A/N: Again, I'm not dead. I haven't forgotten about this fic. I'm back in action, so to speak. And so are these two, it seems.

~Chapter 4~

"I want – you owe me a kiss."

Sweeney stared at the bedraggled creature coming in from the storm. He didn't ask her to repeat it. His ears were already blistering at the prospect of the request. It was too much – far too much. A man's quarters were private – couldn't she see this dim, craggy little barber shop was all he had, his world away from the world?

Her wild eyes swept the room and held the look of gravel inside. The cloak fell away. Rain had soaked through onto her bare shoulders – the rest of her was poorly clothed for the weather – but then Mrs Lovett never made a consistent effort to dress suitably for bitter London cold. It was her duty to live light and colour and fluff – not delve into the heavy drowning weight of fabric gloom and cloaks.

He shook off the fetid coat from his barber's chair. "I owe you nothing."

The thought of touching her made him ill. Now he knew a little of how it must feel to be one of the street whores, shrinking at the touch of all those eel-ish men, but knowing they would eventually agree to their touch anyway. He averted those heavy, heavy eyes of hers. Sometimes they were so large and full, they reminded him of black moons, swamping out all the light in their world with their own strange light. Her desire there was not for him. Like everything in this world, Mrs Lovett had her price. He could not blame her in a way. She had gone barren all these years – condemned to live the shadow life of a detested widow – picking up scraps from the street and turning the dregs of leftovers into pies not even the beggars wanted to eat. She had lived as loveless a life as he – so many, many years. It was enough to make him long for a deep pit, a hangman's noose, a high cliff – anything to end it all now. But he didn't, because he was exhausted – too tired even for that. He could meet death later. Just now, he wanted the Judge more than any gentle woman's touch – not that this creature standing before him could ever be accused of being gentle. She was barely a woman.

"After wot I 'ad to do with that excuse for a man – I deserve a kiss from you, Mr T."

He turned his back to her, knowing it was futile anyway. He would kiss her, because it was easier in the end to deliver this one request, then have her badger him night and day. But there was nothing specified in her request that he had to be nice.

She moved towards him, breaching the difference as he knew she would. They were both broken souls hankering for death, really. Mrs Lovett was in love with the drug of suffering as much as she loved the idea of a child. Besides, she wouldn't know what to do with one anyway, if she had one.

"Snuff the candle," he demanded. He didn't want to look at her in the candle light and be reminded. Instead, he wanted to drown himself in the darkness, and the memory of his wife's golden fleece hair. He could conjure angels in pitch black, but not the sickly taper light of cheap candles bought by a mad baker woman.

"It's not too late to renounce this, you know." He let the suggestion hang in the air. Secretly he was hoping the baker would relinquish her claim – and in some gesture of pitiful kindness come up with another way to the Judge. There had to be another way. He had thought it a thousand times over in his head, and although he had initially agreed – this situation had him more than ill at ease. The idea of investing time in human touch again – and it was truly unavoidable, given the circumstances – made him more than ill. It would effectively mean undoing all his hard work.

For years, he had practiced the art of dying inside. This far, he had succeeded spectacularly. He had managed to avoid any sort of human sentiment or kindly feeling for fifteen years. There were only brief times when his resolve weakened.

They would pass each other on the stairs, and her hand would brush his accidentally. Or she would be there with a warm cup of tea on the landing, and not so accidentally touch the back of his shoulder with her fingerless gloves – and for those brief moments, even through his coarse shirt, he could imagine how that odd, pallid skin of hers would feel through the fabric. He was reminded, just barely, of the time when he had once shown his bare flesh to another human being, and let them see deep into his soul. That time was gone.

This time, it would be mere transaction.

Sweeney Todd was adept at survival – he would survive one brief horrid night with this woman just as he endured all the rest. He would escape to that sacred dreamscape inside his head – the one where only he could enter and wander fresh and unscathed along the moonlit hills where Lucy danced barefoot and free like a faery child – yes, a fool's dream – but then that piece of Benjamin Barker shoved deep inside his unconscious head had always been a fool.

It was a harsh exchange – a judge for a child.

But it was a harsh world.

"I keep telling you my love," he said, battering her hair into the wall with his upturned palm.

She wanted love – he would give it to her, then. He would prove to her that her desires were not worth the want. In the end, the only thing that mattered was the ashes of your dead will. Your will to heap destruction onto the heads of better men – the quicker she learnt that, the better off they'd both be.

"Love is dead, my pet," he instructed, smoothing back her hair so that her bare forehead lay exposed to the trails of fragile moon flitting through the uncurtained windows. "And hate –" he bent in toward her neck. There was only roughness in his touch. "- conquers all."

She shuddered. The contract had begun.

But when it was complete –

He let his mind rove into a world away from sacred dreams, to the dark hell where Sweeney's mind concocted devils and deaths.