A/N: I'm sorry I've kept you waiting! The spring semester has begun and classes are taking up a lot of time now--but we're almost finished, if you can bear with me a few more chapters!
Fifteen's shorter than I'd wanted it, but it gave me so much trouble--stupid transitional chapters. Anyway, I should have more written and up soon, so enjoy!
Tobias went to Lincoln's Inn Fields the next day, a Sunday. Abigail and Melody accompanied him; Abigail had had Cate pack them a picnic lunch. The weather was unnaturally clear, and Tobias sat staring up at the empty sky while Abigail and Melody ate and chatted.
So he had rooted it out at last; Sweeney Todd had contacted him from beyond the grave because the demon had discovered a way to become alive again—but for this, he needed sacrifices. Being still a ghost, or a corpse, or whatever the demon barber was, he was unable to collect these sacrifices himself...
...and so had enlisted Tobias to do it for him.
He almost laughed to himself. Sweeney had, for the most part, ignored him when he'd worked for Mrs. Lovett, with the exception of the night he asked the boy to deliver a letter, the night his happiness in that place had ended. To think that I was ever happy there, Tobias thought dryly. What an abomination it was.
And he had been under the impression that he had escaped it! That all he had been left with were nightmares, and those he had been content to forget when the morning came! No, it was clear that he had not left Mrs. Lovett and her ghastly lover behind; Sweeney Todd, at least, had come again for him, now having a use for the boy he had ignored.Would that you had forgotten about me completely, Todd.
He felt a hand on his knee and looked over to see Abigail watching him. Her face was blank, though her eyes were intent; and for a moment, they simply looked at each other, eye to eye, looking into each other. Tobias saw a woman who loved him, and Abigail saw that her husband had returned to her. He smiled at her, took her hand in his, and raised it to his lips; lingering there, as he had done months ago at her birthday party. She smiled widely in return, tears showing briefly in the corners of her eyes; then Melody spotted Frederick Abberline across the way, and pointed at him as she shouted gleefully, and they turned to greet their friend.
Abigail rejoined Tobias in the master bedroom that night. Sweeney Todd would not appear when Abigail was present; instead, he tried to sidle into mirrors and catch the surgeon's gaze. Aware of this, Tobias used no mirrors except in well-lit rooms, and more often checked his appearance by Abigail or Cate.
He stopped walking into Whitechapel, taking a carriage instead, explaining that as the weather began to get colder his leg pained him greatly. He also began to go into the district less. He still maintained his rounds on Thursdays, of course, but he cut his check-ups where it was possible, and was less inclined to run out to the district at every "emergency" call he received. He invited Abigail to go with him, which she was more than happy to do.
Tobias heard nothing from Todd, and had no nightmares, but the surgeon remained vigilant. Now that he knew what the dead barber's object was, he was under no illusion that the demon would surrender so easily to Tobias's attempts to evade him.
Weeks passed without any sign of Sweeney Todd, however, and with each barber-less day Tobias grew more and more confident, and more like his old self.
Was it possible that Sweeney had abandoned his cause? Tobias had heard of no other murders in Whitechapel that could have been described as sacrificial, so the demon had not found a new living hand—but it was unlike the creature to be so submissive. There were moments when Tobias became again possessed by fear, sure that Todd would appear at any moment; but the moments passed, and Todd did not come, and Tobias would again forget.
But old Sweeney knew what he was doing.