A/N: Thanks to Scarlett Masquerade, CaptainKrueger, AngelofDarkness1605, linalove, md427, Martin Baker, Hayley, MireiLovett1846, and SweeneyToddRocksMySocks for your reviews!
~Decided~
The gas-lamps were ablaze. The depraved were waking up to another night of hell on the streets, while the rich sat and slumbered behind their high spiked gates.
Beadle Bamford carried his master's top-hat and cane and cape as they rushed from the coach to the Judge's house.
"How ill is she?" Turpin was unused to running up flights of stairs, and had to pause a moment to catch his breath.
The Beadle, who didn't seem at all familiar with the concept of "running" and "stairs," looked as if he were about to go into cardiac arrest, or at the very least collapse. Sweat poured from every orifice, and the Beadle had no choice but to mop his face with the back of his jacket sleeve. "I cannot say, my lord." He clung to the banister, panting.
Turpin regarded him with disgust, and flung his handkerchief at him. "Get out of my way then, if you cannot be of use." He swallowed his fears, and tore up the stairs as quickly as a middle-aged man was able.
Mary, and the other maid whose name he'd forgotten were standing anxiously outside the bathroom. They prodded each other when they saw him coming.
"Why aren't you with her?" Turpin demanded. From the way they were standing….the Judge shook off his deepest fear. He'd invested too much time in his patient to have her…do that to him.
"She didn't want…" Mary fell silent.
"She insisted we stay out here," explained the older woman.
"Then she is alive?" Turpin stared at the servants, his eyes slithering from one to the other.
"Very much sir," they answered nervously, bowing together.
"You do realise," he said slowly, walking with mock-leisure to the bathroom door, "that if anything were to happen to her, I would have both of you hung?"
Neither woman said a word. Their faces were drained of colour, and there was no doubt in either of their minds that in matters of torture and punishment, their master was a man of his word.
* * *
They would be spoken to. Insolent creatures. Fortunately for the servants, Judge Turpin had shut the bathroom door behind him, or else they would have been subject to one of his withering glares.
They had left her shivering in the bath-tub. She was nude. They had not placed a towel, or a cloth over her. The least they might have attempted was to drain the bath of water.
But like the rest of London's snivelling filth, they were afraid.
"I can hear you," said Mrs Lovett eventually. Her eyes remained shut fast. Her trembling arms slipped away from the rim, and slid around her bare chest. Her legs, too, snaked in toward her body, so that she reminded him of an infant, floating in its mother's womb.
"You are cold," the Judge observed, coming to the edge of the bathtub. It was soon obvious. The woman was unappealing in the flesh, at least, the burnt half of her was. That did not explain the servants' fear. The baker was very pale, more so than usual. The Judge knew nothing of women's thoughts, that was true. But he knew death when it confronted him.
She had attempted to drown herself.
She knew.
She knew he would be away from her this night.
She had defied him.
"You can strangle me, if it makes ya feel better," she said weakly, still hugging her arms across her chest. "It's all the same ter me."
"Why?" Turpin found himself acting out of character. This woman was a half-corpse. He was turning down the glory of his masquerades, the women as beautiful as Helen of Troy – for this.
And yet he stayed.
"Should think it plain as the nose on yer face, sir."
At last, her good eye opened, fixing itself directly on his stalwart form. Turpin had little experience with sadness, yet he felt the sorrow in that eye as surely as he felt the cold rim of bath under his hand. She wanted oblivion.
"I saved you from hell. This is how you display your gratitude?"
"I ain't alive, sir. Gratitude is for the living." She closed her eyes then. Her body was still shuddering.
Turpin wondered if she even felt the cold anymore. He squatted by the tub, and stroked the little tufts of hair left on her head. "You are very beautiful, Eleanor Lovett. Very beautiful, to me."
The baker looked at him. She didn't scream, or cause a scene. She was very quiet. Very behaved. "I loved 'im always," she said breathily. "I didn't think 'e could do it. Not to me."
"Be that as it may, madam," Turpin said, getting to his feet. "I cannot allow a repeat performance of this…"
"You can cage a bird sir but you can't make it sing."
He didn't listen, of course. They never listened. Sweeney – she wouldn't think of that blighter now, not a second more on 'im. Nellie knew the Judge wasn't listening, because he had taken a cloth from the basket in the bathroom, and was holding it across his arms. Now, what use did a man have with a cloth?
He was regarding her bare flesh again, the soft, unblemished half of her body that had escaped the flames. What sort of man would set a woman's flesh on fire? "What will make you sing?"
Her eye was stripped of all disguise. It did not wink at him, the way it had winked that night she had greeted him outside her pie shop. Now, it was blank. Butchered of dreams. "Nothin'."
"I could give you your freedom."
"Wot freedom?"
"I would let you go. Pay you enough to live comfortably the rest of your days. I would ask no more questions. I would not seek you out."
"Wot you want in return?" It was stupid asking, really. What did men always want?
He did not answer her immediately. Since his patient could not, or would not stop shivering, he decided to apply his own medicine. He lifted her out of the water. She had to cling to him, or fall on the tiles. He wrapped the towel around her naked form.
"Mary!" Turpin went to the door.
The maid opened it, and followed him down the corridor to the patient's room.
The room was not the same. It no longer contained the trapped fever it once had.
He waited until she was dressed again, and came kneeling by the bed. His face no longer looked as harsh and imperious as it once did.
"Wot you want?" Nellie repeated, when he did not answer.
"What your dear Mr Todd had before him every night, and did nothing about. Such men deserve no happiness."
Nellie Lovett hadn't imagined a time when she would find herself agreeing with a man such as Turpin, but for once, he was right. "We all decide which way our lives will play, sir, one way or the other."
"And now it is you must choose your fate," he pressed without malice. "I must now: what have you decided?"
"Do I 'ave a choice?"
* * *
"Go home."
Lucy was no longer interested in hop-scotch. The streets were her playground, yet she trailed after him like a stray cat.
"Sweetie?"
Sweeney turned. In the crevices of her face, he saw no woman. There were holes, gurgles, widened eyes, hands grasping for muslin and mint and all the fine things she had once known.
He took those hands and held them briefly up to the gaslight, tracing the burn marks and stains and age spots and scuffs and scars. A green bruise ran down the length of her wrist, and one of her nails had been torn or bitten in half. He wondered at how her skin was still largely intact, and yet her mind had succumbed to rot. Was there a medicine that could transform his battered wife's skin into porcelain, and remove the dumb dribble from her mouth?
"Go home, my love," he said, gentler this time. She did not understand his words. She must be taught. He paid a passing child selling apples, and dangled the green prize above the woman's greasy head. "Go home," he repeated, "and the treat is yours."
The sweet momentarily entreated her. She clutched at it, and Sweeney lifting it higher aloft only distressed her more. "Sweetie!" she yelped. The beggar sank into the mud, and began patting and pawing at his trouser leg. The pink muslin was all but soiled.
"Go home," said Sweeney firmly. "Wait. I will return. Wait."
"Wait," she repeated, looking up at Sweeney as if he were her vision of heaven. "I wait, Sweetie. Wait for Sweetie."
"Yes," he said, dropping the apple into the lap of her dress. He shook her free of his leg, and broke into long strides.
Her wails followed him the length of the street, but Sweeney was adamant. He could not live. He could not love. He could not hold his battered Lucy. Yet.
Mrs Lovett lived.
And the Judge….he would see about that very shortly.
Sweeney had his friends close by in his pocket, and that was all that mattered.
* * *
Short, I know, but a girl needs her sleep. It may be silly, but I've always wondered if Sweeney slept in his barber chair, or actually had his own room. Something tells me he didn't get around to showering much either…