Title: Love's fool
Author: Lilya
Genre: Tragedy/Angst
Summary: Mrs. Lovett had never believed in love, until it came knocking at her door. It would lead her to her downfall.
Main Character: Helen "Nellie" Brown, Sweeney Todd.
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Most characters are not mine.
Author's note: English is not my native tongue – please forgive my mistakes. If some sentences don't make sense, please tell me and I'll try to fix them.
Love's Fool
Now Love, the ineluctable, with bitter sweetness
Fills me, overwhelms me, and shakes my being.
Sappho
Nellie Brown had it all figured out.
She might have been a little thing of a girl, but she was not going to stay in that small, overcrowded room forever.
She wasn't like her parents or her foolish sisters: she would get a good life, even if rich aunt Helen didn't leave them a penny.
She wouldn't need it anyway.
As her parents quarrelled in the kitchen, Nellie would lie in bed with her sisters and think back of her wonderful plan.
She would work hard, find a decent man to marry her and settle down with a pretty shop – but not a bakery, that was way too much work.
Perhaps a tearoom, or something like that.
Her sisters would have whined at the notion – they dreamt of marrying well and live like ladies or fairy-tale princesses.
Nellie might have been the youngest, but she was no fool.
She wasn't as pretty as Mary and Anne, but even they were not that pretty to hope for such a good marriage.
Mary had even been stupid enough to throw a fit when Dick Morris had asked to court her. She had said she loved Tom Andrews and wouldn't have anybody else.
Bah. Love.
Nellie didn't believe in love, not the slightest.
Their parents had married for love and what did they have now? Five daughters hiding in bed at night, a draughty house and mom's family not speaking to her, except for aunt Helen.
Mom had ruined her hands with washing other people's clothes and dad spent most of his and her pay down at the pub, which in turn caused endless shouting almost every night.
Sometimes, if he got too annoyed, her father would slap or punch her mother into shutting up.
And if that wasn't enough, that poor fool Bess had gone and got herself pregnant by believing some handsome man's words of love – it had been only a few years before but then aunt Helen had taken her to the seaside for a while, as she was the youngest and her goddaughter she had thought best to spare her such disgraceful sight.
When she had come back, Bess was married to some chap who lived in the country.
Anne had told her she had cried and wailed like a drowning cat before she went away.
Well, Nellie wasn't going to let any chap smooth-talk her into a tumble, no sir.
Not that she was particularly virtuous or pious – she just knew that her virginity and reputation were the only things going for her and she had no intention to lose them, certainly not to love.
Besides, aunt Helen might not have been the nicest body in London, but there was one of her sayings that had struck her as very practical: better to be an old man's darling than a young man's slave.
Her sisters could sigh and daydream over handsome boys all they wanted – Nellie would not be a fool for love.
She would avoid love altogether, never allow it to go to her head. She had absolutely no use for it.
She only find it slightly amusing that she ended up marrying a man whose name was Lovett.
True to her word, she had picked him out carefully among her neighbours and acquaintances. He was as big and burly as she was small and twice her age. He might have been passably good-looking in his youth, though that was long gone.
But he had his own butcher shop and a house in Fleet Street. More importantly, he was honest, cheerful and kind and would never hurt her. She liked him well, though, naturally, she was not in love.
Nellie was sure they would get along very well and, with time, she would come to love him and care for him like a good wife.
Everybody in the neighbourhood was more than a bit surprised when they announced their marriage.
Everybody knew that Albert Lovett had taken more than a passing fancy to young Nellie Brown, but no one expected her to seriously accept his courtship.
Certainly not her sisters.
Either way, marry they did and vent to live in Fleet Street, above the Wilsons' shop.
A couple of years later, Mr. Wilson died and Mrs. Wilson went off to live with her son. Rather than rent the rooms again, however, Nellie proposed that they move downstairs and she took over the shop herself while renting the upstairs room.
She had come up with another plan: a pie-shop.
Albert listened carefully, as usual, and could find no objections in her plan. Within a year, the pie shop was open and nicely covering the costs.
In the next year, she even managed to make a good a profit.
Only one thing could have made her life perfect – a baby. Possibly more than one.
But nothing seemed to happen – being practical people, she and Albert took it with quiet acceptance, as there was nothing more to do.
At least she had still one little dream to comfort her – moving her shop to a town on the Channel or, better yet, earn enough money to retire there.
But she would get there, eventually.
For the moment, she was happy, perfectly happy.
Unfortunately for her, her downfall was about to begin.
If Nellie had watched and listened more closely, she would have seen Love as the force it truly could be and not as a weakness.
If she had had the chance to get a classical education, she would have learned that Love was a cruel, powerful, unyielding god – and like all ancient gods, he didn't take kindly to being slighted.
The first strike arrived after four years of bliss, when a young man came looking for a place to set up his own barber shop.
He couldn't have been more than a couple of years younger than her – and he was beautiful.
Benjamin Barker was his name and he took up residence in the room upstairs, where she and Albert had once lived.
His business took off faster than her own had – according to Albert, the lad was a devil with those razors of his.
Nellie had noticed him, of course – she was not blind and he was such a polite, charming fellow. He was also very kind, always willing to lend a hand should a patron become too rowdy.
Nellie liked him, but if asked, she would have said in all honesty she felt like a sister watching over a much-younger sibling as he took his first steps out in the world – because apart form actual ages, she was much older than him in terms of realism and expediency.
But he was young and in love – in fact, about one year and a half later, he finally brought home his wife.
How to describe Lucy Barker née Smallwood?
She was everything Nellie was not: beautiful, quiet, delicate as a real lady. Whenever she went into a room, she seemed to illuminate it, like a ray of sunshine.
She too, of course, was head-over-heels for Ben.
It was nice, at first, watching them – such a beautiful couple, so full of light.
Their smiles, their tender but discreet touches – the way the rest of the world seemed to disappear when they were together – the pure, heavenly happiness that filled every part of them…
It was like watching the sun – glorious, breath-taking, but painful after a while.
Their light showed her the empty corners of her life, forced her to look at them and take them in.
Sure, she did care for Albert – but there was no comparison.
There had been crushes in her younger days, all fleeting and easily suppressed if she found she had not fallen for a man up to her standards.
She had thought she knew love, but in reality she knew nothing at all.
At first it was nothing – a simple, if saddening, realisation.
However, having them always in front of her, day in and day out, the living, breathing example of all she had missed…
At first, it started a little ache, which quickly turned into desire, then longing, then downright yearning.
Nellie wanted what they had, what they felt.
Then, day by day, little by little, she started longing for something else.
For somebody else.
If it had been a sudden, violent fire, she would have labelled it as a foolish crush and efficiently squashed it away.
Instead it started quietly, oh-so-quietly, like a seed falling through the floorboards and somehow finding earth, water and light enough to start growing and growing and growing until it became a full-fledged tree and broke down the whole house.
Each day it grew a little bit stronger, a little bit deeper, for two long years – until there was no way to get rid of it.
Nellie should have known, because she tried – Heaven knows she tried.
After all, she was married and he was married to a beautiful woman, with a beautiful baby.
Then there was Albert, good Albert, and her shop – she would not ruin everything, not for love.
Nellie Lovett was no fool and she knew when she didn't stand a chance.
Then, when it seemed it would go on forever, Judge Turpin stepped in and changed their lives forever.
In the blink of an eye, Ben was gone, bound for the Hell on Earth.
It was then that Nellie began to despise Lucy Barker.
Quite a change of heart, that was – it was impossible to dislike Lucy, with her doll-like beauty and child-like innocence.
It hadn't always been like this, not even when Nellie realized she loved their tenant – after all, Lucy had seen him first, he was hers long before he came looking for lodgings.
But Nellie couldn't help but hate her when she let him go without a fight, when she had the power to save him and did nothing but cry her pretty, useless eyes out!
If only that power had been hers…
Then, the fool failed at killing herself as she had pretty much at everything else.
Again the judge swooped down and took away baby Johanna. Unlike her mother, Nellie did put up a fight – up to a certain point, anyway, for she had little power to protect herself and much to lose.
She couldn't just allow herself – and Albert, of course – to lose her place.
She had to be there when he returned – Nellie never doubted he would be back.
He couldn't not come back, not with love burning in his chest and pulling him back to their last address.
He would need her.
Thus, for fifteen years Nelly grit her teeth and pulled on. Even when the price of meat started to climb higher and higher, even when Albert fell ill and eventually died, she never gave up waiting.
And one day he stepped through the door – just like that, like any other costumer except there was none of those.
She recognized him immediately – or rather, her heart did.
All those feelings she had been hiding, ignoring, denying for years exploded at once. It was like a sudden rush of air on smouldering embers.
However, part of her still wasn't sure. He had changed a lot, though she found him even more beautiful, more attractive.
The story she recounted him was both the final proof and a way to force him to reveal himself – to finally let him know she had been waiting for him.
As soon as she saw her opportunity, she seized it.
She would follow him, help him in his revenge, wherever that road might lead. Who needed Heaven when her own heaven was there and she could drink from his presence, his closeness – he was more intoxicating than the finest gin.
He had lost much of his light, but the dark he had gained was so beautiful and maybe, with time, perhaps he would come to see her.
Perhaps Benjamin Barker was lost, but Sweeney Todd, the fascinating Mr. Todd, would be hers.
Love made her more daring, more hopeful – more reckless.
Love made her blind – and lead her to her ruin.
For all sharpness of mind, she did not realize the main difference between them: Benjamin Barker had loved with every fibre of his being and when his love have been ripped away, it left on his wake only ashes.
A love like that could have no substitute.
Sweeney Todd was born of that emptiness, that void and he had no love to give.
He was a living dead, a walking corpse with only purpose, one holy mission that kept him going like a clockwork soldier.
Mrs. Lovett was very much alive.
She had not known his loss, for even when his ship had sailed, she had known he would be back – perhaps it had been just hope, but time had proved her right.
All he could see was his revenge and, with it, his own end while she looked forward and dreamed of the seaside again, only this time there was not Albert by her side, but her one love and her newly-constructed family.
She had thought they had wanted the same thing – but she was wrong.
In the end, Nellie Brown was just love's fool.
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