Alison Kelly never cried in front of the boys. She was careful not to, because crying was the first sign of weakness. And Alison Kelly wasn't weak. She couldn't be - after all, she's the little sister of Jack Kelly.
She didn't cry when she fell out of a tree, barely eight years old, and broke her wrist.
She didn't cry when Jack came home and promptly collapsed on the Lodging House floor, too beaten and exhausted to pick himself back up. All the boys saw was the worry wrinkled across her forehead as she calmly helped the boys get her brother to his bed and promptly got to work cleaning and treating his wounds.
The boys most certainly did not see Alison cry when she got sweet on Spot Conlon and he broke her heart.
Crutchie knew, though he'd never tell her, that he heard her cry when Jack was sentenced to six months in the Refuge. He didn't miss the silent tears that rolled down her face as she and Kloppman tried their best not to think about exactly how Jack got the welts across his back when he returned.
Tough as nails, they said. That Al, she can take anything and everything in stride.
They didn't see her cry when she took in how badly they were beaten when the Bulls showed up during their strike. The boys didn't see her cry when Jack was arrested. She put on a well-practiced face that read as calm and collected. The boys didn't see her cry when Jack refused their escape attempt.
Well, except for David. David noticed. He didn't say anything when Jack pushed her away and got into the carriage with Pulitzer. He watched as Alison's shoulders began to shake, and wordlessly caught her when her knees buckled. Brought her to his place, slept on the floor that night.
If he noticed any dampness on his pillow the next day, well, he certainly wasn't going to mention it.
Crying made you weak. That's what she'd grown up to believe, when the boys wouldn't cry over a thing, so she didn't either. Nobody saw that Tough-As-Nails Alison Kelly had a fragile heart, one that was easily broken, even after all the hurt in her life.
But David noticed.
The day David kissed her for the first time, three days after the night Jack chose Pulitzer, Alison immediately stopped her tears. She didn't think she'd ever feel the need to cry again.
The boys never knew what Jack said to her the day he double-crossed them to Pulitzer, but that was the day they saw her shoulders broaden and her jaw set as she swore to never let anyone break her heart like her own brother just had.
Alison didn't cry that day.
She didn't cry - almost, but didn't, when she believed that she was saying goodbye to the boys for the last time. Race, her partner crime and chief poker dealer; Crutchie, her oldest and closest friend; Specs, whose glasses she'd never swipe again. David...David.
She nearly let Jack see her cry when they decided to turn around and stay in New York, but it wasn't the heartbroken tears she was used to - these were tears of happiness and relief and a touch of terror at what could happen when they returned. Denton had tried to convince her to stay, to let him take her as an apprentice, teach her to write the headlines she'd hawked all her life. David nearly chased after her and begged her to stay - what would happen between them?
All of her questions vanished the moment David turned and caught her eye. There, before The World and everybody, she kissed him, and felt like she would never need to cry again if everything could feel this right.
She didn't cry for months afterwards. She didn't need to - Jack was happy, she was happy with David and her new (paying!) job, and content with her life.
She did cry a little bit at their wedding, but David never mentioned noticing (though his eyes were a little blurry that day, too).
She didn't cry when coughing fits nearly sent Buttons to the floor. Her brow furrowed in worry, but she didn't cry. When he coughed up blood, Alison decided this wasn't the time for tears, it was the time to be helpful. The boys didn't need to see her cry right now. They needed a rock. They needed Alison to be strong for them as pneumonia spread like wildfire through the Lodging House. She refused to let herself cry as they died.
Romeo.
Specs.
Mush.
Even Les.
She couldn't cry. She wouldn't cry. David needed her, now more than ever. She held him close as he cried, as he wondered what if, and she was there every time he needed her just to hold her close, to remember what was real.
She held him even tighter the day that Jack started coughing. Her hands started to shake when he crashed to the floor, coughing up blood and spit and what seemed like everything that was in his lungs. Alison refused to cry. Not now, not after everything they'd been through. Sarah had cried. Crutchie had nearly hyperventilated when Alison gave the smallest of screams, her head against her brothers chest, when his heart stopped beating. David reached for her hand when it happened, gently prying her away and holding her as tight as he could as the doctor they'd all chipped in to pay for checked his pulse and gave a small shake of his head.
Race had never seen Alison cry. They had been friends for years, but it never occurred to him that he had never seen, or made her cry. Tough as nails, he called her. The only newsie in New York brave enough to clock Spot Conlon in the face all those years ago. He had no idea what it'd look like, if Ali cried. For weeks after Jack...well...she seemed to be barely functioning. Distant from the boys, disconnected from the work she was so proud of. Her relationship with David, of all people, seemed strained. She pulled further and further away from him, further away from her life. Withdrawn and quiet were two words no one in their right minds would have dared to call Alison Kelly.
Three weeks after Jacks funeral, the boys sat around a table, glumly playing a game of poker with an Alison they didn't recognize. Spot cracked a joke about what Jack would have thought about how well-attended his funeral had been, how even President Theodore Roosevelt had come. Some boys snickered, some cracked a small, appreciative smile at Spots attempt to lighten the mood.
Alison's face crumpled as she let herself cry for the first time in months. The boys stared in wonder for a moment, before David sat by her side, held her close, and quietly asked the boys to give them a moment.
No one said a word. Alison didn't cry over nothing, they thought.
Alison Kelly had never cried in front of the boys before.