A/N: The title is dedicated to our dear Judge T, because he really needed a lovely little moment after being the bad guy for so long =p Many thanks to the following reviewers: the-sadisticalovett-nutcase, StrawberryStoleYourCookie, ShadowoftheblackrOsE, MireiLovett1846, AngelofDarkness1605, linalove, bella-thedarklady, and Sa Satin Amoureux. Your patience is appreciated!! I hope you don't think she's gone all bonkers and what not, but it's true, Mrs Lovett is slightly confused here!

~Violent Joy~

In Nellie's mind, there were many ways to be rescued from the deepest cavern of human despair. Some took to drinking themselves into a whirlpool of light and blasting sound and drowned voices; others spent their days ruling sentence after sentence, others sewed endless seams and picked endless threads until their fingers bled; others still took the easy route and had themselves tried and hung on the scaffold before they had even turned twenty-five.

It was a rough business, all this hurting and living.

As she contemplated all that she'd learned and missed out on in her own brief life, Nellie wondered if it would be nicer setting off to one of those dreary country nunneries and covering her wild curls up with the black habit. She'd get three square meals, the chance to close her eyes at night without fear of waking and finding Sweeney's empty gaze before her face, razor aimed, or still worse – nothing more than empty air, for she was sure that candles were always burning in the house of God. And there she'd think of nothing but prayers and banishing sin and angels in the air – angels that looked with halos and blonde hair – too much like Lucy for her liking.

"I won't stay, Lord Turpin," she said with the formality required for a woman of her station addressing a magistrate on the street.

"You may decide that later," he replied, offering her his arm.

As muddled as her thoughts were, Nellie managed to appraise him carefully.

It was barely dawn, but already, the Judge was dressed in his court garb, dusted down and freshly shaved. She caught a whiff of an odd fragrance, and realised it was the Judge's own particular scent. It hadn't occurred to her that wealthy men might afford their own perfumes. She hadn't exactly had many gentleman-like customers in the days after Albert had died and her pie-shop had gone temporarily broke…

"In this way, my dear," he said with faux amiability, taking her hand and drawing her up the stairs.

"I came ter say me goodbyes," she repeated again, turning away from him to gaze down the length of the street. She was in no condition to walk. Her feet might lead her anywhere, when her mind was in such a state. Mostly, her thoughts were with Sweeney, wondering if he was searching for even now up and down the filthy lane-ways.

"You are a fool, Eleanor Lovett," said the Judge smugly. "Did you think I would let you go so easily, once you had fled?"He gripped her arm firmly, and before she could scream, cupped a hand over her mouth with his other hand and shuttled her quickly inside the entrance.

Waiting behind the doors were his guards. They bolted the entrance the minute their feet were across the threshold.

Nellie hadn't been thinking. All those months she'd longed to escape from that hell-hole prison; followed by those few fairy-like moments when Sweeney had appeared at the door waiting to rescue her – all of it flew out the window the minute she'd come face to face with that beggar woman's bleeding body. Around her still, she was barely aware of the chessboard floors, the early morning shadows, the blurred skirts of the maids lurking behind doors – all of her thoughts were focused on the flames that seemed to flare around her arms and back. They soared through her hair, up to the ceiling, around the arms that drew her into another warm person's being.

"My Eleanor," the person said, and those same hands swamped her back and neck, and would not let her breathe for several moments.

"Don't lock me up," she spluttered, unable to process more than a few meagre thoughts at once; the beggar woman, bleeding; the flames on the bakehouse floor, the smoke-filled sky pumping ashes of dead men from the furnace; his coal-black eyes on her face; oceans of water going over her head; that black little tomb the Judge was going to stick her back in –

"It won't do to have you run away again," he said lowly, his voice somewhere between her ear and beneath the curve of her jaw.

"Let me go," she said faintly, turning her head toward the slithers of light pouring in from the windows. It was what any woman was expected to tell the infamous Judge. There should be tears, pleading, tantrums and end-of-the-world speeches. If she were Lucy, she would swear by her love for Benjamin. But she was not Lucy, and Benjamin was a distant collection of smiles and hellos and conversations about the weather.

The Judge held her close, and her body did not revolt against the contact. "You betrayed me, my dear."

"I didn't leave," she lied, "I was kidnapped." Half-truths were Nellie's bread-and-butter, after all.

"You still returned," he insisted, burying himself against her hair. Her skin tingled at the lightest contact between them, and she found her own hands rushing up to connect with the smooth velvet of his jacket. Her mind whirled. He had intimated many lewd things during her months of imprisonment, but until this strange meeting of thought and feeling between them, she had not known this man was capable of deep human emotion. She had thought only in terms of the old leering man peering behind rows of flowers, grasping at young ladies at masquerades. She had not considered that beneath the mask he was as broken as the rest of them in this world.

"I did," she agreed, not knowing what else to say. It wouldn't do to be truthful, and admit she wished she were somewhere else, and yet longed for him to continue.

"Speak," he murmured, lowering his lips just by the end of her chin, and brushing them across the clammy surface of her skin.

She knew the words he wanted to hear, but she could not say them. The tremor in his voice was too much; at last she began to sense the weight of his affection for her, and could no longer gauge herself the depth of the waters they were descending down. If they went deeper, would they forget themselves entirely? She was the baker, after all, and was married (in thought, at least) to the demon barber.

He spoke to her again, and his fingers rose up to the height of his lips. The motion was enough to stir her, and she opened her eyes fully to find his own unblinking gaze drinking her in. He had held much of the flood behind liquid eyes and composed half-smiles, and now he was put to the test, now that the woman he desired was his to possess, it was near impossible not to want to share all that he was. Wasn't that the point of living: to love, and be loved in return?

"I can't –"

They broke contact.

She looked up at the ceiling. "I feel -"

"And what are your exact feelings?" he asked, bristling, his fingers darting away from her like shuddering moths.

"I didn't plan to 'urt you," she admitted. "Wot 'e does is beyond me control."

"And does he still have your heart?" The Judge waited her out, taking a few steps back to lean against the entrance hall.

His eyes did not move from her line of sight.

Nellie was in dangerous waters now.

~*~*~