They were happy. Once.

It felt like an entire lifetime ago. It was an entire lifetime ago when a very different man called himself the barber of Fleet Street, a man who was known to many as Benjamin Barker and Ben to a few. A man who he found sickeningly naive now, a man who was always ready to bring a smile to his loved ones hearts with his quick wit and his love for jokes.

Benjamin Barker had been a talkative man, almost too friendly with everyone who encountered him and it was no wonder he made such fast friends with little Nellie Lovett who ran the baker shop downstairs. They'd spend hours together in the mornings, chattering away like foolish children about the biggest and smallest news that had ever spread about Fleet Street. Benjamin didn't care so much for Albert Lovett, a giant husk of a man who held Nellie about her waist too tight when Ben was around and laughed in his great, loud, empty voice. He was a cold man who had seen too much of the world too soon and in turn had turned his hard shoulder to it.

Of course then Benjamin had met Lucy Robins and had fallen quickly and desperately in love with her and she with him. In the beginning he had been so enraptured with courting her that he simply had forgotten his place with Nellie in the mornings in his excitement. But then Miss Robins had become Mrs. Benjamin Barker and it was no longer proper from him, a married man to spend all his spare time with an equally spoken for woman alone. Not that it had been entirely correct to begin with. And so she was no longer Nellie to him, nor 'Nells' as he affectionately dubbed her. Not even Eleanor. She was Mrs. Lovett and he was Mr. Barker.

He loved her. With every fibre of his being, heart and soul he loved Lucy Barker. Bens Lucy. His. He doted upon her and she, flattered and blushing from the attention loved him just as furiously and on the eve of their fifth year together they discovered that she was with child.

Lucy swore that they would name him Benjamin Barker II. Benjamin himself rather liked John Edmond Barker. And if it should be a girl he couldn't think of a name more suitable than Lucy. They were so blissfully foolish together.

And so very happy.

And then when the child came into this world, so tiny and pink with a slick mass of curly, golden hair atop her head Benjamin could think of no other name for this little God given miracle than Johanna.

In these very walls the content family lived, though then the wallpaper had been bright and warm much like the people who resided in the apartment. Not termite ridden, water stained and peeling. Macrabre.

Yes, he'd been happy here once. 'But' Sweeney reflected bitterly 'Real life fairytales don't have happy endings.'