- My tongues the only muscle on my body that works harder then my heart-
He never forgot that day, although he tried a million times. He was reminded of it every time he stepped foot onto a dock, or looked down at his newsies swimming in the river. It never left his memory. He sometimes thought that he would be able to see that night clearly for the rest of his life. To this day, even 4 years later, he could still remember every detail. How the wind made his arm hairs stand on end. How, the air smelled, of dirt, and grime, of sweat and stale alcohol. He remembered all of that. He could still see that fear in the girl's eyes. The glares, the tears, the screams. He remembered how she had kept screaming "why" and how hard she pounded on his chest when the ordeal had ended. How it had been him that carried her back in his arms while she fought to be free. It was him that undressed her after she had gone into shock and put her into the shower and washed her body. It was him that placed her into bed and tucked her in before taking a shower himself, trying to wash away the stench of death, but it stayed. To this day, he can smell it radiating off himself.
That was the first night he had failed at anything. He blamed himself, and even though he tried to hide it, it was obvious to all of his newsies and his Manhattan friends. There was sadness in his eyes that had never been there before. They felt bad for him, they knew it wasn't his fault, but there was consoling him. That was that, he blamed it all on himself, and she wasn't quick to argue over that fact.
He sometimes wonder what might have happened if he hadn't stepped in, he never looked at the positive side of it, at least one of them survived because of him. Though, to him, that didn't matter, she was as good as gone anyway. She left the next day anyway, gone without so much as a word, over to Manhattan. He received word two days later after a visit from Jack, she was safe, but she refused to talk to him. That's how it was from then on; they hadn't talked in four years.
Occasionally he sent one of his "birdies" to see what she was up too. Through them he found that she had left the Newsies only two months after leaving Brooklyn, to work in a factory. She moved into an apartment 10 blocks away from the Manhattan Lodging House, and she visited often. Never when he was there though, even stayed away during the strike, she didn't want to bump into him. To her, he knew, she was the pinnacle of all evil, The one who had destroyed her life.
Sometimes, looking back on that day, he had not only lost two of his best newsies, he had lost two of his closet confidant's, his two best friends in one incident; one to the river, the other to a broken heart.
Since that day, he was never the same, he turned cold, untrusting. Grew stronger, grew power hungry, he picked fights instead of settling them, used women instead of loving them, he changed, to the point where he didn't even recognize himself. Spot Conlon was no longer the fair, loyal leader that had once ruled over Brooklyn, he was cruel. That's the story of how Spot Conlon had become the King of New York. As he gained more and more power, a piece of him died, a little at a time.