Jack Guffie's heart pounded long after the echoes of the horses' hooves in the empty streets of London had faded and his coach and four was swallowed up in the empty night. Not until they were miles into the open scrub country, galloping through the midnight chill as though old Lucifer himself had been clinging to the axles, did the prickling feeling on the back of his neck begin to subside, the boys shrill cries quiet in his mind. Go! Go! Just go! His obedience to such wild orders and his own fear made him feel foolish. He pulled back on the reins, bringing his sweating team to a trembling halt.

Leaping down from the carriage's box seat, he could still hear the sailor boy sobbing weakly inside the coach. He was absolutely bewildered, and Jack felt almost angry as that shameful fear brushed once again along his spine. He tore open the coach's little door. This foolishness was not what he had been hired for.

The boy inside let out a wheezing, strangled cry as the driver leaned into the still carriage. Jack looked closer. A scrawny little thing, the lad's white face was streaked with tears and far too young looking. This was not the man he had spoken to in the marketplace. Where is he? He was sure he had gone into the shop back on Fleet Street. He fought off a shiver. "What - where?" The boy starting weeping breathlessly again, cowering in the corner of the threadbare seat, but gave no answer. "What's going on?" The only response was a series of louder sobs. Losing his patience, he climbed into the carriage and took the silly thing by his shoulders, shaking him. "Breathe, boy! You have to tell me where you're going!"

"Anywhere! Oh, please, take me anywhere!" Trembling, the little sailor raised his limp hands feebly in front of his face.

"I can't take you anywhere! You have to tell me where! I -" Jack snatched the boy's wrists and made him look at him. "Plymouth, the man said. Is that where you're -" The wretch let out a miserable wail. He let go, thinking. That was what he had said, a double fare to Plymouth in -

Oh, bloody hell, the fare! "Hey, have you got any - Listen, pal! I said, have you got any money?" If there was any answer, it was lost in all the tears and cries. He shook the boy violently. "Can't you talk? Tell me if you can pay your fare!" Nothing. The driver bit his lip hard, his anger finally burn away his earlier fright. "Get out."

"Please, sir, please don't take me back. I can't, I -"

"Get out of the coach."

"What?" The little sailor fixed him with a wild, horrified look.

"I said get the hell out!" He clapped his calloused hand over the scruff of he boy's neck and hauled him to the carriage's open door. "OUT!"

Wedging himself in the doorway, the little rat began to scream and beg like a girl. "Please, sir, I - I'll do anything. Please, don't -"

"You'll what!?" Jack kicked him hard in the side, throwing the boy out into the dust of the road. "You think I can afford this? Do you have any idea how much it costs to feed these bloody brutes!?" He gestured wildly to the burly draft horses that shied at the sound of his screaming. "How the devil do you think I'll stay out of the workhouse and keep a little bread on the table by missing good fares to run fools' errands like this one!? And what -" He seized the weeping lad by the collar. "- the hell -" He shook his furiously, jerking his limp body to and fro. "- will you d-" The sailor's hat fell off.

He froze as tangled yellow hair poured over the thin figure in his hands. The girl in his hands. Oh. Jack's mind went blank as he tried to fit this new twist into the night's tangled events.

But she was a pretty thing.

And he remembered a place nearby. One of his only regular late-night customers, a judge from the city, went there often. And spoke of the pretty women there. Pretty girls…

Times is hard, after all. He stared at her, thinking.

"Get back in the carriage."

XXXXXXX

The sun hadn't yet risen when Mrs. Lovett and her beloved tenant sat down by the fire. She sat on his right, her side pressed comfortably, satisfyingly against his as she held a cloth soaked in cold water to his skin where his wrist had struck the hot teakettle. The injury was not serious, but the pale flesh that clung to his bones was bruised and sported a mild burn, and she had seen him flex that wrist ruefully during their hours of feverish work. Anyway, Nellie longed for any opportunity to stay so near him, to lavish such attention on him. She felt, even though she knew his thoughts were on his beautiful blonde Johanna, that he was hers.

Letting out a contented sigh, she lay his sore wrist gently on her knee and leaned back against him. She'd been tired yesterday when Anthony and Johanna had arrived, and the rest of the night had been hard. Nellie had spent an eternity blood out of the barber shop after they had sent Anthony down to the bakehouse. Feet first he had dropped, with Mr. Todd supporting his body as Mrs. Lovett herself pushed the lever. It seemed more appropriate, like a burial at sea.

Sweeney had done all the heavy lifting down in that dark cellar while she cleaned. She had already started on the bodies from earlier, but she thought he could finish faster. That he did, although from the smell she thought he had burned the sailor whole. She came down to find him hurling the rotting tidbits from the corners into the reeking fire, the evenings many corpses already reduced to a heap of unidentifiable meat. He mopped the stone floor as she washed their bloodied clothes. She had raked the still hot ashes from the oven and threw them into the sewers as he poured bucket after bucket of water down after them to sweep them away.

The whole place stank, more than usual, but there was nothing else to incriminate them. And, she had told him as they stood in the bakery, they had a fine story should anybody come asking. They could say that the judge had taken Johanna and left, and Anthony had gone after them. "It's not as though he'll ever deny it…"

They were safe. And very tired.

"Don't we make quite a team, Mr. T?" Mrs. Lovett's eyes were closed, her head resting against Sweeney's shoulder. "Like right clockwork, the two of us." Her partner sat silently, staring sorrowfully at the floor. Somehow, Nellie felt disappointed.

She didn't really blame Sweeney. She knew the fantasies that kept her going as she butchered those countless corpses were only that. Fantasies. She didn't really expect a bloodstained Mr. Todd to burst into her cellar as the judge fell heavily through the trapdoor, something in him suddenly freed. But something should have changed. He wasn't meant to still be brooding away like before. She should at least have a chance.

Frowning, she shifted her weight to the worn cushions behind her as she looked at he man beside her. She supposed he must feel cheated too. She sighed. "Would you like to talk about it, love?"

"No." He didn't lift his eyes from the tattered carpet.

Typical. "Might help, you know. My old mum used to say -"

"No, Mrs. Lovett." The familiar scowl crossed his face again. "I do not want to talk about it."

Nellie's heart sank a little, her gaze falling with it to join his on the floor. Same old brooding. Same old Sweeney Todd. She shouldn't be surprised. She wasn't surprised, a part of her insisted. But she had hoped, after he had wrapped his blood-dripping arms around her… Guess not then, eh?

XXXXXXX

I ruined it all. Sweeney wouldn't talk about it, couldn't escape from it now that the furious labor he had absorbed himself in was finished. Everything. Bloody. Ruined.

He still saw the sunlight, colorful world he had been taken away from. In his dreams only, and now it was nothing but a dream. It wouldn't be back. Johanna had left him.

It was all his fault.

Why should he say so? Didn't she know? He stared hard at the stained floorboards. Yes, Mrs. Lovett, I have destroyed my life, probably yours as well and certainly Johanna's. Now she was alone, and they would stay forever in their own shadowed Hell, killing until the hangman took them. When we should be laughing, together, going to market, buying flowers to decorate Johanna's new room behind my shop…

And then she would stand, look at him and leave. Discreetly, he supposed, but he'd know why. Who would build their home among ruins?

As if on cue, he felt the baker stirring at his side, lifting his aching wrist from where it lay sprawled pathetically, palm up, across her knee and placed it gently but briskly on his own. "Well, might as well go to bed then. Try and get some rest before we start out." Her voice had that flat edge that always showed she was frustrated. "You should probably do the same. Heaven only knows where we'll end up." She stood, her skirts rustling as she began to leave.

Sweeney stiffened, his eyes darting finally to the black mass of skirts and lace that crossed his sight, to the empty seat beside him, back to Mrs. Lovett's retreating figure. She was almost to the door. Only to bed, Sweeney told himself. She said she was only going to bed. But there was a part of him that was still lost, still heartbroken.

Still afraid.

"No…" His voice was faint, weak. But by some miracle she stopped, her fingers already on the doorknob.

She stood frozen, not quite believing she had heard what she did. It was a mistake. She turned slowly, uncertainty and surprise obvious on her face. And hope. Mr. Todd, she saw, wore the same stricken expression she had seen earlier. She felt her heart melting. "What is it, love?"

Sweeney already regretted speaking, ashamed of his weakness. He looked down again, avoiding her eyes. "Leave" screamed half of his mind. The rest cried "Please don't!" A strangling sensation seized control of his throat. The demon barber felt utterly defeated.

Nellie returned to her seat hesitantly, carefully, and lay her fingers softly on his arm. He looked up. "I'll stay if you like. Anything, Mr. Todd."

He nodded. "Yes," he choked. "I -" He stopped himself. I don't want to be alone. "You can talk. About anything." His eyes searched hers. "Toby, if you like. You lost him, too."

Mrs. Lovett's face fell, and Sweeney could tell she had pushed her own loss out of her mind, as he has tried to do. But she had loved that boy. Her hand fell away from his arm and she began to toy with a stray bit of thread hanging from her dress. "Well, there's not much we could do with him. If he hadn't run we'd have had to…"

Silence hung between them for a long moment. Mrs. Lovett seemed to find the lace on her mangled gloves engrossing. Mr. Todd's own eyes fell to the damp patch spreading around the wet cloth on his wrist.

"Foolish." He looked up at the sound of her own voice. "I thought I could keep both of you. Guess I had to choose."

Choose? She would have killed her precious little orphan to be with him? He stared hard at her.

She looked up. "What? You know I love you."

He did. She had told him so before. But…

Nellie sighed. His eyes were still on her face, but she could tell he was gone again. His Johanna. "We'll get her back, love," she murmured as she lay back resignedly in the old chair.

Mrs. Lovett. Sweeney watched as the woman beside him drifted to sleep. Mrs. Eleanor Lovett. He shifted slightly beside her , settling back so that his arm just barely touched her shoulder. Very gently, he shook off the bandage on his wrist and placed his hand over hers. Nellie…

XXXXXXX

A dim red glow was beginning to filter through the smog as Jack Guffie's coach and four rolled slowly back into the city. Driver and horses alike were exhausted, looking forward to a long, miserable day.

Inside the carriage, deep, empty silence seem to be growing, welling up. Accusing. The heavy purse tucked in his coat was a guilt weight against his chest. He felt like a Judas. But the gold in that purse, he told himself, would buy enough gin to cheer even the devil himself.

Absorbed in these thoughts, he never noticed that as the weary team ambled past Fleet Street, a little figure tumbled from the carriage's bouncing supports into the filth of the street and ran stiffly into the fog and shadows of the morning.

XXXXXXX

Thanks to everybody who reviewed. Very kind of you. If you don't mind, I hope you'll review again and tell me if you thought Sweeney was out of character in this chapter. I tried hard to make sure he wasn't, but...