A/N: I was surprised by the amount of interest, to be honest! Thanks to the following reviewers: F8WUZL8, BlinkYourEyes, Sakura Katana, MisssElphaba, EminentlyPractical, StarMimi, linalove, Crazygirl99, Nellie Lovett Gracey, AngelofDarkness1605, the sadisticalovett-nutcase, MireiLovett1846, ViudaLovett and James Luver.
To the unsigned reviewers:
Casey: Thanks for reviewing. I'm curious now to know what you were listening to!
Maya: Glad you like it so far. I hope to hear more from you. =)
Also, the rating could go up for certain chapters, as you may imagine.
~Chapter 2~
"I don't want no smelly orphans Mr T, so you listen hard. I want a child grown in me belly, an' I'm not about to go prostitutin' meself to get it, you 'ear?"
The barber's mood had been brewing fouler by the minute. He met his reflection in the pie shop window, and wanted to smash his fist through the glass. "So you ask that I prostitute myself, is that it?"
"It's a bargain Mr T. We're both sellin' ourselves for profit 'ere."
He no longer heard her words. "Let's settle it then. Kick the boy out, since you've no need of orphans."
"Keep the boy out o' it," the baker instructed. She turned the key in the shop front and he brushed past her, eyes squinting in the inky darkness.
They both aimed for quiet. Toby lay sprawled in drunken slumber – it wouldn't do to wake him with shouting.
"Where's the ink?" He was in the parlour now, hunting in darkness for the precious liquid, like a wolf sniffing out its blood-prey.
"In the second drawer," she said, watching him from the kitchen. It was an apt picture, Mrs Lovett thought, to think of Sweeney as a wolf.
She removed the black veil from her head, and felt the edge of that strange wind travel up her arms. It blew suddenly through the front door, tossing her veil across the room. She shut her eyes briefly, hoping to capture the mood before it overcame her. The mood that led poets to throw themselves off cliff-tops, and women weaker than herself to purchase poison from the apothecary round the corner…
"A candle might help, love," she remarked, using the harshness of her own voice to bring herself back to the world of the mundane. She dumped her set of keys on the kitchen, and stole over to the half open door, shutting it quickly. She wanted that mood out of her now, as if it were a sickness buried in her very veins.
"Find me one then," he barked.
It would be foolish to pretend they had anything further to say to each other that evening. Any delight that they might have sought in each other's company had been drained by their demands.
He wanted the Judge.
She wanted a child.
Such desires could only end badly, which was precisely why the world continued to reach for them.
Mrs Lovett truly believed that people weren't happy unless they were unhappy. She went to the window, pressed her face against the glass, and ached for what she could not have outside. She was chained to the system of the pie-shop. Skin, cook, and carry to the customers. Only sometimes, when she had to go outside bearing the trays of pies and jugs of ale to the garden tables, did she catch a whiff of the tangible night, and the men and women who walked by, arm-in-arm, not ashamed to hide their affection.
And now the darkness was like ash, falling from every chimney over the filthy rooftops. No one moved in the hollow hours. Even the beggars were still in slumber, propped in the mud or against the shops. All except one fire, from a child at the end of the lane. Nellie focused intently on that creature. Even that girl-child burning fallen autumn leaves over a little seat of rubbish fire, even she dreamed she might escape her squalor. The little nit might pretend for a few small playful instances that she could fly up to the moon using the bare threads of those ashy leaves.
"Be like 'er," Nellie told herself, her breath staining the glass.
"Come here," he called from the parlour.
She came, the little girl all but forgotten.
The glow of the candle from the room cast shadows over his coal eyes, where even the bravest men swore they saw the pits of hell.
He saw her come towards him, her pale skin like paper. No remnants of flour tinged her skin. In this tricky light, she looked less like a woman, and more like an unholy vision conjured up to fool him.
"A contract?" She sat down wordlessly in the worn seat, the paper spread bare before them.
He nodded. "Should either of us…" He had meant to say, if either of them decided to break their promise, the contract would still stand.
"We won't." She took the ink pen and began to scribble furiously.
Her neat hand fascinated him. He had never held much store in the baker woman's intelligence, and it surprised him to find she was educated enough to be able to write the flowing sentences she did now. She dipped the nib frequently, until at last the paper was set to dry under the candle light.
That was where his admiration ended. He scanned the page, but the words barely registered. He could think only of her foul request. Why would the woman need a child? She already had the boy – and he ate and drank enough for two healthy children. Didn't she know what a torment it was for him? If he gave her a child, the bastard would grow strong, while his own girl was still locked up at the mercy of the Judge.
"Love. I've signed. You sign 'ere." She turned her head up at him, as if she were offering it to him, like some pagan sacrifice round the bonfire. The clear radiated look she gave him communicated her feelings clear enough. And he knew. It had always lingered beneath the surface, but Sweeney had never had the patience nor the desire to deal with it. It made him a little sick, to recognise the intent in her stare. It was not the look of a woman. It was not modest.
"I don't know…" He was sick inside. The scraps of dim floral carpet repulsed him, as did the wallpaper and junky china trinkets on the dark cabinet and coffee table; the misery of the untouched piano and the arm chairs with the stains down their backs.
She watched him expectantly, waiting for him to falter. Her presence suffocated the small space between them. He was tempted to set the paper alight then and there. It was too much to ask of a man. If Sweeney had still been a man, and not more of a monster, he would not have agreed to it. He would have walked to the Judge's house that night, waited for the old pervert to step outside in the street in morning's light, and murder him on sight. Then Johanna would be freed from her cage, and he from Mrs Lovett's bondage.
"Is there somefin' I should know, Mr T?" She held the ink pen aloft, as if daring him to fail.
"We'll discuss this properly in the day-time, my pet," Sweeney counter-acted in a business-like fashion. After all, revenge was his life now. He had paid the cost of Judge Turpin's lust for too long, and he deserved to see that foul excuse for a human being suffer as intensely as possible in the prelude to his inevitable death. The promise of a beautiful woman, as Mrs Lovett undoubtedly was to other men, was one of the cruellest, and most effective traps he could set to bait the Judge. And in exchange, he would only have to perform a disgusting, but brief transaction of the flesh.
She tapped him lightly on the arm with the paper roll. "Done." He tensed at her touch.
The barber signed the paper.
Mrs Lovett snatched it up and tied it instantly with a red velvet cord. He saw it disappear into the third cabinet drawer, but made no more comment. Benjamin, and all the light and goodness and humanity that he bore inside him, was rotting dead in a cell somewhere back in Botany Bay, and would be permitted no more say in Sweeney Todd's business. Mrs Lovett was by no means intelligent, but she certainly wasn't stupid. She knew what she was getting herself into. Making pacts with dead men was a deadly business, and if she expected him to conduct himself like a gentleman from woe to go – she was more deluded than he could ever imagine.
"Happy?" he said with a grimace, and was surprised to find her eyes stoked by something akin to tranquillity.
"You might say that," she said, getting up as he moved the chair out of her path in mock chivalry.
She left him in the parlour, oblivious to his dark thoughts.
~*~*~