A/N: A quick encounter between Lovett and Todd. My first Sweeney Todd fic. Reviews are greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sweeney Todd, Mrs. Lovett, etc. oh but if I did...;)

Shadow

Before he had been distant, then close, then aggressively close. He had backed her to the wall, silver, and equally frigid hands stayed her throat.

He snarled. She knew she should not have commented on the lack of business. She inwardly cursed herself for idiocy. For three days his razors had lain dormant. He wanted blood, not her stupid remarks, not her. She thought. But did he want her blood? Hungry black eyes reflected the glimmer of vampiric metal as it inched towards pallid flesh. Her pulse beat against her skin.

She had known that sooner or later it might, and likely would, come to this. All the days of tempting fate, trying to erase the past, to erase the blood, to erase her- days spent eluding the yellow strings of reality.

And now she would finally pay the price, bartering her blood for her brief look at bringing the seaside to the dank streets of London. Wading in salty waves of crimson.

But it was worth it. She loved him. If indeed obsession was one in the same as love. And his obsession was revenge, blood. So maybe he would now love her.

He glared in starved anticipation of the bloodshed and she gasped as the blade broke skin. Red, shallowly pooling in snow. He paused at the simple cut, still pinning her roughly in place, to admire the scarlet drops on the blade. Just a small sliver of the beauty that was to come.

He could already smell it.

She strained back, burrowing into the indifferent wall, and he wielded the blade, ready to whip it across her naked throat-

A bell rang. And the profile, the shadow of a dead man was visible through the shop door, out of which she was momentarily shoved. The man walked in, sealing the door to his crypt behind him, taking his last look at the dark sun.

A life for a life. A trade. A debt was apeased.

But she would never repay that shadow.

THE END

6:54pm 25/07/08

CeceliaSparrow