One year earlier.

xxx

When Sweeney enters her shop, the world stops spinning.

From beneath lids shadowed with flour and fatigue, her eyes collide with his own.

"A customer," she breathes, and just like that the world is revolving again, frantically and ferociously, unable to rotate fast enough to make up for those lost seconds. His legs stumble, unable to support his body on this ground slanting beneath his feet and turning the whole Earth into a merry-go-round –

"Wait!" she cries out, stabbing the knife she'd been using into her cutter board and bustling over towards him. Her skirts swish against the floor and stir up months of dust; hers lips canter in a string of words he can't understand; her arms stretch out to him as his feet continue to flail against a ground moving too quickly –

Her hands close around his shoulders and push him into a seat. His legs fold obediently beneath him.

She resumes her work at the counter, chopping this, stabbing that, rolling this, prodding that. Her mouth continues forming syllables, but he can't distinguish the words: they meld together in one continuous note. One beautiful note that blissfully strangles him.

Fifteen years.

It's a nice number, easily counted and distributed, evenly divisible by five and three. It sounds so simple to the ears.

Fifteen years.

Its simplicity can't begin to convey its reality: the festering blisters in the crevices of skin; the brutality of the endless, heartless ocean swallowing him on all sides; the piercing screams of the guards in the harsh daylight or – a thousand times worse – the thundering silence of the prisoners in their cells at night; the flesh torn from bodies by sun and brawls and whips; the hopeless hope as exquisite as the faded imprint of wine upon the tongue, no longer remembered yet still yearned for.

The hopeless hope that – by mere miracle – no – by mere love – kept him going.

She kept him going. The faded but burning imprint of wine upon his tongue.

His eyes feast upon her as she moves about the room, afraid to look away or even blink lest she disappear and leave him with only his blurred conjugation of her. But she continues to be there, rushing about the room and making her pies and flooding his eardrums with her psalm, and he finally trusts in her reality enough to force his watering, staring eyes to blink.

This fifteen year interim has not been kind to her either, that much is plain. The creases of her face have deepened; the porcelain skin roughened, the rosy cheeks paled; the bright eyes muted, no longer blindly trusting of the world. She is haggard, weary.

She has never looked more beautiful.

Her brambly edges give a grace and maturity she never possessed before. Her hardened body radiates pain, yet understanding. She knows first-hand how bruising and careless life can be – but she emerged victorious from the fight and holds no plans to ever give in.

She is like him.

"Hello? D'you hear me?"

She stands in front of him, bending over, fingers rapping on the table to catch his attention.

He blinks and looks at her.

"I asked if you'd like a tumbler of gin instead," she says, raising one eyebrow. "It takes a lot more than ale to wash out the taste of them pies. Trust me, I know. C'mon, love."

She glides into the parlor; he follows her like a sheep after its master, blindly docile and endlessly faithful.

Neither of these traits is lost on Nellie Lovett.

She trains her eyes upon the gin flagon as she pours them both generous glasses. She suspects, she thinks, she knows it must be –

No.

She must confirm before she does anything rash.

Before she can plot how best to approach the subject, he speaks:

"Isn't that a room up there over the shop?" His voice is rusty and the syllables scratch against his throat. "If times're so hard, why don't you rent it out? Ought to bring in – something."

"Oh, up there?" she replies with a cursory glance to the ceiling, handing him his glass. "No one'll go near it." She shifts her eyes back to him to discover that his eyes have never left hers. Pretending not to be unsettled by this, she takes a seat in her armchair, regarding him with deliberate disinterest. "People think it's haunted."

"Haunted?" he echoes, sinking into the cushions of another chair.

"Yeah. Y'see, years ago, something happened up there. Something not very nice."

She settles herself further into the armchair, allowing herself to get cozy, acting as though she doesn't feel his eyes scalding her body. If this is Benjamin Barker – and she can't think who else it would be – he's changed, and not just physically. The Benjamin Barker of fifteen years ago never stared at her. The Benjamin Barker of fifteen years ago was a shy young thing with a naïve smile that always lingered just a bit too long in his landlady's direction than befit a married man. The Benjamin Barker of fifteen years ago could never even consider being unfaithful to his wife, yet blindly wore his misplaced lust on his sleeve all the while.

The Benjamin Barker of fifteen years ago was too much of a ignorant fool to hold such an intensity in his dark eyes.

Yes, he's changed – he's colder and harder . . . but possibly it is a change for the better.

Possibly it is a change to her advantage.

"There was a barber and his wife," says Nellie, and she can no longer brim her voice with that same practiced nonchalance of before, "and she – she was beautiful . . ."

He leans towards her, his hands on his knees, starved for her words.

So she tells him the tale he already partly knows: of his life with Lucy, of his deportation to Australia. Her voice begins to trip over the chapters he's not yet read: of the judge's persistence, of Lucy being raped, of the descent into darkness. . . .

Fifteen years.

That's how long it's been. That's how long she's been trying and failing and trying and failing and she keeps on dreaming that one day, some day, these tries will succeed, but sometimes she no longer knows why she keeps bothering to delude herself –

"Where's Lucy?" he whispers to her, breaking her from her reverie. He sits in the same attitude he's been for her entire story: shoulders hunched to his ears, hands digging into his knees. He perches so close to the edge of the chair that it's a miracle he hasn't toppled to the floor. "Where's my wife?"

"She poisoned herself," whispers Nellie, the pain in her voice as real and unpracticed as the way her fingers are biting into her palms and her heart seizing in her chest. "Arsenic. From the apothecary 'round the corner."

She doesn't know precisely why she doesn't reveal to him that Lucy survived her suicide attempt, but her instincts say she must not reveal it, and she places full trust in her instincts: they have never steered her wrong before.

Certainly, Nellie knows that Lucy is beyond help. Just as certainly, she knows that Benjamin would try and help her until his dying day. He may not love his wife, but his loyalty to her is unquestionable; it's what kept him from beginning an affair, or being cruel to her, or just walking out the door. If she tells him that Lucy is alive, he will pick up right where he left off fifteen years ago. If she tells him that Lucy is alive, he will no longer be devoted to Nellie, and history will merely repeat itself.

"I tried to stop her, but she wouldn't listen to me," she adds, desperate to make him believe that she did all she could – more desperate to make herself believe it.

Because she did. She does. But that can't stop the guilt, the self-loathing, the feeling that she could have done more, should still do more . . .

What more is to be done, though? Benjamin Barker may have been trapped in Botany Bay for the past fifteen years, but Nellie Lovett has been no less trapped in London. Trapped by her guilt, trapped by her pain. Trapped by the fact that, no matter what she does, she can't get to that bastard.

It's not for lack of trying. She's tried – oh, Jesus, has she tried. Mercury mixed with his wine; arsenic sprinkled upon his fish; thallium soaking his handkerchief; antimony showering a drippingly sentimental letter; lead nestled in a vial between her breasts, waiting to be shoved down his throat as soon as his lips ceased assaulting the bare skin of her shoulder –

And once she became so desperate that she had nearly lost all her practicality and went raging up to his house, a pistol in hand, to break down the door and finally be done with all this –

Each time, something went wrong. He did not drink it, or it was not the correct dosage for a kill, or a servant became the recipient instead . . .

Eventually, he became suspicious of her motives for constantly luring him to settle in her home or between her legs, and discontinued visiting her. He could not prove it was her, and he did not care enough to pursue the matter, so no formal action was ever taken. Nonetheless, she was stopped in her tracks. She continues to plot – of course she does, always . . . but some days, she simply does not know what more to do.

Still. Something must be done about the judge. Justice must be served.

Sweeney doesn't roar with pain when she finishes the story. He doesn't scream or rip out his hair or shake the core of the Earth with his rage. He sits. Sits and stares and feels nothing.

Nothing.

The nothing makes him feel. The nothing makes him feel horror and rage – but not in the way it should. The horror is that he cannot feel anything for his wife being buried beneath the earth; the rage is that he damn well should feel something.

But he can't, and he doesn't, and he won't.

Because is this not better for her? After what happened to her, would she not be better off enclosed within a casket, away from the suffering and the pain? That was all he had ever brought her as her husband, even after his departure: she would be happier now.

And – and oh God, he expects God to strike him down dead in an instant for even allowing the treacherous thought to flee across his mind – and now, with Lucy shrouded in the ground, now he can truly be with the sole reason he returned to London . . .

The thought burns him from the inside out with pain, with shame. How could he think such things? He learns his wife is dead and instantly he fantasizes about another woman in her place?

But he never loved Lucy. She knew that, and he knew that, and yet neither of them ever spoke of it, for what was there to say? She did not love him either. She would not be angry with him for loving someone else, then. Likely she already knew anyway. He could almost feel her smile radiating down upon him from the heavens, giving her blessing for his happiness . . .

He casts his eyes to Nellie. She watches him with torpid eyes, lower lip sucked into her mouth.

"Fifteen years," he says, because he feels she expects him to say something but he's no longer accustomed to utilizing his vocal chords and he doesn't quite remember which sounds are acceptable, which are recommended or preferred.

He bolts to his feet and forces himself to turn away from her, because he can't remember the last time he forced himself to blink. He's probably made her nervous: staring isn't acceptable among civilized people. She's upset, there's no question about that. The retelling of the story unsettled her, stirred anger within her soul. She's more enraged than he about what Turpin did to Lucy.

The thought both touches and pains him.

And he realizes that he wants to be the one to siphon away her anger, her aches. He wants to heal her wounds, to find the salve that not only relieves the burn but reseals the skin.

What balm could possibly accomplish that?

"Fifteen years, sweating in a living hell on a trumped up charge," he mutters, tugging at the sleeves of his coat, because he needs something to occupy his fingers with: after fifteen years in a colony, idle hands are no longer something he knows of.

"Fifteen years dreaming I might come home to a wife and child," he says, hating the flavor of the words but forcing himself to digest them, because he cannot let her know that it is not his wife or his child that mean he is at last home . . .

He hears her skirts rustling as she stands, her boots treading as she walks. Her breathing volume increasing as she nears.

"Well, I can't say the years have been particularly kind to you, Mr. Barker – "

"No," he spits, whirling back around to face her. "That man is dead."

Because Benjamin Barker was a coward who let the only reason he had to live dance on the floor just beneath him. A coward who never had the courage to descend the stairway separating them and join her.

"It's Todd now," he whispers as a grin lights his mouth and shadows the hollows of his cheeks. "Sweeney Todd."

And he shall earn your love, his heart whispers in the silence.

He trails after her once more as she leads him up the staircase. The bell jingles in a sadistic mockery of joy as they step over the threshold. He ambles unseeingly towards Johanna's old crib, but turns the instant she calls his name.

She squats on the floor, patting out a rhythm with flat palms against the floorboards, until at last she hears the desired note. Dragging one of the boards free, she pulls out a box.

The world doesn't stop spinning this time, but he does have to remind himself how to breathe.

His friends . . . his old friends . . .

And she kept them for him.

"When they come for the little girl, I hid 'em," she says. "Could've sold 'em – but I didn't."

As if he needs telling, as if he does not realize, does not appreciate and admire and see. . . . All these years, she could have pawned them off, and made quite a hefty profit too.

His heart surges: could it be, is it possible, can she be –

Does she love him?

He lifts his eyes and searches her face, but she's not looking at him: she's looking at the closed box, a crease between her eyebrows. He wishes to smooth it away; he reaches out a hand towards her before remembering where they are, who he is – what he must not do – and rests his fingers against the razor case rather than her forehead.

The movement jars her. Expression neutralizing, eyes finding his with a reassuring dark twinkle, she presents him with the box. He takes it and opens the lid. He traces numb fingers over the blades, afraid he'll awaken from a dream at any moment and lose all of it – the razors, her – home – if he moves too quickly or certainly.

Holding his breath, he scoops one of his friends into his palm to warm her cold body.

And then it comes to him. The answer.

She gives it to him, his friend, his dear friend, she tells him what must be done – and he does not know how he survived fifteen years without her in his palm, guiding and supporting and cherishing him, does not know how he lived without her – but it does not matter because they are together now, and now, now –

He will kill Judge Turpin.

This is the answer. This is his salve to Nellie's open wounds. This is how he will save her.

"My," she mutters, and from his peripheral vision he sees her watching him, "them handles're chased silver, ain't they?"

"Silver?" he breathes, resisting the urge to watch her in return. "Yes."

He begins to speak to his friends, speaking to and cradling and caressing them as he cannot with her, as he hopes to one day with her. He stands and paces to the opposite end of the room, his back to her, afraid she'll see the emotion gushing like an open wound from his shaking limbs.

Nellie watches him, kneeling on the ground beside the loose floorboard, trailing his movements with hungry eyes. For, just as she trusted it was, her instinct to not tell him that Lucy lived was correct. For her instinct has grown and matured into a plan.

Her lips curl just slightly at the corners into a tender smile. She rises to her feet to join him at the other side of the room.

"I'm your friend too, Mr. Todd," she murmurs in a voice of equal parts hesitation and affection, noting when his razor lurches in a hand overcome with a brief, violent fit. Wondering if she is about to push too far, she lays a hand against his bicep. His blood undulates like sand in a storm beneath her feathery touch.

Dear God – the man's lust for her is deeper than she originally thought.

All the better.

She continues to murmur to him, and he continues to murmur to her by way of murmuring to his blade, and the both of them pretend not to hear the pledges of the other.

"You shall drip rubies," whispers Sweeney.

Nellie falls quiet, watching him curiously as he slices his blade through the air from where they both kneel upon the ground. Does he already know what she plans for him to do? Has he come to it of his own reasoning?

She'll have to be sure before she proceeds. They'll have to discuss the matter plainly. She can afford no more mistakes.

He nestles the razor in his hand, studying his reflection within the silver. The blade tilts slightly in his palm and suddenly it's her waxy face instead of his mirrored within the surface.

Sweeney hesitates, staring into her reflected eyes. Then he tilts his head just enough to peer at her corporeal face, their faces a breath apart.

She immediately begins rising to her feet; he needs to be alone, and she's pushed her boundaries enough today.

His fingers close around her wrist before she can even straighten her legs. He locks her gaze with his:

Stay.

Keeping his fingers around her wrist and his eyes upon her own, he stands, pulling her slowly up with him. Even beneath his loose sleeves, she can see the muscles shifting beneath his skin, the sinews flexing and yielding against bone. She sees and admires the agility in the movements, the weathered resistance of his body, the capability he dominates and masters so easily.

Only when he is drawn to his full height does he break their joined gaze. His hand remains closed about her wrist, his skin cold where the glove does not cover it yet each tip pulsing with a vicious beat, fingers crafted from icicles somehow managing to house a throbbing heart.

He raises his other hand into the air, blade fisted in his grip. The expression on his face is reverent, private – and though never one to respect others' privacy, Nellie finds herself recoiling – she feels as though she is viewing a baptism of a babe not yet tainted by the world, or cracking open the spine of his heart and shamelessly scouring the pages, or intruding upon the afterglow of someone else's lovemaking –

She needs to leave.

But he still clutches her to him too tightly for escape – so she stays. Observes. Listens. Waits for she knows not what. Feels the pulse of his fingers slapping against her own far mellower beat, creating a terrible and discordant rhythm of two hearts that will never pound in tandem.

"At last," he breathes, "my right arm is complete again."

He stands a minute in this repose, blade brandished to the world that isn't watching, bathing in the unholy resplendence of his conviction.

Then his arm descends to his side and his fingers unpeel from her wrist. He kneels beside his razor box and gingerly returns the weapon to its home.

He feels the weight of her eyes upon him, again waiting for words that he does not know how to use. Swallowing, listening to the sound of spit sliding down his throat and glands pressing against his ears, he rises to his feet and turns to her. He tries desperately to make his mouth work, formulate a few syllables of comfort, convey to her his brilliant plan to take revenge upon the judge. But his jaw is unhinged from his mouth, his tongue swollen.

Eventually, she comes to his rescue:

"He's got your daughter too. Turpin, I mean. Adopted her like his own."

The daughter that she, Nellie Lovett, should have been allowed to raise. Was she not entitled to at least that bit of happiness, despite her many sins and failures? Couldn't she at least have been permitted to save that child from the cruelty of the world, even if only for a few blissful years of childhood blindness?

"You could say it was good luck for her," she somehow manages to add. "Least she didn't have to grow up in a workhouse or nothing. And Turpin's always been good to her, from what I hear, giving her all the luxury and splendor any little girl could ever want . . ."

Her words are enough to give him the reassurance and confidence necessary: his jaw reconnects, his tongue deflates, and he can tell her what he must:

"Let them quake in their boots," he hisses, not realizing his hands are quivering until he feels his fingers smacking against his thighs, "Judge Turpin and the beadle . . . for their hour – has come."

Her eyebrow raises in skepticism; her heart jumps in joy. Oh, it's almost too perfect. He's going to comply with her plot with she hardly even having to hint at it. "You mean – you're going to get 'em?"

He nods once, then, unable to bear her eyes upon him any longer, turns and strides to the window. "Yes," he murmurs to the glass panes, leaning an arm against the sill. "Yes."

She grins and licks her lips, tasting ale and stale flour and victory. She approaches him from behind, laying a hand upon each of his arms and her chin upon his shoulder, hiding her smirk in the fabric of his shirt as he trembles beneath her touch.

"Welcome home, love," she whispers in his ear.


A/N: I'm thrilled that this story has received such a positive response so far. I hope you enjoy this chapter as well; I hope it was not too expository.

As always, any and all reviews are greatly appreciated.