Wow, it's been a reeeeaaaaly long time. So sorry! I've been busy with classes and work and just life . . . but this is super long to make up for the wait – hopefully it's worth it. And the next chapter is definitely coming tomorrow, I promise! Special thanks to all my reviewers. This is for you! 3

This one's a happy installment, so enjoy it while it lasts – tomorrow's is probably going to be angsty again . . . ;)

Standard disclaimers apply. I own only my computer, and even that is conditional.


It's beginning to rain again as Katherine approaches the newsboys lodging house, and she runs the last few feet to the door. She has to use all her weight to push it open, and she leans back against it once inside, catching her breath.

The room beyond the entrance is filled with newsboys, which she hadn't noticed immediately because they're acting uncharacteristically quiet. "I'm looking for Jack," she explains once they notice her. "Is he here somewhere?" She searches the faces of the boys gathered, but he isn't among them.

"I think he was on the roof," Crutchie says finally. He's sitting on a fat but ugly flowered sofa, his bad leg propped up on a chair arranged carefully in front of him. He swings it down and makes to stand, but she shakes her head, gesturing for him to remain sitting. "He yelled something about a drawing and ran up there as soon as we got back. If it's raining, he should be down soon."

"Thanks," she replies, moving away from the door and taking a seat that's pulled up next to the small fire going in the fireplace. The rain brought a chill with it, and she hopes she'll dry faster here.

"So what's going on around here?" she asks in an attempt to make conversation. She really hasn't had the chance to talk to them much since the strike, and she'd forgotten how accustomed she'd become to seeing their faces every morning and listening to them joke and fool around as they began work each day.

Only silence meets her friendly inquiries.

"Come on, boys!" she says when she sees their less than enthusiastic expressions. "Am I destined to only come across you when you're depressed and dejected? What on earth is wrong now?"

Specs pulls what looks like a spider off of his sleeve and flicks it under a table somewhere. Katherine watches it roll, then turns her gaze back to the boys. They appear to be deeply engaged in some sort of silent conversation, gesturing with their hands and conveying different emotions with their eyes.

"Seriously, though," she says, getting slightly nervous at the silence and their forlorn faces. "Did something happen? Is someone sick?"

Race snorts and stomps away, looking vaguely disgusted. Crutchie tries to stop him with his crutch, but the bigger boy just shoves past and runs up the steps near the back of the room.

"Is someone sick? Yeah, Jack," Romeo mutters finally, and her heart seems to stop in her chest for a brief terrifying moment. She just saw him a few hours ago, when he kissed her at the door to the Sun's offices before heading to the editor's desk for his first assignment. Then her mind works out what they mean and she starts laughing in relief. They're just bitter he's been spending so much time with her.

"Don't be like that, boys," she says once she can manage the words. "He hasn't changed. He's still your Jack."

"Easy for you to say," Mush says There's a faint bruise forming on his forehead, as though he hit his head off of something. "You're the one he's changing for, to make you happy."

Davey speaks up from a table in the corner where he's huddled over a huge, musty-looking book. Katherine starts at the sound of his voice – she hadn't even noticed he was there. He and his brother were spending less time at their parents house and more time with the newsboys lately. If anyone is changing, it's them. "If by 'changing' you mean 'becoming happy,' well then yeah. Be nice. He's better off with Katherine."

"Katherine makes him smile," Les pipes up from under Henry's chair, where he's trying to coerce a mouse into a shoebox. He waves at her. "Hi, Katherine."

She waves back halfheartedly.

"By 'changing,' we mean 'getting dumb and breaking promises,'" Race's voice echoes from the stairwell. He stomps back down before coming to rest beside Katherine, leaning on the wall next to her. "So thanks for that."

"Oh, really," she says, trying to reassure them. "He hasn't been acting strange because of me. Now that the strike's over and he's not worried anymore, he'll be back to normal." She's actually sure it's the business with the Delancies that's making him distant and protective of his friends, but she doesn't want to bring it up if they don't know. It's Jack's decision how he's going to tell them.

Race opens his mouth, probably to retort doubtfully. But then a hush falls over the room, because Jack has wandered in, his bag still over his shoulder.

His face falls almost imperceptibly when he sees them, scowling and muttering to themselves. "What's going on?" His eyes fall on Katherine, and he narrows his eyes at her questioningly.

"Nothing. Why?" Suddenly Race grins wickedly, throwing an arm over her shoulder. She resists the urge to cringe away – she loves the boys, really she does, but he smells strangely of mold and barnyard animals for some reason. "You jealous?"

"I ain't jealous," Jack says, only slightly too forcefully, his frown more pronounced now. He crosses his arms, looking between them as if trying to figure out the best way to pull her away. "I don't own her or nothing. I just – Ace, you wanna see something? Up on the roof?"

And he thinks he's so subtle. She smirks. "I don't know . . ."

He glowers at her. She stares innocently back. Then Race retracts his arm rather abruptly and uses the momentum to shove her forward.

"Just go already," Specs mutters from the corner. "You two are grossing me out."

"We didn't do nothing," Jack protests, but the boys have dissolved into a mocking puddle of doe eyes and exaggerated kissing expressions. "Shut up."

They don't have to be asked twice to leave.

"So why're you here?" he asks casually, stopping at a door to throw his bag inside before leading her up a creaky ladder to the roof. She shrugs.

"Just wanted to see you, I guess. Want me to leave?"

He snorts. "Uh, no. Not really."

Smirking, she pats his head. "Somehow, I didn't think so."

The rain stopped as quickly as it started, and the puddles are beginning to dry in the humid air. The clouds are much less threatening now, with gold radiating out from the setting sun that's just visible between the skyscrapers. A few birds fly carelessly in the distance.

The roof seems quiet even in comparison to the glum atmosphere of the room filled with newsboys, the noise of the city nothing more than a whisper at this height. Katherine sits on the edge, watching the people far below. Boys throw a ball back and forth, shrieking with joy as they stretch for a particularly difficult throw.

"Everything is perfect today," she sighs. Jack smiles.

"Especially some things," he murmurs, staring directly at her. She can feel his eyes even though she isn't looking, and a blush creeps over her face.

"Seriously, though. I wish things could be like this all the time. Why can't they be?"

Jack shrugs. "C'est la vie."

Katherine raises an eyebrow in surprise. "You know French?" she asks suspiciously.

"Nah. Who knows French?"

She snorts. "Jack, I'm pretty sure that was–"

"Alright," he interrupts, laughing at her frustrated expression. "I bummed a few drawing lessons off this French guy once. I was just sitting in Central Park, sketching, and he was horrified by my inability to draw hands. He said that all the time when he looked like he was giving up. I still ain't exactly sure what it means. And I still can't draw hands, either," he adds as an afterthought.

She leans her head against his shoulder. "I can't help you with the last one, but the phrase means 'that's life.'"

"Oh, so you know French?" This time it's his eyebrow that inches upward, disappearing just beyond his messy hair.

"I had this tutor once–"

"Of course you did." His tone is weary, but jokingly so, she thinks– his grin is still firmly in place.

Katherine casts around for something to talk about in the silence that follows, but she can't think of anything for the life of her. Everything seems dangerous, likely to turn Jack's positive mood dark again. Finally she settles on a challenge, one she knows he won't resent.

"I don't think you're as bad at drawing hands as you say you are."

He looks at her skeptically. "Oh yeah? I promise you I am."

"Prove it," she says, smiling at him. He shrugs, and the two of them climb slowly down to the room where he left his bag.

It's a sort of living room, with thick curtains on the windows blocking out the dying light. Jack turns on a lamp and immediately throws himself into a chair, paper and pencils already extracted from his bag. Katherine settles herself down on a plump armchair across from him to watch him work.

His expression is so intense she's afraid to speak and break the focused silence, and she's sure his charcoal lines are going come together in the best hands known to man, maybe even better than Michelangelo's in The Creation of Adam. But when he turns the paper around with an "I told you so" expression on his face, it's to show her the most awkward, sticklike, stiff fingers she's ever had the misfortune of laying eyes on.

"Told you," he says smugly, unnecessarily proud of his horrible drawing.

"Mm," she says. "I see what you mean. But if you do this–" she pulls the pencil gently from his fingers and adds a line connecting the fingers "–and this–" she roughly lays in another "–you get a nice . . . Butterfly?"

Her modifications made it exponentially worse. Jack cracks up at the thick legs and uneven wings punctuated by fingernails. She can't help but notice how he lays it carefully on the table beside him, though, making sure not to wrinkle it.

"Now I gotta draw somethin' else," he says once he gets his breath back. "Can't have you thinking you did a horrible thing in getting me a job."

"Of course not."

"Go sit back where you were before." He waves her toward the squishy seat once more.

She shakes her head. "Oh no. You are not drawing me."

His eyes twinkle. "Of course not. It's just that, that's the only place you ain't blocking my light . . . Now uncross your legs . . . Tilt your head. There."

"Kelly," she says warningly, but it's an empty threat. She'd let him do whatever he wanted to her at that point. Even in her head that sounds weird, though. She resists the urge to shiver and tries to distract herself by studying the walls of the newsboys' lodging house.

"Could you look any madder?" Jack asks, looking up briefly to criticize her expression. She sticks her tongue out at him, and then arranges her face into something slightly less pained. There aren't any pictures on the walls, and the few frames that do hang there are filled by dull oil paintings of empty fields – certainly nothing that reflects the boys who live here. She's glad when he finally lays the sketchbook on his lap, giving her the opportunity to study his picture.

"The pose of the body matches hers exactly. But it isn't her staring up from the page. It's Crutchie.

"You didn't draw me." She's not sure whether she's upset or honored.

"I ain't a liar."

She studies the drawing in awe. "How can you not draw a hand? You've got his face perfectly and he isn't even here to look at!"

"You think I don't know my boys good enough to draw them from memory?" His tone is a little hurt. She bumps her shoulder against his playfully, making him smile again. She certainly hadn't meant it as an insult.

The boy's eyes seem to sparkle with life from the paper, and Jack captured the hopeful quirk of his mouth perfectly. She's not sure she could ever capture a person so closely with just words. Then a thought strikes her.

"Why did it matter what my face looked like if you weren't drawing me?"

He grins. "Cause I like to look at you anyway."

"Kelly!" she says, feeling the blush starting in her cheeks already.

"What?" he asks innocently. "I already told you, I ain't a liar."


Thanks for not giving up on me! Reviews are confidence-boosters! In the interests of assuring everyone I'm still alive and writing for you I only read through this a couple times, so if there are any mistakes don't hesitate to let me know! Thanks again!

Much love,
KnightNight7203