Title: Rose and Thorn: The Love Story of Sikes and Nancy

Summary: A story concerning the characters and relationship between Bill Sikes and Nancy from Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist",

Rating: Probably an R

Disclaimer: Charles Dickens owns the rights to the characters he created from "Oliver Twist". I don't mean to step on his toes. Or his ghost's toes for that matter as well.

Note: This is going to be dark. I warn anyone reading it that it will feature some serious issues that I can only hope I will handle well. The first part of the story belongs to Sikes. The second will be Nancy's.

Prologue

Even as the girl lay dying, thoughts ran through her mind, past the pain so slow and terrible. She was still alive but her death was as certain as the love she felt for the man who had killed her. The light was fading and her eyes were still open. She hoped that when the light was gone completely, and she no longer saw that which haunted this cursed earth, she would find herself somewhere kinder in the presence of a God more merciful than the One so many had vowed would condemn her. If He were there she would pray for her killer's sake as well.

She tried to bring her eyes to his face, not to implore him to stop, it was too late for that, much too late, but rather she wanted to die looking at the one thing she had ever been thankful for, the one thing she had loved in her whole painful life, even if his face was marked with fury and horror.

The horror was a strange comfort to her. He cared enough to be disturbed by the sight of her dying.

It had been love that had killed her.

Since she had first realized her love for the man standing before her, she had known that he would be the death of her. Whatever he had seen in his life, whatever he had gone through, had made him cruel; His cruelty was in violence and in the harsh words he chose to use. But then what other way had they ever been treated? What other words had ever been said to them? He was not likely to forgive nor was he able to listen and let his anger cool. After their first meeting, she had seen her lover's face reflected in each boy in Fagin's gang. They were all versions of him in his youth, before she had ever known him. Oliver was the boy the robber had been when he could still claim innocence. Before someone like Fagin had taken that from him. Maybe in the end he had become a thief to echo the crime that had been committed against him. She could not look at Oliver without seeing the man she loved as he had once been. In her heart she had wanted so desperately to save the boy, not only to redeem her own soul, but her lover's as well.

It was this love for her killer, his hands now as bloody as the handkerchief she was holding, which still coursed through her heart, a love as equally fierce as his violence and rage. She realized that it was her love for the robber that had kept safe whatever goodness had remained in her heart. She had kept this alive by being allowed to love the man. Her killer had not had this blessing. For so many years before she had even met him, he had lived without anyone to love or make him remember that emotion which was the most redeeming in humanity. Nancy could forgive him for the brutality he had shown her. She could forgive him this murder.

It had been love that had saved her.

Her love for the man called Bill Sikes.