Er, I don't know if anyone's still reading this, since it's been about 16 MONTHS since I last updated... but I'm back again! I really have been meaning to update this for a while, it just took me a bit longer than is probably socially acceptable. Once again, I could go on describing the reasons why, but once again, they would mostly be boring, or nonexistant. So I'll just let you read the story.

It's a funny thing how, when two people live together for a time—whatever their relationship may be—they become subtly attuned to each other's movements, their comings and goings throughout the day, and can therefore instantly sense when something about their counterpart is not quite right. Though Sweeney Todd would never have claimed himself to be acutely aware of Mrs Lovett's bustling lifestyle, so removed from his own, he had, quite without realizing, adjusted to the rhythm of her daily routine. This was why, when the shop was silent at half past midnight, the door to the bake house ajar and the great black chimney empty of smoke, Sweeney Todd flinched and looked away from his shrouded view of the London street.

He didn't immediately register what had unsettled him; it was more of a vague conviction that the rhythm of life in the shop had been upset in some way. And so without really knowing why, Todd found himself closing his box of icily-glinting razors, stepping lightly down the stairs and into the shop, and leaning around the corner to peer down the steps to the bake house, which even at this hour, in the cold featureless face of a looming London winter, glowed oppressively hot.

The barber noticed that the heavy iron door was indeed half open, though he hadn't remembered anticipating that it would be. No sound was audible beneath the dull roar of the oven, though anything very quiet would have been easy to miss. Frowning, Mr Todd descended the stairs, his footsteps heavy and careless this time, and shoved the door all the way ajar. He wasn't afraid, he told himself, of what he might see on the other side.

Mrs Lovett's head snapped up as the door screeched wide, her eyes round and smeared with damp kohl and drying tears. When she saw it was Sweeney Todd who stood glowering in the doorway, her heart gave the wobbly lurch it always did—but this time the baker wished she could rip it from her chest and crush it beneath her boot heel for still, still wanting him. She bowed her head, closing her eyes as tears started in them again. When would she stop? Her hands gripped the edges of the little table she used for carving bodies as she heard him approach.

"Mrs Lovett?" His voice was quiet, but it lacked the tenderness she'd been wishing for. Still Mrs Lovett's eyes fluttered open, and she stole a glance at him without raising her head. His face was impassive, but to her it glowed hotter than the crackling oven. "Why aren't you working?" He didn't seem angry, or sympathetic. Just curious.

But Mrs Lovett seemed to crumple. She leaned over the blood-stained work table, staring up at the barber with imploring eyes already beginning to brim again with tears. "I'm sorry, Mr T," she breathed, "but I… I can't." She wiped at her cheeks, gulping. "I've tried but every man, all of them," she ducked her head and whispered her next words to the table. "They all have his face."

Mr Todd felt a twinge of what might be described as guilt, in a lesser man. But he knew that he had nothing to be guilty for. Mrs Lovett had forgiven him, agreeing that the boy's death had been necessary, that Sweeney Todd wasn't really to blame. That should have been the end of it. So why was she still crying?

Still, the barber supposed, something ought to be done. He took a reluctant step toward the woman still hunched over the work table, expecting her to once again fling herself on him and soak his shirtfront with tears. Instead, she miraculously straightened at his approach, her cheeks still wet, but her lip no longer quivering. She fixed him with a steady, determined gaze. "Mr Todd," she said, "I think it's time we tried something else."

Such had been the increasing popularity of the estimable little barbershop on Fleet Street, that half the neighbourhood had been put out when they'd scaled the rickety stairs to find a sign posted in the window explaining that they were closed for renovations. There were a few brief days of panic, as Londoners were forced to search for another establishment at which they might get a decent shave, until it was decided that tonsorial parlour around the corner would serve as an adequate replacement, until Mr Todd was able to reopen.

The Meat Pie Emporium downstairs was still doing business, but it was agree d that the savory confections now served there were somehow not of the same caliber as those one ate while the barbershop was open. However, as the flow of customers to number 186 began to ebb, the activity within the little building increased.

Sweeney Todd sat hunched before his small bureau, hardly aware of the winter chill trickling like slow but deadly floodwater into the room, or of the way the bones of his spine were grating uncomfortably against the back of the wooden chair. His brow was furrowed in concentration as he watched his white hand dip the pen into its post of ink, and begin forming spiny yet careful letters upon the page.

"To the Estimable Beadle Bamford:"

The barber paused, his pen suspended above the page, while ink collected heavy and glistening on its tip. He ran potential phrases through his mind, but none seemed the right one with which to proceed. He and Lovett had agreed upon what must be said, but they had talked little of precisely how to say it. Why couldn't she do this? Mr Todd had never been any good at letter-writing.

As he heard the creak of his shop door opening, (no bell now—it had been taken down until business was to start up again, Todd resolved never again to let his landlady cross his mind. She seemed to possess the supernatural ability to sense whenever she was the subject of his musings, and to materialize at exactly that same instant.

"Well, Mr T? How do I look?"

His eyes didn't move from the paper. "Fine."

"Mr Todd."

He glanced up., She did look better—cleaner, at any rate. Her usually frayed and knotted ribbons of hair had been pinned slightly more successfully on top of her head, and her pale skin looked as though a layer of dust had been lifted off of it; it glowed faintly in the dim light. Her ever-shifting eyes were carefully rimmed with black kohl, and she regarded him seriously, expectantly.

"You look fine."
She nodded, her dry lips curving slightly, although her eyes remained somber. One good thing that had come from this uncomfortable problem the baker seemed to be having about that dead boy, Sweeney thought, was that she tended to talk much less now.

Still, she was presently craning over his shoulder to peer at the paper, still blank but for its lonely introduction, scribed neatly at the top. "Haven't you finished that yet, Mr Todd?"

"No."

"But I'm about to be off. I need it now. You've had two days, love, what have you been doing?"

He shrugged listlessly, but his black eyes narrowed in irritation as she reached over him to take the paper and pen. His gaze remained fixed on the empty space on his bureau, and he listened as she muttered to herself, scratching away with her pen on that stupid piece of paper. He wasn't entirely sure why she still irritated him so—after she had now supplied him with two new ideas for exacting revenge (even if the first one had proved unsuccessful.) It was partly her mannerisms, he supposed: her chatter, the way she leaned over, sighed, moved him about the room like he was a piece of furniture, and the way she looked at him, still, with a longing he could feel prickling on his skin, nudging at him when he'd forgotten to keep his guard up, trying to force its way in between the cracks.

It was Mrs Lovett's continued devotion, he decided, that bothered him the most, for he knew full well that he neither wanted nor deserved it. He had ignored the woman, struck her, snarled at her, even murdered her adopted son, and still she refused to recognize that Sweeney Todd was a hopeless cause, a stupid thing to be slicing her heart open for. What would it take for her to hate him?

Todd was just beginning to ponder the sort of awful depths to which he would have to sink, when the scribbling of the pen stopped, and he heard Mrs Lovett say, "Well that's done then."

He looked up to see her tucking the completed letter into Pirelli's old purse, which in turn was tucked into the bodice of her dress. She took a turn in front of his broken mirror, pinned her hat more securely into place, then opened the door again. "I won't be long, love. Wish me luck."

There was a slightly expectant pause, in which he said nothing, and then she smiled at him sadly, and closed the door behind her.