A/N: As always, eternal thanks to all you readers. You are the reason I write this. Since I'm really tired at the moment, I'm just replying to your reviews here (don't worry I won't normally spam chapters like this!):
bella-thedarklady: I'm glad you like the background lyrics, to bad we can't hold Sweeney at gunpoint and force him to chase after her, eh?
linalove: As always, I love hearing from you! =)
the-sadisticalovett-nutcase: I won't spoilt it for you until you read, sorry! =p I didn't believe you about the Tim Burton exhibition until I googled it ~ guess who might be heading to Melbourne this winter? =D
StrawberryStoleYourCookie: Thanks for the review! Shout out to Phantom of the Opera, my second favourite musical =D
ShadowoftheblackrOse: Again, I really appreciate your honest reviews. I was aiming to chill with the lyrics, so I'm glad you think I achieved that. =)
Sa Satin Amoureux: Your comment on the Beadle inspired this chapter, honestly it's true! I have my own plans but I'm equally influenced by reviews!
AngelofDarkness1605: I can't really say much in reply to your review or else I'll give this chapter away! =p
~Return~
The Beadle wondered in the last moments of his lascivious life: should I have done things differently?
Chief in his thoughts was the ache of an unfulfilled fantasy: that he might become the great Judge Bamford, in the event of Lord Turpin accidentally tripping down the stairs or having the misfortune to trip and land headlong into his bedside chamber pot. The Beadle had so many life plans, you see, one of them being his dream of one day opening up his own opium den, and picking and choosing the finest quality snuff. It was only now that he realised he was lazy. He had squandered his days eating –among other activities – and now he was about to go straight to hell, with nothing to show for it. Blast.
"Listen, dear Mr Todd, we're both friends here," he said composedly, not for one moment forgetting the itching fire of his severed fingers beneath their bandages, "perhaps we can work out some arrangement –"
"Quiet." Sweeney advanced wielding the familiar blade.
He had breached the Beadle's hiding place, under the apartment stairs. Bamford had planned to wait until the Sweeney had gone back up to his room, and take him by surprise, but now it seemed that he was once again on the receiving end of the demon's blade.
"I don't want to kill you."
"You –" This was news indeed!
"Wait."
The barber called him back, while he was in the very act of scuttling away.
"You won't return to the Judge, Beadle. As long as Mrs Lovett is within the vicinity of Turpin, you don't approach them. You don't touch her. If you do, I'll know."
The Beadle's eyes were bursting with incomprehension, and a need for a feed, among other things. He knew the sort of man this creature was, and it wasn't a man. As far as Bamford knew, all men were cockroaches scuttling about the lowest regions of some cosmic basement floor, but this breed of evil was too strange for even his rat cunning. If he hated a man, he had him hung, unless circumstances prevented him. And Mr Todd surely hated him. Now that they were almost close enough to smell each other's underarms, why didn't the barber seize his opportunity? But the Beadle bowed his head and nodded vigorously, wondering what dark angel had chosen to spare his life twice. "That sounds reasonable, Mr Todd," he got out.
"Good."
In the few brief slashes of light across the brickwork that announced the coming of dawn, Sweeney Todd had thundered back up the apartment stairs, and slammed the door. Completely unconcerned.
Bamford sat there for much longer, while the rest of London took its time waking up. He was as dumb and wide-eyed as one of the fish laid out for market, and it took the local chief inspector coming down the alleyway with a bleary-eyed platoon of his men just off night-shift to send the rat scuttling off.
~*~*~*~*~
Across the other side of the suburb, another creature was fleeing for her life.
Nellie Lovett was not afraid of the dark, or the streets, or the evils that lingered there, for she was as much a part of the evil as the Judges who handed out sentences to hang orphans, or let the law work good men and women for hours down the mines, and hours more in the factories. The baker would never think her crimes as heinous as Judge Turpin's, but then again, she had never really stooped down to stare those dead men in the face, and contemplate what sort of men they had been alive, and what families they had left behind. She would never contemplate such things while cutting them up, or in the long night hours afterwards, for that meant turning into the depths of her soul, and finding out she was as cruel as Turpin himself.
"Angel Gabriel," she murmured as she ran, remembering some half-taught prayer now that all her plans were in tatters.
It was not her nature to get caught up religion or thoughts of her spiritual fate, but what if it was true, what those stern-faced priests had shouted in the church halls in her childhood? What if her soul was beyond redemption?
In the old days, when she could stand the wafting smell of human flesh, Nellie had thought she and Sweeney had been the perfect match, because of all they stood for, because they could not help their behaviour. Because they so often despised the rest of the world. Yet here she was, fleeing.
He had rescued her, come for her in the dead of the night to steal her away like she was some warped Rapunzel and he the half-dead Prince blinded in both eyes by the thorns that bound them both to their profession – but the fairytale had failed. He had taken her to his palace, and shown her the true nature of life, to kill and be killed in return. The most shattered and innocent were just a weak mimic of what it meant to be human, and the vicious and strong – she and Sweeney, were not even mimics. They were both less than, and more than human. They were outside, non-people.
"Lettuce me dear, an' fresh eggs!" a man plying his fresh garden greens wheeled past her in the slowly waking street.
"No thanks," she shook her head, pretending as if walking out in her nightgown and cap were the most ordinary thing in the world.
In the end, she could philosophise all she liked. It all boiled down to one fundamental question, really: if Mr T could kill a beggar woman, what was stopping him from killing her?
There was some swirling madness in Nellie at that moment, or she would not have done what she did. The white building stood out like a burning mirage before her.
"Ah, my dear," said that long-dreaded voice floating out from the threshold. "You've returned."
Judge Turpin, beckoning to her from across the flood of the waking human tide.
***