A/N: Well, it's been a while since I posted anything new, and this has been sitting in my writing folder, unfinished, for about a month. Came to me in the shower. The dialog isn't very Victorian, but it works will most all the versions—original, revival, film. Also, I'm not sure if they ever said Mr. Lovett's first name was Albert in the show. It kind of stuck with me when I heard it in the film, though, so there. If I was Stephen Sondheim, Hal Prince, Hugh Wheeler, or any of those people, I'd be dead or really rich. Either way, I wouldn't be writing ST fanfics.
The Gates to Heaven were white and very, very clean. They seemed endlessly tall, their bars impossibly thick. They were also very much locked.
Todd shook them fiercely, as if the four hundredth time might do the trick. He was to be sorely disappointed, once again. The metal rattled but did not budge.
The two of them were no longer dressed in their shabby Victorian garb. She wore a straight, plain black dress, and he a suit of the same simplicity and color. Everything around them was white. The clouds, the Gates, and the figures that drifted just of focus beyond them.
They looked horribly out of place, but not really. A pair of demons loitering on Heaven's doorstep. Appropriate, one thinks.
Lovett made herself comfortable on a little puff of a cloud, and stared idly at Todd, who continued his useless attempts at admittance to Nirvana.
"Give it up, love," she said after another minute.
"I must see her! I must tell her I'm sorry!"
"She isn't coming. No one is coming. I think we've determined this."
"Lucy!" Todd screamed, collapsing against the Gates.
"Oh God." Somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled. Lovett glanced upward. "Sorry."
He picked himself up and went to sit by her. The look on his face was one of utter devastation, as he slumped over, wincing, and placed his head in his hands.
She put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Oh, come now, dear. It isn't that bad. After all, you've still got me, and I'm already over that whole oven thing, you know. We're going to have lots of fun in purgatory together, we are. Well, as long as we avoid Turpin and his lot—"
"Ben?" The accomplices both looked up at the same time.
"Lucy!" he cried, with childlike enthusiasm, and ran to press up against the Gates that separated them.
"Damn it," muttered Lovett. The thunder was louder this time, and she looked up once again, but this time with an icy glare. "Christ, please shut up."
She was as she had been many years before, prior to the arsenic and the Judge and Australia—beautiful, with folds of golden hair and long lashes. Like her daughter. The insanity had vanished from her eyes; now they twinkled sadly. She was dressed in all white, and small, feathered wings protruded from her back. She did not smile.
"Hello, Ben." The tone was cold. Unforgiving. Todd looked puzzled; his mouth parted and his brows contracted. Lovett's eyes lit up.
"Lucy, I—" The barber started. He was abruptly cut off.
"Ben, He would like me to tell you to go."
"He?" said Todd. His voice cracked. It seemed like he might cry.
"God, dear," called Lovett. "God wants you to go away." He looked back and forth between the two women, briefly, then asked Lucy:
"Can you not understand? Can you not see that I was just trying to—to find some kind of justice—and, perhaps I went about it the wrong way, but that doesn't mean—"
"It does mean," she replied in that same apathetic tone. "Even if the ends were to justify the means, the ends are not worth justification in this case." Her voice softened for a moment. "You killed many, many good people, Ben. I know you say that it was all for me, but I would never have wanted to see you take another's life. Now please, go." She left. They watched her go, gliding off slowly, until she melted into the out of focus crowd on the other side.
Todd came back to sit by Lovett again. He stared at nothing, his eyes like little pools after a heavy rain—threatening to overflow at any moment. She watched him for a moment, and then glanced around, chewing her lip. Nellie had never been good at comforting people. Al had always been so jolly, shrugging anything off with a laugh, and who else had she ever had that might have needed to be consoled?
She patted him a couple of times on the back, rather than something more benevolent, and declared cheerfully:
"To Hell it is, then!"