Mrs. Lovett is not meant to be as loveable as she appears in fanfiction.
Disclaimer: The characters and settings in this story do not belong to me. I make no profit from writing this story.
The clock ticked to the sound of his pacing. Back and forth, tick tick, perfectly in time with the sound of his footsteps from overhead. The swinging pendulum could have been one of his legs, always moving, back and forth, back and forth in front of that window. She almost didn't notice when she started moving to the beat, like she was dancing, her steps in time with his, her movements all in tune to the metronome of ticking clock and pacing feet.
She scattered flour to the beat. She pounded and rolled pastry to the beat. She chopped, crimped, basted, and even wiped her forehead to the beat, leaving tiny smudges of flour and grease across her skin. She hummed to the beat, realised what she was doing, and cursed herself.
Always singing to his beat. Always dancing to his tune.
The only people, Mrs. Lovett mused, who danced to her tune were the ones she butchered in the basement kitchen. The only people who she never had to hide anything from were dead, their skulls cracked from the long drop from the second storey, throats slashed, faces always surprised... And always stinking. She had at first been disgusted to learn that human bodies always soiled themselves in the moments after death, when the muscles let go and the body was limp, before rigor mortis set in. Now it was just another bit of unpleasantness.
She had begun to talk to them, these bodies that she cut up and baked into her pies. It started with a dry little joke when cleaving head from torso; "All this slaving away in a dark ol' room hot as a furnace, it's enough to make you lose your 'ead!"
Soon Mrs. Lovett was conversing with her meat from the moment she entered the room. She told young men her problems as she stripped them of their clothes and valuables. She chatted about the weather, the money she was making, and the price of flour gone up while she sharpened her cleavers against a whetstone. She confided in them her feelings of loneliness as she hacked their limbs from their bodies and stripped the flesh as best she could from the bones.
The Meat provided a sympathetic ear that she couldn't get from the boy Toby, or her Mr. Todd upstairs. Toby wouldn't understand. Though he was wordly for his age and had been forced to grow up fast, as all children from the poor and working classes did, there was a sort of innocence in him, and a moral compulsion that would send him running the second he discovered the truth about the pie shop. Mr. Todd just didn't care. And oh, how it hurt her to admit that. Even down here, in the dank humidity of the basement bakehouse, alone but for her dead, dismembered companions, it hurt.
Mrs. Lovett had to remember not to talk to the pies. The pies may be made of her dead companions, but they weren't the same. Pies didn't have faces, and were there to be eaten. She felt at her best these days when she was serving customers. These were faces that smiled back at her, and voices she didn't have to only pretend to hear.
She felt a sense of exhileration when she bustled through and around the tables, skirts swishing about her ankles, feet, back and arms aching. A dazzling smile would slowly creep onto her face as customers came and went, chatting, eating, and (of course) paying. And then, when the last customer left, her smile began to disappear.
By the time she had sent Toby to wipe down the tables and had begun to wash her trays and knives in a big tub of soapy water, Mrs Lovett looked older and more worn. The fine lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth deepened as she frowned into the greasy grey liquid. She scrubbed, splashing water onto her skirt and her rolled up sleeves, knowing the only thing stopping her hands from getting dry and cracked with the acidic traces of lye were the hard callouses and tough skin a baker developed over the years. Toby came, and went when she told him that she'd left him a tray in the sitting room. Boys and their appetites, Toby looked as if he could eat half his own weight on a good day. Mr. Todd didn't look as if he could eat anything at all, and had to be badgered into taking a few mouthfuls of stew and a gulp of two of ale. Always thinking of him, she was! And blast it all, he was pacing again and she was moving to the same beat!
Disgusted with herself, Mrs. Lovett threw the rough scrubbing brush she'd been using to scour her oven trays across the room. Shoving her sleeves higher on her arms, Mrs. Lovett fished in the dirty water for her trays, stacking them on the nearest available surface with as much noise as she could possibly make. Trying to drown out the noise of the pacing from above she did the same with her knives, slamming each one down on top of the trays with a clatter.
She couldn't down him out, no matter what she did.
Frustrated, Mrs. Lovett grasped the edges of the tub, hauling the heavy container of greasy water to the door. She was puffing like a bellows by the time she'd even taken four steps, and had splashed dishwater onto the bottom of her skirts. Annoyance and self-hate giving her strength, she barelled open a window without even touching the handle, and threw the dishwater out onto the street with a yell that made a few passers-by stare.
Panting, Mrs. Lovett retreated back into the shop. She shoved the tub under the counter (which was really only a table with an extra panel nailed to the front) and collapsed against the wood with a groan, tears of frustration prickling at her eyes. His pacing had stopped. Sudden heavy footfalls could be heard coming down the steps outside and Mrs Lovett gave a little gasp. She straightened and wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands, smudging the charcoal that she used to make her eyelashes appear darker, turned away from the door in the hopes that he wouldn't notice that she'd been crying. Or maybe hoping that he would notice, notice something about her.
The door opened with a protesting whine from the hinges, and closed with another small whine. His footsteps were closer now, though strangely muted now that he wasn't above her. In time with the clock he strode (tick, tick, tick, tick) until he was standing at her back. Mr. Todd didn't speak, but she could feel those intense, odd eyes staring at her back.
Gathering her wits, Mrs. Lovett pasted a smile onto her face and turned. "Mr. Todd," she greeted him, "can I get you something to eat, dear? Something to drink? I got this new ale just this morning, it has this real nutty taste..." Mrs. Lovett trailed off uncertainly when all he did was continue to stare at her.
"You've been crying, luv."
"What?" Shocked just as much that he'd spoken as that he'd noticed, Mrs. Lovett floundered, unable to come up with anything more witty to say.
"You've been crying."
"No I haven't." A bare-faced lie was the best she could do and his eyes seared through the untruth, burning her and making her look away. "It's just these onions I were chopping earlier, that's all."
His eyes swept through the shop, seeing no traces of onion.
"Downstairs," Mrs. Lovett elaborated weakly, "I was chopping them downstairs. Mr. T."
Mr. Todd did not look convinced. He must have decided to let it go, because he didn't say anything further on the subject. "I'll take dinner upstairs," he told her instead, turning to walk out of the store and back up the stairs to his own shop, "I wont be disturbed."
He heard her. All day, every day. When he wasn't lost in his own thoughts he could hear the noises floating up to him from below, like God must hear Hell. He thought of Downstairs as hell, his own personal hell, and that was strangely comforting. Mrs. Lovett was his Devil, the voice of reason that he didn't want to listen to, whispering in his ear and forever telling him to wait, softly, to be patient. Sweeney Todd was not normally given to being patient in matters like these that tumbled through his mind day by day. Had it been solely up to him he would have simply found a way into the Judge Turpin's manor, slit the man's throat, and then let himself be taken for his murder. Sweet Justice, locked in Bedlam, executed, hung by the neck... Death did not scare Mr. Todd. He was already dead on the inside.
Mrs. Lovett's voice continually brought him up and out of these death fantasies, reminding him that there was such a thing as life. Her voice had told him of his daughter, living with the judge. Her voice had convinced him to wait, to see Anthony and his ridiculous interruption as an opportunity rather than a setback. Her voice resonated in his empty chest, filling him with a feeling as if his heart were still beating. Sometimes he imagined that he had died when his Lucy had. He imagined that he'd felt it, back in the prison camp, working to clear land for roads and settlements, that his heart had broken one day and he was only just realising when and why it had happened. Gradually, over time, every night he went to sleep he woke up emptier and emptier...
She didn't know it, but he could hear her when she was down in the bakehouse. Her voice filtered up through the shaft, coming up through the floorboards as a pleasant hum. He could not hear the words, but he knew she was talking; Chatting to a captive audience, perhaps to keep her own squeamish fears at bay.
"She keeps us alive, my pet," he spoke to the gleaming silver cut-throat in his hand, idly sharpening the already deadly-sharp blade against a leather strap, his voice was barely above a murmur. Even now he could recall her face as clear as daylight, right down to the tiniest detail, how her pupils dilated whenever he came too near.
Sweeney Todd growled in disgust, flicking his razor closed and turning away from the chair to the slanting window that faced out towards the dregs of London. He could recall the woman he loved only when he gazed at her picture, but he could see his Devil whenever he closed his eyes.
Oh, how he hated her... He hated every little detail, from the top of her unruly reddish curls right down to the flaking buttons on her shoes. He hated how she would pester him to eat, to drink, to wash, to come outside and get a bit of air. He hated how she was always right, how she could come up with amazingly practical schemes to solve both of their problems at a go. He hated how she smiled. He hated how she doted upon that boy, a walking liability that she insisted was harmless. He hated her most of all because she could make him smile - rarely, fleetingly, he smiled. It reminded him that he was still human, and Sweeney Todd hated to be reminded of his own humanity.
Her footsteps sounded on the stairs and Mr. Todd slipped his razor back into its casing. He always knew it was her from the tiny click of her heels against the wood. Tap-click, toes then heels, tap-click, and the rustle of her bustled skirts. The tap-click stopped outside the door, her knuckles rapped against the varnished and stained wood.
"Mr. T," she called through the doorway, "I've got your dinner on a tray, luv, and it's just left outside your door. I know you said you was not to be disturbed."
There was a long pause as they both stood, separated by ten feet and a sturdy wooden door, and then Mrs. Lovett's feet began tap-clicking towards the stairs. Mr. Todd moved swiftly, crossing the length of his barber shop in only three single strides. He pulled the door open, his head and shoulders appearing from the gloom a split second before the rest of him. "Mrs. Lovett."
She stopped at the top of the stair and turned, her hand upon the rail. Her brown eyes looked absurdly hopeful. It occurred to him that he could no longer remember her first name.
"Yes, Mr. Todd?" Mrs. Lovett prompted when he simply stared at her, ignoring the tray at his feet. His stare bored into her head through her eyes, he looked as if he could see right through into her skull even though her mind remained as unreadable as always.
"No," he said after a long moment of just staring, "I need nothing. Leave me."
Mrs. Lovett nodded, her curls bobbing about her head, and turned again to leave.
"No!"
She stopped again only two steps below where she had started, turning to look up at him with confusion on her face and worry on her eyes. "Mr. T?"
"What is..." Mr. Todd seemed to choke on the words, eyes narrowing breifly, face becoming drawn. "Mrs. Lovett, what is your name?"
Now it was her turn to stare at him. She was trying to puzzle him out, he could tell, trying to see what might have made him ask, whether he had some kind of hidden motivation. Whatever she thought of his question, she could not find the answer to him. "Nell," Mrs. Lovett replied, uncharacteristicly hesitant. "I never known ought else."
For one very breif moment Mr. Todd's face softened, and for that one moment he looked more like Benjamin Barker in Sweeney Todd's clothes. Then he slammed the door, leaving the tray, and Mrs. Lovett's bowl of stew and pot of best ale alone on his doorstep.
He slumped against the closed door, cradling his head in his forearms, teeth bared, eyes screwed shut. He could hear her breathing. His Devil, waiting in vain for him to reappear. Then she descended, tap-click tap-click, down into Hell.
Only when he heard the door to the pie shop close did he slowly let his own door creak open enough for him to retrieve the bowl of stew and the pot of ale. Only the first bite tasted sweet. The rest tasted like nothing. He ate it as if it were a path to salvation, as if it were Lovett herself... Because it was her.
Cut-throat - the style of razor that Sweeney Todd uses. A single blade on a hinge that folds the knife so that the sharp part of the blade is facing into the handle. Therse were (and sometimes still are) used up until the invention of the disposable razor.
Bellows - large, organ-like instrument used in blacksmithing to raise the temperature of the forge fire. Often makes wheezing noises when used.
'Pot' of ale - Actually a modern-day word as well. A pot is a glass used for beer/cider/ale, and is the size smaller than a schooner. It would be about a half-pint.