DISCLAIMER: I don't own Sweeney Todd, or anything particularly affiliated with it, but if I did, this is how a sequel to the fabulous musical might go.
A/N: Anyone keeping up with Pages knows I don't often like to do Author's Notes before the chapter, but I decided this one was kind of important.
This story features a female OC, and more importantly, will later feature some very mild femslash. If you're not okay with that (like I said, it's very mild, but still) then please don't proceed, because flame reviews will not be tolerated.
This is all set post-Sweeney; I've always been a big fan of the musical, but our school's recent production renewed my interest in it, and in the end of our production, Sweeney slit Mrs. Lovett's throat rather than threw her in the oven. This story revolves around this concept, assuming Nellie managed to survive, but I'll let the rest remain a secret. You know. Spoilers.
With that being said, I hope you enjoy, because Sophi and this story are a concept I've been working on for quite a while.
Sophia's chosen faceclaim is Jenna Louise Coleman, and this story is presently rated K+ for mild language. Rating has the potential to go up at a later date, but it likely won't.
Enjoy.
It was a dark and gloomy night. Of course, that's how most nights were in England, so it came as no surprise to anyone in the city of London. In fact, had the weather been particularly nice that evening, the lack of rainfall pattering against the concrete streets and window panes would have disturbed most residents of London, silence at night feeling quite out of place.
Rain pattered against the stony grey ground, and Sophia locked the front door of the store for the night at last. It wasn't like she'd had very much business—she never did—but, having extended the hours of the bakery well into the night in an attempt to reel in a little more money, she'd been exhausting herself staying up. Not like she had much of a choice—if she wanted to survive, she had to make money, and with how awful she tended to be with cooking, that was particularly hard.
Sophia didn't ask for the shop. Her mother Aileen had handed it off to her when she'd grown particularly ill, and Sophia, out of work and, with her mother going off to live with her aunt, out of a place to live, would have been stupid to decline. But then, with no real particular talent in cooking, she was stupid to accept, too, trying to run a whole restaurant on her own. Maybe if her father were still alive, the matter of her finances would be a different story.
Her neighbor to the left was a widowed innkeeper with two children, and the man often fed her. She hated it, really, being treated like some invalid, but considering she couldn't exactly cook for herself, he had her stop in for breakfast and dinner quite often. But nothing in London is free, of course, and it came at the cost of watching his children throughout the day while he was busy at work in the inn. Not that she minded it much; she positively loved children.
At nights, she relaxed. Most of her days were spent keeping the children in line and keeping the grime out of her establishment—her food may not have been the best, but Hell would have to freeze over before she let the place get as filthy as some. She didn't necessarily want to imagine how awful things would be if she were cooking on a regular basis—more than her early morning batch of breads and pastries, almost all of which turned out atrocious and inedible. Sometimes, just sometimes, if she was lucky, some would turn out looking particularly edible, and she'd trick some poor bloke into buying her monstrosities. It wasn't often, though. But, despite how little she actually cooked, she found herself quite exhausted at the end of the day and particularly enjoyed being able to curl up in the parlor and just read.
She really rather liked books. Growing up, her mother had been sure that, come Hell or high water, Sophia would learn the value of the more scholarly pursuits in life, and, of course, Aileen had succeeded. To be honest, she actually particularly enjoyed writing as well, but no one needed to know about that.
Just as Sophi began to settle down with a book and some brandy in front of the fire in parlor—a particularly warm and welcoming fire at that—a banging on the door snapped her out of her comfort and she grumbled, standing from the plush chair she'd buried herself in and shuffling out of the parlor and across the considerably colder bakery.
At the door stood a woman whose features she couldn't quite make out in the dark, though Sophi clearly knew she was particularly damp from the drizzle outside, and with a rather piqued frown, the landlady pulled the shop door open.
"May I help you?"
"I'm terribly sorry to bother you so late, love, but you wouldn't happen to have any room to be able to put me up for the night, would you?" The woman asked, and Sophia's frown only managed to deepen.
"You'd do best to ask the inn next door, you know," she replied, and made a motion as to shut the door. Quickly, however, the woman shook her head, trying to push it back open.
"No—see, the problem is, I haven't actually got the money to afford a room there. I've checked with them already, believe me, and they won't take me. Haven't exactly got anywhere else to stay, either, what with no job and a recently closed down living situation."
To be honest, the woman looked positively miserable, and Sophi just couldn't help but take pity on the woman. Pulling the door open and standing aside, she let the woman outside step into the dry, warm insides of her shop.
In the light, it was easy to see that the woman was actually quite pretty. She was certainly aged, yes—couldn't be any younger than 30—but with will defined cheekbones and a soft expression, Sophia had to admit, the woman was quite comely. That didn't distract from the rather unsightly scar on her neck, however, that was easily visible in the light. It was lopsided, and whoever had done it either didn't know what they were doing or hadn't meant to kill the woman, but it was a lengthy and unprepossessing cut scarring along most of the front of her neck. The landlady quickly looked away from it, however—wouldn't want to stare.
Ushering the woman into the parlor, she had her wait for just a moment while she slipped upstairs and grabbed some dry clothes for the other to change into. It was one of two dresses her mother had left, and while it was too big for Sophi's unfortunately tiny form, it seemed like it would fit the stranger better than any of Sophi's other clothes.
The second the dress was in the other's hands, she disappeared into the other room, shutting the door and giving her time to change by the light of the fire. When the woman was clothed, she beckoned the landlady back in, who set the damper clothes in front of the fire to dry and sat the woman down in one of the plush armchairs.
"How did you manage to get yourself in a position like this?" Sophi asked; it was some of the first real, conversational words she'd spoken since inviting the stranger in.
"That's a story longer than I'd like to tell," the woman replied, and Sophia nodded curtly.
"Can I at least get a name, then?"
"Nellie Lovett. Mrs. Lovett is fine if you want, though, dear."
Sophia swallowed hard. Mrs. Lovett's Meat Pie Emporium had been shut down by the law roughly three months earlier due to some murders in the basement and unsavory rumors about human flesh in the meat pies there going around. "As in the pie shop owner?"
"That was my shop, yes," Mrs. Lovett replied.
Sophi couldn't help but eye the scar for just a moment before forcing herself to pry her eyes away, glancing towards her bookshelf to the right of Mrs. Lovett. "I see."
"I don't suppose you want me around then, do you?"
"Well—no, that's not really true…" Scratching the back of her neck, Sophia returned her gaze to the older woman, who was watching her with that gentle expression on her face.
"What about you, then? Surely you've got something I can call you."
"Sophia Somerled," the younger replied. She figured, the other being her senior by at least four or so years, it wouldn't be quite appropriate to request to be called 'Miss'.
"Lovely name," Mrs. Lovett remarked.
After a moment of silence, Sophia asked, "I suppose if you used to own a pie shop, you'd know how to cook then, wouldn't you?"
"Of course."
"Here's the thing—I'm completely useless in the kitchen," Sophia began. "I mean, sure, I keep the whole establishment particularly clean, especially compared to some restaurants, but I can't cook worth a damn and if you're out of work and a place to stay, then I can always rent out some of the upstairs rooms to you and have you work in the kitchen with me here."
"Aren't you the resident baker, though?" Mrs. Lovett frowned. "I'd hardly like to put you out of work, dear; what would you expect to do?"
"I'm the sole employee as well, so I suppose I could just stick to cleaning and playing hostess. Not like I'm good for much else."
"Now, that can't be true, you must have something that you do particularly well."
Sophi shook her head. "Nothing for the business, no."
Considering the other's offer for a moment—honestly, it was an amazing offer, but she wasn't entirely sure she could go back to working with someone in her shop just yet—Mrs. Lovett watched her, regarding the young girl. She was certainly full of youth, not possibly older than 28 in age, and with a pretty round face framed by what had fallen out of the particularly messy bun of her brunette hair, Nellie honestly couldn't help but wonder why the girl was running a shop instead of being married off by her parents.
"How did you ever come by a shop you can't manage, love?"
"It was my mother's," Sophia replied. "When I was 18, she ran off to London to run the shop and I stayed in Oxford doing… well, not much of anything, really, work was hard to come by. But when she fell ill, she went to live with her sister and I came to take the shop back."
"What about your father? Couldn't he have taken the place?"
"Haven't got a dad. He's not around, anyways."
Mrs. Lovett was at least smart enough to leave it at that.
"Anywho." Abruptly, Sophia stood. "I'll go set up one of the rooms upstairs then, yeah? That is, if you'll take the job."
Frankly, as far as Mrs. Lovett was concerned, any work was good work in her current position. Everyone around town knew her name—and a good majority had heard the rumors about the human flesh in her meat pies and her work with the barber above her old shop. Whether said rumors were true or not was a different matter. "Of course I will, dear. It's a perfectly good position and if you've got a place for me to stay, then who am I to turn it down?"
Sophi couldn't help the broad smile that crossed her features, and admittedly, it brought one to Mrs. Lovett's own.
"Wonderful. I'll just slip up and take care of that, then." And with that, Sophi was gone.
Honestly, Mrs. Lovett had expected the girl to be down within five or so minutes—the rooms must have been particularly seldom used. So the woman sat there, and sat, and eventually leaned back and began to relax. And with the warmth of a fire and properly dry clothes and a chair comfier than anything she'd slept in for ages since having left the hospital, who could blame her for letting her eyes drift shut for some rest?
By the time Sophia returned, Mrs. Lovett was out like a light.
Sure, the bedroom had taken some particular work—the bed left without sheets and every single surface in the room dusty and filthy, the landlady had been up there for roughly a half an hour making sure it was a livable environment. But she didn't expect the woman to have fallen asleep in the chair she'd settled down in over that period of time.
Nothing to be done about that, she supposed; she certainly wasn't going to wake the poor woman up, so she just slipped back up into the bedroom she'd prepared, blowing out the candles and grabbing a couple of blankets off the bed before quietly returning to the parlor. With such care as to not wake Mrs. Lovett, the landlady carefully wrapped the woman up in what blankets she'd grabbed before adding another log or two to the fire and retiring to her own room for the night.
A/N: I genuinely hope you liked this; depending on how popular this gets, I'll likely update this about as frequently as I've been updating Pages lately; if not, you can expect a chapter maybe once a week. Please leave some reviews, all feedback is greatly appreciated and I love all of my readers very much uvu
till next time, friends