Disclaimer: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is owned by Christopher Bond, Stephen Sondheim, Hugh Wheeler, Dreamworks, Tim Burton, et al. I'm just a poor college student playing with these characters for my own amusement. Used without permission and not for profit.

Once Upon a Time
by misaoshiru

Once upon a time, shortly after the Barkers had moved in upstairs at Fleet Street, the pretty young Lucy quite round with child already, her Albert had made the comment that he felt a tinge uncomfortable around Mr. Barker. Nellie Lovett looked up at him curiously. "How's that? He seems a nice man to me, that one."

"I know, love," Albert said around a mouthful of pie. "He's nice enough, sure. But there's...moments."

"Moments? Do tell."

"There's moments where 'is eyes..." He swallowed, from the looks of things chewing on his words with nearly as much vigor as his veal pie. "Benjamin's eyes kinda go all – well, I guess 'feral' would be the word for it."

"Feral?"

"Like, well, I dunno." Her husband took a large draft of ale and licked his lips. "A tiger's, especially when he's worried about Missus Barker. I can't really explain it. You got anymore pie, Nellie?"

She smiled. "Always, for you, my dear."

After dinner, Albert dug out his old sketchbook from the time his family had gone to visit the Indian colony when he was a boy (he was actually from a fairly wealthy family and well off for himself until he gambled away his last few pence against some man on the street) to show her a tiger, since she'd never seen one herself. There were two things in life that her Albert was good at: drawing and eating – and she stared at the old sketches fixedly, keen to commit their details to memory. Even in his youth, he had been able to capture the graceful violence radiating through the lithe, tightly-bunched muscles and narrow, stormy dark eyes to paper in a way no real tiger could be caged.

"I'm probably just imagining things," Al muttered. Nellie just nodded, too stunned to speak.

Once upon a time, Mrs. Lovett learned that marriage wasn't always the happily ever after her mother had promised her despite the purple bruises that without fail spotted wherever her dress didn't hide after Father took up his favored bottle of gin and drank to life and its perils. (Mother often told her, "Oh, he doesn't mean it. He just doesn't know his own strength," and little Nellie, either too young, too naïve, or both to truly understand, believed her.)

It was silly, to be true. At the beginning of their marriage, she and Al had never fought, or if they did, she didn't remember. But what with the gradually rising price of meat in London, why couldn't her bloody great lump of a husband get a job and help out just a tad in finances? It didn't even have to be a regular job; she was quite sure he could easily sell his beautiful artwork, draw for advertisements, anything! But no. All he ever did was sit around, gorge himself on her pies (practically worth their weight in gold these days), and sleep. They didn't even have beds in the same room anymore.

Ah, if only it were easier for a common woman to secure a divorce. No one would grant her an annulment. Her resentment for her former love was growing day by day, as were the beginning traces of fear – Albert was starting to drink more and more each passing week.

Nellie Lovett was no fool. She had seen the bruises on her mother's arms and legs, and she recalled the sketches of Henry VIII and his fellow Tudors that her Albert had so lovingly reproduced from the lush paintings he'd been treated to as a child. She learned from Mother and from Anne Boleyn. She would take a preemptive strike.

She told the apothecary that she had a rat problem. She told her friends and family that Albert had left her. It was true enough, she figured.

There were times when it was something that she regretted. She reconciled it by telling herself that she only missed the relationship that was, not what it became. Besides, Mr. Barker had usurped Al's place in her heart long ago, the day their eyes first met.

Once upon a time, she learned the true meaning of loss. They took her Mr. Barker away. He had done nothing wrong, and while she had long secretly hoped something would happen to separate Mr. Barker and Mrs. Barker...not like this. Never like this.

And then, after the continued cruelty of Judge Turpin, she felt something she could not recall feeling toward another woman, save her mother, and certainly not Mrs. Barker Barker, in her life: empathy. She came to visit her neighbor nearly every day, holding her hand through the nightmares, caring for baby Johanna, and in general trying to at least put a little light back in the poor thing's life.

This continued until one day, Mrs. Barker, still feverish from a winter cold, stirred weakly as Nellie had taken her hand and said, "Benjamin?"

It was after this that the resentment began to set in anew. The green-eyed monster, whose thirst for a monopoly on Mr. Barker's love and acceptance she thought she had managed to quash permanently after the tragedy of poor Mrs. Barker, stirred, ravenous for blood. And the more Mrs. Barker's will to live faded, the more insistent the monster became.

Finally, she could do naught but indulge it. Another quick trip to the apothecary, and a quick swish to stir the arsenic into a glass of gin. "To ease the pain," she said, handing the cup to Mrs. Barker.

Mrs. Barker looked up at her, eyes tired and sad but not angry. "It's poisoned."

Nellie shook her head vehemently, but Mrs. Barker said, "Don't worry about it," and downed the cup in one gulp.

It was worse than if Mrs. Barker had died. Never again, she promised herself. Never.

Once upon a time, Nellie Lovett remembered how to dream without nightmares. Her Mr. Barker had returned, even if he was Mr. Todd now. And he was all hers. Wasn't he?

His eyes, though...they really were like a tiger's now. It almost scared her.

Once upon a time, she had a nightmare about tiger eyes.

But as harsh as Mr. Todd could be, he was gentler around Mrs. Lovett in reality. He wouldn't seriously hurt her.

At least, she hoped.

Once upon a time, Mrs. Lovett taught herself how to strip a human body of its flesh, grind it, and bake it into pies. She shuddered the first time, but it was good business, given the current price of meat due to the ongoing war against France.

Nellie had killed someone once, almost done so a second time. She meant it when she said, "Never again." But this was different. She was helping Mr. Todd now.

She would do anything to help him. Anything.

Once upon a time, she glanced upon a sleeping child clasping an empty bottle of gin to his chest for the third night in a row, sighed, gave an amused smile, and ruffled his hair.

Once upon a time, she dreamed of a house on the beach and living a happy life with Mr. Todd.

Somewhere inside, she knew it was probably impossible. But she could dream.

Once upon a time, she exchanged promises with the same child that nothing was going to hurt them.

It had to be the truth. No other option.

Once upon a time, she screamed. It was her, again. Bloody Mrs. Barker ruined everything, didn't she?

Put her out of her misery.

He saw her face. He saw. Hesawhesawhesaw.

A surreal waltz. She knew she was doomed. Somewhere inside she knew, even as he talked of forgiveness and living for now, that this was Sweeney Todd. He didn't forgive. He didn't forget. But she could dream.

As she screamed away those few last breaths, the fires of the oven consuming her, she noticed with a pain beyond physical that he shut the grate, hiding from her eyes the only flames more consuming, those tiger eyes that were her death and her salvation.

"Now we all deserve to die – even you, Mrs. Lovett, even I."

She should've known. She knew.

There was no place for her in the fairy tale of Mr. Todd and Mrs. Barker, and there never was.