Title: The Late Mrs Barker
Fandom: Sweeney Todd
Rating: PG-13
Length: 200
Content notes: warning for rape/noncon; oblique reference to suicide.
Author notes: contains spoilers for Sweeney Todd.
Summary: Can a ghost be haunted?



Can a ghost be haunted? It feels that way, the music in my head. Jeering, mincing, long-ago music from the Judge’s house.

He’s the one that should be locked up, though nobody dares touch him. I said no to him over and over again, but he wouldn’t listen. Took my husband, sent him away to the other side of the world. Gone. Took what I wouldn’t give him, with his Beadle holding me down and all of his fancy guests in their masks, pointing and laughing as the music played. Took my wits from me, my life, poisoned. Took my daughter as his ward.

They say a mother’s ghost watches over her child, and this one needs watching over, my Jo, my jay. Shut up in that wicked house like a bird in a cage. She grows more like her poor mother every day. He looks at her with those same hot covetous eyes. What will become of her?

I was a pretty woman once, but you wouldn’t know me now. Nobody does. A ragged ghost. They look through me, all of them, even that man with the young sailor in the street today. Hey, don’t I know you, mister?