A/N: SO so so so sorry this is late!!! It's been a bit busy lately, but I haven't forgotten to drink my tea!

~Non Compos Mentis~

"You won't need to bury me after all, Mr T," said Mrs Lovett after twenty minutes of walking back to the pie shop. He wasn't making love-dovey eyes at her. He wasn't sweeping her off her feet. He wasn't shouting for a coach to drive them at neck-breaking speed to the sea.

He was just tapping the ground with his right foot, muttering something about "dead men" and "burying himself alive." Unless this was Mr Todd's way of being romantic –

"The tea has worn off," Sweeney Todd concluded, breathing a sigh of relief.

"Oh well," said Mrs Lovett far too casually, kicking a spare pebble on the road.

"What now?" Sweeney asked, slowing their pace as the approached the familiar shop.

Her eyes lit up. "Wanna get drunk?"

Sweeney frowned. Normally he didn't approve of such gluttonous vices, but considering that both their dreams had been dashed in the space of one miserable afternoon, the thought of drinking himself into an early grave seemed strangely enticing.

"I'll get the gin," the baker insisted, sensing Sweeney was at his most vulnerable. Ah ha, she realised, racing up the stairs like a girl going to fetch her skipping rope. Maybe I can settle for second best. It was her speciality, anyway, settling for seconds. Lucy had Ben, so wasn't it right Nellie had Sweeney, half compos mentis or not? She had the idea that a gin-fuelled romp with a repressed barber was bound to be as satisfying as a honey-moon picnic on the beach under the stars…

"A second teabag!" Sweeney bellowed unexpectedly, tearing up the stairs after her.

"Wot?" She turned at the door, just as he barrelled past her and knocked her winded on the dusty floorboards.

"A second teabag," he continued to mutter, lifting the trunk where they'd stuffed Pirelli's body. He began rifling feverishly through the dead man's clothes.

Suddenly Mrs Lovett realised what he was on about, and joined in the search. "Big beefy man like Pirelli couldn't just 'ave one ruddy teabag," she wheezed, feeling up the sleeve of the bloody man's arm. "One more teabag, an' I can make my wish!"

"I think you mean my wish, Mrs Lovett," snarled Sweeney, slapping her arm away from Pirelli's arm. "You had your wish, now it's my turn."

"An' Orphans live past their sixth birthdays!" snorted Mrs Lovett, elbowing him in the side.

Sweeney Todd was a very weak man except for his exceptionally toned hand muscles, and the properly placed nudge was enough to cause him to crumple to the floor.

~Twenty minutes later~

"Well, that solved that," said the baker glumly, staring at the dead man's naked body. Clothes were strewn around the barber shop, but nothing had revealed a second magic teabag.

Predictably, the demon barber had gone to pieces. "Another pointless exercise!" he vented, throwing an oil lamp at the already violated mirror.

"I suppose I'll get the blame," his companion muttered, rolling her eyes at the ceiling.

"What was that?" Nothing escaped Sweeney's sweeping stare. "It was your idea, my pet, to boil that teabag -"

"I only thought some good would come of it!"

Downstairs, Toby was busy making explosive experiments in Mrs Lovett's bathtub.

"So that's where me gin got to," Mrs Lovett observed.

"Sit down my dove," instructed the barber, pushing her forward with her shoulders.

She sat obediently, ignoring the flaming look in his eyes. She was too busy concentrating on the ashen skin, the dusty hair and practiced fingers.

"Be very quiet," Sweeney continued, swiftly drawing out his razor and holding it up to their gazes.

"I hope you isn't intendin' to 'urt me Mr T, becoz I really don't think either of us would like that."

"You mightn't, my pet, but I might," he confessed, lifting the blade to her throat.

"You aren't goin' to be intimate wif me, are you, Mr T?" said Mrs Lovett at last, her eyes widening with that frightful delight that Sweeney loved to see on his victim's faces.

"Sorry to disappoint you, Mrs Lovett, but brunettes happen to be very physically unattractive to me."

She shut her eyes, hoping the exercise would be swiftly done. Even at her moment of death, Mrs Lovett couldn't resist a final quip: "Oh that's right, I forgot you 'as a fetish for blondes. Just like that ole Judge T –"

"I'm nothing like the Judge!" Sweeney shrieked, bringing the blade across her throat at the exact moment the baker grasped the lever on the barber chair, and pulled.

"FLAMIN' JESUS!" Mrs Lovett screamed all the way to the bottom.

"Delightful," said Sweeney Todd, bending his neck down the trapdoor to view the crumpled doll body of his former accomplice.

"I'm not dead!" shouted Mrs Lovett angrily from below, "so you can stop your gloating!"

"I'm not gloating," Sweeney growled, "merely peeping," but he got no further in his explanation.

No sooner than he had craned his neck to argue some more with Mrs Lovett, than he lost his footing and went tumbling down to join her, right in the middle of the churning, chopping, bakehouse sea.

"It came true!" sang Mrs Lovett, paddling about merrily in the dark waters that lapped around the furnace and buoyed them about the room. She looked at the barber's body, sinking down into the depths, with a crestfallen face. "Well, part o' me wish, anyhow."

"Lucy!" Sweeney gasped, surfacing from the waves.

~*~*~*~