Notes: This is pretty darn PG, but I really hope you haven't seen Sweeney Todd unless you are old enough to be watching extremely bloody, R-rated movies... Written for the 12 Days of Christmas Writing Challenge; details on that at my Greatest Journal (user name earthypages). Not my characters, please don't sue, etc. etc. etc.
He spoke to her of love, and she believed him; locked away in a tower all her life, she didn't know any better. Oh, she thought herself a practical sort of girl, mainly: she told herself she smiled those smiles and dropped that key because she would do anything to escape Judge Turpin. Escape via charmed sailor seemed as good an escape as any.
She wanted to believe him, of course, especially when he rescued her from the madhouse. She wanted to hold his hand forever, gaze into those sweet, devoted eyes, and know only what it felt like to be one of a pair of turtle doves in the spring, singing sweetly and in love with love.
But he was a sailor, and sailors needed the sea. She was an orphan, and orphans needed to earn their keep. The wide world was just as unforgiving as London.
He would swear his love and she would believe him. She took in sewing and mending and earned herself the rough fingers of a seamstress, but he would hold those hands in his and tell her they were beautiful. He would touch her yellow hair, now faded, and tell her it was the same shining gold as it had been the day they met. It was a lie, but it was a pretty one, and she wanted to believe it as much as he did.
When he was gone at sea for months at a time she found the house quiet and her dreams uneasy. Her mind, now unfettered by his ardent love, would run wild with memories of a man with a calculating sneer and a small bedroom that kept her shut away like a songbird in its cage. In her mind her embroidery was always stained with blood, and the face of the man who kept her would melt into the face of another with cold, dead eyes that burned away her soul. His low, ravaged voice would tell her again and again to "forget this face."
She wanted to forget; that would be the practical thing to do; but the more she tried the more she remembered: his knife at her throat, his breath smelling of death and despair. Forget this face. Forget this face.
She buried herself in her sailor's love, willing his hope to be her own. She spent her days stitching and living and trying not to remember, and even though it was just a birdcage of another sort, at least she was a turtle dove with a mate who was devoted and true. Doves didn't think of London soot or bloody knives or desperate men; they thought of their nest, their mate, their sweet song. So would she do. It was a lie, but a pretty one. Pretty as a bird singing in the springtime, never having heard of cages.