Disclaimer: I don't own Newsies or the characters you recognize from that movie.
Author's note: I've had this one in my computer for months and months and I just rescued it. Jack was the only person I could write for a loooong time. Then Oscar, Skittery, and Tumbler became my boys, and now Jack is neglected. *shrug* I missed him... So here he is :)
"Are you okay?" I asked my mother softly. She was leaning with her elbows on the table, her face in her hands.
Her shoulders stiffened. "Yes." Her voice was hard and cold, it rolled toward me like a marble across cement.
"Did... Did I do something?" I asked.
My mother nodded, her face still hidden in her palms. "You wore that hat again." She said, jerking her head up to stare at me, tears speckled her voice.
I fingered the cowboy hat on my head. "But he gave it to me." I said.
"You should have spat in his face." My mother said, her voice sharp enough to cut my skin. "You're a fool, Frankie, if you think he cared about you at all. He just wanted to get into my bed. You were just a pawn, Frankie. You meant nothing to him."
"Please." I gripped at the cord the hat hung from, pulling on it so the hat slid further down my forehead, screening me off from my mother a little more.
"He only gave you that hat to get at me." She said. "He still left, didn't he?" She turned in her chair and her icy gaze sliced at me. "He didn't care. Men never care about anyone else. Just look at your father."
I ducked my shoulders and backed away from her. I could smell the brandy in the air, I saw the glassy look slicked across her brown eyes.
She slumped back over the table, her thin shoulders hunched forward as she started to cry harder.
"Oh, god. Why'd you leave me, Jack?" She whispered into the dim apartment. "Why'd you fill my son's head with nonsense..."
I closed my eyes and pushed my back against the door. I didn't want to listen to her bitter words. I knew Jack Kelly cared for me, even if she didn't think so. I was sure of it. I wanted to twist the door knob and run, but I was afraid of leaving her alone.
"Frankie?" Her voice was harsh. "Frankie?"
"Yes?"
"Give me the hat." She said.
I held the string tighter.
"Francis Sullivan!" Her eyes cut to my face, "Give me the hat!"
I shook my head, the hat's brim scratching across the door. I heard footsteps coming up the stairs outside. My mother's eyes jerked to the door knob as it began to rattle. I slid away from the door and my father came in.
I knew where he'd been, he'd been with Medda. He was with her almost every night. He was gone all the time. How else would Jack and my mother have been able to fall in love?
I watched my father's down cast eyes slowly rise to mine.
Jack Kelly had left, gone back to Santa Fe when my father told him to leave. My father had told him to go so we could be a family again. The night Jack left, my father was at Medda's again. He wasn't trying to fix our family, he just didn't want to be replaced. I had told Jack that when I caught him on the stairs, leaving.
"With time, Frankie." Jack had said in drawl I had once tried to imitate. He stopped, squatting on the stairs. "It'll all work out in time."
"But my mom'll miss you." I had said.
"And I'll miss her, Cowboy. And I'll miss you."
He had smiled and had lifted his hat from around his neck and placed it on my head. "You keep this safe, alright? Just until we meet again."
He stood and picked up his suitcase.
"Where will you go?" I choked.
"Home," he said. "In Santa Fe, where everythin' is bigger." He cast his blue eyes up towards the dim ceiling, as if seeing the grand landscape laid out before him. "You come and see me, alright?"
"In Santa Fe?" I said.
He nodded. "I'm lookin' for a ranch. If I ever find one..." A smile played on his narrow mouth, "I'll send for you."
He started back down the stairs.
"Jack!" I called.
He turned back, both feet on a different step.
"What if they won't let me go?" I asked. "I can't live here with them."
"You can't let 'em beat ya." Jack said smiling at me. "Here." He untied the red handkerchief from around his neck. "You can keep this, too. Don't lose it, Cowboy."
He tied it around my neck and put his hand on my shoulder. "You tell your mother I love her, alright? Tell her... I'm sorry." With that, he went down the stairs and left, not stopping no matter how many times I called after him.
I stared up at my parents as my father still stood in the doorway. They were still torn apart, Jack leaving a week earlier hadn't helped a thing.
My father's eyes swung over to me, huddled against the wall.
"What are you doing wearing that?" His voice suddenly snapped cold. He lumbered toward me and I slid out of his grasp, darting between his legs and out the door. My father followed, gripping at my collar and finally snagging it between his fingers.
He dragged me back to the apartment and threw me against the floor, my hip collided with the hardwood, then my shoulder. I heard the front door slam shut.
I felt the pain in my stomach as my father's foot slammed into my gut the first time, but the image of Santa Fe, with it's giant sun, it's cowboys, and Jack Kelly filled my mind so completely I felt nothing more.
I closed my eyes and let my father beat me. After a few minutes he staggered back and leaned on the wall, panting slightly. I watched my mother. She stood over him and shook her head bitterly.
"Pathetic." She said to him, "You beat your son because of your own guilt."
She hadn't even tried to stop him, tired to protect me. She wanted to tear him down more than she wanted to save me.
I curled into a ball and felt how sore my body was. I drowned out my pain again. I imagined riding a horse, side by side with Jack. He'd point to a plant and tell me what the Indians use it for. He'd show me how to hunt. We'd ride out to the edge of his ranch and fix a rip in the barbed-wire fence, together under the warm, giant sun. I smiled to myself.
"You can't let 'em beat ya." That's what Jack Kelly had told me, and I would live by that. No matter how someone treated me, I wouldn't let them win. They'd know that Frankie Sullivan wasn't to be pushed around anymore than Jack Kelly was.
I looked up at my parents. My mother was yelling at my father, who sat mutely staring at the space between my mother's eyes.
"It's sad," she said. "You leave me alone, and you chase away my lover, yet whose arms are you in? No wonder your guilt is strong enough that you'd hurt him." She reached down to where I was lying and pulled me to her in a cold, empty embrace.
"What about your own guilt?" His words spun out of his mouth, shutting my mother's angry lips. "I know you have to feel guilt for all the pain that you've caused our son." My father jammed his thick finger toward me and I flinched.
"Pain? Clearly our little Frankie has taken a shine to Jack. Look, he loves him more than he loves either of us." She gingerly lifted Jack's cowboy hat out of hands and shoved it toward my father. "Do you think Frankie would wear us around his throat?"
My father took the hat and stared at it. He rose his dim eyes to me and I backed myself to the wall again, waiting for what he would do.
He stepped toward me, my mother hovering at his shoulder. He held the hat towards me in a slow, deliberate way. I paused. I reached toward it, my fingers brushed the brim carefully. I kept my eyes on him to see if it was trick, if he would rip from me at the last moment. I closed my fingers around the hat and he let go.
I pulled the precious hat to my chest.
"He may care for Jack more than for me." My father said quietly. "But he loves Medda more than you, so we've both lost."
My mother's mouth fell open just enough I could see the wet part of her lips. I was a weapon they used against each other.
"You've never met that tramp, right? Right, Frankie?" She said. "You wouldn't pick some vaudeville tart over your own, poor mother? You've don't know her, right?"
I just clutched my hat and stared forward.
"Don't kid yourself." My father said. "Where do you think he went while you and Jack had the place to yourself? Where do you think he goes when he runs away from us for the night? Medda sees him in the balcony all the time." My father swung his gaze to me, still with my back pressed to the wall. "Isn't that right, Frankie?"
I stared ahead.
"Is it true?" My mother demanded.
I let my head nod slightly.
"Disloyal little louse!" My mother screeched. She shoved my father out of the way and grabbed at me. Her fingernails dragged across my face and my neck as she tried to pry the handkerchief off me. She gave up and reached for the hat. I hugged the hat to my chest and curled around it, protecting it from her claws with my arms.
"How dare you pick that whore over me! Over us!" My mother's voice was high, her nails sharp as they dug into my skin. "How dare you choose Jack over me! I'm your family! We're your family!" She slapped my cheek and I felt the sting down my body.
I closed my eyes.
"You can have the little harlot!" She cried. "But you will not flaunt Jack in my face." She slipped her fingers between mine and the hat, she almost had it in her hands. Suddenly she wasn't on me anymore. I looked carefully over my shoulder. My father had her by the throat, on the ground, pressing his thumbs into her neck.
"Don't touch my boy." My father hissed. "Don't touch my boy and don't call Medda a whore. She's more a lady than you are."
I held Jack's hat on to my head and rushed toward my parents as they struggled on the floor. I threw myself desperately against my father, trying to knock him off my mama. My father jammed his elbow out and hit me in the stomach. I stumbled back and fell to the floor.
He pressed his thumbs harder, my mama's nails were ripping his forearms but he didn't seem to notice. I pulled on his hands, trying to pry them loose. He shoved his shoulder against me and I fell again.
"Please, let her go!" I pulled on him again, he ignored me.
Mama looked up with fearful eyes, she reached for me but I didn't take her hand. I wanted to save her. I grabbed his shoulders and pulled with all the strength I had in my ten-year-old body, but he didn't budge. "Please stop!" I begged. Tears clung to my face.
"Please!"
Mama's hand dropped to the floor. Her eyes closed.
"Mama!" I screamed. "No!"
My father blinked. He lifted his hands from around her throat and stared down at his lifeless wife. His eyes slid up to mine, they wild with panic. "I didn't mean to." He said.
Tears and snot slid down my face. "Mama!" I said again. I couldn't move, I didn't go any closer to her.
"Frankie, you'll tell them I didn't mean to, right?" He said.
I pulled the cord on my hat. I pulled it down so it slid down my forehead and covered my eyes. I didn't want to see her. I couldn't look at her. She would wake up if I didn't look at her dead. Looking at her dead made it real.
"Frankie, I'm sorry." My father said. I felt his heat as he stood above me.
"Frankie?" He moved my hat, he lifted the brim and pushed the hat so it hung down my back, the cord on my throat. My throat. I clutched at the cord, the handkerchief, the heaviness all I could feel. My eyes rested on my mama.
My father's hand went toward me. I ran. I twisted the knob and I bolted from our building. I ran until I was exhausted. I hid in the gutters, the alleys. I ran and hid for weeks, months, years. I grew, but I never forgot.
Every moment the heaviness of the hat and the red handkerchief on my throat reminds me of what my mother paid. She'd let him beat her, but I won't let them beat me. I stole what I needed, and when I was arrested for it, I broke out, I changed my name. Now I'm Jack Kelly. I went to Medda the night I ran from The Refuge. I told her everything, and she hugged me and told me she'd keep my secret.
I won in the end. While my father rots in prison, and my mother rots in her grave, I live on. I have Jack, I have Medda, and I have my freedom.
You can't let them beat you.
I'll never be beat again.
A/N: So... What did you think? *biteslip* I know the ending kind of crashlands, but I've been tweaking it for ages and I couldn't figure out how else to finish it. :/
BLAH.
Review?