Well, readers, I am back! Didja miss me? Heh. Well, here is the new-and-improved Quicksilver! I am so happy to have it back up! As some of you will have noticed, I did some shameless self-promotion and messaged you telling you this chapter was up :). I'm terrible, I know. If you read the first version, you will also notice I have added to Mercury's character.
Fanfiction won't link to the song Mercury plays, but if you go to YouTube and search "Schumann violin" the video will be lower down on the page and is called "Schumann 1 sonata 1 movement". No, that is not me playing.
Well, here's the legal stuff:
I do not own Newsies. I do own all characters unfamiliar to the movie, unless otherwise noted. Please read and review... you can even review without an account!
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All for one and one for all -- that is our motto, is it not?
from The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas
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July, 1899
I woke up to the sight of wood above me. Not surprising, as I sleep on a bottom bunk. I didn't bother getting anyone else up; I just looked out the window to my right before closing it's curtains. Then I pulled my nightgown off over my head and dressed in my white blouse and dark green skirt. I put my nightgown on the peg that had held my blouse and skirt. Then I went to get my violin from under my and my little sister's bed.
No one ever touched my violin but me. Most were scared. I was a fighter, and I was also branded a lunatic, mostly for talking to feral cats -- worse, the feral cats responded. Not a very good combination for making friends.
Taking out the bow, I carefully applied rosin from the hard cake in it's own little crevice of the plush-lined case. Replacing the rosin, I took out my violin. Then I climbed out the window, carefully, and to the top of the roof, using the fire escape. I settled on the edge of the roof that faced the street.
Then I played Schumann Sonata No. 1, first movement.
I was greeted by the usual windows banging open by people (some belonging to our lodging house) who proceded to shout curses my direction in a colorful variety of languages, including Italian, German, French, something I think was Norwegian, and, of course, English.
But one old woman and her equally old husband stopped their morning walk to clap for me, this strange girl with her long hair whipping in the wind, and her skirt tossed about by the same force. Of course, I wasn't wearing stockings. Shame on me. Doubtless they missed the scars and fresh cuts both on my inner arms.
I finished, took my solemn bow, and went back inside to braid my hair, roll down my sleeves and wake up my little sister.
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I sat down on the edge of the bed and shook my little sister, who slept next to me. Little Becca. Dark brown hair that was a shade off from black with an almost-curl, baby-fine and wispy fell in her eyes. She woke up from her deep toddler sleep, stood, and yawned before burying her little face into my shoulder and murmuring that she "wan more sweep." I sighed. Poor little kid. Where the baby fat of an average three-year old should be in her little face and hands there was none. I was lucky enough to have boots to put on her feet and a smock on her back. My own apparel was less than fashionable. We were alway poor, but somehow mother always managed to dress me in a blue dress to "set off my eyes." (She gave up on white lacey frocks as soon as I learned to play marbles in the streets with my friends and how fun mud wrestling is.) My eyes aren't really anything to gawk at though. Golly gee, another pair of blue eyes in Manhatten! Whoop-dee-dee. I liked Becca's sea-green eyes with a dark blue rim better. She'll be a pretty girl when she grows up.
If she grows up.
I told Becca no more sleep, then woke up those that had not already awoken from my violin playing: the twenty-odd other newsgirls of these Manhatten streets that slept in the same dormitory room as I did in the Newsgirls Lodging House (creative at naming, aren't they?). It was their turn to dress in their clothes from their own pegs. As soon as we were all dressed, teeth and faces clean, hair braided, and I had finally put on my black stockings and boots, we headed out to sell the papes. We passed by the nun cart, grabbed our bread and watery coffee with grounds in the brew, and headed off to the distribution office.
It was going to be a fine day.
Yes, that was a sarcasic comment.
Our daily routine was always the same; nothing changed but the headlines.We bought our papers, hawked our headlines, most girls being pretty enough to use their feminine wiles, but I had nothing but a loud voice, an imagination that had been encouraged as a young child, and a little sister named Becca, which was fine by me. Being ugly has it's advantages so long as you come to terms with your lack of beauty; no creepy strangers hitting on you, no guy wants to use you, and if you're ugly, you might as well be invisible.
Which is why I hear things. Lot's of things. I knew about Mush and Flips breaking up before Mush himself did. I know the headlines before everyone. Heck, I even know why Crutchy uses a crutch and that Blink doesn't really need an eyepatch.
I'm ugly. I'm invisible. I'm a newsie. I have a temper that risies as quicker than you can belive.
My name's Mercury. Mercury Pallas, of Manhatten. Was it because of my temper? How fast I run? I honestly don't know.
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We all bought our papers at the office. There was a baby born with two heads, a trash fire on Ellis, and some sports scores, but I don't like to shout those out because the losing team's fans like to take their outrage out on us newsies. My closest newsie friends were Spades, Jones (yes, a girl) and Ella... Ella had black hair, black eyes, and a black heart. That girl was cold. Just... cold. Years on the streets had made her that way.
Same as all of us. But we all have each other... I think that's why we all are at least somewhat human. We just hadn't met Ella quick enough. She was the least human of us all.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
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Yes, quite a bit of it was the same; well, please review. If you don't have an account it will still let you review!