Newsies Oneshots 2.0

The Future-Jack and Crutchie

"Jack?"

Crutchie sat up from his makeshift bed on the rooftop, rubbing his eyes of sleep. He knows he should've just gone back to sleep like most nights, but most nights Jack wasn't standing at the edge of the rooftop, looking down at the quiet streets of New York. "Jack? Why are you awake? We ain't gotta sell 'til a few more hours, go back to sleep."

"First time I heard you say that", Jack chuckled, and Crutchie realized he wasn't going to go down so easy. "But I ain't tired, Crutch. I...I got a lot on my mind."

"About your birthday?" Crutchie groaned as he began making his way to his best friend, using pure intuition to guide himself. His leg had been bothering him earlier, and he hoped that his gut feeling was enough to keep him from falling on it. He smiled when he grabbed Jack's hand, eventually getting him to the rail. "It'll go great, Jack. We got everything planned out."

"No, it..." Jack chuckled humorously, and Crutchie furrowed his brows. Jack was always excited about his birthdays in the past, always telling everyone about it to increase sales, and grinning the whole day like a kid in a toy store. But recently, he hasn't even wanted to discuss it, or celebrate it. "I just- I don't know."

"What are you worried about?" Crutchie placed a hand on Jack's back, attempting to help the older breathe a little. "What's going on?"

Jack licked his lips, staring at the stars reminiscently. Crutchie knew he was always infatuated with the stars, and there were nights when he, Jack, and Race would stay up all night talking about them. But they were just sleeping, and Race wasn't awake enough to think about his own name, much less the stars. But Jack seemed to be more than happy to watch, like his brain wasn't getting the memo. "You okay?"

"Spike was 18."

Crutchie didn't know what to say to that. He didn't know how to tell Jack that Spike was an accident, and that it was nothing to worry about. He didn't know how to tell him any of this because he was trying to tell himself, and it wasn't working. "Yeah. Yeah, he was."

Spike was the best leader the boys could ask for, even if he wasn't the head of the newsies. He was more in Race's position as a second, and they were quite similar: blonde hair, a personality that could take up the room, and so good with kids, everyone wanted Spike as a brother. Jack wanted him as a brother.

And as his brother, Jack wanted to protect him from the world, and Spike did Jack. For a while, it worked—Jack learned the ways of the newsies faster than anyone in working-kid-history, and Spike learned from Jack the same way through art and music. When Jack found Medda for the first time, the first person she met was Spike. They were family.

He taught Jack everything he knew about being a leader when the others were too busy, he gave Jack advice about his confusing feelings, he made Jack when no one could; they were close. Some of the littles at the time—Race, Albert, even Crutchie—thought the both of them were actual brothers, that they came to the Lodging House together to sell papers. After a while, Jack and Spike stopped correcting them about and just let it be true.

Which is why when Jack found Spike lying in an alley, beaten bloody and barely recognizable, it hurt so much. Because he couldn't deny it, not at fourteen, and not at seventeen-and-a-half. He could never tell anyone that Spike ran away before his time was up, that he got tired of the newsie life and promised to visit because Jack was there. He knew there wouldn't be any visits, he knew Spike never ran away, and he knew he was never coming back.

Jack didn't even show up to his funeral, and he would forever regret that. Crutchie did go, and he can't say how much it hurt to see their leader burn Spike's newspaper rather than Jack, the kid's best friend and brother. He knew Jack would never forgive himself for that, but he also knew Jack would never cleanse himself of his final image of Spike, and that was enough guilt to last him his life.