Author's Notes: If you happened to read the first (or second) version of this story posted, you're in store for something different. This is a complete and total rewrite (and if you're reading this prologue for the first time, that's just been revamped too). It's scary because I'm going into this blind. The prologue is giving me a little bit of direction, but beyond that, I have little to no idea as to where I'm going with this right now. Anything could happen at this point, really. That actually makes it exciting, too, and I'm very enthusiastic about this story. If you're reading this, please review!

Disclaimer: Newsies and its characters belong to Disney; any songs that appear as chapter titles/stops belong to their respective owners (here, for example, I'm praying that Unwritten Law doesn't sue me ^^;). I only lay claim to Patrick, Louis, Alice, and anyone else that appears in this story but not in the movie.

Prologue -- It Happened One Night and Went Into Morning (or, Seein' Red)

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1899, Three Days Before the Newsies Strike Began

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i'm seein' red
don't think you'll have to see my face again
don't have much time for sympathy
'cos it never happened to me
you're feeling blue now
i think you bit off more than you could chew
and now it's time to make a choice


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"Patrick!"

Fifteen-year-old Patrick released his right hand from the doorknob when he heard his name. In his left he was holding a knapsack with his life packed away inside. But he said nothing to the boy who was speaking, only giving him a steady stare.

"What are you doin'?" the boy asked.

"Leavin'," Patrick said, running his free hand through his mussed dark brown hair. He hadn't taken the time to brush it when he snuck out of bed in the middle of the night. He had wanted to make a clean getaway, but it seemed that now that wouldn't be possible. Patrick had neglected the fact that twelve-year-old George was the lightest sleeper of them all, especially since the two slept in the same room. George gingerly stepped across the room, making his movements light to avoid waking up anyone else in the house…just as Patrick had, but this time it appeared none of the other still-sleeping boys would be waking up.

"You can't go!" He grabbed Patrick's arm in an acute panic.

"You can't stop me, George," he said, pulling his arm out of George's grasp. "This is somethin' I'se gotta do."

"What am I gonna tell Ma?"

"You ain't telling her nothin'," Patrick told him firmly. "You ain't tellin' no one nothin'. You didn't see nothin' tonight, okay?"

"Den what about when dey come ta wake us up in the mornin' and you ain't in yer bed?"

"Den you say you slept the whole night and didn't see nothin', alright, George?"

"What if I wants to find ya?"

"You can't." The older boy's reply was flat and firm.

"Please," he implored. "Patrick, I won't tell no one you left, but if I wants ta see you, even if I can't talk ta you, where can I find you?"

Patrick paused. It wouldn't hurt to tell him where he could be found if George was only looking, not touching, not speaking, not telling.

"Ovah on Duane Street."

"Where the newsies live?" asked George, slightly confused. Patrick was a factory boy. He had worked in a factory all his life. Just as he had.

"Yeah, George. I'se gonna be a newsie. I'se had enough of the fac'try life." Patrick slung his knapsack over his shoulder and replaced his hand on the doorknob. "But," he added warningly, "don't be talkin' ta me unless it's an emergency. Only if somethin' real big happened. Anythin' else, and I'se just gonna pretend I don't know ya."

"Why?" George demanded. "You ain't evah been like dis befoah."

"I'se been savin' me pennies, and I'se determined ta have a new life now," Patrick said to him. "I ain't gonna let you ruin it. I don't expect ya t'understand it, George, but please, just stay out of it." He cracked the door open slowly, until he could fit through the space.

"Patrick?" asked the other boy once more.

He stopped, halfway in the hall. "Yeah?"

"Youse still me older brudder, no mattah where ya go."

Patrick couldn't help but crack a smile. "Yeah," he confirmed. "I'se still yer older brudder."

He slipped out the door, and then he was gone. George did his duty as a younger brother and closed the door behind him before slipping back into bed.

Outside, the streets were dimly lit, but it was enough for Patrick to read the street signs and make his way to the Lodging House, his new home. He had made it a habit to pass by it every day on his way to work, just so that when this night came, he would be ready, willing, and able to head there no matter what. And now, here he was. He had successfully run away from home, and he was about to begin his dream job as a newsie. It was what he had always wanted to do. Patrick watched those boys every day on his way to work and saw how much fun they had doing their job; it seemed so easy. Much easier than factory work, at least. He wasn't even that good at factory work anyway. Being a newsie would give him the opportunity to excel at something, and open doors for him that had been slammed in his face before. At least, this is what Patrick hoped with every fiber of his being. George, Ma, and the others would get over his absence, Patrick was sure. He had never been much of a help to them anyway.

He could see the glow of an usually large light around the corner, three blocks from his destination. Someone must have left their lamp on. Or they were working in the night, though it must have already been long past midnight.

Patrick rounded the corner and stopped when he saw it.

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oh i confess
i don't know what to make from all this mess
don't have much time for sympathy
but it never happened to me
you're feeling down now
i don't know where I'll be when you come around
and now it's time to make a choice

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It was hot. So hot that Louis was roused from the deep, dream-filled summer sleep he had been experiencing in his family's third-floor tenement. When he opened his eyes, still groggy from sleep, he at first mistook the brightness glowing outside his window to be the morning sun, and thought he had overslept again.

His eyes widened when he realized that the source was not the sun, but the building across the alley. It was on fire.

"Shit!" he cried, hopping out of bed and pulling on a pair of pants. Blindly, he reached for a nearby shirt to cover his upper body. He didn't have time to grab the fresh linen strips sitting in the basket beside his bed-table to wrap around the open wounds that covered his torso. "FIRE!"

This was not good, he decided as he opened his door, shirt only half on his back. His neighbors were running half-clothed down the stairs towards the exit of the building, some of the younger children yelling and crying. It occurred to him that the downstairs exit would not be his best option with the stampede of his neighbors. He would put the fire escape to his own use, he resolved. After all, it was a fire, so no situation was more appropriate.

The smoke that billowed out from the neighboring building was enough to choke Louis as he crawled through his winder and onto the ladder that led to the alleyway between the two buildings. He looked down below him. The alley was littered with trash, but no person (or corpse, Louis's subconscious fear) was there. He could feel the heat from the fire as he descended downward, one foot at a time, with the screams and coughs of his fellow tenants and even some of his neighbors, trapped inside the lit building, filling his ears. Despite the sweat beats forming on his forehead, Louis was chilled by the sounds. As his feet hit the ground and he let go of the final rungs, he knelt in the alleyway and succumbed to a fit of coughing loud enough to drown out any sounds coming from the flaming building.

But then there was a loud crack, and a stomach-turning crash, more than enough to stop Louis's coughs. One of the beams from the building had fractured from the flames and hit the ground. Embers showered Louis, who shielded himself best he could with his hands.

Coughing started up again, but the voice was not the one of the boy of the alley. Louis looked up, squinting slightly as his eyes met the light, and saw a girl slowly crawling out of a pile of flaming debris. He recognized her as one of his neighbors. She was nearly eighteen, the same as him. She and Louis had known each other from the time of their youth. But here, she looked nothing like the girl Louis had seen every day since childhood. Her hair had been fairly singed, her now-pallid face blackened by smoke and streaked with blood from the cuts that made their way across her visage, most notably one that stretched across her forehead and down the side of her face. Her clothing was blood-spotted and ripped almost unnaturally, as if it had been torn or caught on something. One hand helped her steady on the ground, and the other was clenched around the handle of a seared suitcase so tightly that he could see her whitened knuckles.. As soon as he overcame the shock of this sight, Louis rushed to her.

"Youse alright?" he asked her. She used the hand that had been steadying her, refusing to let go of the suitcase, to wipe the blood from around her eyes before replying.

"Let me go," she whispered through lips dried by the heat.

"Yer buildin' caught on fire," he said. "Where are you gonna go?"

"To die," the girl managed to croak.

"They'se gonna wanna know what happened to ya. Yer family, yer neighbors…what am I supposed ta tell 'em?"

"Tell 'em all I died." She coughed again, clutching her blood-stained hand to her chest. She managed to rise, stumbling slightly and leaning against the wall of Louis's building.

"Where d'ya think yer goin'?" asked Louis, putting a hand on her shoulder. The girl shrugged it off almost ferociously.

"Don't touch me!" she hissed at him. She stepped further down the alley to evade his grasp. "Lou, don't do anything," she repeated. She lifted her suitcase up as if she was going to swing it at him. But behind Lou was the wall of flame that had once been her tenement. She stumbled back further at the sight, almost as if she was afraid of the blaze.

"Am I supposed ta let you die!?" he demanded.

"Yes!" A translucent tear trailed down her race and mingled with the blood on her face. Again she used her free hand to wipe the fluid away. "If the rest of my family's dead, I'm dying too!"

"How do you know dey're dead?"

"I saw them all die!" She fought back a sob. "So, I'm going to die too."

"That's real stupid of you," Louis commented forlornly. "If you wanna respect yer family, treat yer wounds, get up the next mornin', let 'em live on in you. Don't give it up." He grabbed her shoulders again. The girl would have shrieked if she felt she had the voice.

"If you think you got all the answers, then YOU find me a solution!" She pulled away again and staggered towards the exit of the alley, in the opposite direction of the building and the residents, rescuers, and reporters that were undoubtedly gathering around it. She coughed violently before spitting out the words, "But if they find my body tomorrow…then you'll know what I decided."

Louis watched her disappear. The way she had acted…it was like she was trying to erase her entire existence, a plot Louis's presence almost thwarted. No matter what she would do now, she would always know that she had been seen exiting the building. One would always know she had made it out alive. One had seen the wounds that dominated her body. One would know the story behind them. It was only one, but it was still one too many.

Louis coughed. This burden, paired with the surroundings, was almost too much to bear. He stumbled out of the alley and into the open street, to the open street and into the arms of the crowd one girl had been trying to avoid.

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and foolish lies
oh can't you see i try to compromise
'cos what you say i know is true
and i can see the tears in your eyes
and what you said now
just like the words from running through my head
and what i do to get through to you
but you'd only do it again

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Alice paused in front of the building, gazing up at its sign, so large it almost seemed to be threatening her.

'The Garden Place', it read. What a name for a whorehouse.

This was not a sign of desperation, she told herself as she swatted a stray strand of curly red hair out of her face. Though anyone else would have guessed it was her last-ditch effort, it was only the second place she had looked this morning. It seemed like there was no other option for her than this. There was no way she would take a job in a dank, dirty factory like her sister had, or live struggling under the feet of those more fortunate than she. This was her chance to start over. She had already found a new place to live, an all-girl's home called Fifth Street House. The woman who ran it, Mrs. O'Hagan, was a plump, brown-haired woman in her middle forties who had at first been reluctant to give Alice a bed. She had looked like trouble, stumbling in at the crack of dawn in ripped clothing and a dirty face, but Alice pled with her and gave her assurance that all that had happened to her was an isolated stroke of bad luck. Fortune's wheel had only set her down a few pegs, and this was her chance to work her way back up. Alice took a deep breath and entered.

The room, she immediately noted, smelled of stale smoke. The only person present on the lower floor was a busty, beautiful, golden blonde in her early twenties, sitting at a desk, looking bored. From the looks of it, everyone else was busy on the second floor. The woman looked over Alice with a smirk on her face as she approached.

"Sorry, darlin', we don't service goils heah," she said scathingly.

Alice fought off an angry blush. A smartass whore wasn't about to drive her out this easy. "I ain't askin' for 'services'," she forced through clenched teeth. "I'se lookin' fer a job."

"Den try down the street at the fish market. How old are youse, anyway?"

"Old enough," Alice said simply.

"We get a lot of goils sayin' dat. But dey don't know what it's like. You don't know what it's like, I'm sure."

"How so?"

"The last thing youse gotta think is that this is gonna end up bein' some job where the man of your dreams comes along by chance one night and takes you away from him. Dat's furthest from the truth. The people who come here, dey don't care how you feel inside, just how good you are in bed." It sounded like the woman had told girls this hundreds of times, but it still held the punch and passion to make anyone with less resolve reconsider their decision.

"I ain't expectin' dat," the redhead said honestly. "I knows what I'se gettin' meself into."

"Yeah?" asked the woman, arching an eyebrow. "If you really mean dat, youse got guts, kid. What's your name?"

Resenting being called "kid", Alice could only utter her first name before the woman cut her off.

"Hold on, I don't want yer last name," the woman told her. "I'd be Daisy Gregoire. I own the place."

"'Daisy'…dat where the name of the place comes from?" asked Alice.

"Yeah. Most of the goils adopt flowah names after a few weeks. We'se got Delia, Marigold, Orchid, Violet, and Baby's Breath too…you think you can handle bein' a Garden goil?"

"I can handle anythin'," Daisy was informed with confidence.

"I can tell," she observed as she looked her over. "Were youse in a fight or somethin'?"

Alice gingerly touched the long cut that traveled across her forehead and partway down her cheek, one of the reasons Mrs. O'Hagan had been hesitant to give her a bed. She had tended to the bleeding all night in an empty alley, and it was only now that the wound was beginning to scab itself over.

"Sorta…" She trailed off. "When can I start?"

"Well, why doncha stay in bed for a day or two and rest up foist? I can give ya an unoccupied one if you ain't got a place ta stay."

"I'se got a bed ovah at a goil's boardin' house," Alice told her.

"Fair enough. Take care of your scrapes dere, too." Daisy smirked and casually added, "Men don't like screwin' a goil who could start bleedin' at any given moment."

Alice couldn't help but grin.

"Got it. See ya soon, then, Daisy."

"Yeah, see ya 'round…Garden goil."

Alice waved and turned on one heel to head out the door. Outside, the rest of the city was hard at work and the street outside the Garden Place was full of people. Barely anyone gave her a second glance as she pressed her way into a crowd. This was the way it was going to be from now on, she decided - an unknown in the streets and the world. It was going to be better this way.

If only it hadn't taken last night to get onto this path, she thought.

He thought.

They all thought.

But this was how it was going to be, they each knew…no matter the consequences.

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so follow the leader down
yes swallow your pride and drown
when there's no place left to go
maybe that's when you will know

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