"Nothing to be afraid of, love."
The room was dust. The fat stripes on the walls had expired to a dingey jaundice color. Johanna's tattered blanket slouched over her crib. Painful nostalgia twisted in Sweeney Todd's gut. He approached the relic, lifted the cover, and a doll-weathered by fifteen years of abandonment-gazed up at him, helpless. Todd wondered if Johanna's scent may have preserved itself in the toy's hair…
The sound of knocking wood startled him back to the present. He turned to see Mrs. Lovett crouched beside the loose floorboard. Mouth agape, she watched him.
"When they came for the girl, I hid 'em," she said. Todd knelt down opposite of her. "Coulda sold 'em, but I didn't."
Todd mentally acknowledged her loyalty, but didn't care to address it. The box, stripped of its covering and bare for his taking, changed hands. Gently, his fingers unlatched the lid. The maw of the box widened. He trailed his hand over the ridges of the glistening razors. The silver and the cold kissed his fingertips as they passed. The thrill of the touch chased his nerves. He plucked up the first and, reverently, opened the blade. He rose and turned, enjoying the white light flashing over the metal. Cradling the handle, he descended again, the word "rubies" passing between his lips and his friend. His breath heated the blade and as he drew in air, it happened.
She smelled like home. Flour and dust and the musk of a woman's skin. Mrs. Lovett had leaned over his shoulder and brought her face intimately parallel to his. Todd choked on the desire to take hold of her scent somehow and crush it like a petal to release the perfume. He nearly dropped the razor when he met her eyes. Shameless intoxication swam in their gleam. Could he cleave to her strongly enough to bring him home?
No. She was not Lucy.
"Leave me."
Thursday afternoon, she took his arm.
St. Dunstan's market had secured the first step in Todd's plan. Beadle was first on his ledger, and then the Judge Turpin. Beadle and Turpin. Beadle and Turpin. And then what? Who?
"...and then me poor Albert passed away, and I thought: 'ow's a lady to make a good respectable living…"
He considered Mrs. Lovett. Could she be to blame in this? Her words were, "I tried to stop her. She wouldn't listen to me". Todd imagined the scene: Mrs. Lovett pleading to Lucy to leave the poison, and then watching helplessly as-
He couldn't see it. He couldn't see any of it.
"Mr. T, you listenin' to me?"
He wasn't. "Of course."
She hesitated, then continued. "And bloody Mrs. Mooney stopped visiting the butcher, so I knew…"
Todd couldn't take her life. She was a help of sorts, an unexpected ally. Not her. At least not yet. Probably not at all. Only Beadle and Turpin. Beadle and Turpin.
Her body and the weight of her body crashed against the wall and he pressed her chest with his hand. The same intoxication glistened in her eyes as always did when she beheld him, but this time a lens of terror clouded her expression. He led her to her husband's chair and, like a lamb, she followed his pressure and his tension. This was too easy.
The blade of his razor rested against her papery neck. Her hair brushed his cheek as his face approached hers. Her brow furrowed and her eyes closed and she waited. The dust and the flour and the musk of her skin mingled with the tang of fear-
And he was home again. His eye caught Johanna's crib, and he loved her. She deserved life and joy and beauty. She deserved for her childhood to be avenged. Todd released Mrs. Lovett. Overlooking London, he cried, "Finished!"
"...that's all very well, but what're we gonna do about him?"
Todd didn't remember ending up on the floor. It was as though he'd blacked out; all his energy was expended, his mind throbbed, and his psyche had transformed. Purpose consumed him, mind body and spirit. He would purge this place.
"Do you hear me?"
Gravity was stronger than before. Todd could feel himself rooted, sinking. He stared upwards towards something he wanted to catch; something he would search for in the throats of less honorable men.
"Great useless thing…"
Todd had woken early that morning. The chill of London penetrated his clothes with ease and shook his bones awake, tearing him from the dream:
Pale skin, closeness. He'd been holding a woman; Lucy, he presumed. But that was the rub: he never saw her face. It must have been Lucy. Who else? There never was anyone else he loved, or anyone else that he wanted.
But there was something he was missing in his thoughts. Something he consciously refused to see.
The doorbell tingled. The footsteps crossing the threshold undoubtedly belonged to Mrs. Lovett.
"Brought you some breakfast, dear."
Todd couldn't look at her. He fixed his stare upon the blurry horizon and ignored her burning presence.
"Mr. T? Could I ask you a question?" Her voice was gentle.
"What?"
"What did your Lucy look like?"
Todd's eyes fell. He knew her image from the photograph. But after fifteen years, he could recall no other face. He grasped at that feeling, just out of reach. He didn't know what it was like to be in the same room as her.
"Can't really remember her, can you?" Mrs. Lovett pressed.
"She had yellow hair."
He willed her to leave. Instead, she approached. He resisted the need to look at her and judge her pale skin. This was a moment of grief for Lucy.
But it had been fifteen years.
"You've got to leave this all behind you now. She's gone. Life is for the alive, my dear."
At first, his journey for revenge was in Lucy's honor; and then it was in honor of her memory, the memory that was slipping from him. His purpose then became his drive: we all deserve to die. But until then...why would there be life if not for the sake of the living?
"We could have a life, us two," she began. Heat bubbled up through Todd's gut. "Maybe not like I dreamed, maybe not like you remember. But we could get by."
He could resist no more. With a deep breath, he turned to her. She was not as close to him as he hoped. He drank in her image: eyes glistening in the light, as inviting as always. Her skin burned cold, like the moon. The turn of her breasts and shadows of her bones drew his eye. The willingness in her body melted his shame. She watched him watch her.
Tense silence flexed in the space between them. Mrs. Lovett waited, growing more breathless by the moment. Todd closed the gap with a single stride-he dared touch her. His arm lifted and his fingers found the curve where her back leaned into her neck. Her lips parted with a modest sigh and her eyelids faltered. She could not approach him, as though afraid that if she permitted herself, he would vanish. His senses pricked back to life as he touched her and breathed her in. The fabric of her dress, firm around her hip, thrilled his fingertips and his palm fell into the crook of her body.
She drew a breath sharply, and Todd remembered that she, too, had been without intimacy for many years.
Devastation fell him when she broke contact.
She turned from him and hurried to the door. Todd readied himself to speak, at a loss of what to say to bring her back. The bell gave a scraping whisper and Mrs. Lovett carefully closed the door to the shop.
She turned to him, pressing her back against the door. The tops of her sleeves had fallen from her shoulders and the brightness of her skin contrasted against the dead room around her. She regarded him beneath her lashes and let a smile creep over her face. "Mr. T…"
In a few intrepid steps, Todd pressed his chest to hers. Her breath was pure sugar. She sucked in the air between them, eyes locked in disbelief. It was as though she was witnessing a divine miracle. Her rapture was that of a fantasy coming to fruition.
A fire of unimagined heat trailed down his chest and bathed his insides below his navel. Carefully, Mrs. Lovett snaked her palm between his coat and vest at his ribs. Todd shrugged off his overcoat and let it fall to the floor. The chill from the window snapped at his pores through his shirt.
His vast body hooded her against the door and he watched her lips closely. She inhaled, and one brow swiftly skipped once and instantly, he tasted her mouth.
It was as though Todd had pulled the trigger on Mrs. Lovett's inhibition. Automatically, she thrust him closer with both hands. Aware of her breasts pressed against him, the heat in his abdomen rushed into pressure; he leaned his waist into her belly and her fingers hooked and dragged down his back. She caught his lower lip with her teeth and chuckled, softly and darkly. Todd broke the kiss to scrutinize her face: her cheeks were colored the barest pink, her lips flushed- desire swam in her deep eyes. Mrs. Lovett opened her mouth as if to tell him something. Her gazed flickered down his neck and back to his eyes. The dark peak of one breast hid, barely concealed, at the rim of her dress.
His hand rushed to her skirt and raced up her leg, certain. She gasped, louder than before, and released her breath shakily.
"Aw hell, Mr. T…" her brow furrowed. "We shouldn't."
Todd rested his hand on the door behind her, supporting himself. Protest erupted in his body. "What?"
She gulped in steadying air. She muttered, lost in her own body, "Not like this."
Frustrated, he stubbornly maintained his closeness, though he feared the battle lost. "Then when? How?"
Her cheek brushed against his as she rose to whisper in his ear: "Seduce me."
Frozen by her contact and her words, he could not overcome his paralysis in time to catch her before she slipped through the door and closed it.
"Toby? Come inside and warm yer bones before the weather fouls, and bring the canary…" she called from the stairs. "Spick 'n span, that's the motto."
Todd's body began to recover from the encounter, but his heart could not.
Sweeney Todd could no longer sit in his barber's chair. If he did, he thought, his throat would surely be cut and his body would crumple into the bakehouse below. As such, Pirelli's chest (as he had come to think of it since that first murder) became his new place to sit and consider. With his stone, he sharpened the one razor he kept for his own face: the virgin blade.
Justice was on his mind, and inheritance, and the philosophies of men. Recalling his epiphany, he revisited his conclusions:
Because of the perpetual cycle of one man stepping on the face of another, to in turn be trod upon himself, all deserve to die. Death shortens the reign of the wicked and relieves the pain of the victims; but how could death act as both a punishment and reward?
Todd had always been careful to pick and choose those he shaved and those he slaughtered, both on moral grounds and discretion for the sake of concealing his practice. He killed the old, the alone, and the wicked. He could not see himself killing a woman, even if the opportunity arose. Perhaps women were too warmly spirited to mercilessly knock down others for selfish gain.
No philosophy could justify to Todd that Johanna deserved to die. For all the death he had brought, Todd recalled bringing life. The years could not dull the memory of that complete joy-
"Mr. Todd!" The door clattered open, accompanied by the metallic protests of the doorbell. Antony burst into the shop, waking Todd from his brooding.
"What is it, son?"
Flustered, the sailor rapidly shook his head. "I don't know where to begin...I came here to report that Turpin had locked her away in a mad house, but the door was locked and the curtains drawn-"
Todd didn't keep the door locked. Then he remembered a time he was pressing it closed with his weight and the weight of Mrs. Lovett. His nerves flared hot at the recollection.
"-and then she gave up the ghost before I could do anything else."
"Johanna?!" Todd gasped in horror.
"No, no, no. The beggar lady."
Todd rocked his head, clearing it. "Tell me again, slowly."
Antony drew a breath and began to pace as he retold his account:
"I waited outside of Turpin's residence. I could find no way into Bedlam, and hoped that the wretched man would somehow lead me to a clue. There was a woman, the beggar, who frequented the pavement nearby. I watched her, and she watched me-we began to communicate about our separate plights. She nursed some kind of repulsion for the judge, relating to the injustices he's committed by means of his power...she too had been watching him, and learning his practices. When I told her how I'd meant to rescue Johanna, she became possessed with excitement. She must have been tinkering 'round while we all slept: for come the next morning, the Judge and Bamford had taken naught but three steps out onto the street and the began spewing blood and vile down each other's shoes and the stone. I dared not approach them, but I watched from my hiding place. No one passed by, and the beggar lady crouched in the shrubs beneath me. Mr. Todd, they were positively moaning with pain, but I could not find it in myself to help them; I knew it had been the work of my friend, passing judgement for their sins."
Antony stopped pacing, as his face screwed up as if to weep. He clasped a palm to his forehead and continued, his articulation more deliberate than before.
"I went to her, to engage her in an escape from the scene. She would not move. She could not speak, and she ground her fist into her chest. I tried to calm her, but her heart wasn't willing-" Antony swallowed hard, pausing. "I took the lady in my arms and she grew still. She gave herself to Heaven, as though her work was finished. I fled to an inconspicuous place, before I could be accused."
The young man, scarred by such simultaneous death, slumped to his knees and gave up, quietly sobbing.
Todd, breathing sharply, walked to where Antony shook. He joined him on the ground, arm outstretched and clasping his shoulder. Todd felt none of what he could. His breathing sharpened, and an acute feeling of bareness trembled over his body. He knew the feeling to be shock. He said, "All is amended now."
His hand closed around his razor, shutting it. He fell to his side and slept.
Rest now, my friend.
Rest now forever.
Sleep now the untroubled sleep of the angels.
Todd woke in a spacious, unfamiliar bed. Chill pressed against him, and it was no doubt this that woke him. It was late in the night: he could feel London sleeping nearby. All was smoothly black at first, save the raw umber light struggling through a dirty oil lamp. He blinked twice and propped himself up on his arms. His muscles ached and his bones seemed to have worn thinner. But he had rested, truly. The sensation had so long been denied to him that he feared himself dead.
"Had to close business, wot with you dropped out," Mrs. Lovett's voice informed him. Todd looked in the direction of the velvet sound. Her hair, wilder from sleep, betrayed her silhouette to the lamp. She was not dressed; her figure blocked the soft light, which filtered through her loose nightgown. "Me nerves couldn' take it anymore, to tell the truth. The meat's all used and gone."
"How long was I asleep?" Todd became aware of his own attire: he felt only his long cotton underpants and half unbuttoned shirt.
"A day or so. Sailor brought you down, all shaken up. Gave 'im some gin to short the panic, and he spun me the same yarn he spun you, I assume."
Todd dared not think of it for long. He committed to process it in time, with savor. Now he had to unwind the present.
"What of Johanna?"
The mattress murmured as Mrs. Lovett returned to it. "Our lads are fetching her now. Toby had some great idea in that wig of 'is. Sailor was all too keen."
Todd tried his feet, desperate to drink and relieve himself. Shakily, he regained strength as he leaned off of the bed. When he returned, Mrs. Lovett had bent her legs side by side like a windmill. Her gown was hiked past her knees, revealing them, and a faint snore wheezed over her pillow. Some part of him wished she had managed to remain awake, though he knew not why. What of them now?
My revenge is complete, Todd told himself. A machine within him whirred on, scrambling for input. Surely there was work still to do. But he could find no avenue left unfinished: the Judge and the Beadle were dead, and Johanna would soon be taken into good care. But it was for her that Todd anguished the deepest.
If only angels could prevail, he would be able to start over and raise her. He would give her all of his love, and teach her and shape her heart. Powerless against time, Todd slumped at the edge of the bed and stared into the lamp. The infant he had loved as Benjamin Barker was gone, and in her stead was a person he didn't know anything of. He knew nothing. He was her father, and he wouldn't be likely to recognize her on the street. Calloused as he had become through killing and his time in prison, yearning for his daughter bled through the heart of him.
He would wait up and meet her, he decided. If only as an acquaintance, and not as her father (for that man was dead, even at the end of his mission), Todd would behold her. Courage welled in his heart and made it both heavier and quicker. In his state, though, he would recall her in the future as he might recall a dream, and he knew that would soften the blow of her passing. What could he say to her? Was there a shred of advice he could give to her in brief, or a lesson he wished to convey? Todd recognized this would likely be his only chance to speak with her.
The first light teased through the clouds over the city when Todd heard evidence of an arrival. Finding his pants neatly folded on the vanity, he party dressed himself and took a heavy breath. He caught sight of himself in Mrs. Lovett's mirror: the darkness beneath his eyes had lost potency, and his skin clung to him with more vigor. He flattened his hair with one hand and stepped reverently into the hallway towards Johanna.
"Maybe it's time for a holiday."
A grotesque pile of nails, hinges, and mechanical parts clustered on the floor of the barber shop. Neither his nor Mrs. Lovett's establishments had reopened for the public. Since the night Johanna left, Todd had lost his taste for killing; he projected he may continue in barbery after a short while, but he would have no more need for the tipping chair. Disgust lingered with petty regret as he disassembled the machine that had served him so ingeniously.
"We can't afford it," he responded sadly. It was true that Todd needed to escape this place, and desperately. But without customers, he couldn't project how he could live realistically. If Mrs. Lovett intended to reopen her pie shop, she would be facing the butcher's prices instead of her own free supply. They'd been rationing the ale, and the gin. If they stayed closed much longer, business would take a hit for good.
Mrs. Lovett wore an ill-fitting dress from her younger days, stripping Pirelli's chest of its blood-stained lining. She was the one who insisted she and Todd renovate the barber shop, turn it into a place without all the ghosts. He insisted it would be futile: their crimes had been too great to erase. He wanted to damn the place; he wanted to damn the whole city.
Todd threw down the wrench and sprang to his feet. He turned to face Mrs. Lovett. "Forget this!" he burst out. "I can't be here any more!"
She watched him closely, anxious but not startled. Her mouth was turned in concern, and she came toward him cautiously. "Mr. T, I have some saved from earlier times, enough for just a few days-"
"You don't understand," he half-hissed. "I want to leave for good."
She put both her hands on his shoulder. Her touch instantly relieved the urgency in his veins. "You could go on south and rent out some place for now, stay at an inn for a few weeks or so."
"We can't afford a house by the sea," he said with a tone of warning. To his surprise, Mrs. Lovett smiled. At first her lips just curved at the corners, and then a sigh of good humor elevated her to quaint laughter. He squinted at her. "What is it?"
"You want me to come with you?"
Todd found himself embarrassed. Of course, he assumed she would. But it was indeed presumptuous to think she would be willing to leave. Yes, they had been sharing a bed, but chastely. They hadn't so much as kissed since that day so long ago, and Todd hadn't had stamina or time to court her as she'd hoped. But she knew the truth, completely, and no one else ever could. And he knew the truth about her, and it was a truth none else would find tolerance for. However it would be, they were completely shaped for a life with one another. Murder was their marriage, and he could not turn from it.
It was too soon to articulate all of that, but he felt she knew it.
"Please, Mrs. Lovett, come with me," he said quietly.
Her elbows bent and she brought herself closer to him. She rested her great head of hair against his collarbone. He could feel the mist of her breath against his neck, and goosebumps shuddered over his skin.
"It'll take a measure of persuasion; I hate to part with the place," she muttered into him. For a fraction of a moment, Todd furrowed his brow: wasn't she the one with the elaborate fantasies of an exodus? Repeating the sentence to himself, Todd identified the sing-song tone of mockery in her voice.
"Mrs. Lovett…" he muttered. She leaned back, hands locked behind his neck, and smirked. Drunk desire smouldered in her eyes, and a deep inhale elevated her breasts. His need to descend to her lips was preceded more strongly by a temptation for retaliatory mischief.
"Mrs. Lovett, I will return to you with a well-considered demonstration of my reasons given time. I implore you to practice patience."
Outrage at his seeming misunderstanding of her intentions colored Mrs. Lovett. She began to unlock her fingers from beneath his collar when Todd, seized by amusement, encircled her waist and, with the strength in his arms, bound her body to his. Relief and shock mingled on her face, which she concluded in a chuckle. Her hands fell over his shoulders and down his chest, and Todd relished each detail of the touch: the intrepid pressure, the heat through his vest, the suggestion of their orientation as they traveled. Strings of daring charged through his veins and ignited his flesh. He sunk his lips to hers and her body went limp against him, surrendering to his passion. His arms flattened her harder to him and sustained her.
She broke the kiss and dipped back. The papery skin of her exposed neck smoothed over her chest and plumped at her breasts. Pressure built behind his navel and sunk through him. Violent necessity seized him, and he dropped his chin onto her chest as if to devour her throat. Clamping his lips together on her neck, a heavy breath whistled from her mouth. The musk of her blossomed and beckoned. Deftly, one hand cupped her bottom, snaking beneath her. He lifted her off the ground, and she grappled to him with her legs. Her lids had faltered, and she charged her mouth to his. Blindly, he carried her to the wall and mantled her there, like a decorative improvement. Her breathing labored, as though she was the one carrying a load. He dodged his mouth to her ear and quietly demanded, "Be mine."
He caught her earlobe with his front teeth. The soft, loose skin of her cheek's hollow grazed through his sideburn. The wetness from between her lips brushed his ear, and she said, "You're already mine."
A fragrant summer twilight passed over the little town of Petersfield, where Mr. Sweeney Todd resided in the months following his flight from London. The ghosts of the dead -Lucy, Turpin, the Beadle- remained between the cobblestones of the city he abandoned. Though never forgotten, their burdens no longer haunted Todd with the same strength. Still, there was one he would never forget; she was the detail that wouldn't leave him until the day he died.
If only angels could prevail, we'd be the way we were, Johanna.
Wake up, Johanna, another bright red day.
We learn, Johana, to say, "goodbye."
He'd scrubbed the blood stains from the photograph of her as an infant, and added a photograph of her and Antony on their wedding day sent to him following her departure. By the light of the tiring sun, her countenance illuminated for him from the depths of an image too long past. He began to replay the night of their meeting again in his mind, his heart fluttering with phantom anxiety at the remembrance of her first glance. She'd been shockingly familiar, and he must have been to her too; for she held his eye with a surprise and inquisition that would never lead her further than an observed deja vu.
Todd's hairs erected at the sound of Mrs. Lovett's footsteps behind him. His attention split between the past and present. In an instant, she was against his back, resting her chin on the corner of his shoulder. "It's Johanna," she observed.
"Yes," he responded. He could barely distinguish his own voice above the jungle of noise in his mind.
"Mr. T," she began. "Can I ask you a question?"
"Of course, as always."
"What happened the night she came?"
Mrs. Lovett had been asleep, to her regret when she woke. Todd had never addressed what passed between him and his daughter; he had never been one to express unneeded feelings, and recognized that there may be discomfort for Mrs. Lovett, being past the age to feasibly bear him children the way Lucy had. Todd suspected she was barren, having avoided conception with her late husband as well and taking so closely to Toby.
"The night I met her again," Todd began reluctantly, "She was troubled. The sailor chirped his optimism for the future, and she dismayed that the ghosts would never go away."
"Not unlike yourself…" Mrs. Lovett murmured.
"But she is young," Todd defended. "So I said to her, 'You're free to be happy. The wicked hold you captive no more, and it is up to you to escape whatever grasp is left of them.' It was clear she hadn't expected me to speak. Then I said, 'Life is for you.'"
His eyes moistened unexpectedly. He shut his eyelids to hide the infant tears, and prickled under Mrs. Lovett's watchful eye.
"Life is for the alive," she added. She pried her body between the windowsill and her lover, bringing him into an embrace. He allowed himself to droop his head onto the curve where her back became her shoulder. "And as she is, we're alive."
Disquiet lingered in Todd's soul, unable to resolve all that had been done to him and all that he'd done. In their sins, he and Mrs. Lovett had compromised what it meant to be alive. This life was neither what she dreamed nor what he remembered.
But they were getting by.
THE END