30 Kisses #28: Wada Calcium CD3; fanfic50 #24: science.
A/N: For those who don't know - because I sure didn't - Wada Calcium CD3 is some sort of calcium supplement sold in Japan, marketed heavily to kids, elderly folk, and people who have sunlight or fish deficiencies. Save for sending Sweeney and Nellie on a crazy time-traveling adventure and then subsequently on a field trip to Japan, I could not figure out any way to incorporate this supplement into one of my stories. So the actual Wada Calcium makes no appearance in this fic. That said . . . well, it's always fairly sun-less in London due to either rain or night, and this fic takes place in the dark. Also, Sweeney and Nellie are sunlight deficient. Obviously. xD So there's my rationalization. I hope you enjoy.
Every night, at precisely one in the morning, he takes a candle to his window and flashes it to the sky, to nothing, to the heavens, to everything that refuses to listen and everything he refuses to believe in:
Dot dash dot dot, dot dot dash, dash dot dash dot, dash dot dash dash.
L-U-C-Y.
Every night, at precisely one in the morning, she stops in the middle of whatever she's doing – wiping down tables, tabulating the week's earnings, butchering mens' bodies – and runs to her shop to squish her forehead against the window and peer up at him and his window and his unheeded message.
Who does he honestly expect to see the signal? And even if anyone does see, who does he honestly expect to respond? The one person that it's meant for is dead (to his knowledge, at least), and he doesn't believe in heaven or God.
Sweeney Todd is not one to engage in pointless gestures. Sweeney Todd does not waste a gesture nor word more than is absolutely necessary.
What is so necessary about this?
And you, Lovett? Why is it so necessary for you to watch? You know what you're going to see and you know what he's going to do and you know how it's going to make you hurt so . . .
She'd taught herself Morse Code the instant she heard of it three years ago. She'd pinched up money that she didn't have in order to learn it from a passing sailor. She used to signal from that very same window, at that very same time, every night:
Dash dot dot dot, dot, dash dot, dot dash dash dash, dot dash, dash dash, dot dot, dash dot.
B-E-N-J-A-M-I-N.
She knew it was foolish. She knew it went against everything she told herself she would always be: practical, level-headed, wise about what little funds she had. A dreamer who knew she must dream in order to survive, but not someone who let such dreams get in the way of reality.
She wasn't stupid enough to think that her beams of light into the sky had anything to do with his return to London. Nonetheless, she couldn't help but think that there must have been some relation. That her flickers of candlelight into the heavens, her summons for him to come home, had shone down as sunrays in Australia, imprinting themselves upon his weathered back, twining into his soul.
For if not this explanation, what other one was there for his return home? Or for his return to her? Or for how he had now taken over the rote that had been hers, despite that she had never shared with him how she too knew Morse Code, nevermind that she had once signaled night after night as he now did?
Every night, at precisely one minute past one in the morning, he finishes the signal and she rips herself away from the window, pivoting her body to slouch her back against the counter, hands upon the sink.
Every night, at precisely two minutes past one in the morning, she cries dry tears onto her kitchen floor.
Every night, at precisely five minutes past one in the morning, she chides herself for being so irrational, gathers her wits, and straightens her spine.
Every night, at precisely six minutes past one in the morning, she travels upstairs to his barber shop and brands her lips upon his flesh. She doesn't need a signal to remind him where she is and where his home is anymore; she has herself, more tangible than any flashing lights into the nonexistent heavens, or silent wishes to a lost wife; she draws him into her embrace and makes him forget all that he cannot reach through his messages . . . or at least pretends that she can make him forget.
Every night, at no precise time – the time varies infinitely night to night depending on how long he allows her to embrace him and how much he needs her to make him pretend he can forget – she rests her arm on his stomach and her head over his heart and she taps out her own message that can never be reached upon his chest, nails grazing over his skin:
Dot dot, dot dash dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot dash, dot, dash dot dash dash, dash dash dash, dot dot dash.
I L-O-V-E Y-O-U.
A/N: Reviews are love.