Notes: Yes! All it took was a really boring day at work, staring at pies, and I broke through my writer's block. The style of this story may start to change a little from here on in, as I've finally figured out where it's going. That may mean more action and less introspection.

A firkin is a small barrel used to house wine - often strong wine, like port.

'Rum' as an adjective is an alternative for 'strange'.

For the very first time, Sweeney Todd paid attention to the way people looked at him on the street. The middle-aged, cynical and jaded, noticed him only in passing - too wrapped up in their own dour lives to see him as anything more than an eccentric. The young men and women didn't care, concerned only with their own lives or with their young children. They only noticed him as an obstacle in the street, something to step around, to take care not to bump into. It was the children and the beggars that concerned him.
Small children would look at him and as he looked back Mr. Todd could see it at once in their eyes, that somehow they recognised him as kin to the monster under the bed. Wide, frightened eyes filled with tears, tiny hands clutched at mother's skirts. The beggars avoided him completely. Ratty, bedraggled men and women who would approach anyone, hoping for enough pity or revulsion that they would be paid to go on their way, avoided him. Street urchins, those children who had already seen the 'monster under the bed' in many of its human incarnations, still recognised him as a monster.

Sweeney Todd, the monster. Sweeney Todd, the devil. These new thoughts made him very uncomfortable.

"We're close now," Mrs. Lovett piped up from beside him, and Mr. Todd was jolted back down to earth. "Dont' you worry now, luv. We'll sort this Mr. Church out right proper."
Somehow, her voice was strangely calming and yet worrying. Mrs. Lovett, the one person in the entirety of London who knew who he was. A devil in her own right. Mr. Todd glanced at her from the corner of his eye, barely giving any response other than a disinterested grunt. Johanna, his salvation. She was almost within his reach.

-

Joseph Church didn't like the look of the couple who entered the tavern, the woman smiling vacantly and the man staring through bloodshot eyes. He liked them even less when he saw the man behind the bar direct the couple towards his table. Church lowered his eyes to his pint of beer, aware that it was early in the day to be drinking and not really caring about that fact. He was a working man, he did his share and he earnt his pay... It was his choice if he wanted to drink it away.

"Mister Church, I presume."

The voice that spoke was pure gravel, a rumble with consonants. Joseph looked up, focussing on the man who had spoken. "Aye," Joseph's own voice was roughened by drink, "That would be me."

"We were wondering if we could talk to you," the woman said, and Joseph had to look twice when she smiled. That wasn't a vacant stare in her eyes, but something different. Something disquieting that reminded him most absurdly of his own mother. Joseph was about to tell her to go preach to someone else but something in that smile stopped him. When he didn't reply, the woman barrelled on. "We were wondering if we could talk to you about a girl. A blonde girl. Name of Johanna, what Judge Turpin might have sent away somewhere."

The man clenched his fists, lips twisting into something resembling a sneer. He looked angry, pained. Joseph did not want to talk to him. "Why dont you talk to the good Judge himself?" Joseph asked, talking into his mug of beer.

"That's not an available option," the man rumbled through his sneer, looking down his nose at Joseph. Joseph stared back at the man, noting the deep circles under his eyes, the strange light in his shale-grey eyes.

"Have you got a problem, mate?" Joseph asked, put off by the man's obvious hostility.

"The world is my problem," the man muttered, but not quietly enough.

Mrs. Lovett shot her companion a look. Mr. Todd fell silent but looked no less hostile, barely hiding his contempt for this establishment, this man they were supposed to be getting information from.

"You'll have to forgive my husband, sir," Mrs. Lovett started, smiling again. Mr. Todd's frown deepened, but a sharp sideways glance from the Devil kept him silent. "He's terrible worried and yet he can't do a thing for it. You see... the girl, Johanna..." Mrs. Lovett paused. She looked uncertain for the breifest of moments. "She's our daughter," Mrs. Lovett said finally. "We were unable to keep her when she was born, we didn't have the money. Judge Turpin took her, kind soul, and found a place for her in a merchant household. We've been out of London for the past few years, making our fortune as it were -" that was believeable, as even if Mr. Todd still looked as shabby as ever, Mrs. Lovett had bought herself new dresses and was currently wearing a confection of maroon taffeta silk. "- now that we're back we wanted to be a family again. Only... only there was a quarrel in the household. Johanna has been sent away and the household refuses to talk about her. Our boy, Anthony, what works in our shop, he heard that you might know where she was. The poor boy was too scared to talk to you himself, so we've taken the afternoon off in the hopes that you might speak to us. Please, sir. We only want our daughter back."

Mr. Todd was staring. He couldn't help it. He knew that Mr. Church was also staring and surely the man would notice something was wrong if he kept looking at Mrs. Lovett, but Mr. Todd couldn't drag his eyes away. Her husband?! Their daughter? Mrs. Lovett had been so convincing that for a moment he had wanted to believe her; He had wanted to believe, if only for a moment, that he still had a wife, that he had never been in a prison colony and his years away had been here in England with at least part of his family. Mr. Todd had wanted to believe, for a moment, that he was a normal man, that revenge was not the only fire burning inside him.

Joseph Church was staring for a much different reason. Such an impassioned plea from a lady who had obviously seen hard times. How crass would it be to refuse her the information that she sought. "I might know something," Joseph admitted finally, "something about where your Johanna is. Now I don't know her name," Mr. Chruch began, lowering his voice to a hum that wouldn't carry to the other occupants of the bar. "A girl, one with yellow hair, was taken to the asylum by word of Judge Turpin. It was his beadle that drove the carriage. They say she was like a ghost, so pale she was, staring and silent. That's very queer, you know. Normally those mad folk are screming when they're brought in, or telling rum tales that aren't true."

"The asylum?" Mrs. Lovett gasped, her hand flying up to cover her mouth in a show of her shock.

"Bedlam?" Mr. Todd croaked. He felt cold, numb from head to toe, only his heart seemed capable of feeling. It burned in his chest, squeezed too tight under layers of ice and hate.

"No," Mr. Church assured them, having fallen hook, line and sinker for their lie - only parents would be so concerned for a mad little girl who had somehow incurred the Judge Turpin's wrath. "Fogg's Asylum on the strait."

Mrs. Lovett glanced at the barber standing beside her. One glance was all it took for her to notice his cold, faraway expression. The same expression that Mr. Todd wore when thinking his most dark, turbulent thoughts. She knew there was a fire burning somewhere inside him, the fuse was lit from within, slowly burning closer to the powder keg he held under his breast. Perhaps it was best to leave before the fire could reach that far.
"Thankyou, Mr. Church," Mrs. Lovett said suddenly, dipping a quick and lopsided curtsy for the appearance of politeness, "God bless your kindness, sir."

With the air of one who had much practise with the task, Mrs. Lovett looped her arm around Mr. Todd's elbow, clasping his wrist with her hand. Smiling politely, she bustled him out of the shop and down the street, headed back to her pie shop as fast as pedestrian traffic would allow. She chattered nonsense, talking about everything and anything innocuous that came to mind - new fashions she'd seen in a shop window, the price of salt gone up again, perhaps redecorating the parlour room or her boudior. She kept talking long after she had run out of breath, acting the part of a bothersome housewife to make Mr. Todd's glower seem caused by her incessant chattering and not the will to do harm to others.

He dropped her at the gate foot of the stairs to his lofty cell, shaking her off his arm with ease. Mr. Todd's feet pounded on the stairs, the door to his barber shop slamming shut to cut off Mrs. Lovett's cry - "Mr. T, you ought to let that Anthony know that..." - to replace her voice with the jangle of a bell, then silence.

Mr. Todd paced backwards and forwards before the big leather chair in the centre of his shop, turning to the window and back again, touching the razor in its holster at his side. He hated that Mrs. Lovett was right. He knew he needed to let Anthony know what they had heard. Mr. Todd couldn't go himself to discover whether Joseph Chruch's rumours had any foundation in truth, Anthony was much less memorable, much less... disturbing to look at. Johanna was not Mr. Todd's daughter, she was the child of Benjamin Barker. Mr. Todd couldn't claim any paternal rights without explaining who he really was. Not without alerting the Judge to who he really was...

A sudden spark lit his brain. Mr. Todd stopped dead, staring at the leather chair, the beginnings of a plan forming within his mind.

As the day wound to a close, Mrs. Lovett began the ordeal of trooping up and down the stairs to the basement kitchen, trays of pies held in hands swaddled in thick linnen so she wouldn't burn herself. The smell was mouth-watering, but she wasn't tempted in the least to sample one of the pies for herself. She had a better dinner planned for herself once the store was closed.

Toby watched her from the store front where he stood behind the counter, wiping down beakers and checking the barrels of ale and the smaller firkins of wine. Curiosity was a steady thrum in the back of his mind as he wondered why, time and time again, Mrs. Lovett would refuse his help with carrying the pies. She wouldn't let him near the door to that kitchen, having shooed him away from the steps several times. It wasn't that she was worried about him damaging the product because she let him handle the pies when they were upstairs. She even let him handle the hot trays and use the small oven in the shop front, so it didn't seem to be about a worry for his health.

She certainly wasn't afraid that he would stuff himself with pies, she let him eat as many as he wanted anyway. Although, Toby had begun to wonder whether eating the pies was such a good idea after all.

Mrs. Lovett took three trips up and down the stairs, each time bringing more pies to keep warmed by the oven. As soon as the clock struck six, the doors to the shop were opened, half the pies were gone within the hour.

Toby was busy then, dashing back and forth with a cloth over his shoulder to wipe up spills or dust crumbs from the tables, pouring drinks and collecting plates while Mrs. lovett served the pies. Toby watched the customers as he trotted back and forth, a performer's smile on his face. They were always happy, showing their teeth as they smiled and laughed, joking with one another and their host. So many of their teeth were brown or crooked. Toby saw missing teeth, black teeth, chipped teeth, all of them crunching through the crisp crust to the succlent filling.
They reminded him of pigs. Fat, happy pigs. Skinny little pigs with missing teeth. Rich pigs. Poor pigs. The mental image disturbed him more than he could say. Many of Mrs. Lovett's pies smelled and tasted as if they were made of pork. Pigs eating pigs. The thought made his skin crawl.

"Excuse me."

The voice that penetrated Toby's thoughts was high and thin. It belonged to a very fat old woman dressed in a velvet ensemble that made her resemble a large, round plum. "Yes ma'am?" Toby answered politely, offering the woman his very best and friendliest smile.

"I would like my money back," the woman said imperiously. She thrust out one pudgy little hand, showing him a plate with a half-eaten pie resting forlornly in the centre. "This pie is certainly nothing like the fabled 'best pies in London' that this establishment claims as its call to fame. I dare say this is the worst pie I have ever had. Please take it back."

Toby faltered only a moment, but recovered swiftly. He nodded and took the plate from her with a short, polite bow. "I'll be right back, ma'am," he assured the plum-coloured woman before quickly turning and disappearing back inside the pie shop.

He took the pie behind the counter and gingerly prised off the top. The meat inside the pie was a strange colour, more grey than brown. Toby lifted the pie up (first making sure none of the other customers could see) and carefully took a whiff of its contents. The smell made him blanch. A sickly sweet, musty kind of smell that seemed familiar even as it turned his stomach. Toby tossed the pie into the oven fire, content to let it burn to a crisp. He took a step away, intending to explain the situation to Mrs. Lovett. Something made him stop though, and instead he simply went to the money box and counted out the price of a single pie.

Toby returned to the woman in plum and handed over her refund with another of his best smiles and a personal apology from the baker.

There were five more such returns within the next two hours, each pie with the same colour and smell. That smell lingered in Toby's nostrils as the shop wound down to a close for the night. He couldn't put his finger on what was so familiar about it. A certain smell. Sweet, almost rotten... The thought came to him all of a sudden as he was stacking dirty dishes by the wash tub. Gangreen!

Toby stared at the plates without seeing them. What sort of butcher would sell someone a cut of rotten meat? Why hadn't Mrs. Lovett noticed it?

"Toby!" Mrs. Lovett's voice called to him from the parlour room. The house was small and didn't have a proper dining room, so Toby and Mrs. Lovett took their meals in the parlour at the small, four person card table. Mrs. Lovett often tried to get Mr. Todd to come downstairs to dine with them, but often to no avail. Tonight was one of those ocassions, the barber's seat was empty.

Toby sat down, placing a napkin in his lap like Mrs. Lovett had instructed him to. He was famished, his stomach rumbling loudly at the sight of a full plate of meat and potatoes doused in gravy. Mrs. Lovett was not a religious woman, so he had no need to say any prayers before tucking in with a will. "Ma'am," Toby said, once he'd eaten enough that his stomach had stopped rumbling so fiercely, "what butcher do you buy your meat from?"

Mrs. Lovett put down her fork, raising her napkin to pat at the corners of her lips carefully. "One what's in the square, Toby. A Mr. Turnbull, he delivers the meat direct like."

It was hard to tell whether she was lying or not, but Toby had a strange suspicion that she was. "I've never seen meat being delivered," he pointed out, poking his remaining potatoes across his plate.

"It's delivered 'round the back," Mrs. Lovett explained, giving him a warm smile, "so nobody sees. It's not good for the customers to see the filling for the pies before it's made up proper. Now, finish your dinner, then off to bed! I'll leave the dishes to soak and you can finish up in the morning."

Any protests Toby had were beaten back by Mrs. Lovett's flapping hands and unwavering insistence that he should go to bed after such a long day. As Toby climbed the stairs to the little room that had become his bedroom he tried not to think about how he couldn't ever remember seeing a butcher's shop that was owned by anyone called Turnbull, or how the smoke from the kitchen downstairs was similar to charring bone and flesh, or those strange clues to do with Mr. Todd's behaviour. He refused to think about all the small clues and things that were coming together in his mind to form one, unpleasant whole. He didn't want to realise that his dear Mrs. Lovett may not be as sweet and wonderful as he had thought.