VI. August 7, 1848. London, England. Mid-afternoon.

"Are you ready?"

She takes off the straightjacket (for good this time), and he simply stares up at her, bewildered. He's stopped mumbling, and he's tiptoeing back into sanity. With a heavy sigh, he lifts his head (he knows what he has to do).

"Toby, you got a letter today."

It is easier to address him as Toby, and maybe it's because he constantly asks her who she is. If Meeker were here, he would say that the boy is considering her a friend, and that is dangerous. Huh. She would like to have Toby as a friend. She would love to have Toby as a friend.

"A letter?"

"From Johanna. Would you like to read it?"

"Can't. Would you?"

"Read it to you? Of course."

She makes a big deal out of clearing her throat, and he smiles at that.

"Dearest Toby,

Anthony and I have reached the English Channel and are heading into France. Can you believe it? But we went through the English countryside, and it was… I don't know how to describe it. Mesmerizing, that's it. Anthony tells me stories that he heard on his travels, and he says England's got the best stories of all. We got married in a little church by the sea, and it was more than I've ever dreamt of.

We send you all our love, and hope you are well. Don't let that nasty woman get to you. I'm sure if you are good they can transfer you into a boys' school. I will make a point to visit if we are ever in London.

Yours,

Johanna

P.S. Thank you."

She winces slightly.

"I don't think you're nasty," Toby says quickly, grey eyes pleading yet strikingly honest.

"You don't?"

"Are they going to take me away?"

"They are just going to ask you questions. If they think you're… okay, then they'll send you to a boys' school."

"What if…"

"If they think you committed any of the murders, they'll probably send you to prison."

"Oh. Oh, you don't know."

"Just tell them the truth, Toby."

He jerks his head toward the steel wall, banging once, twice, three times. His lower lip is trembling slightly, and he's trying so hard to tell her something, something that he's been trying so hard to forget…

"You killed him, didn't you?"

"I did," he chokes out.

"He hurt her, didn't he?"

"I'm… not even sure who she is anymore."

She kneels down and looks him in the eye. Breathe in, out. Three minutes time and she'll never see him again. And his hand is creeping up her arm, and she flinches slightly.

"Shh…" he whispers.

His fingers work their way up her neck and into her hair. It is now she realizes that she left it down to today (her reflection said she should. And she was crazy enough to listen). All he is doing is trying to comb out a tangle in her hair, nothing more. His fingers are gentle, and it reminds her somehow of being seven and letting her mother braid her hair. It is a time she's misplaced in her memory, and she left a bit of herself at the asylum gate. Here are the missing pieces, then. Her cheeks burn and she's leaving beads of sweat on his arm and fingertips. Sweat and tears.

He deserves more than a few pence and a muffler from a woman in a pie shop. The cats were dead, (mutters Emmeline Mooney in her sleep), but the people came from the man upstairs. She put bloody 'love' into her pies. Love and flesh. And to think that was Toby's Mrs. Lovett. He should find someone who cares about him as much as…

Well, as much as his mother did.

He releases her hair gently, smiles again. He has so much love and nowhere to put it, and she hopes Mrs. Lovett, wherever she is now, knew how much he cared about her. She almost wishes…

"Just the truth, Toby," she croons, almost like a lullaby.

"I have to… to face it. It won't go away ever, and when I tell them, it won't go away. But Mrs. Lovett told me I was a good boy, and you told me to tell the truth. And she was pretty and she was… nasty, and you're pretty and not nasty, and I'm going to learn to read. And I'm going to learn to live."

"You will."

Rook comes into the cell, ready to bring Toby into the police station.

"They'll be flowers there, and if I care for them right, they won't die."

That's the last thing he says to her before he walks away. Her eyes follow Toby and Rook all the way down the hall. He turns around and waves at her, and she returns the gesture. And he's smiling. They turn the corner, and then it's just her and a bunch of raving lunatics and it's all normal in its twisted way. For a second she just rocks on the balls of her feet, back and forth and back and forth. She is compelled to laugh just to hear it reverberate off the walls. She wonders if he'll look the same in ten years. Will he remember Mrs. Lovett? Will he remember her?

She goes into her office to get through a little more paperwork before the dinner run. They are looking for Meeker's replacement and looking for Jack and looking for someone to fill the gap that Toby left behind (and you're pretty and not nasty…)

Pretty?