Author's Note: What a weird chapter I have made.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sweeney Todd and neither does your mom.

Chapter Twenty-One: Ghosts

"I don't think you fully comprehend what it means to have a broken limb," said the prison surgeon, as though speaking to a small child. He squinted through his tiny spectacles at Anthony, who was lying on an infirmary bed in his shirt and trousers, one sleeve rolled up so his arm could be examined. "It means that you keep the limb still so the bone can knit itself back together, or else risk losing use of the limb permanently. You don't get into a fight after a scarce half hour in jail, for God's sake."

"I know," Anthony replied. He wanted to say that he hadn't meant to get into a fight, but he knew how ridiculous that would sound. As far as most of the world was concerned, he'd thrown the first punch, never mind that the first blow was really more than three years old. Besides, he didn't feel much like talking. The surgeon's hands worked deftly and gently, but they still sent a sickening, white-hot pain up his arm when they pressed on the broken bone. He bit his lip and stared at the cracks in the ceiling.

"It looks like I won't have to reset this, after all," the surgeon said, just as Anthony found a crack shaped like China. "Lucky for you. Now, for the love of God, keep it still."

He started to rebind Anthony's arm. Anthony continued to study the China-shaped crack, which, on second thought, looked much more like a shirt. Then the surgeon applied a damp cloth to a cut above his right eye. The sensation was nowhere near as bad as the pain in his arm, but it still stung like hell. During the fight, he'd hardly noticed his injuries, but now he felt them all too well. Blind rage had burned through him, leaving him with nothing but exhaustion and stupid, senseless pain. He wondered if Johanna had felt the same way after shooting Mr. Fogg. He wondered if Mr. Todd had gotten more than a fleeting moment's pleasure from killing the judge. He wondered if there was hope of satisfaction on earth or in heaven, but, before he could think of an answer, he drifted off to sleep, the surgeon's cloth still on his face.

"Do you feel better, love?"

The voice belonged to a woman, but Anthony didn't have to look to realize the speaker wasn't one of the Quakerish nurses he'd seen hurrying about the infirmary. The Cockney accent was all wrong for a nurse, but the smell of ashes that came with the voice was more wrong yet. Sure enough, when he opened his eyes, Mrs. Lovett was sitting on the edge of his bed. The bit of sky he could see from the high infirmary window was black and nobody else was around. She still wore the blue and white dress she'd been wearing when he'd last seen her. Her dresses had always touched him in some strange way. Their frills, flounces, and bright colors seemed to express an optimism that couldn't be crushed by poverty or loneliness or whatever else a poor widow might have to face. Now he could hardly bear to look at her, even though she was whole and unburned as he remembered. Her pretty dress had been bought with blood and he'd helped her purchase it. He'd contributed to her evil fund with his blindness and the penny he'd spent on that meat pie. She'd tricked not only him, but countless others, including Toby, who would never be the same again. And she was supposed to be dead.

"Leave me alone," he told the apparition. "You're just something I dreamed up, like Mr. Todd last night. I'll wake myself up in a second and you'll be gone, because you're dead now. Go away."

"Alright, dearie," she replied, "but are you sure don't want company?"

He sighed. She had a point. If he woke up now, he'd be alone with his unhappy, confused thoughts. If he stayed asleep, he'd still be alone because Mrs. Lovett was a figment of his imagination, but she might be able to give shape and meaning to his misery. Never mind that he would have to do the actual sorting out. Things just sounded more clever coming from Mrs. Lovett. Besides, he was too tired to wake up.

"Why did you do it?" he asked. "I know Mr. Todd wanted revenge and probably went mad in the end, but why did you help him? You took something awful and made it even worse with those pies. You never seemed like something was wrong with you, so why did you do it?"

"Why does anybody do anything?" she countered. "I made money from it. You saw my new dresses and how happy I was with the shop. If I'd stolen the money or whored myself out to get it, you wouldn't be very angry with me, now, would you? You know what it's like to be poor. You might even feel sorry for me."

"But you didn't! You let him kill all those people! You helped him!" He threw his good arm over his eyes and took a deep breath. "It's not the same thing at all."

"Oh, c'mon, love," she said. She placed her hand on his left arm, just below the broken bone. Her hand felt hot and he shuddered. "Throw not the first stone lest ye be judged, that's what I always say. Why didn't you tell anybody about his scars or his rages? Because you felt sorry for him, of course. You cared about him. So did I. You must've seen how I looked at him."

"You were in love with him," he said. It had crossed his mind once or twice that Mrs. Lovett and Mr. Todd might be lovers, but he'd considered it none of his business and put it from his mind, not least because the idea of Mr. Todd in bed with anyone seemed utterly incongruous. Now he thought of Mrs. Lovett's sad story and how frustrated she'd looked when he'd come to tell Mr. Todd about the asylum, but he couldn't bring himself to feel sorry for her. There were things a person should never do, not even for love.

"I'm not like you," he told her. "I thought he might kill somebody if he got angry enough, but I didn't think he'd actually done anything. A man can't be arrested for his temperament. And I knew he'd been convicted of something, but I didn't think it was anything violent. And I wasn't the only one who thought it was fine to keep him on the ship, you know. You knew everything. You knew what I never would've suspected and you still helped him. I'm not like you at all."

He was crying a little by now, but Mrs. Lovett had the good grace not to mention it. She just patted his hand.

"I wonder what the baron's niece would say about that," she said sweetly. "Maybe you didn't know anything about Mr. Todd, sweetheart, but there was somebody you knew all about. Ain't you thought about that poor girl?"

He didn't reply. The baron's niece had been in the back of his mind since he'd heard about her from Mr. Byrd, but he'd avoided thinking about her on purpose.

"She's going to have it worse than you did, you know," Mrs. Lovett continued. "You got to keep it all a secret, but the whole world knows what happened to her. Nobody cares if a boy ain't a virgin, but nobody will marry a genteel girl what's been with a man. Maybe if you'd told when it happened to you, the captain wouldn't have ruined her life."

"I couldn't have. I…" He swallowed and wiped his eyes with his sleeve. He didn't know how to explain how lost he'd been, how he hadn't known whom to tell or whether he would get in trouble for it or even what to call what had been done to him. He didn't have a much better understanding now. "You're not supposed to know any of that," he finally said. "You couldn't have known any of that."

"Oh, good God," she snapped. "You just said you dreamed me up. Anyway, if you want to pretend I'm really Mrs. Lovett, let's just say I know everything because I'm dead. Or that Mr. Todd heard what you said when you thought he was passed out and then told me, because we both know how talkative he was. Or maybe everybody can tell just by looking at you. How about that, love? Isn't that what you think?"

He laughed. He'd never had such an absurd dream. Then he started crying even harder. That was the trouble with tears, he reflected. A person could go months on end without crying, but once he started, it became increasingly easier to do it again. He didn't like it at all.

"You're being bloody ridiculous, you know that?" Mrs. Lovett said. "You'd think all the rape and murder in the world started with Anthony Hope, the way you take on. Doesn't leave much wickedness for the rapists and murderers, does it? Awfully selfish of you, love."

"But you just said…"

"Well, I'm you, ain't I?" she interrupted. "You think a lot of things, most of them nonsense, so I wouldn't listen to everything I say."

"I certainly won't listen to that. I'll get a headache if I try," he told her, laughing again. She resumed patting his hand and he knew he was still crying as well.

He woke to find a Quakerish nurses simultaneously pressing a damp cloth against his forehead and shaking him by the shoulder. With some embarrassment, he realized that his hysterics had carried over into the waking world.

"I'm sorry," he told the nurse. "I'm fine. Thank you."

She made him drink a cup of water, but then she left him alone. He stared at the high window for a while; the sky was a dark, overcast gray, which could've meant almost any time of day. When he finally got back to sleep, he dreamed about riding on a stagecoach with a basketful of eggs on his arm.

Author's Note: Hey, when you're a nice, traumatized Victorian boy and you're living half a century before Freud, you do what you can. I promise that plot-type stuff actually happens in the next chapter. I just felt like this one was structurally important or something.