Chapter Text

Prologue:

London, August 1st, 1846

It had been a dreary day on Fleet Street. Well, to Nellie Lovett, the last weeks had been all the same: no clients, no visits, no hope. Her own stomach growled with both hunger and the sick that eating her own horrible pies caused; so she didn't doubt customers wouldn't come when she herself couldn't stand the taste of lard and rotten meat. Not even Mrs. Money came to trade gossip and mockingly sneer over her lack of business.

At that point, Mrs. Lovett's only company would be the beggar that hanged around the neighbourhood. She heard her shrill voice getting close as she kneaded the dough and rolled her eyes. Today she didn't have the patience to deal with her. If she made more fuss, she would call the police. She took a deep breath, throwing the dough on her bawl and rose face to confront the hag.

And her eyes met with those of a ghost.

A man was inside the shop, half-holding, half-carrying the beggar woman by the waist. For a moment, Nellie thought he would be someone from Bedlam or a police officer, coming to tell her about whatever indiscretion her former neighbour had caused. But she recognised his eyes, his face. He was much older, thin, and had a beard now, but he was the same.

And he held the beggar in the same way he had when she had been his wife, though she didn't do the same. Mrs. Barker seemed to be struggling against his hold on her waist.

"Excuse me," he said, a little out of breath. "I wanted to ask… It's the room over the shop for rent. We have just arrived and need a place to rest."

Mrs. Lovett stared at the unlikely pair up and down and raised an eyebrow and the picture. The two ghosts, looking so far from the happy couple they had been. But even now, with his ragged appearance, the beggar fitted less than his wife than a rat with a black cat.

"The room?" she drawled. "Yes, it is for rent, but I don't do charity, love. I won't have beggars here."

"We are not beggars," Benjamin Barker said, his voice harsher and deeper than she remembered. Angrier, too.

She could tell he didn't remember her at all.

"No?" she said and stared at them. The beggar woman shirked something like a protest and tried to push him away by the chest.

"It's all right, love, calm down," he said in a completely different tone. "We'll get a bed and a bath soon. You'll be better."

"No, no," the beggar woman sobbed. "I don't want to be here. I don't know you."

"You said you did. Lucy, hey, Lucy, look at me. It will all be alright, I promise."

A little too late to promise that, love. Nellie bit her tongue to not say the thought out loud. "It'll be four shillings per week, for the room if you can keep her calm enough to not wake the entire street," she said, trying to infuse her voice with a cheery tone and reaching to her pocket for the keys to the room. "But I warn you that there is no furniture there, love."

He frowned for a moment, as if he had expected everything would be the same fifteen years later. Mrs. Lovett rose her brow again, daring him to reject the offer. She doubted there would be anyone else that would take them, unless he wanted to go to a poorhouse, and even then they wouldn't last long with the beggar's constant moaning and singing.

Benjamin sighed and took the key, balancing between the conversation and keeping his wife from running away.

"Thank you."

"You can use the bath that is in the back," Nellie said and turned back to her work, letting all the rage fall into the hard dough. Christ, she needed to find a better miller, a better butcher, a better…

A growl of frustration came from her mouth and she threw the dough inside the bowl again, resting her head on her hands as she leaned over the counter. So, he was back, Benjamin Barker, after fifteen years. He had been a memory now, a fantasy that had filled her dreams when the misery wore her out. He had escaped, clearly, because she doubted anyone would revoke the life-sentence they'd put him on. Oh, what a fantasy would have been had he had arrived alone. She could have imagined herself been his shelter now that everything about the past was that empty room over the shop.

But he had arrived with her and Nellie couldn't find the will to even pretend cheerfulness.

She let out a dry, bitter laugh, almost as high-pitched as the screeches of the woman in the back of her house. Oh, how funny were the jokes destiny played! So funny… So cruel, like the hunger that plagued Fleet Street.