A/N: Well...this chapter certainly took forever - and I mean forever - to write. It's really short, and it was gonna be longer, except it kept giving me so much trouble. I had great expectations for it, I really did....but then my life decided to go *screechboom* as life often does, so this is what you get. I hope you like it, anyway. Stuff actually happens in this chapter! Oh yes, and one of my good friends recently got an image of a Bob the Builder Sweeney Todd stuck in my head, so thanks for that. It can be scary... Cheers!
Very quickly, he saw her concern harden into something altogether different, and Mrs. Lovett launched herself at him to latch onto his razor and grapple with it in order to tear it from his hand. He did not relinquish it with ease, and the silence was deafening in their locked movement. It seemed that the shadowed figure drawing ever closer might notice at any moment as he slowly began to regain control of his blade, but nothing happened at all for the longest of times. The baker was intent upon hindering his aim, and though he tried to convince her to let go with strength alone, it was not enough. Neither was this method very fast, and Mr. Todd knew it would be a wonder if they ever survived.
"Stop it," she hissed at him, presumably in desperation as she glanced sideways towards the constable. "That'll do no good; there's only more where this one came from. Mr. T, how do you mean by going on like this? Let go!"
"No!" he growled back. She winced as he said it, but he refused to let her have her way. Eleanor fought against him in a shameful desolation, and they struggled in utter silence until the satchel was half off his shoulder and the constable was only a couple of steps away from revealing their presence. Sweeney knew it was a match Nellie couldn't win, but that did nothing to stop her from trying. They were equal in their tenacity, and that was enough to keep them each holding to the weapon even as the officer plotted his course towards their direction.
The battle of pulling and tugging turned into a contest of who could glare the other into submission as their awareness of their impending discovery grew, and this was a contest Mr. Todd wasn't entirely prepared to participate in. It wasn't often that he was looking at her so directly, and it was difficult to keep glaring when it was so much easier to simply gape. She seemed distracted by his stare as much as he, and he thought past this to formulate an easier plan. By this time, he knew she couldn't win, and so did she.
She was left helpless to the perfect execution of his movement, and he discarded her weakened resistance in an instant with a simple upward twitch of the lips. The smooth metal gave way immediately to slip right through her fingers upon his manipulation of her malleable emotions, and he found he was rather enjoying it at his further exploit. He leaned forward in a discreet movement that would be virtually invisible beyond the shadow to place his lips deliberately upon her cheek, and her frozen shock prompted his familiar flame to return to eat at his concentration.
"Thank you, my pet," he breathed out across her pallid skin, and the words held a certain meaning beyond what he was counting on in his obvious mockery. The delicate touch worked to ignite his burning encumberment, and he resisted the urge to both sigh and obey the parched thirst.
The baker did nothing as he stole back his silver prize and aimed for the constable's throat, as if she were just as dazed as he. In perfecting his aim, he stopped to consider this, and wondered at how his hand had somehow become caught in hers. Puzzled at how it had gotten there at all, the thought distracted him until Eleanor had the audacity to gasp into his ear, and the sound was like a lever to his mind that pulled his thoughts back towards the source. She seemed not to have noticed just yet what she had done, and so she simply blinked up to him in the silence that surrounded them. It was the kind of silence only brought about when anticipation was locked just below stiff muscles and shallow breath, and Mr. Todd found his fingers curling about her hand at the movement that was displayed in front of them, his nails biting at her skin.
Seeming to have realized her error, Mrs. Lovett became very still at his side, and her hand tightened around his. It was too dark for him to see whether she was looking at him or not, but Sweeney was glad for it and respected whatever reasoning that had led the baker to ridding the place of any light before they left. Now, it served to disguise them in its shadows from the looming officer, when they might have been caught had there been light.
A sickening excitement upturned in the pit of his stomach, burning up his veins with every labored beat of his heart to affect each of his senses in a stifling peak of awareness. He felt he could hear every rattling breath taken by the constable in front of them, and noticed that Eleanor appeared not to be breathing at all. With these senses roaring in his head, he felt it very light, and strained to see through the velvet darkness at the rustle of clothing. The barber could almost see the indefinite shape of the officer moving towards Nellie with an arm outstretched, and she shrank back closer to him under the advance.
Mrs. Lovett was right; attempt to slit the constable's throat, and he risked attracting more from even the slightest of noises. It was unfortunate, but he knew he could not take on more than one or two officers with a simple razor when they had clubs and pistols as well as the leverage of threatening the baker, who was without a weapon. Protecting Eleanor was a task not easily taken on, considering the trouble imposed by the shadow reaching for her, getting closer to touching her with unjust fingers with each passing moment. He was left with only one choice.
Biting back a sigh, he drew his razor into the air above his head and lashed out with it, flinging it from his palm in one great sweep towards the door of the adjoining room. With the consequential clatter invoked by its interrupted landing, even Mr. Todd was slightly surprised at how much noise he'd actually produced. His right hand now suddenly bereft of the familiar weight, he let it fall to his side as the moving shadow before them halted. Only a tiny amount of space separated the tips of the officer's fingers and Mrs. Lovett's vulnerable neck, and the barber was sated with the retreat that he'd caused.
Quicker now, the constable pulled away to go investigate the source of the sudden racket, and the mark of his heavy footsteps on the wooden floor announced his departure. With each step away, the tension that had pulled together his chest was loosened until at last, as the footsteps vanished into the next room, the baker's uncomfortable movement at his side led him to recognize that they still had quite a ways to go. More constables were sure to come, and haste was essential to survival.
Therefore, taking a step away from the wall, he induced Nellie to follow him with light footsteps and a careful course. His hand in hers suspended both their arms between them like a rope, and he secured the knot with a delicate tug that pulled her towards him in the dark. He stopped as she stumbled, and waited to listen. When no further noise succeeded, Mr. Todd continued to lead the baker ever closer to the stairwell that loomed so much farther than he remembered. It was only a dark splotch in the center of his vision, barely visible against its surroundings. Everything about him took on a surreal state of blurring into one another, and he still continued towards the biggest blot of ink with each foot dragged forward.
At the top of the stairs leading downward, the stench of coppery death and charred filth filled his nostrils with an unpleasant stinging, and he resisted the poignant urge to cough into his throat. Remarkably, it seemed not to affect Mrs. Lovett in the slightest, and left him to ponder what she truly did for him each day. It was a gruesome imagining even for him, because he had never thought of his customers as anything but faceless meat and revenge, blood and flesh. Now, it seemed that they had been grinding up and cooking entire lifetimes, and suddenly the walls were coated with a nameless, despicable contamination that left a stain on his conscience. This was murder.
Perhaps some of it was deserved, but none was so deserving as he for such a death. And yet he would not have it. Responsible as he was, he was bent on living now that he saw there to be a slight chance of doing so without the misery the past had brought him.
The subtle tap of shoes to the floor gave him an indication of how much time they had, and so he brought Eleanor down with him into the foul gloom at a faster pace, trusting the steps underneath to be where he set down his feet. She came at his side, obscured by the murky shade, and he knew her to be there only by her hand in his, and her somber breathing.
It was more foul to him once they had reached the bake house floor, as if the air hanging about him had suddenly taken on a solid consistency and he could hardly breathe. Breathing through his mouth now to rid the smell from his nose, he continued straight on into the dark with the creeping suspicion that he was going to trip and fall on his face before long. If not, then Mrs. Lovett would be so kind as to do that before him and take him down with her. Either way, he knew that sight was useless in this kind of dark, and it was almost eerie with the slow drone of voices behind them debating whether or not to go down. A lingering chill drilled itself past his skin and into his bones from the weighted air around them, and though they tried to be silent he could hear their footsteps echoing like thunder claps around them.
"Stop," whispered the baker quickly, and he did. "There's a grate where you're standing, and I know if we got down and felt for it then we could find the lid and lift it up." She sounded breathless and panicked, much like he knew he should feel himself if given proper time to consider it. Working quickly, he knelt down on one knee and felt Eleanor do something similar as he searched for the lid she spoke of with his fingers on the grimy, cool stones. More than once, their hands met in their blind raking of the floor, but he didn't pause in his inspection until he'd found the means by which to pull up the lid, and his fingers locked around it at about the same time Nellie determined that she had "got it".
Muttering a reply under his breath, they lifted it together with as much stealth as they could muster, and his side touched the floor first with a quiet metal scrape. They set it down with uneasy caution next to the hole that sent him a mildly fresh breath of air compared to his thick surroundings, and there was a second's hesitation as each waited for the other to make a move. Squinting into the nothingness in front of him where he knew Mrs. Lovett would be, it was very strange to know she was there but not to see her. He could picture her softly shadowed face and dark, curved lips as she might have gazed back at him, her liquid black eyes boring into his through his imagination. It was very likely that she was looking at him then, but it was almost impossible to tell.
"Mr. T…?" he heard her question, a little too loud for his liking. She sounded somehow calm from the tone of her voice, though he knew she couldn't be, and it picked at his curiosity enough to disregard the approaching voices for a few seconds longer.
"What?" he snapped dangerously. She hesitated at his irritable reply, and the pause led him to become impatient with the baker and her sudden need to question him. They were on the brink of either escape or capture, and he wished vehemently that she would simply ask her silly question later, when the seconds against them weren't so critical.
"The flowers…" it was all she said. Vaguely, it gave him a memory of the odd bouquet he'd given her, lying somewhere on the corner of the harmonium where she'd put it and left it. It would have surprised him that she'd remember it now, after it was certainly too late, if he hadn't already been expecting something of equal fatuousness. As it was, he simply scoffed at her pother and directed her to climb down through the hole. Through she seemed to want to argue, all she gave him was a quiet "alright" before feeling out for the rusted, old ladder and stepping down onto it.
The baker climbed much slower than he would have thought it would take, and the footsteps coming down into the bake house had him impatient. If the constables walked just a few yards forward, then they would be caught. Holding his breath, he started down after Eleanor before she had reached the bottom and willed them not to make any sort of noise that would attract the attention of the constables entering the room. There was no way to tell for sure how many there were, but Mr. Todd was sure he didn't want to find out. They talked loudly, discussing how dark it was and searching for match sticks as he reached out to drag the lid over and carefully lower it shut above his head. Whatever noise might have been made was masked by the sound of the officials' voices, and he cursed when he heard one mention searching the sewers.
Quickening pace, he grabbed Mrs. Lovett at the bottom to pull her in the direction away from the grate. She came a little too willingly, tripping on the uneven stones underfoot and careening into his side with a loud gasp. With much toil, she managed to remain on her feet, but the raucous uproar she'd caused with her sonorous shoes was enough to cause an unnerving silence above them. Growling at her to take them off, Sweeney proceeded to stride down the dimly lit passage to scout out their direction. There was a fork in the path ahead where it split left and then right in an angular method, and there was no possible way to ascertain the quickest course from simply staring at the scoured stones and listening to the trickles of the flowing waste.
When he returned, Nellie was closer than he had anticipated with bare stockings and her boots held by the laces at her side. She nearly knocked into him again, but he ushered her along just as she caught her footing to keep at a fast pace worthy of her complaint. Strangely for her, she gave none, but he equated this to the echoes around them of their own movements being a warning against direct speech, as well as her knowledge of the facet that it was entirely essential. The baker was unusually quiet as he led her down the left passage, and she said nothing even as they were forced to bend their necks due to the low rocks overhead.
Not long after, he heard a clatter behind them that indicated the presence of the constabulary a ways back, and also encountered yet another series of pathways leading off from one another in separate direction. Beside him, Mrs. Lovett let out an exasperated sigh when she managed to trudge through a puddle, but gave no complaint when she caught her arm to drag her on. Had he thought about it, his pace might have been too quick for hers, but he did not think of such a thing at the time. Instead, he concentrated on walking silently and quickly down the nearest passage.
Eleanor, on the other hand, felt more inclined to go left; he noticed this once she had started off in the opposite direction from his, tugging him back. Naturally, they both stopped to look at one another: his an accusing look, and hers surprised. She tried to communicate something to him without words, but he cut her off by bringing his hand to her throat and closing it. The gesture wasn't meant so much as to murder as it was to threaten her and force her into agreeing with him on what way they should take, but he soon found it to be quite the bad idea.
He jolted her closer by his grip on her throat, trying to shove her in the direction of the passage and make her go ahead of him, but the action unbalanced her. She might have caught herself had he not still been latched onto her neck, choking her if she would lean just a bit more forward and failing to help her as she fell back. Seeing his mistake, he moved faster than he could think in lunging after her, preventing her from landing in the waste behind and therefore preventing a great stink as well as a loud splash. What resulted was his holding her very close, moving away from the wide flow to stand against the wall.
The baker exhaled into his shoulder, sounding astounded, and he let her cling to him as he listened to the dripping quiet. A distant tapping was getting closer, and he tried to discern how far away it was from their location. Not even the whole police could search the entire London underground; it was impossible. There had to be a route they wouldn't take, and that route would be their escape. All he had to do was keep choosing paths until their numbers were low enough from splitting apart at each intersection. Until that time, however, they were not safe, as they were not safe then.
Nellie's heartbeat was in the same pattern as the tapping beyond, reverberating through him from the pulse of her neck, and it proved to be a good distraction. Feeling a similar prickle of heat as what he'd felt before, but recognizing it for what it was, he tried very hard to suppress it. Now was certainly not the time to be kissing his accomplice, much less even thinking on it. They would be lost and spotted in an instant, or what it may seem like, if the roaring in his ears and the pounding on his temple were anything to judge by on his sense of control. It had taken on a different meaning from when he'd last had to encounter it; then, control had been the diligence to wait until the exact moment he knew was opportune for slicing through the arteries of his customers: wait, like Mrs. Lovett had said. Now, it was a completely different idea. Control was a foreign concept in this matter, entailing the reigning in of his temperament as he'd never had to before.
Murder was calmly waiting for the right moment to unleash his beast, like opening a door. It was easy. Now, it was like trying to keep shut that same door with such a driving force behind it such as to knock him flat if he had opened it. It was unpredictable and straining.
With her pulse racing against his palm, Eleanor shifted away from him, and he removed his hand from her throat. She breathed her thanks, and met his gaze with an even stare, filled to the brim with the very emotion he failed to comprehend. It was something close to wonderment, but it was much more. Though he didn't take the time to figure it out, he knew that it wasn't quite the heat that he felt, but something less apprehensible. There was no temptation or strain behind her gaze: only that awed, gawking light that shimmered at him in its foul mockery of his inability to appreciate it.
He knew that it would cost him a great deal to give in to the imploring requests of his sizzling sense of inward burning, but there was nothing for it. The request became a demand, and the demand was too much. The door he held tightly shut groaned under the great pressure, and he grit his teeth until it burst open completely, leaving what was behind to flood out through him and direct him forward. Without an ounce of hesitance, he complied, and caught the baker in her shock with a crushing urgency. She did not disagree, and in fact followed his movements if not when even more fervor than he. In her excitement, she didn't have a very developed sense of survival. She allowed for all and might have allowed him much more, had he not remembered the very prominent fact that they were in a sewer with the law on their heels.
Swallowing his incineration and tearing his lips from hers, Sweeney held her in her place for the moment, listening to how fast their destruction progressed towards them. It was not very far away now, he could hear, and the tapping had become a slamming. Even Eleanor, through her helpless daze, seemed to notice it, and she sent him a glance that he answered by pulling her down the path he'd chosen earlier. This time, she did not argue his decision.
This time, they ran, and the barber could feel the heels of Mrs. Lovett's boots colliding with his thigh as they swung from their position hanging from her hand. His own shoes made a dull smacking sound on the wet rocks underfoot, and it was exceedingly difficult to compare their distance to the constables' through the noise. Grinding his teeth together in an effort to run faster, he suddenly found Eleanor outdistancing himself by a good few yards. Blinking after her, he focused his direction on her back in front of him and irritably wondered how she had become so much faster than he. She was like a right proper animal the way she flew ahead of him, and he put his question to her once he'd finally gained enough ground to be heard.
"How are you so bloody fast, pet?" he implored, trying to keep his breath from escaping him. She made no point to hide the fact that she was gasping for the air herself, but she looked over her shoulder at him in a way that didn't settle well in his mind. The smirk on her face was much too satisfactory, and he'd rather her not look at him like she had. In fact, he'd rather her be the one behind him.
"I had some practice on them cats a few years back," she replied breathlessly. "Quite fast, they are; nigh impossible to catch…don't see how – how Mrs. Mooney does it. Guess it doesn't matter so much at present, though, eh?" She gave him a sad smile with a sidelong glance, attempting to keep her hair in its place as it started to topple down from atop her head, and his only reply was to supply her with a curt nod. There was no approach he could think of that would make Nellie – a woman, no less – faster than him, and so the gain was temporary in his mind. He could easily overtake her, he knew.
Sucking in a large portion of air, Sweeney willed himself to move faster. Soon enough, the air started to chill his throat, his lungs aching for a full breath, but he refused to give in until he knew for sure that they were safely escaped, and that he was able to run quicker than the disgraceful baker ahead. She was certainly quick in her way, and she looked back to him as he challenged that.
"Mr. T…you don't happen to be thinking that you can run the faster, do you?" He made no answer as he concentrated on coming upon her side, and she almost laughed at him as his efforts proved vain. She remained the same distance apart as if some unknown force had been stuck in between them, and by then he felt his head throbbing on each impact with the solid ground. "It's a race, then?" She flashed him a wicked grin, a new sort of confidence creeping into her voice as he tried without success to beat her in this game.
The answer he gave her was not verbal; in lieu of speaking lest he be heard by anyone other than Mrs. Lovett, he flung himself forward to run equal at her side. The grin lingered upon her face as they charged on through the dark sewer, and he became increasingly aware of the plodding steps behind them, even louder than theirs. There was no possibility that they hadn't been heard: that disappeared with the running footsteps that gave chase to their competition. So far, it was Eleanor who was in the lead, and somehow he knew that he'd never hear the end of it if he didn't defeat her in this challenge. She wasn't one to keep her bragging to herself in these matters, and he wasn't one to let her win.
More prominently, there might not be any bragging to be heard of if they didn't each run as fast as the devil himself might have – had the devil any reason to be running from the police.
It was harder to tell in the gloam of the dim passage, but a substantial hole seemed to be visible on the far right of the wall, corroded away by the grime and the rats. Why anything with half a mind would live down here at all, he didn't care to venture a guess. Aiming his course for the hole that looked like a suitable cover from searching eyes, Nellie picked up on his intent and changed her direction as well.
Even as they angled closer to the carved out portion of wall, time was slipping away at the approach of the constables. It was a matter of seconds, each seemingly worth a whole lot more as the officials neared enough now to shout. Their voices rang out clear in the space around them, jolting the barber's mind into a state of absolute obligation. They had to reach the crevasse between wall stones, without any option in the matter. The constables were too close, and there were two more than Mrs. Lovett and himself combined.
Just as an added danger, they had pistols. He was led to this revelation by the cracking bang that resounded around them, and he nearly lost his footing at the disruption of the stones near his left foot. Regaining a consistent motion, he had set aside all thoughts of this being a competition.
From somewhere in the intensity and darkness beside him, the baker's fierce hand came to grip his own, and she pulled him faster along with her as several more shots arrested his ears. He followed her willingly, hearing the explosion of the powder and the ricochet of several more rounds as he started to wonder if he was breathing at all. Oxygen no longer entered his lungs, and his working muscles protested to the chase, but he did not cease to run. With everything he could have possessed, he pushed his legs to follow the same fast pace and felt the sack on his shoulder beat into his back at every sprint.
The were only yards away from the eroded chasm when everything halted, and he felt an incredible, fiery lashing bite up his leg to his calf where it impeded him. Without so much as a grunt, for he had no breath for it, he felt the obligation shatter and collapse as he collapsed, too. Still attached to Eleanor with his fingers lodged through her own, he dragged her back as he fell, and she gasped for him when he could not. She went to her knees as he hit the floor bitterly on his left shoulder, and the echoes of the shouts behind them made clear the approach of the officials through the blurry portion of his thoughts.
He might have told the woman to get up and run had he believed that she would follow such advice, but as it was he said nothing. In their current position, they would be found without much quandary at all between their pursuers, and he resented that. With what little presence of mind he had, Sweeney edged his hand closer to his hip, and realized two things. The first being that his razor was gone, he could vaguely recall throwing it away for an earlier escape, and the second revealed that even if he'd had the blade, he might not have been able to stand with it. As frustrating as that seemed to be, the coarse pain that tugged at his attention made it less so. In fact, it was very likely ebbing away his very conscience, and so he concentrated harder on maintaining a way out of their current situation.
"Mr. T," Nellie said, very much out of breath. Her voice was choked and halting when she continued, shifting something in his determined haze that made his chest constrict. "Don't tell me it's…"
"My leg," he injected. "They shot my left leg." Gritting his teeth at the radiation of a surging, twisted pain, he managed to keep his voice from showing this struggle. "Get on your feet and get behind the opening."
Despite the command, she shook her head. She did stand up, and made like she was going to actually do as instructed, but came back a moment later with a good sized chunk of rubble in hand. Looking at her, he was able to discern that her knuckles were very white around the jagged block of stone that had come out of the wall, and there was a thin layer of water glittering behind her flint-colored gaze as she stooped to him. On her knees with the piece of wall held firmly at her side, she stooped lower to press cold lips to his cheek, and he found no warmth in this gesture to be even slightly annoyed for – only sadness.
It was becoming harder to focus on a single thing as the pounding in his temple became considerably worse, and he could hardly process the words that Mrs. Lovett spoke to him next. "I won't be watching you get yourself killed and be standing around idle, love. We've come far too close for that, now. It's not every day a woman finds someone she'd rather drive herself mad over than let alone, Mr. T, and whether or not you'd be so kind as to acknowledge that doesn't matter at present. What I should say, rather, is that I'd sooner let them coppers kill me than watch them kill you." The sincerity rang clear in his mind, and he might have been impressed at her admittance under any other circumstance. In the event, he barely had the time to think before the officials arrived in a clamor somewhere behind him, and Eleanor stood up with a heavy aim.
She struck before they could gather the resolve to shoot, and her aim proved to be worse than he'd imagined when he heard the stone crash against the ground, harmless. Whatever she had planned to do with a rock against four constables he had no idea, but at most the throw had caught the man off-guard. There was a pause where a couple of them started, flinching around in response to the noise, and the baker looked around for something else. He could have sighed at her sudden incompetence had he been in a better position, given she had a pair of capable boots hanging from her fist. By the time she realized this, too, she was already the target of four different pistols.
As soon as they had been noticed, the shoes dropped to the ground with a louder clunk than normal, and Sweeney saw the baker flinch at the noise. She might have been so unthinking as to take a couple of steps backward, but thankfully she was more sensible than that. Remaining stone-still under the locked and loaded aim, Eleanor glanced to him, and he did see a marginally normal amount of fright hooding her gaze, but it was not nearly as much as he would have expected. Noting this led him to yet another trait concerning the baker that he'd not taken the time to notice, before; Mrs. Lovett was actually quite brave. After all, she had faced him unflinchingly every time he'd threatened her neck with his glittering blade, and she'd risked a hanging for chopping up a good many corpses of his killing. Not once had she complained, not even of that God-awful stink, and he had to admit that he admired her daring gallantry.
Once again, he was reminded of an imploring interest to dismantle her, and to examine the aspects of her character in a more lightened detail. He knew as he watched her lift her chin to the constables and swallow, however, that later would be a more appropriate time. As of now, they were frozen in place – him a little more solidly than her – under the threat of the pistols pointing in the direction of Nellie's heart. He felt that if he only reached out to grab the boots she had so carelessly dropped, he might have had enough time to clock one of the officials squarely in the jaw, but reality spoke otherwise. In the time he could reach for the laces of her shoes, there was plenty of time for him to be shot at.
A few more moments of deliberation gave him the presence of mind to make a clear decision; it didn't matter what happened to him. It was probably the strangest thing he'd reasoned in a while, in context of saving the baker, but it was true nonetheless. With as many people as he'd murdered in his blind vengeance, he truly did deserve to die. Mrs. Lovett, however, had only been dragged into the crime through her odd sense of devotion, and she hadn't actually done any of the killings. She might have been his source of redemption if it wasn't already too late, but he would have to make do with what he had, and that was exchanging his life for hers. Given the situation, there wasn't much else for him to do unless he wanted the both of them to die.
His hand had only time enough to merely twitch towards the pair of boots before a series of events left him squinting defensively into the darkness ahead. Firstly, before he could even glance upwards, there was a large commotion composed of mostly grunts and shouts, followed by a shriek that he was almost positive was not Eleanor. When he did dare to look, a single shot rang unambiguous in his rushing thoughts, halting his sweeping concentration and focusing it onto the direction of the rancor. Whatever had happened was clearly over, and he could distinguish several dark shadows on the floor marking the place of unmoving bodies. The barber peered closer at these bodies, unnerved by the silence with only one predicament; where these the bodies those of the police, or those of who could only be Nellie, Tobi, Anthony, and Johanna?
Somewhere in his thoughts, he managed to recall that Ragg had been lost to them between the shop and then, and so a wave of tension was released from his aching head in response to the realization that there were four corpses, and all were of relatively the same stature. In the least, he wouldn't be crawling his way out of the sewer with a bleeding calf or eating rats to fight starvation.
"Mr. Todd…?" It was Anthony. Lifting his head to see properly past the floor, the barber saw all of whom he had expected coming out of the shadow before him, Johanna with a hand over her mouth and Anthony with a pistol in hand. A little behind them, Mrs. Lovett stood looking dumbstruck, and he soon found out why. At her side, a rock dropped absently from the hand of Tobias Ragg, and he grinned largely up at the baker who looked as if she were torn between actions and about to cry. He saw her wipe away the moisture beading at the brims of her eyes, and as she launched herself forward to embrace the boy, exchanging a series of whispered words that the didn't catch.
"You've been shot," said Johanna quietly, stepping towards him past Anthony. The sailor looked as stunned as everyone else, and he came forward with the girl to offer a hesitant hand. Sweeney looked up at him in deliberation, assessing whether or not he could stand at all, but after a time he simply took the hand and was pulled up. His head was beginning to hurt worse than before, and he saw his vision fade for a moment under a deluge of piercingly bright spots as his arm was secured about Anthony's shoulders.
"I'm fine," he told them gruffly, but there was not a person in the room who didn't know that it was a lie. He hardly heard whatever reply was given, and allowed his head to fall halfway against the boy's shoulder as they moved closer to a way outside. It wasn't the most favorable position, but he was much more content to set an image of weakness now than to lie bleeding on the ground of the sewer watching Eleanor get herself killed. Somewhere close at hand, Nellie walked nearest to him except Anthony, and through his muddled staring at the floor he felt her fingers lightly twist into his at the tips. It was a connection that could be easily broken with the slightest of movements, but he made sure that, for her sake, it was not severed.
It seemed to him a long walk to reach an end to the unprepossessing maze, and there was little effort to speak from the people around him. For the most part, he tried not to walk on his left leg at all unless necessary, putting almost all of his weight onto the sailor at his side. There were times he'd close his eyes against the redundant aching, only to open them a few seconds later and find that they were in a completely different area, and that perhaps a few seconds were really a few hours. He might have found it irritating to be carried in this way if he'd had a mind for such thoughts, but more often than not his thoughts were nonexistent and dim under a veil of blankness.
"I can't swim," he heard his daughter admit, opening his eyes to find himself sitting against a wall near where they overlooked the waste flowing out through a grate into the sea. The grate had been removed, and he saw Johanna hesitating as she looked down at the channel that stretched out before her. Nellie stood closer to his side, and she sighed in what might have been agreement. She looked tired, as did the others, and this gave him a faint indication that it was either the middle of the night or early morning.
"Neither can I," shrugged the baker. "Things like that aren't high on a woman's list of things to learn, dear, not to mention this is probably the first time poor Johanna has even seen the sea. What of Mr. T, then? It's not very likely we should find the materials to build a boat lying about here." At this, Anthony looked around as if just realizing that Sweeney was there at all, and he looked caught on saying something that refused to come out. Looking back to Johanna, he shared a glance with her before sighing in his own turn and professing that he didn't know.
"I can swim," Sweeney asserted, acquiring four different surprised looks all in the same moment. He looked at each of them, seeing many different things in their expressions, but the most perceptible was skepticism. They believed, sensibly, that he could not move for himself with a bullet in the back of his leg. In an effort to prove them wrong, Mr. Todd proceeded to stiffly get up, standing on both of his feet away from the wall, and clenched his jaw in defiance against the flash of pain. Walking smoothly towards Mrs. Lovett, he voiced his idea in an order: "We're going to swim carrying them with us."