Time Truly Divides || Newsies Time Travel AU

Prologue

TW: Fighting, blood, injuries, and mentions of death.

Francis 'Cowboy' Sullivan did not like the Delancey brothers. Especially when they kept tormenting his boys, specifically the younger boys.

"What the hell?" he shouted as he pushed Oscar, the younger of the brothers, away from Chalk. "What'd he ever do to you?"

"He didn't pay for his papes and we can't have that, can we Oscar?" Morris sneered at him.

"No, we can't have that, Morris."

"Listen, fellas. I'm sure we can work something out," Francis tried to bargain. "He's just a kid. If you got a problem with him, you can deal with me."

"Fine, Cowboy," Morris sneered, swinging a punch at Francis.

"Chalk," Francis shouted, grabbing the younger boy by his arm and running out of the alleyway they were in. "Let's go."

Chalk ran with Francis but he struggled to keep up. Eventually, Francis scooped Chalk up into his arms and took off sprinting.

They reached the Lodging House after five minutes of running. Francis found himself much more breathless than Chalk. One of the struggles of carrying a child while running full speed.

"Go get ready for bed," Francis instructed. "I'll get someone to look at those cuts, buddy."

Chalk ran up the stairs as Francis dropped himself onto a couch with a deep sigh. Life never seemed to be simple for him, it always had to become crazy when just as things were starting to relax.

"Hey, Vine, I need you to check on Chalk," Francis said. "Delancey brothers were at him."

"No problem, Cowboy," Vine answered. "You gonna get the rest of the boys up to their bunks?"

"Yeah." Francis stood up. "I'll get them up there."

Rounding up the younger kids and getting them all to sleep was a struggle for Francis. Despite there only being three of the younger Newsies that still needed to be put to bed, it took him half an hour to get them to settle down.

By the time they were actually asleep and not just pretending to sleep, it had been another half hour and Francis too wanted to go asleep.

Unfortunately, he couldn't sleep but instead had to go out to deal with the Delancey brothers. Usually the brothers spent their evenings hanging around the Bowery, so Francis had an easy time tracking them down.

"Oscar. Morris," he shouted, gaining the brothers' attention.

"Cowboy, what do you want?"

"I want my boys to be able to sell without getting their pay taken."

"That ain't our problem," Morris said with a shrug.

"Like hell it ain't your problem. You keep taking their pay."

"It teaches them a life lesson," Oscar said, moving so he was standing on the opposite side of Francis to where Morris was.

"Hey, Morris. I think we oughta teach Cowboy here a lesson."

"Yeah, Oscar. He needs to learn that he can't just ask us for money."

Francis looked between the two brothers before he rolled his eyes.

"I dunno if you are deaf but I didn't ask you for money," he argued. "I just want you to stop stealing money from little kids."

"We didn't steal nothing from no one."

"Sure and I'm the Queen of England," Francis scoffed.

"That explains why you're such a sissy, then." Oscar nudged Morris in the side, who slipped his hand into his pocket.

Francis noticed what was happening and moved his hands up in surrender.

"Listen, fellas, we don't gotta do nothing we'll regret. Let's just talk this out."

"It's too late to talk, Sullivan. You said all we needed to know."

A panic started to overcome Francis, not that he'd ever admit that. And pretending to be tough was a lot easier than facing his feelings.

Oscar lunged at Francis and he had just a few seconds to move out of the way before he got caught by Oscar. Unfortunately, he moved right into a flying fist from Morris.

"Come on," Francis tried bargaining as he stumbled away from the brothers. "We don't gotta do this."

"But we do."

After spending a while trying to avoid hits aimed at him, Francis decided to try and stop it himself.

As Oscar came barrelling at him again, Francis let him run forward, throwing a punch at the last moment. It didn't quite work to plan as instead of stopping the confrontation, it just made it a lot worse.

"Oscar." Morris grabbed Oscar, who was doubled over, and forced him to stand upright. "I say we give him hell."

Oscar grinned and nodded. Not one to walk away from a fight, Francis prepared to defend himself against the brothers.

And he did, for a short time, until he got hit in the head hard by Morris' brass knuckles.

The brothers took advantage of Francis' moment of being stunned and came onto him with a flurry of punches, kicks and hits with anything they found lying around near them.

Try as he might, Francis couldn't fight back. He couldn't even move to try and curl up, the pain was just far too much.

A bright white light came over him as his eyes slipped shut and every came became calm and more painful than ever at once.

When the light disappeared, Francis was met by a lady's face above him.

"Sweetie, are you okay?" the lady asked with a tone of someone who was panicking but trying to keep face for someone else.

"Am I dead?" Francis asked before promptly passing out.

~~~
915 words