The Experiment || Newsies AU

Chapter 72

The end of Jack's speech was barely heard over the angry shouting from the Newsies.

He noticed Pulitzer's advisor coming up towards him with what he presumed was money.

He was right.

When the rest of the Newsies realised where, or who, he was walking towards, their anger only grew.

When he reached Jack he handed, or quite rudely shoved, the money to Jack who pushed him.

Jack turned around expecting everyone to just be plain old angry.

He got what he expected from some of them.

Not to name names but Spot was fuming and looked like he wanted to rip Jack's head from his shoulders.

He probably would have if it wasn't for Race who was calming him down, who Spot was also trying to calm down at the same time.

Race looked like he was going to cry, whether it be from anger or sadness nobody could tell, not even Race.

He was feeling too many feelings to be bothered to figure it out.

Specs and Elmer were holding back Albert and Finch who were about ready to soak Jack into the next decade.

Mike and Ike and Katherine and Sarah were in tight hugs in their respective pairs whispering words of comfort to the other.

Romeo was standing beside his boyfriend trying to process everything that had just happened.

JoJo and Buttons were in a similar situation to Romeo but they were farther along the train of processing it all.

They had started to accept that maybe it was all hopeless and that Jack was never actually on their side.

Blink and Mush were nowhere to be seen, Jack guessed that they had left once the speech was over.

Multiple people did, Ms. Medda left once she could tell that Jack wasn't speaking his own words.

She couldn't bear to listen to Pulitzer's words coming out of the boy's mouth.

The Newsies were essentially going through all of the stages of grief at the same time.

The worst was when Jack looked at Crutchie and Davey, he couldn't bring himself to look at either of them.

Davey had his arm around Crutchie's shoulders, giving him a half-hug.

Both of them had tears threatening to fall.

Unlike Race theirs were only from sadness, they didn't have the willpower in them to be angry.

They knew that Jack wasn't the one who wrote the speech but it still hurt them that he didn't at least try to change it a bit or do something to stop him.

Jack thought he had had enough heartbreak for his entire in the previous ten minutes.

But when Davey and Crutchie walked away without so much as sparing him a glance back it broke his heart into another  million pieces.

He knew he deserved it entirely but he still couldn't help it when he felt the back of his eyes burning with tears.

He went to go after them but the glares he got from the rest of the Newsies put him to a dead stop.

He knew it would be pointless to try since they'd just block him no matter how hard he tried so he just turned and left, walking in the direction of Pulitzer's office.

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