness of a breeze tickled her skin as the door swung open wide before her, face to face with him, the wind that with which she soared above the stars, and her downfall, her ruin, her destruction. Benjamin Barker, him, Sweeney Todd.
A torrential rain of grim nature drenched his skin pale, the circles beneath his eyes red, the mirrors of his soul black and murky in storm, in the turmoil with in. All visible upon his weathered form, yet somehow never quite readable. And at an instant he was before her, breeching their typical code of distance with his nearness. The intimacy of his simple action melting the throb of ache and misgiving within her, his fingers reached out to her tenderly wiping away the blood from upon her lips. And their filthy hands did wash one another's.
How it happened she would naught know, but her lips fell upon his, graced with a kiss. A modest kiss, a simple kiss, a chaste kiss, yet all at once, the most passionate kiss of Nellie's life.
For a moment, just a moment, she felt the beat of her heart quicken in her bosom, and the object of her affection almost reciprocate the flood of love within her. Almost, but not quite.
Cold, and cruel, Mr. Todd withdrew his lips from hers. Blankness, emotionless expression masking his face in shadow. His voice a low growl, a malice.
"Leave me." An order.
Obedience coerced her to rise, slowly stepping away to conform to her constant state of solitude. But the fire rekindled in her heart, subsequent doubt vanished. All that remained was a woman in love with a man and she'd keep him clean forever just for a chance at experiencing that same burst of vehemence through passion in the kiss of the devil's advocate.