The following morning, Nellie woke up with a pounding headache. Switching on the light, she opened her eyes with difficulty and promptly noticed she was alone. She reckoned it must be late and Sweeney was already shaving patrons because otherwise, he'd be practicing his favourite sport—brooding—in the cabin. She couldn't help but sigh.

Her stomach grumbled and she made a motion to stand up to freshen up a bit and go get some breakfast or lunch, depending on the hour. But as soon as she tried, she realised how heavy her whole body felt, unceremoniously falling back onto the mattress. She began to panic. How much did she drink last night!? She couldn't even remember drinking at all.

She was deep in thought, trying to recall what happened last night, with every memory she unlocked adding to her growing sense of dread, when the door opened to reveal none other than the demon barber himself carrying a tray with some food. She breathed in relief, at least Sweeney seemed fine and hadn't done anything stupid after the incident with that portly man at the party.

He handed her the tray and despite the racing thoughts that were threatening to overwhelm her, Nellie found room in her aching heart to be touched that he was bringing her breakfast to bed. He never had before.

"Thank you" she told him, to which he only nodded as he tried to conceal a not-so-subtle side eye. Was he angry with her? Had she in her drunken stupidity, done something he did not like? She told herself that she shouldn't care, that she was past being desperate for his approval, but the ever growing knot in her stomach kept proving her wrong.

She ate some of the scramble eggs he'd procured for her to try and quiet it and it would have worked had he not been starting at her all the while. One brief glance up and into his obsidian eyes rattled her nerves even more. Nellie being Nellie, attempted to start conversation to ease some of that tension, but he didn't say a word, he didn't even grunt or told her to shut up like he did on his worst days.

He just took his time observing her, and she found herself growing progressively more anxious under his stare, so she eventually stopped blabbering as she finished up her breakfast. His piercing gaze had left her speechless.

She'd never liked silence, for along with quiet, it allowed her worries to fester. Nor did she liked being dissected. He remembered when he first arrived, how he avoided looking at her, and how it maddened her, so she tried everything to get his attention, even stripping naked if she had to. She couldn't pinpoint when that changed, but it was no longer rare to find him starting squarely at her when she wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary, as if he could see into her soul. It never failed to put her on edge.

"The child isn't giving me any morning sickness today, bless it" she tried again, hoping this topic prompted him to engage. She still wasn't sure what he felt about the fact that he would probably become a father again in around seven months, but after seeing him being so attentive the other night, she knew she could at least try without unleashing his fury.

"It should have, it's the least you deserve for how pissed you got last night" he spoke after a while, his inquisitive look had turned into a blatant glare that made her look down in shame. "But I suppose he or she has a soft spot for mummy to turn a blind eye to her antics. So do I, for that matter" he said, making her heart soar. If only for a second, for his voice was grave and detached when he spoke next. "That doesn't mean you should do it again. You put on a very embarrassing spectacle."

He meant to be stern in his warning, but he held back when he noticed her pained expression. There was so much more he could say, so many more implications of her actions he could chide her for, but there was no need to pile on her obvious distress.

"Of course, I won't. I don't know what came over me. I don't even remember drinking that much, just a couple of sips of that bloody expensive gin" she defended herself, her worry evident in her voice.

"Just don't do it again. Our child is probably fine, I bet it's strong like you are, but you shouldn't forget you are pregnant, Eleanor" he said, as if he was indeed reading her mind.

Because that was the main reason she had brought up the baby in the first place. The nagging fear that her foolish irresponsibility had harmed him or her in any way, putting its life at risk. She could never forgive herself if it was the case. So intense was the angst she felt that she hadn't dared to voice it out loud, as if by doing so, she could pretend it wasn't real. But he knew, somehow. He knew what was really plaguing her, and he offered her the comfort she didn't tell him she was seeking for she never expected to find it from him.

Since she'd concealed her pregnancy from the doctor on the ship that examined her and all passengers when they boarded for immigration purposes, as well as from everybody else but Sweeney, she would have to believe and pray for the best. She was still anxious, but his reassurance kept her grounded. It meant more than she could express.

"I swear this is the worst hangover of me life. Me head feels about to burst" she complained, eager to change topics and leave her pointless worrying and her very confusing feelings behind now that the mood seemed to be lighter. He raised an eyebrow in disbelief. "Those rich bleeders and their alcohol, heavens know what they put in there. Nothing like the good ol' homemade gin I used to make in me bathtub after Albert passed."

"You made bootleg liqueur?" he asked in a tone that wasn't judgmental nor disproving, he merely seemed amused.

"You'd be surprised by all the things I did to keep from starving" she said with a proud smirk, trying to suppress the bitter edge in her voice.

"Tell me" he blurted out. Nellie was visibly taken aback by his forwardness, so he tried to soften it. "If you'd like, I'd like to hear about that."

Although she'd always wanted him to show interest in really getting to know her, she hesitated. Because those were dark times that called for desperate measures, what if he didn't understand? The counterfeit liqueur and some other shady but retentively innocuous enterprises were only the tip of the iceberg. If he knew the whole story, he would never look at her the same way and she could not have that. Even when she was sure she couldn't disappoint him further after he caught her lying about his wife, the prospect still filled her with terror.

Besides, it's all in the past. And her past did not define her, or that's what she tried to convince herself of.

"Maybe some other time, hmn?" she replied in a non-committal way as she resolved to stare at her now empty tray.

He understood her reluctance, so he didn't press on. Trusting others was hard in itself, trusting someone who for so long had wielded so much power over who she was and who she wanted to become was a feat of heroic proportions. She must understand that he wanted her, flawed and all, but that would take time.

They never really trusted each other, now that he thought about it. Not about what really mattered, at least, for each of them skirted around their pasts and presents, their truths and lies and everything they were too afraid to say in favour of a mostly carnal relationship, not devoid of complications in itself. Even if she didn't seem so, for concealment was another of her skills, she was as guarded as he was, if not more.

He knew that if he did not take action now, their relationship would remain mostly unchanged: essentially an arrangement to satisfy their most primal urges while coparenting a child. And he could no longer settle for that. Hence, building trust was an imperative.

With sweaty palms now that her chestnut eyes were focused on him and the darkness of the night no longer shielding him, he gulped before asking: "What do you remember about last night?"

"Not much, I'm afraid. I remember the party and the… problem you had with that man-whale. I went out to find you and I did, but I don't really remember what happened after"

"So last night, when we were at the party, I…" he began, telling her about his fear of crowds for the second time now that she was finally in her senses. The fear that she would judge him, that she could one day use it against him to manipulate him was still there, but he wanted to trust her.

"Oh my Lord, I'm so sorry, I didn't know, I…" she began, unsure of what to say. As grateful as she was that he'd told her, what he'd confided in her was so unexpected she didn't know how to proceed. But if there was one thing she knew about him, was that he didn't like to be pitied. "Thank you for telling me. I won't be dragging you to more parties in the future."

His heart stopped for a second. In the future… that meant she still envisioned a future with him. That her previously expressed intention to leave him was no longer a given. It filled him with hope. His expression remained stoic, trying not to let it show. "I didn't want you to think I was being a rude arsehole for no reason."

She vehemently shook her head at that, but her expression drastically changed as she realised something. "But you tried… for me."

It came out barely above a whisper, so he echoed louder: "For you."

The look of wonder in her eyes did not go amiss by Sweeney. It was as if she was discovering a new side of him, a new smaller but precious doll in the matrioska of the man she thought she knew, protected by all the others. Sweeney's heart began to race, for he'd only seen that look once before. In young Nellie, in the other timeline, when she was beginning to fall in love with him.

On her part, Nellie tried her best to come out of her stupor. She refused to engage in the never ending petal-pulling game of the "he loves me, he loves me not" for it always led her to the same bloody conclusion. She was too tired for that.

"What else happened last night? I must have been so drunk, I hope I didn't do anything too foolish" she asked, and he was quick to pick up her on mood change. He didn't say anything. Instead, he decided to try a different approach.

"Well, apart from pulling up your skirts to show me how wet you were for me…" he teased, although he thought it came out rather awkwardly. Humour wasn't his forte. She didn't seem to notice or care.

"Shut up! I did what? Oh Lord…" she cried out, but there was a hint of amusement in her voice.

"Don't act so surprised, it's not the first time you've done something of the kind" he continued.

"In the privacy of our home!" Although both willed themselves to ignore it, they got a tingle in their spine upon her mentioning of her home and all the wickedly delicious things they did there. If those walls could talk…

"Oh really? What about the market then? Or alleys? Or bloody Hampstead Heath behind some bushes that weren't nearly thick enough?"

"Shut up!" she yelled but she was laughing at this point. Cackling, more accurately, and he didn't think he'd ever heart her laugh like that. It warmed his cold heart like only she could.

"Things have changed" Nellie said rather solemnly when the laughter died down, as if to remind herself they were on the verge of separation. No longer lovers but estranged partners. Even if the hunger for one another had not diminished.

He nodded, crashing back down to reality with her. "Apart from that, you told everyone Sweeney Todd is aboard the ship." She went pale, panic seizing her for the umpteenth time this morning. It made her feel light-headed.

And once again he seemed to read her mind, for before she made any face that would reveal her discomfort, he was sitting on the bed with her, offering her a glass of water. She experimented a strange shake of deja-vu but shook it off. She had more pressing matters to concern herself with. "Please, tell me you are joking."

"I'm not, but do not worry. The passengers of this ship are so daft that they will never know it's me. They are looking for someone with a thick London accent" he spoke in his best scouse accent he used to interact with everyone but her" A white streak in his hair." He pointed at his healthy mane that he'd dyed full black. "And an odd eye. Frankly, I don't know how they came up with that."

She gave him a small smile, but her mind was reeling. How could she be so stupid? to blow their cover like that. She hated herself at the moment, but that helped no one. The only path was to look forward.

There must be something they can do, maybe she could convince those people that it was an alcohol-fuelled prank of tasteless nature. Perhaps Harold Winslow could unwittingly aid them, if she played her cards right. And of course, they could just put the spotlight on something or someone else, plant the seed of suspicions in those simpletons' minds, and even directly accuse a random man if they must. Someone not very nice, like that human tapeworm Mr. Coone…

"And Mr. Coone is dead" he added. His emotionless delivery was intended not to upset her any further, but it had quite the opposite effect. Her heart somersaulted in her chest.

"You didn't!" she exclaimed. It took Sweeney a few seconds to process what she was implying, and she took it as a confirmation of her inkling. "Sweeney! You can't kill on the ship, are you barking mad?"

"I didn't murder him" he said, a bit miffed she'd jump to that conclusion straight off, although he understood why.

She smirked somewhat bitterly. He thought he could fool her? She believed he trusted at least with that, but maybe he no longer did… "C'mon love, there is no point in denying it now. What's done, it's done."

"I didn't do anything" he repeated, but she wasn't listening.

"Oh really? Then who? Because I know you are possessive and that man kept making advances at me… that sounds like a job for you, dearie."

"I didn't kill him Eleanor!" he roared, making her shut up at once. She had learned to be cautious when he was like that. "I don't know who killed that bloody bastard, but they didn't do me a favour. We might be suspects, Nellie." She froze but he gave her no time to process the new bits of information. "You were so inebriated you told one of the sailors you were happy Mr. Coone was dead and now the captain wants to interrogate you. I managed to hold them off last night because you were not in a state to talk anything but nonsense, but I assume they will come by to take you to the captain dependencies at some point today."

"I didn't see anything. Or at least, I don't remember" she was quick to point out. "He was being a pain in the arse all night, chatting me up without rest and when I went out to find you, he tried to get cheeky in the corridor, but I kicked him in the balls and I went my merry way, on to continue my search for you. His devoted Mary Sanderson pulled him towards the bathroom but there is no way she would kill him unless it was in a Romeo and Juliet rendition, that poor woman was so smitten. And he got along with everyone else on the ship, he was a rather agreeable man except for when he became a lewd bastard. I don't know who would want to kill him, who'd have an interest in his death… except for you, love, with how he pursued me and all."

He ran a hand over his already messy hair as he tried to figure out how he could convince her, promptly realising that his best shot was just telling the truth.

"I may be jealous, possessive even. I know I don't have the best track record when it comes rationality, that I lose control and only see red when my instincts are awakened… But I didn't do it, Nellie. Not because I didn't want to, because Lord knows that man had it coming, but if I had, it would have only made things more complicated for you, for me, for us." He gingerly placed a cold hand over her still flat stomach, making her freeze, gulp, as a myriad of thoughts and emotions ran through her head. But she couldn't trust herself to speak, so he pressed on. "You believe me, don't you?"

"Course I do, love" she said after a little while, her voice trembling as she spoke.

Leaving Sweeney to wonder when he would learn to tell her lies and her truths apart.

The rest of the morning was rather uneventful for the barber. He'd been lucky to only receive visits from his favourite type of patrons, those who didn't try to engage in conversation. Shaving them almost absentmindedly, it allowed his mind to travel to where his heart was only a few floors down.

There had been something different about her that morning, a shift in her approach towards him. She didn't deflect from the issues concerning them by being bold, seductive, and seemingly not caring much about anything that wasn't a given tangible that could get in her way. No, that detached façade she was so keen on keeping up to had come down more than once this morning, allowing him to see glimpses of her vulnerabilities she so dearly protected from his and everyone's prying eyes. He knew why she did, of course, and even it was just her lingering exhaustion or some aftereffects from the alcohol in her system, it humbled him that she'd allowed him to see.

He couldn't really recall mere alcohol ever leaving her like this, for no matter what she drank, she was always up and running the morning after despite the gallons of liqueur she ingested the night before, as if nothing had happened. It could be the pregnancy, those hormones her counterpart in the other timeline couldn't stop complaining about, but it could also mean that she was learning to be honest, to him, but also to herself.

That she no longer felt the need to constantly pretend she was happy and thriving, that she was grateful for every new day she got to live no matter how the world treated her. That she'd gladly settle for the little scraps of his affection, from him not ordering her out and to him going to find her for a quick shag in the middle of the day when both knew it wasn't because he was particularly infatuated and couldn't get enough of her, but because he was frustrated and needed an outlet in the form of her talented body. She always dropped everything to let him use her, and her smile never once faltered, even if he was aware her soul was

Their recent past filled him with regret but he was doing his best to change, to be better for her, and maybe she was finally beginning to see it. He no longer wanted to use her, to take advantage of her devotion and her insecurities, her deep yearning for love. He wanted to love her with all he had, like she deserved, and the first step was treating her right.

He was doing things for her; from agreeing to go to that blasted party, to bringing her breakfast in bed the morning after because he knew she needed it, putting his disappointment aside. Furthermore, he was surprised to realise that doing these things wasn't as hard as he thought they would be, not as hard as when he forced himself to do them for Lucy in the other timeline despite the love he also felt for her.

Caring for Nellie felt right, even if the only reward he got was one look of gratitude in her beautiful chestnut eyes, and he supposed that was what true love was all about.

The same conclusion he reached the night before came back in full force, an irrational sense of optimism that as long as they were together, everything would be alright. Foolish, naïve, impractical, it was those same thoughts of love-fuelled invincibility that had sent Benjamin Barker to a penal colony in Australia. He knew he was far from returning to that man, but it was plain to see that a certain softness had indeed returned, bringing light to his dark persona. He was becoming a sappy idiot when it came to her and he hated it, for letting one's guard down could only lead to tragedy.

A succession of the horrors lived flashed through his eyes, all the pain, the longing and the abuse he was subjected to in Botany Bay culminating in the moment he found out Lucy was dead, that he had killed her. That Nellie, the woman who was slowly but surely making way into his barely alive heart, had lied about what he thought mattered the most to him. He shouldn't love Eleanor Lovett, yet he did, and it was changing who he was. It was maddening.

"Ouch, do be careful, Mr. Payne!" his customer hissed out after Sweeney had accidentally nicked the skin of Johnathan Denton.

He had completely forgotten it was him he was shaving now, for instead of his prying self always trying to get him to 'open his heart', he had been silent as a mouse. He hadn't asked anything about the party fiasco, despite Sweeney vaguely remembering him being there and thus witnessing the whole thing. And thank heavens he hadn't attempted to engage in silly small talk as he was prone to. Perhaps the man had finally learned that Sweeney didn't like him much, that they would never become friends like he and his wife were of Nellie's and had stopped trying.

"I don't want to join the pile of bodies in the ice box" he added, and as much as the sound of his voice jarred on him, it got Sweeney's attention.

"The pile of bodies? I thought it was only a man who died last night."

"Yes, that Mr. Coone man I think it was, didn't know him well but it's a loss. His friends have been inconsolable, he must have been a great man" Mr. Denton began, unaware that Sweeney was rolling his eyes behind him.

"But indeed they found a body under one of the tables, a woman. She must have drunk too much at the party, she was so out of herself she was almost like a different person, never had they seen someone hold their alcohol so poorly, those who were with her last told me and Marjorie this morning. And of course, some dastardly buggers took advantage of her state, violently raping her until she couldn't take it anymore. She was still alive when they found her, but she passed away this morning in the infirmary due to her injuries. In her last moments of lucidity before her death, she was asked who did it, but she couldn't remember anything, the poor dear. So rumour has it, it was a bunch of ship officials, in the midst of last night's chaos after the first body was found, for her death is not being investigating, only Mr. Coone's. Travelling alone, she was, with no one to answer for her… Those bastards are going to get out unscathed" he concluded through gritted teeth at the injustice.

"A bunch of ship officials… or of rich vultures who think themselves above the law" Sweeney muttered under his breath.

"Come again?" Mr. Denton asked, his voice laced with avid curiosity. Perhaps he too had an interest in the morbid, but Sweeney was not going to share his suspicions with him. He still did not trust him much.

"Nothing" the barber replied, and hurried to shave the rest of his face so he could leave.

Feigning a migraine, Sweeney closed shop for the day and wasted no time in walking over to his cabin. Only Nellie and her welfare on his mind.

Because it didn't take a genius to piece things together, the extreme state of inebriation so she seemed almost a different person, Nellie swearing she only drank two sips of Harold's disgusting gin despite the man claiming otherwise, her not remembering anything the morning after…

He had no way to be certain, but something deep inside told him he was: Mr. Harold Winslow had tried to drug his baker last night. No, in fact, he had succeeded and had she not found Sweeney first, it could have been her brutally violated—Like Lucy, was the thought that kept creeping into his mind—and left to die under a table as her poor abused body gave out.

The thought made both his blood boil and run cold in his veins. Yet a sentiment prevailed above the rest. It was relief, detracting him from every murderous urge he had. She was fine, alive, and so was their child. He could only be grateful.

He had to see her, tell her and warn her about that slimy man whose company she so enjoyed frequenting.

But when he finally arrived at their door, he promptly noticed she was not alone inside. Assuming she was finally being interrogated, he leaned against the door so he could eavesdrop.

Yet the male voice he could hear along with Nellie didn't sound like the fairly young captain's nor any of the officials'. Raspy and breathy, it denoted the owner's advanced age, and entitlement was apparent in every syllable.

"Oh, Harry, stop it! What a flatterer you are" he heard Nellie, her voice laced with playfulness as she let out a flirty laugh.

It was none other than Harold Wilson she was with.

Alone, unaware, and at his mercy.