Chapter 22: Earning Her Keep

A/N: Wow. I had an awesomely happy day and then I had to come home and write this little chapter. So, yeah warning you all, it's sad. Short. But sad.

Warning: Contains swearing, and being ashamed.

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Nancy stared at her reflection in the cracked mirror before her, and it was as though she was no longer seeing herself. She touched her face, raking her fingers over her made up cheeks and terrifyingly red lips. She ran a hand through her hair, the usually crazy curls tamed and looking somewhat presentable. Nancy let her hands drift across her bare neck line and shoulders, the dress was showing off a generous amount of cleavage besides. Her fingertips played at the place where her corset met her skirt, and her eyes wondered to where her ankles were showing beneath the skirt itself. Nancy's dress was red, simple, with a bit of white lace at the collar. It was nothing spectacular, but Clara was right about one thing, it certainly fit her.

"Nance!" Nancy turned around to see Clara in the door waving at her. "Come on, there are customers downstairs." A knot curled dangerously in Nancy's stomach as she took a few nervous steps forward. She wanted to cry, she wanted to scream, she wanted to run as far away as possible. But she couldn't. She had to go downstairs and do this, had to do it for Dodger, the boys, Fagin, life in the gang. If she wanted life to go on the way it had been, she had to do this. And so with silent tears unshed in her lifeless eyes, Nancy stepped out the door with Clara, and headed for her first night on the job.

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Nancy re-entered the flat just as dawn was breaking over the horizon. Her bare shoulders had a few bruises on them, because as she had suspected, the customers were not nice at all. Her hair was no longer neat but dis-shelved and knotted in all sorts of places. So many hands had run through it last night, she couldn't even remember faces anymore. It had all been one great blob of terror, pain, and sorrow. Nancy had caught look of her face in a window while hurrying across town, ignoring the way early risers sneered at her, and she knew that the make up was still on. So heavy that she couldn't even recognize her face anymore. But in the purple skirt she wore beneath her red dress, there was money. Her keep, she had earned her keep.

"Nancy!" Dodger cried when Nancy walked back in. Instantly his smile melted as he took in the sight of her, and Nancy could hear the child's breath catch in his throat. She did not pretend to smile, and her acts of cheeriness were long gone. The young woman had nothing left in her, she felt empty, broken, and in no mood to reassure those she held so dear. "Nance?" he asked. His voice was quiet, and she knew how utterly awful she must've looked. She didn't turn her face towards him as she made but one soft-spoken plea.

"Just....don't look at me Dodge," she begged. She couldn't stand that he was seeing her like this, as this. He shook his head and scurried ahead of her up the stairs, shooting all the boys a look of warning. Fagin's head pulled up from his breakfast as she came to the top of the stairs, and suddenly he wasn't hungry anymore. He had tried to imagine...tried to prepare for how she would look coming back in. And his mind had played horrid awful images for him. Images that had turned his stomach inside out and made him sick. He had imagined things that made him want to break down crying. The way he had pictured her looking had sent chills down his spine and made his head throb with pity.

And she looked worse. So much worse then his cunning old mind could have ever imagined.

Nancy would not lift her eyes to meet the stares stuck on her now. Not the boys her age, gawking openly, not Dodge who looked sad enough for her to cry, and certainly not James who was looking at her as if he might just pay for her services. She kept her eyes locked on the floor until she had crossed to be standing in front of Fagin, and in the silence she looked up at him with eyes that were without anything but the weight of the life she now had to lead. Slowly, never breaking the eye contact, she reached into her pocket and distributed the wad of cash on the table.

"There. Is. Your. Damn. Keep. Fagin," she hissed. And then, without taking a look at any of them she went to lay down in her bed, not speaking another word.