Hey, all!

Quick bit: The cover art was made using a picture taken by Jacob Riis titled Street Arabs in Sleeping Quarters, Church Corner. I edited it using the Pixlr app, but the credit goes to him.

Because of the fact that I want to use this author's note to explain the inspiration for this story it's bound to get long, so just skip the bold if you don't want to read it. If you do want to read this, then thank you very much, and I hope it's worth your time.

Also, the mini history lesson is going to be here, and not at the end.

Anyway, for my birthday my parents got me "NEWSIES: Stories of the Unlikely Broadway HIT". It has six sections: one about the historical foundations of Newsies, one about the movie, one about turning it into musical, one about its Paper Mill run, one about Newsies deputing on Broadway, one about extending the initial Broadway run, and one that features reflections from "the Newsies family".

In the section "Depicting A Fine Life On Film", which is about the movie, there is a reflection by Max Casella (who played Racetrack Higgins, as most of you know) about his time working on the movie. In it, he says this:

"The reality of these kid's lives was much, much darker than what we ultimately represented on film. Most of them slept in the streets and during the strike many were killed. To my mind they were like little men: they didn't go to school, they worked for a living, and they dressed like adults."

This prompted me to do some (more) research.

I found things like:

"Newsies were usually orphaned, and there were as many as 10,000 homeless children wondering the streets of New York in the 1890s."

And:

"In Los Angeles alone, 17 newsboys were killed and 283 injured between 1904 and 1909."

Note: that last one was taking from a blog site, so take it with a grain of salt.

Regardless, it proves my point.

For the past several months, I have been sitting on the urge to write a fanfiction where I take Disney's plotline and add some more history, such as what I quoted above.

This is the first, and possibly last, of my stories doing just that.

One last thing:

Some of you are probably going to get upset at me for having Jack take so long to notice that something is wrong. That's your opinion.

Personally, I think in real life it probably could have taken longer.

Newsies, on average, earned 30 cents a day. It cost about 6 cents per night to stay in a lodging house and an additional 4 cents for dinner. That was a lot of money, and newsies had to save some of their 30 cents for buying papers to sell the next day. It wouldn't have been unusual for newsies not to stay at the lodging house for several days, or to not be at the circulation desk in the morning.

Since those would have been common occurrences, unless he had seen their bodies, or someone had told him, it might have been more than five days before Jack had noticed anything unusual.

But that's my opinion, based on my research.

Thank you.

~Connie rose

The day after the strike ended, August 3, 1899, Jack noticed how there were fewer newsies hanging around the lodging house than usual.

He supposed it made sense, in a way. They had just won a major victory; the kids were probably out celebrating or spreading the news. They had earned it.

And so, Jack didn't pay it too much mind.

The second day after the strike ended, August 4, 1899, Jack noticed how there were fewer newsies in the line to get papes from the circulation desk.

Jack wondered why. The World had agreed to buy back the papers they didn't sell, so there was less risk involved now. And they had just gone two weeks without pay; those kids would need the money.

The boys not at the circulation desk that day were a mix of boys who lived at the lodging house and those who didn't. But regardless of whether they were his boys or not, Jack knew they need to come back to work soon.

And so, Jack was concerned.

The third day after the strike ended, August 5, 1899, Jack noticed how most of his boys were more resigned than usual.

He had just suggested they all go to Medda's to see the show, and they'd all said no. Now, Jack hadn't expected things to go back to normal immediately. He had figured there would be some trust issues. It did seem like he had sold them out, after all, and he wasn't in a hurry to explain. But none of his boys meeting his eyes? He wasn't expecting that.

Clearly Jack was missing something. He did a head count. Thirty. There were usually forty in this room in the lodging house.

Jack jumped to his feet. A few of the boys made sounds of surprise but he paid them no mind. He dashed up to the top floor of the lodging house and began working his way downward, counting.

The lodging house had beds for up to 250 boys a night. Usually, 200 boys slept there.

While Jack may not have known every boy to ever fill those beds, Jack knew those two numbers by heart.

And so, when he only counted 135 boys, Jack was worried. Really worried.

It wasn't until the fifth day after the strike end, August 7, 1899, that Jack found out where the missing boys were.

It was Crutchie who finally told him.

He pulled him to the side and in hushed whispers, explained to Jack what the others had been hoping he'd discover on his own.

The majority of those boys were stuck on the streets, unable to afford the lodging house fees. Some were in the few hospitals that would provide medical care for the lower classes. The rest were gone. Dead.

It hit him like a ton of freaking bricks.

And it was all Jack's fault. He should have seen it coming. He should have realized.

Between the heat from the summer, the fact that the boys could afford even less food than usual, and the hired brutality beating up on the strikers… they couldn't have won the strike without casualties.

But Jack didn't think that far ahead.

He had convinced himself that the worst that could happen was the boys being sent to the refuge. After all, that was what he had changed sides to stop.

Boy, had he been wrong.

They had won the strike. They had gotten Pulitzer to buy back all papers unsold. They had made a historic compromise, and opened the eyes of thousands of people in New York to the injustices all around them.

But at what cost?

Jack had started the strike. Jack had gotten them all involved. Jack had made the speeches. Jack had told them to fight when the bulls came. Jack had been the figure head.

Jack was to blame.

He had never wanted to go more than he did now.

And so, Jack barricaded himself on the roof that night. Curled up on the roof's edge he drew, and he drew and he drew.

Faces. Places. Events.

Political cartoon after cartoon after cartoon.

With each image he came closer and closer to swearing off it forever. To vowing he'd never again try anything ever remotely similar to the strike again.

But Jack knew he couldn't do that. He'd always be looking out for the underdog, always trying to stop the injustice. It was part of who he was.

And so he swore instead that next time he undertook something similar he'd be certain from the beginning that the ends would justify the means.