Fanfic 100 - 075, Shade.
Mar. 23rd, 2008 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolevalanTitle: What Dreams
Fandom: Sweeney Todd
Characters: Anthony Hope, John Jasper
Prompt: 075, Shade
Word Count: 446
Rating: PG
Summary: Anthony runs an errand.
Author's Notes: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snowyofthenight, by request.
The den was close, and dark. The lamps expelled more soot than light. The sailor looked around him and could muster nothing but disgust for the creatures… he presumed they were human… draped over the beds and chairs like dirty laundry.
“Oh, me, oh, me,” a small woman says to herself, rocking back and forth. The sailor thought, with a pang, of himself as a much younger man, saying “London’s full of them,” about a woman such as this. So easily, as if commenting on the number of ships in the dock. He’d no idea how true it was, then. Not really.
She probably would have continued between those two syllables for an indefinite length of time had he not broken in. “Madam… I just need the laudanum. If you please.”
“Oh, yes, yes sir, yes,” she continued in the same tone, but shuffled over to her chest, rooting around. A man with the swarthy coloring of an Arab moaned and shifted as she passed him by. “For the bad dreams, sir, yes, so many bad, bad dreams, so many for…”
Anthony had stopped listening. Of course he went to normal apothecaries but one could only buy so much there, so often… And it kept her quiet, in the night. At least when he was home with her, he’d be sure she didn’t take too much. Never more than…
The woman had shuffled back over, continuing the steady stream of words that seemed to escape her without her notice, like steam from a pond on a misty morning. “…dreams of fire, dreams of blood, yes, oh, me, monsters, and terrors, and all sorts. Will ye be wanting more, sir, soon, do you think, sir?”
Anthony put the coins in her hand and took the small, dirty parcel. “Yes. A few weeks.” And he turned to go.
The door opened and a dark young man, well but not richly dressed, strode in with purpose enough that he nearly collided with the broad shouldered old sailor. Anthony was too large for the small, close room, and it would have been hard to miss him, even at a slower pace. But the man slid to the side, watching the sailor with a contempt Anthony himself felt upon entering the room. There was something in the man’s look that made Anthony think of Fleet Street.
But he dismissed it. Everything made him think of Fleet Street. He tucked the parcel into his greatcoat as the man inquired, low, about a pipe of opium. How a man could bear to stay in that room long enough to smoke, Anthony couldn’t imagine. But people were capable of anything. That he never forgot.
Fandom: Sweeney Todd
Characters: Anthony Hope, John Jasper
Prompt: 075, Shade
Word Count: 446
Rating: PG
Summary: Anthony runs an errand.
Author's Notes: Written for
snowyofthenight, by request.The den was close, and dark. The lamps expelled more soot than light. The sailor looked around him and could muster nothing but disgust for the creatures… he presumed they were human… draped over the beds and chairs like dirty laundry.
“Oh, me, oh, me,” a small woman says to herself, rocking back and forth. The sailor thought, with a pang, of himself as a much younger man, saying “London’s full of them,” about a woman such as this. So easily, as if commenting on the number of ships in the dock. He’d no idea how true it was, then. Not really.
She probably would have continued between those two syllables for an indefinite length of time had he not broken in. “Madam… I just need the laudanum. If you please.”
“Oh, yes, yes sir, yes,” she continued in the same tone, but shuffled over to her chest, rooting around. A man with the swarthy coloring of an Arab moaned and shifted as she passed him by. “For the bad dreams, sir, yes, so many bad, bad dreams, so many for…”
Anthony had stopped listening. Of course he went to normal apothecaries but one could only buy so much there, so often… And it kept her quiet, in the night. At least when he was home with her, he’d be sure she didn’t take too much. Never more than…
The woman had shuffled back over, continuing the steady stream of words that seemed to escape her without her notice, like steam from a pond on a misty morning. “…dreams of fire, dreams of blood, yes, oh, me, monsters, and terrors, and all sorts. Will ye be wanting more, sir, soon, do you think, sir?”
Anthony put the coins in her hand and took the small, dirty parcel. “Yes. A few weeks.” And he turned to go.
The door opened and a dark young man, well but not richly dressed, strode in with purpose enough that he nearly collided with the broad shouldered old sailor. Anthony was too large for the small, close room, and it would have been hard to miss him, even at a slower pace. But the man slid to the side, watching the sailor with a contempt Anthony himself felt upon entering the room. There was something in the man’s look that made Anthony think of Fleet Street.
But he dismissed it. Everything made him think of Fleet Street. He tucked the parcel into his greatcoat as the man inquired, low, about a pipe of opium. How a man could bear to stay in that room long enough to smoke, Anthony couldn’t imagine. But people were capable of anything. That he never forgot.
