A/N: This is about an OC newsie in my story Fightin' Irish.
Dedicated to Succulentie.
Thanks for reading faithfully. This one is for you.
Czech had been a Newsie longer than he'd actually been a Czech. He'd come to New York on a grossly packed passenger boat and sailed across the sea almost nine years ago. He was only seven when he left— a young boy lost in his mother's skirts.
But New York ran her down. New York worked her fingers to the bone, sucked the youthful glow from her cheeks and the warm light from her eyes. New York winter killed her.
At nine he was motherless. At nine, he took to the streets. He took food from the nuns and he slept in creaky unused fire escapes. He stole, picked rich pockets and cut purse strings. He went hungry some days and froze on others, but he got by.
Ten years old, he met a small scrawny boy with blonde hair and startling blue eyes. He was tiny, short, slim boned, and underfed. He was dirty too, clothes smeared with dirt and hands black with soot and that had transferred to his face— one circle of smeared blackness around his left eye and smudged down his cheek. Conlon, he said his name was when Czech asked, with a voice to harsh and cold for such a small boy— even then there was a spark in his eyes that spoke of insurmountable fierceness and unmatched ability.
"Spot!" An older boy laughed, holes in his pants and shirt untucked. He had ink on his hands and a smile on his face. "Let's go! Papes ain't gonna sell themselves!"
Czech followed after for a while, watched them meet with others —all ink-stained and happy— mesmerized by the black splotches on their fingers and the smiles on their faces. The bulls, however, caught him soon after and tossed him into the Refuge faster than he could say "ow". Packed in like cattle with the others just like him, all young, dirty, dead-eyed miscreants with empty gaping holes where stomachs should be, he wished he was ink-dyed and naively happy.
He was there for three days. Three days of four boys to a bed, dirty clothes, skin, and hands, with a slice of bread for dinner. He was there three days before they brought Conlon in.
He was as small as the youngest of them, but his mouth was faster and meaner than the biggest and burliest of them. He backtalked the Warden, got clouted across the face so hard he was tossed back onto the floor he'd bled on it. They made him scrub it clean until his fingers bled too.
He didn't know how to shut up or back down. Colon didn't know the meaning of "give up" Not until they nearly broke his leg and he was forced to lay down.
That's when they property met. Czech ventured to help him— help the boy that stood up for himself, stood up for others when no one else would. He brought the bedridden kid half of his half-burnt and water and he learned.
He learned the boy was a Newsie. He sold papers for The Brooklyn Eagle and he was gonna get outta here. If anyone else had said it, Czech wasn't sure he'd believe them, but there was a sort of righteous fury burning inside the other boy that his black eyes and bruised body couldn't conceal.
He vowed he'd get out of there, his young face drawn into a deep frown that would have looked more at home on a greasy sailor or war vet. He'd seemed too old for his small body and baby-face.
Czech only nodded.
He left and worked in the kitchens as he was assigned to do. The hours dragged by, the sun seeming to halt, to freeze in place each time he got a glimpse out the small cloudy window. When he got back, hair matted with even more sweat and grime then had already resided there and limbs heavy with fatigue, the black and blue boy was gone and he just couldn't bring himself to be surprised.
A week went by. No one saw hide nor hair of the blond boy. Snyder, the Warden, cause a royal stir. But Conlon was still gone.
The boys spoke of him in hushed whispers— the boy who'd escaped. By the sounds of the whispers, he should have been nearly six feet tall, bulky, muscled and strong. They seemed to have forgotten the pint-sized terror who'd lived among them only a week ago, adopting a Hercules in his place. Czech knew better.
Somehow, it was more impressive, the real thing. The real Conlon- short, vicious, and smart, was a thousand times more interesting than one more big and bulky street thug bully.
The Newsies called him Spot.
Coming back to the refuge with twenty feet of rope and a small army of Brooklyn-bred newsboys, Conlon came back for the kid who'd set his leg and brought him food. "C'mon, what're ya waitin' for?" he asked, sticking his dirty yellow head in the window.
Czech called him a friend.