Author's Note: welcome to another collaboration from the minds of myself and Markaleen! The other night, we were talking about the trauma associated with the Great Depression, especially in orphanages and in a setting like the one Warbucks works in. Obviously, for a kids' musical, these subject matters had to be glossed over, somewhat, in order to remain suitable for the whole family. Written works such as these don't have to be quite as careful-and we are as a result presenting our retelling of Annie, keeping in mind the darker events associated with the time period. Thank you for reading!

[oh, yeah, we've also included Hannah from Annie: A Royal Adventure. Creative liberties:)]

JANUARY 1933

"Oh, no. Your face is so red, Annie."

The last thing the redhead wanted to hear when she finally returned to the dormitory—after an hour-plus of listening to Miss Hannigan rant, rave, and then paddle her because she'd played another prank on the matron—was the worried words of her best friend, Hannah. In hindsight, she should've been much more careful today: the first of the year was rough for all living in the orphanage. For everyone else, it marked another 365 days without anything changing. For Annie, it was because another New Years' Eve had come and gone without her parents having come to find her. Eleven years ago, exactly, they'd left her on the front stoop of the Hudson Street Home for Girls, a broken silver locket around her neck and a note in her pocket promising they'd return one day. Every New Years after the fact, Annie stayed up as late as she could just so she'd be the first to see her mother and father when they finally did come. How badly she wanted to know what they looked like. Did her mother have hair the same shade as hers? Was her father tall and with broad shoulders, like a lumberjack? How did they act around each other? Did they steal kisses every now and then to remind the other of how strong their love was? Did they sit in parks, whispering to each other about the life they wanted for her?

Of course, she knew these were all fantasies. If her parents were out there, their lives were surely as bleak as hers had always been. The Depression affected every single walk of life—the rich, the poor, the orphaned, the parented. Her mother and father, she assumed, had to leave her behind because they were running out of money. She wasn't all too sure their fate would be different now.

Nevertheless, this New Years, something inside her had cracked. Eleven years now, she'd been waiting. Eleven years filled with restless nights and days where she was starving and cold and worked to the bone. Eleven years of trying to hold onto a dream that seemed to slip further and further from her grasp the more time passed.

So, she'd played a prank on Miss Hannigan. Who could blame her? The woman was horrible to all the orphans, she more than deserved what she got. It'd been a pretty simple trick, anyways—cutting the wires on her radio so she couldn't listen to Helen Trent anymore. She had a spare one, Annie was sure. And if she didn't, oh well.

"I'm fine," the girl told Hannah now, sighing as she pulled back the thin blanket on the cot she shared with the smallest, newest member of the dormitory, Molly. The girl had been at the Home for two years now, and she, Annie, and Hannah had formed a family, of sorts. There was hardly a time one was seen without the other two—except, of course, whenever Annie was being punished. And that was a fairly common occurrence.

"How bad did she hit you?" Hannah scooted forward on her own cot, the one beside Annie and Molly's. "Did she get the paddle this time?"

"Miss Hannigan's never hit me hard, you know that," Annie shook her head, although the stinging on her backside begged to differ. That was the thing, though. Hannah was a worrywart—and Molly, as she grew older, was starting to take after her. Yeah, it wasn't ideal, living with Miss Hannigan, but other kids in other orphanages had it far worse. There were some places that didn't get any food, or the rations were so slim only the youngest kids ever got a solid three meals a day. Some places were even colder than Hudson Street, and they didn't have a laundry service, either. Annie, Hannah, Molly, they were lucky; they had meals, and they had blankets, and they had a place to rest their head at night. A few hits from the paddle were nothing. As though to prove this point, she shrugged a little. "Why are you even still up?" she continued.

"Because you were down there a long time," Hannah shook her head. "I couldn't just sleep, Annie."

"You need to," Annie pulled her knees to her chest. "I'm fine. Really, I promise. And we have to be up early tomorrow, don't forget. We've got that dress order we have to work on, Miss Hannigan was telling me all about it, how we keep putting her behind."

"You're going to rest, too, right?"

Another shrug. "I'm not really that tired."

"Annie—"

"Hannah, seriously, don't worry about me," Annie forced a tight-lipped smile onto her lips this time around, hoping desperately that her friend wouldn't bring up the real reasoning behind her lack of desire to sleep. She was exhausted, of course—all the orphans were. Irregular sleep schedules, be it from little kids in the dormitory having nightmares, or Miss Hannigan coming in and waking them at three, four, five in the morning, none of the children had had a full nights' rest in forever. Annie wasn't sure she'd ever gotten one. But none of that mattered right now, and Hannah and Annie both knew it. It was around this time of year the redhead always got nightmares, the images in her head more brutal as she got older and older. From December to February, she'd sleep maybe two hours a night, and not every night, either. It was a way of protecting herself, and tonight, she wasn't interested in fighting her brain. Plus, if she fell asleep, she couldn't be sure she wouldn't wake up screaming, and that would worry Molly, who was plagued by visions of her own. Moreover, the younger girl dreamt about actual nightmares—namely, the ferry accident that'd taken the lives of her mother and father.

"I can stay up with you," Hannah offered now, scooting closer, and then moving onto Annie and Molly's cot altogether. It wasn't big enough for the three of them, not by any stretch of the means, but that didn't matter to any of the girls. Sighing, Annie wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater. It was a rarity that she allowed herself to cry—and Miss Hannigan wasn't the culprit of it. She just couldn't stop thinking about it: eleven years.

"Do you think they're coming still?" she found herself asking, a question that terrified her beyond belief. For her entire life, the note and the thought of a real home, with real parents, and real happiness, had been the only thing keeping her going. But eleven years was a long time—almost too long.

Hannah forced herself to smile, just as Annie had. "Of course they are," she answered, with a positivity that rivaled the one Annie usually spoke with. "They said so in the note, didn't they?"

"Something could've happened," she glanced down. "Not like parents dying doesn't happen all the time."

"They're going to come for you," Hannah promised, a bit more seriously this time. She reached out and took Annie's hand. "And they're gonna adopt me and Molly, too. And we're gonna be sisters, all of us. We'll have a big treehouse in the backyard, and you'll collect frogs, and I'll bake with our mom. We'll have apple pie, every single night, and Mom'll make pancakes every single morning."

Annie laughed a little. "Wouldn't we get tired?"

"Not of apple pie," Hannah shook her head. "But, in case we ever do, we'll make blueberry, then."

"Thanks, Hannah," Annie leaned forward to hug her. "That sounds really nice."

"They're going to come," she whispered again, squeezing her friend tight. Annie only shut her eyes, hoping once morning came, she could believe that with her whole heart.

…

MARCH 1933

"We should all run away to find them."

Annie let the words slip from her mouth as though they were completely natural, like any other topic to broach during a game of Jacks. Since New Years, everything had seemed so much worse than usual. Had the orphanage always been this drab? Was the crying always that loud? She was beginning to crawl out of her skin, and she couldn't think of what to do to fix it—other than take matters into her own hands, of course.

Hannah dropped the Jacks in her hand, mouth forming into an 'O'. "No way," she said, shaking her head. "Annie, that's crazy, it'll never work."

"Why not?" Annie sat up. "It never works when it's just me, sure, but that's 'cause I'm alone. If we all go, we'll be… limitless. Molly can keep an eye out for us. Hannah, you can carry her on your back. Me, I know every shortcut in the city, so we can hide, no problem, and we'll be fine."

"You know where your mommy and daddy are?" Molly asked, eyes widening and excitement very clearly showing across her face. Hannah shook her head.

"No, she doesn't," she replied, pointedly. "And no way, Annie. That's too dangerous. Miss Hannigan always finds you, she always does."

"When I'm alone," Annie argued again. "Molly, you're a good lookout, right? You can make sure the police don't find us, I'm sure you can."

The little girl tilted her head to the side. "What do I have to do?"

"We'll have a code word," Annie nodded. "If you ever see an officer, you just yell 'duck' to us. But not like we need to duck beneath something, like you've seen a duck. Can you do that?"

"Annie…" A warning tone entered Hannah's voice. Annie glanced over.

"We're never gonna move in with them if we just stay here on our butts," she said. "Molly, come on, practice."

Molly sat up just as tall as Annie, donning a look of mock surprise. "Oh, my gosh, guys!" she pointed across the room. "It's a duck!"

Annie laughed. "That was so good, Molly! Yes!"

"Annie, this is so stupid," Hannah shook her head again. "You're going to get us caught and hurt and in trouble. Am I supposed to carry Molly all day? I can't do that."

"We'll take turns, then," Annie shrugged. "Please, Hannah. Please, please. I wanna find them, I know they're out there still. If we can make it away from the orphanage, I know we can figure out where they are. You can feel it, when it's your mom and dad. Please."

Hannah set her jaw. "How are we even gonna get away?"

"Miss Hannigan is gonna visit her brother this afternoon," Annie smirked a little. "I heard her talking about it with him on the phone. She doesn't wanna, which means she's gonna be in a bad mood when she gets back, which means she's gonna drink more and be sleepier. All we have to do is leave through the front door."

She chewed down on her lip. "That's a really bad idea…"

"Worse than staying here, freezing our butts off and getting nothing from it?"

"I think we should, Hannah," Molly piped up. "What if we do find Annie's mama and daddy? We could be sisters! We could have a home! And toys!"

Hannah stared at the two of them, not at all wanting to give into the plan. However, when it came to her best friends, there were two options: talk them out of their schemes and watch them get sadder and even more dejected as a result, or go along with it and hope and pray she could step in before things got out of hand.

"Fine," she said through gritted teeth. "But this is stupid, and I wanna make sure that's on the record."

Annie just beamed even wider, leaning forward to hug her friend. "We're gonna find them, Hannah," she said. "I really, really think we are."

…

"Well, that worked out great."

Hannah scoffed loudly as soon as the cellar door was shut on her, Annie, and Molly, their escapade out onto the streets of New York lasting all of two hours. As it turned out, Miss Hannigan hadn't been drinking when she'd returned from visiting her brother. In fact, when the police officer brought the three of them back to the orphanage, Annie was dismayed to find two completely full bottles of the matron's bathtub gin in the trash. Not only was she sober, she was more than alert, and she'd noticed the kids leaving as soon as they'd walked through the door. The only reason they hadn't been caught sooner was because Molly did prove to be a pretty good lookout. They'd been able to avoid the police for a good little bit because of her, but the girls had all gotten tired soon after, ducking into an alleyway to try and get some shuteye. That was when their luck had run out, and here they were now, in Miss Hannigan's cellar, a tiny space with barely enough room for one of them, let alone three.

"So, we need to be more careful next time," Annie said, softly. "We can do that. We just have to make sure she's really out of it."

"Next time?" Hannah asked, in disbelief. "What 'next time'? There's not gonna be a next time, Annie!"

"Of course there is!" she shook her head, though she knew Hannah couldn't see her in the darkness. "We haven't found them yet, they're still out there, and we can't just give up."

"You don't even have a plan for finding them, Annie, we're not going to run away again," Hannah scoffed again. "You can feel where they are? That doesn't count for anything. Feelings aren't a map."

"So, we got in trouble for nothing?" Molly asked, softly.

"See?" Annie threw her hands up, something Hannah actually could make out in the dark. "Molly agrees! We came this far, we didn't do that only to come this far. We have to find them. Please, Hannah. Please."

Hannah paused for a moment, and though Annie couldn't very well see the features on her face, she was aware that the silence between them now was pretty tense. She straightened up.

"What?" she asked, softly.

"I don't know if we're gonna find them, Annie," Hannah answered, regret in her voice. "I…. I know you miss them. I know, I miss mine, too. But… they'd have come back by now, right? If they were really out there. They really loved you, at least it seemed that way in the note. They'd have been fighting hard to come back to you. So, if it hasn't happened by now…"

"No," Annie said, screwing her eyes shut. "Don't. Don't say that."

"What if it's true?" Hannah continued. "You're only gonna get us in trouble, over and over again, if you think they're really there still."

"It can't be true," Annie's voice wavered. "I'm not an orphan. I'm not."

"Annie—"

"Shut up!" Annie yelled, before just as suddenly bursting into tears. The air in the cellar froze again, Molly and Hannah both stunned—Molly, most of all. The younger girl wrapped her arms around her friend.

"Don't cry, Annie," she whispered. "It's gonna be okay."

Annie wanted to shove her away. Actually, she wanted to bust out of the cellar, run, hide, never spend time around Hannah or Molly ever again. Instead, she let herself crumble, completely, because it was settling in, how hopeless and miserable her life really was. Eleven years, she'd been clinging to her dream, and eleven years had come and gone without any developments. And she wasn't mad at Hannah, not truly—in fact, she was mad at herself for being so stupid about the whole situation.

Of course they weren't coming back. If they hadn't in eleven years, why would they now?

She had to face the truth—she was an orphan. Just like the rest of the kids.

The one thing setting her apart from all of them, it… well, it'd never actually been a reality, had it?