Chapter Ten

A/N: Thank you to my great reviewers, thelovelyflorencelovett, mrs lovett, Guest and .

The next day, Nellie awoke with a smile on her face and a tear drying on her cheek. She had had the most beautiful dream, the perfect life she could live… until it turned into a nightmare.

In her dreams, she had remembered one of the brilliant days she had shared with Ben during their childhood, picnicking on a hillside above the edge of the city with a hamper of bread that Edwina Barker had prepared for them, one of the many gestures of goodwill that the woman had shown her young son's friend, though also dropping a subtle hint towards the fact that the frail child should eat a little more than she regularly did. 'If she had really known how little I ate back then, she would have packed a great deal more in the picnic basket than she had done.' Nellie reasoned, torn between a smile and a sigh as she remembered two contrasting components of her old life.

But then the dream took a more sinister turn. She had been selling the dozen loaves of bread she had baked that morning, with the final traces of flour her mother had left in the house, so that she could make a little more money to live on with the profits. She had made almost two crowns doing so, and had only a couple of loaves remaining, so she had begun to plan how much of her profits she may reinvest into more ingredients, so that she could keep making enough money to survive independently. However, though she had kept a watchful eye on the streets, should the police come sniffing around, she had not kept such an eye on her customers, not even on the man who had worn a hooded cloak, and had not shown his face to her, not even when he invested in four whole loaves, twice as much as anyone else had bought. She had not thought twice about it at the time. Until the police rounded the corner.

When the man had pulled back his hood, revealing his true identity, the Beadle, to say that she had been shocked would have been a gross understatement, to anyone who had seen or heard of the event. She had been set upon in the street, restrained by two burly officers, while the slick haired man in power had read her the riot act, over the top of the noise of her screams and cries as she attempted to free herself from their grasp. She knew that it had been frowned upon, what she had done, but not severely enough in breach of the law. It was ludicrous, in her eyes, that she was being hauled away for attempting to survive.

It had been just then when her knight in shining armour had appeared. Ben had rounded the corner that led to the higher end of town, running as quickly as his legs would carry him, meaning that he nearly went headfirst over the cobbled stones of the market, in his haste to reach her. She had cried out, willing him to move faster, to fight off the guards and spirit her away to his home, lock the doors and hold her until they were gone. But he didn't. He couldn't, because he was only a child, as she was. He wasn't a hero, only a scared little boy.

Still, he had attempted to shout, to stop the men from taking her away, and he had thrown her a gift to remember him by, while she had cried out repeatedly, wishing for him to remember her as well. She had not seen him again, nor seen anyone, until she had been allowed to leave the workhouse at age eighteen, to marry Albert Lovett, an extremely overweight man with a failing pie emporium, which was ran by Nellie alone, as she now called herself, Ella being too painful to use after losing her darling Ben, as their only income. Nevertheless, she was better off than she had been before, and that was good enough.

When she had awoken, her mind had only focused on the Benjamin Barker she had used to know. Not on the elder one, the husband of Lucy and father of Johanna, nor on the vengeful barber now known as Sweeney Todd, but on the sweet, caring boy who had given her a heart shaped pendant.

Over the years, whether it had been the fourteen years he had spent in the Australian prison or the knowledge of what Judge Turpin had done to his family, Nellie did not quite know, but he had certainly changed, to the extent that he was almost entirely a different man. When once he had been kind, compassionate and friendly, he was now vengeful, obsessive and, quite frankly, mad.

Still, even as she considered what Sweeney Todd had done over the months, what she had helped him to do, the woman could not helped but feel the ache in her heart that reminded her of how much she still felt for him. He may still be in love with his darling Lucy, much to her despair, but she had never been in love with her own spouse. Albert had merely been a ticket out of the workhouse, a way to keep a roof over her head, nothing more. Benjamin had always been the one she had loved.

Lying further back in her bed, Nellie felt another tear slip down her cheek, followed by another, then another, and the woman found that once the dam had been breached, there was no stemming the flow of water from her eyes. Rolling over onto her side and wrapping her arms around herself, as if she could make the arms be Ben's by just the force of her willpower, the baker began to sing, her voice choked and saddened by the tears she still cried.

I'm still here too, Mr. Todd,
I wish that you knew, Mr. Todd,
I know that you know how happy I am when you're here,
Always had a fondness for you, I did.

With the final word, the woman once again fell into a deep and fitful sleep.

A/N: I don't very often write chapters with no dialogue, so not sure how this went. I wanted to give an insight into chapter four, but from Ella's point of view. Please review!