NOTE: when finished read the bold print at the bottom. IMPORTANT.

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Sweat. Blood. Tony's smirking face. The cops. More Blood. Screams.

That's all Mush could remember. Once his brain started functioning properly again he reasoned that Tony must have gotten tired of them dragging their butts for almost two weeks. They had been trying to buy some time to rescue Star. Obviously it hadn't worked. Tony must have contacted the police, blaming everything on the newsies. 'What a dick' Mush thought. He'd remembered seeing Star though. She had been dragged out of the boat by a cop. Stupid police. They didn't give a damn about the newsies. Any excuse to beat them up was good enough. Now here they were. In the refuge. Split up and aching. Mush turned his head slightly and found, to his further dismay, he was sharing a cell with dearest Switch. Great. Mush was just about to poke him awake when the guard returned.

"I've been sent to ask you if there were any other drugs, aside from the ones you were about to load up?"

"They weren't our drugs!" Mush tried to explain. He felt the air vaccum out of his lungs as the gaurds boot collided with his bare stomach. He gasped for air.

"Don't bullshit me, where there any other drugs?" the gaurd asked again.

"Yes! The boat was full of it... but it was Tony's boat..." Another kick.

"We checked the boat, all we found was the girl... the one that was hiding,"

Mush strained to make sense of this all. Tony must have moved the drugs, shipped them off before turning them in. He felt sick. Nothing made sense, yet everything seemed to be converging with everything else... like colours blending... it did make a twisted kind of sense. They were pawns in a wicked chess game. No one cared about them.

When Mush said nothing more the guard began kicking mercilessly at his ribs, stomach, face. It was then that Switch woke up. Taking in the scene before him; the squirming Mush being beaten to death on the floor, Switch did what he could. Swiping his hand across the beefy man's feet, hecaused the gaurd to fall tothe floor.

Flustered but not nearly taken aback the guard then began working on Switch. Kicking his already fragile body. For the second time in a year Switch felt his ribs cracking. He could do nothing to stop it. He waited it out. Mush tried to help but with no success. He only earned a few more blows to the head. When the guard was satisfied he left.

Switch's head swam so violently he puked on the floor. Everything that had happened seemed so dreamlike in the last little while. Had they been living at all? Retching again, Switch closed his beaten eyes. Slowly the room stopped spinning.

---

When Switch woke again, Mush was sitting up, on the small bed provided, rubbing his bruised body.

"What makes you think you get the bed?" Switch asked groggily.

"You can't help it can you?" Mush asked.

"What?"

"Being an ass," Mush explained, "even in this circumstance,"

Switch smirked slightly, "Character trait I guess," he said. He paused. He was damn near half dead. They both were. Somthing twisted in Switch told him to say it, get a reaction from Mush when he knew he couldn't do anything about. Yet another, very foriegn feeling told him to say it for another reason. What was it? Honesty? Maybe.

"Star's been seeing me behind your back," he said quickly.

Mush looked up. Waiting for an explosion, Switch braced himself.

"I suspected," Mush said at last, looking back down at his feet. The strong boy's voice faltered a bit.

Switch looked up at him, "and your not going to try and kill me?"

"Why? Do you want me too?" Mush asked half-heartedly.

Switch did his best to shrug, "More then once I've wanted to die,"

"I don't love her anymore..." Mush said, as much to himself as to Switch, "I mean, I love her... I'm just not in love with her..."

"Odd, but understandable..." Switch reasoned.

"You've had it for her since you got here," Mush stated.

"Before actually," Switch said truthfully.

Mush nodded, "She captivates you," he said, back to rubbing his bruises.

"Yes she does," Switch said, wincing slightly from pain.

"That's what she did to me too," Mush said, "except I was never as forceful as you," he said, somewhat bitterly.

"To be honest, I don't think she minds..."

"Lets not talk about this anymore..." Mush said, cutting him off before he got into any unwanted details.

"Fine,"

---

Star sat, arms wrapped around her knees. Shivering slightly. The walls around her were caked with blood and somthing that looked sickenly like feces. She was alone. She could hear voices and footsteps in the hall outside, even the voices of her fellow newsies. But she was alone. She didn't know how long they were going to be stuck in here and she didn't care. She was... away.

Away from Switch.

Away from Mush.

Away from herself.

She felt disconnected. And she was happier now then she had been in a long time.

She let herself slide to the floor. Still shivering. She closed her eyes.

Maybe now everything would stop, go back to the way it was...

'That would be good' Star thought, 'really good'

She silently rocked herself to sleep thinking that. If only things would go back to how they were.

One half of her brain was convinced. It kept her thinking that, warmed her up inside. The other part of her knew she was just substituting for the harsh reality that surrounded her.

'If I keep thinking this it'll go away'

Tears.

She couldn't fight the world anymore. It had fallen on her pretty hard.

'It'll go away'

Fighting herself really wasn't going to be much easier...

'All better... it'll be all better'

... but things had changed.

Things had really changed.

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Ok! I know this is sudden but... I think I'm gonna end this story here- DONT PANIC! THERE WILL BE A SEQUEL VERY SHORTLY!

Put me on author alert and check it out! Not sure what I'll be called yet but there will be one for sure!

So, in a sense this is the end of this story, but same characters and everything will pick up in the next one so... hmm... kk, so keep your eyes open!

Peace out