Fanfic 100 - 008 Weeks

[dolevalan]

Title: My First Week Without Benjamin
Fandom: Sweeney Todd
Characters: Lucy Barker
Prompt: 008, Weeks
Word Count: 473
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: First person experiment. I'm...not sure if it worked, but here it is anyway.



There are a hundred and one little things that one has to do, when one’s life shatters. Often, these are silly little things, things you would never think of. It wasn’t doing extra needlework, or getting extra jobs in the pie shop downstairs to buy bread for myself and milk for Jo. It wasn’t dismissing the Irish lad now that there was no more hair for him to sweep.

It was canceling the newspaper, because Benjamin was the one who had read it. It was remembering to buy less meat at the butcher shop. It was paying Mrs. Lovett the rent, since he had always done it before.

I had never lived entirely alone; even before my marriage, I lived with my father. Had he been alive, I would have probably gone to stay with him, but he had gone just after Jo was born. And so, now, I was faced with a bed too big for just me. I didn’t change the sheets for the longest time, because they smelled like him.

There were things all over the apartment. Three days after he’d gone, I tripped over a pair of his boots. I went to put them away, and then ended up sitting on the floor sobbing because it occurred to me that there was no point in keeping them. Jo heard me and started to wail in the next room. I pulled myself together for her sake. Not just once, but so many times that first week.

I was standing on the dock, when they loaded him. I knew he was innocent, and so did anyone else who was honest with themselves. But apparently justice is an optional accessory of our legal system. It was a dingy, uncertain part of town, the dock where the hulks were moored. A never-ending parade of convicts, clad in ill-fitting gray uniforms, shuffled up the gangplank. Most of them stared down at their boots, or looked sullenly around at the other men. Benjamin happened to turn back and his eyes caught mine, their intense blue visible even at that distance. I pressed my fingers to my lips and he nodded before he was swept away, into the massive, rickety-looking ship. I gave him the knowledge I believed in his innocence; it was the very last thing I could give my husband.

I could not decide, for the longest time, whether it would be better if the ship sank before it got to Australia or not. Whenever I had such a thought, I’d promptly berate myself for it. The image
of the ship pulling away from me in the fog haunted my thoughts waking, and my dreams sleeping.

At least they did not hang him. I repeated this sentence to myself, over and over, throughout my first week without Benjamin. It would not be my last.

Comments

[pensnest]

Poor Lucy. I like this impression of her - a bit classier than Benjamin, but devoted in all sorts of ways.

[dolevalan]

Again, thanks for the feedback. Steady (commenting) readers make me happy! Glad you enjoyed it.

[msalicenutting.livejournal.com]

I'm not stalking yooou! :D

The image of Lucy seeing Benjamin one last time before he steps on the boat and is gone forever is so brilliantly haunting. I love it oh-so-much. How much time passes between this and her rape, do you think?

[dolevalan]

Well, you'd have no one way of getting it from the fic itself, I don't think, but when I was writing it, I was working under the assumption that her rape would come before the end of the following week. I just really liked the image of Lucy trying to get used to the idea of a lifetime of weeks without her husband, when in fact, this was effectively the only one.

I mean, granted, there were 15 years without him technically, but I hardly think she was in a position to appreciate it. Right. I'll stop babbling now...

[msalicenutting.livejournal.com]

Nonono, I totally get what you're saying.

Funny, also, how Mrs. Lovett is really the only one to appreciate his return after all that time gone.

[lucky-magenta.livejournal.com]

I really like the way you've written her...you've made me feel more sympathy for this character than I ever have before.