A/N This managed to complete itself fairly quickly... but it's a little odd. I really like how it turned out though, peculiarities aside. Hit three hundred reviews last chapter- woot. Wow.. I sound so enthusiastic.
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Time once had a great hold over Nellie's life. There were rigid schedules to be kept and beats that could not be missed. After Benjamin had been shipped off, time had become strangely less constricting, or perhaps she had simply forgotten to keep track of it. James brought her back on track for a while, but after things fell through with him time had once more become an impossible thing. When Benjamin returned to her as Sweeney Todd time had once again snapped back into a strict perspective. Even her daydreams couldn't fully pull her away from the heavy rhythm of his pacing above her. Unlike before this continued stretch of rigid time didn't bother her. Each moment was to a beat she enjoyed.
It seemed time could not overcome a plague that turned men into monsters.
Nellie's entire day had been thrown off-beat by it. Or, it felt like it had been the entire day. The early dinner crowd was where it all started. That day's dinner. It already felt like months in those few hours of fighting for her life, and her companion's. Every moment of being afraid had stretched out time, especially without the reassuring tred of the barber's footsteps near her.
Inside of Turpin's home time had stopped, and after reuniting with Sweeney it seemed to speed ahead before jerking to another halt.
Being knocked unconscious was not an entirely new experience to Mrs. Lovett, life had never truly been kind to her, but this time, when time itself was already imperceptible to her, she was more wary than before about wondering in how long she had been out.
The feeling of wakefulness was dizzying, as her last cogent memory was that one of falling. Falling, at the time, it seemed to an unyielding inevitable. Death. Her open, seeing, eyes contradicted that assumption.
Before Nellie's reality was fully in focus, her lips parted and a whisper of 'Mr. T?' slipped out. If she didn't remember the collapsed stairwell Nellie would have thought he was worse off that her, though he still could have been. He was seated right next to her head, making it difficult for her to see anything below his chest. His pale skin was covered in a thin layer of sweat, and his parted lips drew in short raspy breaths. Despite the softness of her voice his eyes slid open and looked down into hers. For a moment he almost looked relieved, but then his eyes left hers and became inexplicably sad.
"Sweeney?" She prompted, panic seeping into her voice. Nellie suddenly remembered the barber wasn't supposed to be up, and she quickly worried that he had been moved for her sake. "Ya need to be lyin' down, I-" Her body was slow to respond to her brain's command, so her muscles hadn't even twitched when one of the barber's hand came up to forestall her.
"Calm down." Sweeney's lips twitched, as if he wanted to smile.
"But you shouldn't be up. 'Ere I am, taking up all the space-"
"Nellie- you're on a counter, not the table."
The fact he used her first name was all that kept her still. "Than why the hell aren't ya lyin' down?"
For a moment she was positive he was going to burst into laughter. The barest trace of a smile on his face and in his eyes was all she got. "I wanted to be near you, so that when you woke up…" As if suddenly aware of what he was saying Sweeney's words died in his mouth, lips still parted to continue his sentence.
"Luv?" Nellie asked, hoping that if she didn't bring attention to his kind behavior he wouldn't stop.
"I needed to know you were going to wake up." Sweeney's eyes went down, but he didn't look at her. "Needed to know…" The second time was little more than a mumble.
Sweeney's insistence on just seeing her wake up caused panic to flare through the baker. Even though she had been conscious for some time, her body felt distant from her and the one thing she could really feel was that she was lying down. She had no idea what the extent of her injuries were.
"Sweeney, what…I-"
Her panic seemed to be affecting him for his eyes went wide with shock. Another thought struck the baker, nearly stopping her already erratic breathing.
"Where, where is every-?"
"Breath!" Sweeney commanded, almost for his own benefit as well as his. "Just breath." He brought his hands up, but an internal debate with what to do left them hanging awkwardly in the air.
Ignoring his dilemma, the baker attempted to regain control of her breathing. Her hands jerked into the air from where they had been resting on her chest, and she stared at them confused.
"Your, I-"
"I have them." Given the opportunity, Sweeney let his hands take hers. "You shouldn't have gone after them in the first place."
She ignored his last remark, still trying to get her lungs to fully expand and accept the air she needed. His hands on hers reassured Nellie more than she realized. "Anthony, he... Where.. Where is everyone?"
The silence he gave her was not at all reassuring.
"Sweeney?!"
"They're out looking." He deadpanned.
"Looking?"
Sweeney's hands tightened around hers, and his eyes begged for something she didn't understand. "For Toby." Begging her not to panic.
"Toby…?"
"He disappeared after Anthony brought you back."
James had been particularly reluctant to leave the judge's home in search of Toby. The honest part of him confessed he could care less for the boy's well being, but everything else in him screamed he needed to do it for Eleanor. How would she feel, waking up and finding the boy gone?
Another honest part of him simply wanted to see the state the city was in. Even in the poor light of a smoke covered moon it was easy to see the destruction. It made him feel proud, in a sick, twisted sort of way.
Had he really been the cause of all of this?
Anthony and Johanna were investigating an abandoned house, leaving James alone on the street. The smell of corpses and smoke clogged his nose, it oddly registered in his mind as the smell of victory. Ever since he stepped outside he had been overcome with the urge to tilt back his head and just laugh, but the bodies of disemboweled Londoners kept him quiet. The blood of the countless dead that stained his hands overcame his sick pride.
Lifting his hands, he slowly turned them in examination, half expecting to see the blood. It wasn't there, but some part of him desperately wanted it to be. After all, just moments ago Eleanor's blood hand been covering his hands. It stained his clothes though, just like Sweeney's. Of all people to save that day, it had been two murderers.
A soft chuckle slipped out of him then.
God, he needed to see her. He needed to know she was still alive.
"Sir?"
His head jerked in the direction of the voice, surprised Johanna had snuck up on him. Not caring to hear her news, he dropped his hands and looked away. "I'm going back."
"Why?"
Was that Eleanor's stubbornness seeping through the girl? "I need to make sure the two there are still alive."
"What about Toby?"
For having very little contact with the child she was rather insistent in finding him. "You and Anthony will do fine without me." He was two steps away when she stopped him.
"Wait! I've been thinking…" Her hesitation lasted long enough for her to draw a deep breath. "You made them go after Mrs. Lovett, but not hurt her. Can't you make them go after Toby?"
James tightened his hands into fists, feeling a strange rush of irritation. "I can try."
