Not while I'm around
Fourth Bell
No one`s gonna hurt you,
No one`s gonna dare.
Others can desert you,
Not to worry,
Whistle,I`ll be there.
There had only been a tiny moment of doubt for her when the sombre looking stranger had entered her pie shop.A second in which she hadn`t been sure,but then he had spoken and even that small doubt had been erased.Oh,he was changed.His skin was a sickly white now,his body muscular and bulky from years of hard physical labor and his posture stooped like that of someone who was constantly living in fear of some brutal punishment.There was nothing left of the naïve young man he once had been,not even the name.
Sweeney Todd,that`s how he called himself now.He didn`t seem to have expected that she would remember who he was,or rather who he once had been.But what his name was now mattered little,what mattered was that against all her expectations,Benjamin Barker had come home again.And despite how different he looked now,he was still beautiful.
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Her decision not to tell him what had happened to Lucy was made in a split second.She couldn`t tell him,the last thing he needed now was the burden of having to care for a raving lunatic whom he probably wouldn`t even recognize as his wife anymore.
He had endured enough grief for several lifetimes,she refused to add to it.Let him believe his wife was dead,he`d get over it eventually.Cauterize that festering wound of vain hope before it poisoned him completely.Oh,she did feel sorry for him,how could she not,seeing the sheer pain and despair in his eyes when he realized there was no wife,no daughter to come home to.
He was desperate for something,anything that might still in some way be a connection to a life of which the past fifteen years had erased all visible traces.His hands shook as he reverently took one of the heavy sliver blades from it`s red velvet bed.
Year after year had she been tempted to pawn the razors.Year after year had she needed the money more urgently,but deep in her heart there had always been something that had stopped her.An irrational voice,soft but yet too loud to ignore,that had always spoken but one word.Wait.
And now the waiting was done,for both of them.Now all she needed to do was to make him see that he wasn`t as alone as he thought.That someone had been waiting for him.That there was someone he could turn to,that he could depend on.That those two cold blades weren`t his only friends in this world.And maybe,if he was willing to accept her friendship,she could make him see that there still was someone who loved him.And then maybe he just might grow to love her too.