Fanfic 100 - 007, Days
Jul. 19th, 2007 12:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolevalanTitle: Counting Sheep
Fandom: Sweeney Todd
Characters: Sweeney Todd
Prompt: 007, Days
Word Count: 235
Rating: G
Summary: A nightly ritual.
Author's Notes: A tiny little birthday drabble.
He counted. It was a habit he’d picked up back in Australia, to keep himself sane. He would catalogue and measure his life, to give it a sense of purpose. A sense of direction. The first 100 days in Australia. Ten days before Johanna’s birthday. Seven years since his mother had died. It gave his days a rubric of meaning that he couldn’t find in the meaningless repetition of his days.
They were repetitive in London too, though the work was different. But still, they had little enough to make one more important than the next, so he kept counting. In bed, before he fell asleep, he kept track of things, and it laid his life out in a path. Twenty three years before he’d met Lucy, time wasted without knowing it. Fifteen years in hell, breaking rocks in the sun, rest a fleeting dream. The weeks since he’d returned, slowly beginning to pile up, forming the foundation of a life in which he would never again hold her, see her smile.
And every single day they’d had together. He numbered them, in his mind, filling them with every shred of memory he could summon. He ran them through his fingers like a rosary, and prayed for absolution. Not for what he planned to do, but for every moment he’d carelessly let slip away in the past.
There was nothing in his future worth numbering.
Fandom: Sweeney Todd
Characters: Sweeney Todd
Prompt: 007, Days
Word Count: 235
Rating: G
Summary: A nightly ritual.
Author's Notes: A tiny little birthday drabble.
He counted. It was a habit he’d picked up back in Australia, to keep himself sane. He would catalogue and measure his life, to give it a sense of purpose. A sense of direction. The first 100 days in Australia. Ten days before Johanna’s birthday. Seven years since his mother had died. It gave his days a rubric of meaning that he couldn’t find in the meaningless repetition of his days.
They were repetitive in London too, though the work was different. But still, they had little enough to make one more important than the next, so he kept counting. In bed, before he fell asleep, he kept track of things, and it laid his life out in a path. Twenty three years before he’d met Lucy, time wasted without knowing it. Fifteen years in hell, breaking rocks in the sun, rest a fleeting dream. The weeks since he’d returned, slowly beginning to pile up, forming the foundation of a life in which he would never again hold her, see her smile.
And every single day they’d had together. He numbered them, in his mind, filling them with every shred of memory he could summon. He ran them through his fingers like a rosary, and prayed for absolution. Not for what he planned to do, but for every moment he’d carelessly let slip away in the past.
There was nothing in his future worth numbering.
