A/N: Hey all! I was moving and getting settled so that's why I've been MIA but I've a few more chapter for ya and a lovely review (Shoutout to ME(Guest)) reminded me I have readers! So thanks for sticking with me! I love you!

to my reviewers...

ME: Thanks so much for your encouragement and for reading my stories! I love you too, fam!

Jaywing25: Here's a new chapter! Spot and Rois are back together! Neither wants to acknowledge that kiss quite yet though, so sorry!

Guestanewone: You're so so sweet! The whole integrated dialogue/action thing is just kind of my style I guess, but practice makes perfect friend so just keep plugging away! Write whatever you want whenever you want!

Jean-Moddalle: As always, thank you! :)

Succulentie: Thank you so much for your input. I'll try to make that more clear. I think the working girls thing was somewhat accurate- women who worked in factories at least wouldn't have had the nicest hands and doing your own wash by hand will make your hands kind of dry and crack-y. Jack will come up a bit more too.

Viola: Thank you so much for your review! Spot's relationship with the Brooklyn boys is important! and they'll be back soon, so don't you worry- more Rae is comin up.

FluffyMarshmallows: I really really want to incorporate her unique skill set more, but I am, as of now, hitting a bit of a wall I'm not sure where I want the sory to go anymore. She will get to fight more, but I'm not sure if it'll be on behalf of Brooklyn or of herself.

"The hell did she give you?" Spot mumbled as he helped her carry the their bags of clothes Medda had forced into her arms.

"Skirts, blouses, a nightgown, a pair of shoes and that other bag is for you boys- bunch of button-ups and pants and some socks, I think," she answered, eyes tilting upward as she tried to remember everything Medda had stuffed into the bags they were lugging back across the Brooklyn bridge. "She was really sweet."

"Sure took a shine ta ya," he said.

"She told me ta come back an' see da show sometime." She ducked her head. It was a strange quirk of hers, he noticed. She was pretty. She was intelligent. Hell, she was even funny. She had a way of fitting in where needed, but she never saw it. She didn't think she belonged. She didn't see the way Medda had immediately taken to her. She didn't see the way the younger boys had all but adopted her as their collective big sister. She didn't see the way Red and Pick and Yo-Yo and Frenchy and Skiff and even Czech had all accepted her as a part of Brooklyn.

She belonged just as much as any one of them, but she still saw herself as the outsider.

It dissipated when they were alone, the world falling away until it was just them, walking down a street… She was quick to smile then, quick to laugh. Her eyes danced and her cheeks blushed pink, speaking unreservedly. He wanted her to be like that all the time, anted her to blush and smiled like when he kissed her head earlier.

He shook his head- now wasn't the time.

With a new set of clothes to dirty and a new stockpile for each of the boys her sewing duties had seen an immediate decline. After a few well-timed questioned, one pretty little pout, a few bats of her eyelashes and rather well put together argument combined with her clean bill of health and a promise not to do anything stupid, Spot reluctantly agreed to take her selling.

He bought a few extra for her to carry, a self-satisfied smirk on his face as her eyes widened at the near 200 pape stack he carried. He could admit to himself, only himself, that he liked to impress the girl. She was all sorts of tough- snapped at the boys when they were out of line and scared the bejeezus out of them when it was needed, all while being totally sweet and protective of the younger boys.

It was hard for her to sell. Most looked strangely at a girl selling newspapers and walked by with disapproving glares. Men shook their heads and scoffed, looking down at her over their thin noses and through their thick-paned glasses. Women gasped and pointed, gossiped and hurried away. They ignored her outright. If that wasn't enough, her accent was still thick and at points it made her hard to understand. He liked it, liked the thickness to her words and the subtle injections of gaelic into her english vocabulary, the nicknames she'd so easily bestowed upon him and his boys. It was a problem Eoghan didn't share. His accent wasn't nearly as thick. The prejudice some held against her irish-immigration status put a damper on her pape-count that it didn't on her brother. She could sell a decent amount, enough to make her a few pennies, but it wasn't enough to buy much of anything.

It was a blow to her ego, but she took it in stride. She knew why they didn't like her. She knew there was nothing to be done about it. It didn't matter. Spot sold enough for the both of them. In fact, having her near actually increased business. More so for the younger boys then him.

When she sold with Bait and Eoghan a block or so down from him where he could keep a close watch on anything that dared near her and the boys, Bait came running up after him, money bag full. He babbled about the boom in business and how a bunch of nice ladies had all bought papers to help him and Eoghan take care of their 'big sister' and how a couple of boys had come to talk to her and had ended up buyin' papes instead.

Spot had seen them- a couple of pickpockets and a pair of suited up schoolboys about his age had come to talk to her. She'd turned them down pretty fast, setting the cute little boys on them instead and guilting them into buying at least one pape.

It was a good hook for a day with a bad headline.

"Trolley strike drags on for third week," was an utterly boring and unexciting headline.

"What the hell St. Clair," Skiff muttered angrily, cursing the Editor as they sat around the Brooklyn Daily Eagle's distribution center and read over the headlines.

"This is shit," Czech shook his head.

"Can't be that bad," Rois smiled, attempting to be positive as she read over Spot's shoulder. Blah Blah Blah Ellis Island Blah Blah Blah politician Blah Blah baby born with two heads- wait what? "Baby born with two heads?" she read again.

"Gotta be from Queens," Red grinned, prompting Frenchy, Yo-Yo, and a few others to laugh.

Digger growled, kicking at the wheel of one of the wagons. "Where's all the good stuff. I'm getting damned tired of these shitty-ass headlines."

"Calm down boys," Spot said, confident as ever as he strode atop the wagon and addressed his newsies, his subjects. "Headlines, don't sell papes," he said loudly. "Newsies sell papes. Time to carry the banner, boys- get to it."

With a roaring shout and a few whoops and hollers the boys raced out the doors of the distribution center and out onto the streets. Rois stayed behind with Spot, waiting until he felt he could jump down from the wagon and re-join her on the ground. She was smiling at him softly, in that way where she ducked her head a bit, afraid she was giving away too much in her eyes.

"You're real good at t'at," she told him.

"What?"

"Motivatin' 'em," she drawled, then looked out over the small corwd of rowdy raggedly boys, "they need it."