I was hearing the soundtrack and I thought of these lyrics and then the story burst forth, like a spray of lovely rubies. (sorry bit morbid, there)
I tried my best to match the song. It was bloody hard!!
Anyways Enjoy!! Reviews enjoyed - flames will be use to bake the pies.
The bake house was hotter than usual, its light merrily licking at the grisly remains. She peered up at the floor of the barber shop, it underside innocent. It hides secrets like her, it appears clean but is drenched with the blood of neighbors and complete strangers.
There was a barber and his wife
And he was beautiful
Sent to Australia for life
He returned to find his wife
It eats away at her, she rubs her chest. The knot forcing her to breath, the smell of all her misdeeds choking her lungs. She covers her mouth, stilling the scream that's trying to break free.
Dark and beautiful
Todd he said his name was, Sweeney Todd
His crime was mine, foolishness that is. Nellie sighed her arms aching. The bones crunch and shatter. She closes her mind, desperate too drown out the sound of her own morals disintegrating.
There was a woman, you see
Pale little thing, stupid little nit
Would have killed to get a smile from him. poor thing, poor thing.
It was so easy at first, just another customer but she saw through his darkness. Her Benjamin had returned, no not her Benjamin but a new man. A man that had no claim and she had tried. She could help him forget, maybe in time he would even love her but she realized.
She was in love with him
Wanted him like mad
She had realized, he was taken and like Benjamin had been taken in by yellow hair. Beaten by a woman who could not claim him. The customers became ingredients but he became less fair, more demon than angel and it weighed on her. She had forced the change.
Everyday she worked on her flour
Watched him, sit down and glower
Saw her dream turn sour, poor fool
She gave him everything, it was her fingertips that caressed his face. It was her hands that saved his silver friends. She began to cry, the meat salted by her misfortune. His face a mask of living death, he would leave her and go meet his Lucy.
Didn't realize what she done, poor thing.
She worked the crank, her arms and body frail and beaten by the sudden realization. He would leave her at first chance. She would rather he kill her, that than to leave her abandoned.
She took Mr. Todd to his old rooms. poor thing, poor thing
She made a mistake and told him lies,
She tells him what happened to his wife
She swallowed poison and took her life. poor thing, poor thing
Worthless to the world once more. No dreams to sustain her this time.
Of course when she tells him, poor thing, poor thing.
The Judge now has his darling girl
He goes and screams like a mad old thing
She wonders where she went wrong poor thing
Now he's tormented by revenge poor thing
He won't rest til Judge Turpin is slashed
The meat gurgled through, she laughed hysterically. Was this her life, to be forever a shadow? An actress that moved and laughed on an empty stage to a hollow audience. She pictured the curls of his hair, the dark and light close but never entwined. Like them close but forever apart.
He set up shop and set her to chop
He decides to go on a killing spree
Everyone deserves to die
She pictures all the customers that will continue to taint his soul. A soul already damaged, damages that she had brought onto him. She stops, the guilt layering itself. It wraps around her throat, suffocating any kind of happiness she could get out of their arrangement.
She sees the madness inside, you see
Those meat pies continue for love, you see
Pour soul, poor thing.
"Nooo." the scream is yanked from her throat. "I can't, I can't." she sobs. She crumples to the floor, her dress collapsing in on her. The desperation making claws of her hands, ripping the ornate grave.
It's given in but she continued to tear at the very air until she lays bleeding and spent on the ground. Unable to shush the voices, all the voices and hands she can picture rising from the grinder. Coming to greet her into her own personal hell.
She continues screaming, not daring too stop. The noise seeming to keep them away, she crawls backward, her dress left behind. She moves closer to the fire, begging for forgiveness.
"What happened, why'd you scream…" his sentence is cut off. He is shocked at the ruined woman, her dress ripped to shreds, her hair held in a violent tantrum. She looks at him, he steps back at the brutal betrayal in her eyes.
They no longer resemble warm chocolate but an ever darkening ocean that will pull him under if he looks too deeply.
For once, he is the aggressor. "Mrs. Lovett? My Pet?" he moves close anything to get her to move, to acknowledge him. He is scared of her stillness, he touches her warm cheek.
She cowers as if struck, he pulls back. Surprise etching deeper lines in his worn face. He turns to look behind him, trying to understand what it is that holds her attention. Sweeney kneels in front of her, he grasps her hands. Their sticky nature evidence of what had caused her breakdown.
Like the demon they accused him of being she snarled at him. "Leave."
"What?" surprise bringing a new change to his normally empty eyes.
"Leave this place," she shouts. "Leave Benjamin Barker." Shoving him roughly away from her, her own back closer to the oven. "Get the beggar woman, there you will find your Lucy." the fight drains from her.
Sweeney stands over her, cannot comprehend what she is saying. "Lucy is alive?" he inquires wonder uncurling the harshness off his face, lifting years off of him. "You lied to me?"
"I didn't lie, never lied. Said she took poison never said she died. I would have been twice the woman she was. Because I love you." she wrapped her arms around her, her dreams dissolving like the finest spun sugar she so loved as a child.
She faced her demons head on, but they had gotten their pound and retreated forever banished by her anguished truth. He left swiftly, his boot heels clicking every last beat of her love away.
She burned the last of the bodies, bones and all. Destroyed the last of the pies as well as any remnants of clothing she could find, including her dress.
She scrubbed the bake house, diminishing every last drop of blood. She did the same with the barber's shop, disabling the chair. She lays in her bed, the silent ceiling a testament to what the lies had gotten her.
Nellie Lovett would never bake another pie with meat, she had her Toby to see to that.
Mr. Todd would probably never darken her doorstep again,
but at least she had set them both free.