Author's Note: I decided to write a bit of a sequel to "I Caught Fire". This is the first chapter to it and I hope this turns out as well as I had imagined it would.
"Cat?" Kid Blink pushed open the ancient door of the Newsgirls Boarding House, previously owned by Flashbox now owned by the younger girl named Cupcake. The old building creaked as he walked slowly up the stairs. "Cat?" He called again. His voice echoing eerily around him in the empty halls. As he drew closer to where the girls slept, he noticed more and more pictures of the girls together. There was one picture he always stopped to look at, it showed all of the older Newsgirls and Newsies, standing together in the park. He liked to look at it because it let him remember the old days. Now everyone in the picture had gone their separate ways, or else in couples. Blink was the only original Newsie left and he was leaving today with his new bride, Cat. "Cat?" He shouted this time, taking the stairs a little faster. He noticed that the picture was no longer hanging by the doorway were it usually hung. The thin curtain hiding the room from his view rippled gently as he neared it. Blink pulled the ragged thing aside to find Cat, sitting on the bunk she had once shared with Flashbox. She was staring down at the tattered picture of all her friends. "Hey." Blink said softly as he climbed up next to her, "It's time ta go." Cat looked up, her eyes were kind of puffy as if she had been crying. "I knows, I jus' can't foaget all a dese guys." She whispered, motioning to her old friends as they stared out of the picture, forever frozen in the past. "Come on, baby. We's gots ta go, the train'll leave widout us." Cat gingerly tucked the picture into her small bag and wiped her eyes as she gazed around the huge room, one last time. "I's jus' can't believe it's ovah." She murmured sadly as Blink lead her down the rickety old stairs, one more time. "Neither can I." He replied as they walked slowly down the broken-up street that ran past the boarding house. Cat slung her bag over her shoulder as she walked down the road, towards her new life.
The train whistle blew as it began to chug out of the station. Cat and Blink sat near the back. "I's gots dis big house out in da country, might not be much, but it'll do." Blink told Cat as the train raced away from New York. Cat smiled at him. "If it's wid you den it mus' be ok." Blink wrapped an arm gently about her shoulders, "Things are gonna be fine." He said, kissing her gently. She lay her head on his shoulder as the soft rumble of the train lulled her to sleep. Kid Blink stroked her fine black hair as the rode along. He, too, missed his friends: Jack, Mush, Race, Dutchy, Specs, and even Spot. It was as if a part of him was gone forever. Something he could never get back. The landscape rushed past them, replaced, in Blink's mind, with memories of good times and bad times spent with the Newsies. He remembered the rally at Medda's during the strike, when he had somehow managed to end up before the judge with the rest of his friends. A memory of the day Jack had decided to stay in New York with the Newsies. Memories of crashing wedding parties with Cat, betting at the races and often losing with Race, and playing Poker at Medda's with his friends. Blink remembered the bad times, like when the Mafia had shot a young woman with Race, when Cat's psychotic mother had been released from the asylum. In this train of memories, Blink's own mind became his enemy as it forced him to remember things he didn't wish to remember. Not because they were bad things, but because it made him realize just how much he didn't want to leave New York and his old life. Now he had a new job, taking care of Cat and any kids they might have. He would have to learn a whole new role in life's theatre. The role of a husband and father.