A/N: After staring at my computer screen for half an hour, I said to myself, "Self, it's been half a year and you still don't have any stories up on . Go write something, ya lazy girl!" So that's all very well, but I don't write multichaptered fanfiction (or anything multichaptered, really) without a ridiculous amount of time, so the first thing you're going to get from me is…Free form poetry/drabble thing, which is what I'm best at. Forgot to mention, this is a Sweeney Todd fic (as you probably know), it could be movie or musical (but it seems more like movie to me, because of the window's description) and it might have other chapters added onto it (those chapters will be free form too, if it comes into existence). I'll shut up now. Enjoy!
Stars
It's night, and he hates it.
Evening is all very well.
He still gets some customers,
still can continue his war aganst humanity;
The bloody shirts,
neatly folded in a corner,
are proof of that.
But between nine-
When people stop coming for a shave-
and one-
By which time he can lay on the chair,
perhaps get an hour of rest
before the nightmares start-
he's nothing to do but brood,
staring out the huge window,
pacing along the wall,
slumped in his mechanical monster of a chair.
Waiting.
And thinking.
He thinks of the past, sometimes,
and as he looks out the huge window
on the night
that used to be so beautiful,
he can't help but make comparisons.
Before,
London became a moonlit fairytale at night,
everything quiet, hushed,
drenched in silver,
Magical.
Now,
London looks even darker and grimier
when lit only by gas lamps
and the thin strips of moonlight
trying to force their way
through clouds and smog.
He looks down.
Without daylight to whitewash it,
the newfound poverty of the street
on which he once lived
is even more appalling.
Gone are the flowers in windows
or cheerful awnings
that held their colors,
even at night.
In their place,
beggars and prostitutes line the walks,
slumped against the buildings like rag dolls,
unable to hold themselves up.
He looks up.
You used to be able to see the stars,
every one of them,
if you looked out this window
when it was dark.
Lucy would know the name of evey constellation,
and he'd watch the path her finger traced,
trying to make a bear or a fish
out of wavy lines.
Now, the stars are obscured
By the same smog that blots out the silvery moonlight.
He can't say he doesn't miss them.
Without the stars, every thing seems black as pitch,
Even when lit by the flickering gas lamps.
Night used to be magical to Benjamin Barker.
Now, to Sweeney Todd,
it's just the dark.
End note: Like it? Hate it? Feel like hunting me down and stabbing me to death with a bread knife? Tell me in a review, please. I do have an idea for a companion piece, so tell me if I should continue.