And how in the world was he supposed to react? He had something—no, that was wrong; he had everything—and they had snatched it away, taken it from his hands as greedily as if it was food and they were starving. They had left him cold and, worse, alone, alone with men whose crimes actually had been committed.
Those men weren't like him, not then. Perhaps in their way, they shaped him, shaped him to be a more callous person—but he didn't know, he couldn't see himself, couldn't see how he changed, or rather how he was changed. All he knew was that he would rather die than spend his life in that hellhole: and so he left.
He nearly did die, but somehow—if he believed this, he would have said it was Providence, but as it was, those fifteen dank years had stripped him of his faith—he did not.
The town he returned to was his home. It was a barren, cold place, and there were too many memories, but still, it was home, and it was bittersweet—those first few moments of smelling the smoky, blunt smell of the city's air, the ground heaving from the swaying of the ship being suddenly taken away, and the boy beside him, it was all, somehow, like being home again. Even if Lucy was not there, even if the air was dirtier than he remembered it to be, even if no one seemed to remember his face—he was home.
And, for a while, things got better from there—in those glittering things he called his friends; they warmed to his flesh and somehow, although he knew that they were nothing more than metal warmed with the heat of the blood beneath his skin, they seemed alive—like companions.
How did they expect him to react? Did they think that the poor victim of Benjamin Barker would perhaps find the penal colonies to be suited to him, and be content to live his miserable life in a hot and dry foreign land? Did they think that that pitiful man would be fine watching all be taken away? Did they think he would just lie down and take it?
Well, whatever they thought, they were wrong.
Dead wrong.
He would not take it, even if perhaps that Barker fellow would have, because God and Mrs. Lovett and whatever scrap of soul he had left all knew that he was not that goddamned Benjamin Barker any longer. He was someone else, a different man, a man with whom Benjamin Barker perhaps shared some physical similarities, but a man that would not lie down and let the world roll over him.
What did they think he'd do? Curl up in prison and sob his eyes out? Maybe Barker had done that—Todd didn't remember. Maybe doing nothing, he thought once, would be the smartest thing to do. But that thought flitted out of his mind as soon as it'd came, and was gone much too soon for Todd to start questioning whether he was doing what he should. Losing all was hard, impossibly hard, but not gaining it back, letting it all slip through his fingers again, would be so many times harder, and that, if nothing else, would kill him.
And still, though he was by no means young, he wasn't old. He had time, more than enough time, and he couldn't think of a better way to spend it. So he would simply do nothing—for a while. It was not really doing nothing: he was planning and waiting and watching and speaking with his friends.
He had all the time in the world, and what better way to spend it than revenge?