It's surely been so much longer than a week, give a few days (sorry…). I'm finally sitting down to work on this chapter, after updating all the other fanfictions I needed to. This officially commands my attention now.
Anyway, a quick recap of chapter one: A girl (who remains nameless) has stumbled into Sweeney Todd's barbershop, sick and weak, who just so happens to look exactly like his beloved Lucy. The girl has collapsed in his arms after leaving him with one request - she wants him to bleed her. Why did she go to the barber? Doctors terrify her.
Let's watch things unfold, shall we? Now, enjoy chapter two!
Mr. Todd's mind had gone blank at the mere sight of the girl, and now, to have her unconscious in his arms after she'd fainted, he had no idea what to do. He had barely registered the only words she'd spoken to him, after her confirmation she had not come in, as he had inquired before seeing her, for a shave. Something about bleeding. She'd wanted him to bleed her, yes that was it.
He could do it, too, of course. Barbers knew how to bleed people, as well as a few crude dentistry techniques, but the last time he'd done such a thing he had barely been a proper barber for a year; in short, a very, very long time ago. While he was sure he could, though, looking at the girl made something explode in his chest, a supernova of emotions that he thought had long since escaped him, reminding him so abruptly and so painfully of his precious Lucy that the thought of cutting her open himself was too much to bear.
Why did she want to be bled? The only clue he had was that he could feel her skin burning through her pale blue, somewhat ragged dress. She was unearthly pale – paler than him, even – and had a slightly green tinge to her cheeks. She was quite obviously ill. Very ill.
So he did what any sensible person caught in his situation would do; he swept the girl up in his arms so he was carrying her like the princesses in the storybooks his wife had bought for their daughter so long ago, before he'd been falsely convicted, and proceeded as quickly as he could downstairs to enlist the help of Mrs. Lovett.
"Mrs. Lovett," he called gruffly, opening the door to her shop and crossing the threshold. As he made his way across the kitchen and towards her living area, he called again, more urgently, "Mrs. Lovett!"
"What is it, love – oh!" Mrs. Lovett came out of her bedroom and started at the sight of the girl in Todd's arms, her face blanching for a moment before she realized the girl was much too young to be the person she thought. Clutching a hand to her heart as the color returned to her cheeks, she marveled, "Good heavens, I thought for a moment that was—"
"Lucy," the barber said painfully, his voice cracking slightly with the fresh yet familiar grief of having lost his wife. "Yes. I know."
It took a moment for the situation to really clunk into place inside Mrs. Lovett's head, and then she asked, "What on earth do you have a girl here for, Mr. T?"
"She clambered into my shop," he explained, laying the girl down on one of Mrs. Lovett's couches and stepping away from her, trying not to think about the remarkable resemblance between her and his dead wife. "Asked me to bleed her, of all things. And then she just… collapsed."
"Oh, dear," Mrs. Lovett said, looking more closely at the girl. She could hardly get over how much the child looked like Lucy Barker. She wore a tattered pale blue dress, ripped at the bottom with the stitching on the hem unraveling, faint stains from varying sources adorning the fabric. Her yellow hair was long, all the way down to her lower back, and damp with sweat.
Mrs. Lovett bit her lip. Beads of sweat dotted the child's skin everywhere; her neck, her forehead, even her arms. The baker stepped forward and placed a hand on the girl's forehead. "Mr. T, she's burnin' up," she whispered, suddenly acutely aware that she and the barber were in the presence of someone very ill.
Mr. Todd simply nodded, a look of pain akin to the expression he'd worn when she'd told him of Lucy's fate etched across his face. Mrs. Lovett sighed. It couldn't be easy for him, seeing a girl who looked so much like his wife in such a state. It probably kicked up memories, and whether they were good or bad, they had to be excruciating.
"Give me a minute," Mrs. Lovett said, stepping away from the girl and disappearing into the room she'd allowed Toby to take.
The boy emerged with her some moments later, his eyes widening at the sight of the girl. "What's she doin' here?" he asked, pointing at her. "I passed her outside! Looked like she was trying to die or summat, she did. Either that or drunk. Wot's the matter with her?"
"She's sick, Toby, dear," Mrs. Lovett said softly. "Now, go fetch that bucket of water like I asked you to."
"Yes, Mum." Toby nodded and scurried off, disappearing into the kitchen.
Mrs., Lovett crossed the room and perched herself on the edge of the couch the girl was lying upon, brushing blonde hair out of her eyes and wondering if hers were brown like Lucy's had been. "What are we going to do, Mr. Todd?" she asked.
He sank into a chair and held his head. "We can't do anythin' right now. It's nearly midnight. We'll figure it out come mornin'."
"Poor dear," Mrs. Lovett sighed. "Wonder where she came from. Though it looks like she's had it far from easy." Staring at the girl, a thought dawned on her, and she gasped. "Mr. T! Maybe this is your Johanna!"
But Mr. Todd only shook his head. "My girl is in the care of… Judge Turpin." He spoke the name with obvious difficulty. "You really think he'd have her wearing somethin' like that?" He indicated the girl's tattered and stained dress.
"No, I suppose you're right," Mrs. Lovett said, her shoulders slumping. For a moment she thought the girl could be the key to Mr. Todd's happiness, but if she wasn't his daughter than she was just going to prove as a source of heartache for him.
Toby re-entered the room, a bucket sloshing with water hung over his arm and a towel in his hand. "I got the water, Mum."
"Very good, dear. Now bring it over here," Mrs. Lovett waved him forward, and he handed her the bucket. She dumped the towel into it, wrung it out, folded it, and laid it over the girl's forehead. "Well… I suppose this is all we can do for now," she sighed. "You head on to bed now, Toby, love."
He nodded. "G'night."
As the boy returned to his room, Mrs. Lovett turned to Mr. Todd and offered, "I'll stay up and watch her. You go on and get some sleep dear."
"No." He startled her with the very force with which he spoke the word. "I'll see to her."
Mrs. Lovett was reluctant to let him torture himself like that. And he already got so little sleep as it was. She'd rather he got himself some rest, recovered a bit from the shock of seeing this girl, who could very nearly be Lucy's twin (at the age she was). "Don't be silly, dear, I can—"
"Leave me."
Mrs. Lovett sighed and shut her eyes, letting out a long breath. "All right," she whispered, getting to her feet and throwing a final glance at the girl. Trying not to dwell on the torment in Mr. Todd's expression, she slipped into her bedroom and shut the door.
Mr. Todd drew his eyes up to stare at the girl, swallowing back a flood of emotions that seemed to be overwhelming him. He almost felt like Benjamin Barker again. He let out a deep, rickety sigh and ran a hand through his hair. Mrs. Lovett had suggested the girl may be Johanna. Unlikely, surely, but… just maybe…
He stood up slowly and leaned over the girl. After a moment he whispered, "Johanna?"
The girl didn't stir.
He steeled himself and whispered, a little louder, "Johanna?" Pursing his lips, he touched her wrist and said, a final time, "Johanna?"
She jolted out of her sleep, letting out a muffled cry of both shock and pain, and Mr. Todd drew back immediately as the girl scrambled into a sitting position, terror in her brown eyes. She registered where she was, in an unfamiliar room, and stared at Mr. Todd, trying to pull from her memory where she'd seen him before.
Her wrist hurt like hell. She started there, trying to remember what had happened to it. She was running a blank on everything, like her mind was shrouded in a thick fog. Fleet Street. The words flashed in her head, and she recalled falling to the pavement. That was when she'd hurt her wrist.
As she held onto that one occurrence, other memories began to come back to her. She'd accidentally killed a man. She'd escaped the brothel she'd been kept in against her will for four years. She was sick, really sick. She'd even vomited in an alley. And when she'd gotten to Fleet Street, she'd gone looking for a woman who ran a pie shop, hoping she could help her. But she'd gotten distracted.
That was it. The man was a barber. She'd wanted him to bleed her. She sort of remembered asking him to, though she wasn't completely sure she had. And after that, she remembered nothing.
So many questions. Had he bled her like she'd asked? Where was she? What was his name? So, when she opened her mouth to ask, she was shocked when the question that came from her mouth was, "Who's Johanna?"
Mr. Todd flinched. He hadn't expected to be so dejected by learning the girl wasn't his daughter after all, but it made his stomach plummet. He couldn't find his voice. How on earth should he answer the girl? What would he tell her? That he thought she was his long-lost daughter?
The girl waited for an answer that never came, so rather than press the matter she decided to voice another query. "Where am I?"
Mr. Todd swallowed down the lump in his throat. "Below my barbershop in the home of a baker named Mrs. Lovett," he responded gruffly.
The girl glanced around. "Where's she?"
"Bed. It's very late." Mr. Todd watched the girl as she looked towards the hallway with the doors leading to Mrs. Lovett's room, Toby's room, and a bathroom. If she wasn't Johanna, then who on earth was this girl? "What's your name?"
The girl cringed. A name? She didn't truly have one. She'd grown up without one, a nameless urchin on the streets, before she'd been more or less kidnapped by that god-awful French woman and her husband and forced into prostitution. At the brothel Madame and Monsieur had called her Désirée, a French name meaning "desired". It was supposed to be symbolic. She was the prettiest of their prostitutes, and therefore men wanted her. That didn't always mean they could afford her. Madame set the price for a night with her prized Désirée very high.
And she wanted nothing to do with that place for as long as she lived.
"I don't have a name," the girl whispered. The room began to spin and she breathed in sharply. She still felt awful.
"Are you all right?" Mr. Todd asked tersely.
The girl waited for the room to stop spinning, but it never did. "Did you bleed me?" she whispered, her vision going fuzzy.
Mr. Todd looked away. "No. I didn't."
She was going unconscious again; she could feel it, the darkness creeping up on her. In a few moments she'd be gone. "Do it now," she mumbled, her expression going slack as the black overtook her body, numbing her senses. "Please…"
She succumbed to it.
Fin! It took me too long to get this out, and now it's off to work for a few hours before I set to cycling through my writing again, one story after the next. Four to update… I work myself too hard. Plus, I'm looking for a second job…
Anyway, I love you all, I very much hope you liked this chapter, and please review! I know you're out there reading this!
Phantom, out!