A/N: This was originally just going to be a oneshot, but it's impossible to tell plot bunnies what to do. Thank you to everyone who's following this story. Just a word of warning: this is a bit more graphic and probably less well-written than the first installment. Hope you like. If you would like more, drop the plot bunnies a review. Plot bunnies feed on reviews.
Hush little baby, don't you cry/ Don't cut your arms, don't say goodbye/ Put down that razor, put down that light/ It might be hard, but you'll win this fight –Unknown
The blades began to call again when night fell. As the darkness closed in, so did every insecurity and odious memory roosting in Mrs. Lovett's brain. Alone in her bedroom, the baker remembered every customer that had smiled to her face and then hissed into a friend's ear about what a whore she was.
She saw the adoration in Benjamin Barker's eyes as he ran his fingers through his perfect blonde wife's beautiful, flawless locks and smiled down at their cooing, gurgling baby girl.
She heard her cleaver chop wetly through muscle and fat.
Nellie Lovett thought of every time she'd let Toby down to dote on the ever-unreachable Mister Todd, and in turn every time she'd been unable to get across to Sweeney that she was right there and willing to hold him tight until the demons in his head retreated into their corners.
She tasted blood and belatedly released her bottom lip.
The siren song grew exponentially stronger; her skin itched for release. The baker grazed her lip again as her wide brown eyes fell upon Toby. The boy was curled up at the foot of her bed, close enough for his soft, even breaths to puff against her bare ankles. The baker sat up, careful not to jog him in any way.
She didn't know where Sweeney had taken her grooming razor, but a drawer full of winking steel waited in her kitchen. No longer could she resist its pull.
Drinking in one more look at the boy that she'd come to love so fiercely, Nellie slipped out of bed and glided into the parlor.
Cold tiles stung her bare feet as parlor carpet gave way to kitchen linoleum. Her tiny feet made not a sound as she crept to her notched, stained counter.
The vivacious redhead's arm burned as she forced it to flex. She was no gentler on it. The furrows had opened a couple of times earlier on in the day. Twice she'd been forced to retreat to the bakehouse and rinse her arm before she could return to work without fear of her story of a sprained wrist falling through.
The slightest press, a slight exertion of the wrist, and she'd be dripping rubies in no time. Nellie swallowed cotton, an odd apprehension prickling across the map of her skin as she reached for a drawer and pulled it open. Her faithful workmates winked conspiratorially in the moonlight.
"Don't you dare."
For the third time in as many days, Mrs. Lovett nearly jumped out of her skin. "Oh!" she astutely exclaimed, one hand flying to her convulsing heart. "Mister Todd!"
The demon barber's only greeting was to peel back white lips from equally white teeth into what was easily the most terrifying snarl that she had ever seen.
She backed away as he advanced. The drawer creaked shut and then dug into the middle of her chronically aching back. Sweeney loomed above her, his black eyes harder than the blades that were shut up just a fraction of an inch away from her nightgown-draped flesh. She stared up at him, unable to tear her eyes from his as her body tried in vain to decide whether it should press itself into the counter until it became nothing more than a swirl in the wood, or curl into his frame and get lost in his body heat.
"N-now, love," the baker stammered, finding that her tongue had become thicker than wool. She couldn't scramble and crawl through one of his episodes. Not tonight. She just couldn't.
His teeth clenched so tightly that she could hear them. Inwardly, she winced. The barber's eyes flashed, and Nellie trembled.
White hands flickered through the pre-dawn gloom before she could even think to cry out.
Then the demon barber of Fleet Street seized her in his arms and held her tightly to his chest.
Sweeney Todd clung to his landlady as if the room was dissolving around and beneath him like shifting sand. He held onto her as if he could keep her from slipping away; as if he could physically ward off the darkness that was drowning the world slowly.
He felt her tiny hands slip onto his back and fist tightly in the fabric of his shirt; tightly enough for the pressure of the fabric on his skin to sting. He didn't care.
Blood hammered through his brain, paying specialized sadistic attention to one side in particular. The messy-haired murderer thought that he might be sick right there on the kitchen floor.
He imagined the steel gnawing his landlady's skin, puncturing the minimal fat effortlessly and tapping into a fountain of waiting crimson…he imagined Nellie Lovett's life bleeding from her bony wrists, soaking into her nightgown and congealing in a dark, oily pool across the surrounding floor as her mass of red curls slumped against the counter just like another vermin cooling on the bakehouse floor…
No. No. Sweeney Todd physically shook his head and gripped the teeny redhead more tightly. After all her haranguing on the uselessness of dwelling on pain, he was going to hold her to her own words.
He steered her out of his arms and heard her groan in the back of her throat.
"Hush." He set her on top of the counter effortlessly and began to peel back her bandages.
She reached across to his hand, impeding his progress with her tiny fingers. "I can get those myself, love…"
"Congratulations." Sweeney edged her pale hand out of the way and unwrapped her arm.
A muscle jumped in his jaw as he saw the rubies edging down her porcelain skin like slanting frowns. "Eleanor Lovett, have you been picking at these?"
"N-no, dear. They've been comin' open all by themselves."
Sweeney's jaw ached as he ground out, "The boy was to take you to me if they started to open up again."
She tensed, and a hint of her normal fire crept into those wide eyes. "Now don't you be takin' any of this out on Toby. I made sure he nor anyone else wouldn't notice."
"Hell, Nellie…"
He took a dishtowel and pressed it to the frowns; she winced but he continued to apply the same amount of pressure.
It's as if the bloody woman wants to die; to leave Toby adrift and himself to face a basement full of rotting bodies. It's as if she wants to give up on him like- nononono
He cannot think like that; he will not think like that. But not even his ocean of devotion can drown the recurrent sting of betrayal. He has been abandoned once before by a woman who claimed to love him with all her heart.
It will not- cannot- happen again.
Roughly, he swabbed at his accomplice's arm, and she hissed between her teeth.
The hiss went up an octave and dissolved into heaving agonized pants as he wetted the cloth with gin and again scrubbed at the self-imposed wounds.
"Oh Mister T I can't it bloody 'urts oh Mister T stop it please I'm begging-"
It wasn't until she squirmed away from him and nearly pitched right off the counter and onto the unyielding floor below that he was forcibly snapped back to the present.
The barber steadied the baker and forced himself to take a series of deep breaths. When he resumed the cleaning, her eyes warily following every move he made, Sweeney was considerably gentler. He pressed down on her pale arm just hard enough to staunch the rubies, imagining that she would break- and shatter- just like porcelain under the weight of too much force.
Then he told her, addressing the towel, "I'm going to have to sew these shut, I'm afraid."
She nodded, not meeting his eyes either.
Sweeney offered her his arm and helped her down from the counter when she took it. The tiny baker followed him upstairs to his shop without question or faltering, and silently he had to admire her strength. Not many could march so resolutely to pain that they could just as easily hide from and avoid.
But Mrs. Lovett sat down in his dreadful barber's chair and gave him her arm without breaking off her staring contest with nowhere.
She tilted back the gin that he gave her to drink in one good gulp.
She didn't whimper when the needle first winked in the moonlight, black with her rubies as it strained to pull along gory thread.
Occasionally she hissed, shuffled her feet, and dug her fingernails into the furrows left in his chair by customers in their final throes. But not once did she complain.
Mrs. Lovett was reeling by the time Sweeney snipped off the final stitch. Her entire arm was one pulsating, red-hot scream.
Still, she managed to spit "Thanks," with the one scrap of breath that she could wrest into English.
The stripe in Sweeney's hair glimmered as he nodded, once.
He helped her downstairs, and she was too pain-drunk to protest that she hadn't lost the use of her legs. She clung to his strong, callused hands and pretended that she didn't have to let go and that he wouldn't mind indulging her so.
She was surprised but not overly so when he trailed her into the parlor.
"I'm fine now, love," Nellie told him, her stomach twisting with the lie and the effort of speaking coherently, "You should get some sleep."
Instead of retreating, he drew alongside her and wrapped his strong arms around her corset-bruised waist. His fingers caressed the rainbow of bruises through the whisper of her nightgown.
"You are not fine," he murmured into her ear, raising goosebumps all across her skin.
Instinctively, she nestled her head into his warm chest. "I will be."
His hot breath puffed through her unruly curls. "And I intend to make sure of that, pet."
The baker blushed. The blush flamed all the way up to her hairline when he picked her up and carried her into her room.
"Mister Todd! For 'eaven's sake, Toby's right there!" she squeaked.
The barber kicked off his boots. "Then he can bloody well scoot over."
Oh. Realizing that she'd misinterpreted his intentions, Mrs. Lovett allowed the introverted psychopath to lay her down on the mattress and climb in beside her.
He tucked them both into the sheets and pulled her deep into his arms. She laid her ear over his heartbeat and wrapped her arms around his torso. He didn't pull away or growl at her. His legs hemmed her in on either side in response. For no reason at all, tears dripped silently down her chin, and she found herself consumed by trembling. His strong fingers stroked her cheeks and twined through her messy curls. The fiery redhead fell asleep to his dexterous caresses.
Sweeney Todd kept watch over his landlady and accomplice for what remained of the night. Her bed was crowded with the boy in it too, and the nest of body heat kept the self-imposed loner on edge. But Sweeney did not budge from her side.
He had failed to protect someone who had depended on him and given him her heart once.
It would not happen again.
And so he cradled Mrs. Lovett, pretending not to notice when the boy woke and fixed him with a horrible look.
She was his, and he was going to defend her from everything that would do her harm- especially herself.