DaSilva's Sister (Morris Delancey x Reader)

Chapter 19

18 July 1899

"Y/N!"
I turned around to face Les who was calling me.

"Hey Les, whas goin' on?"
"Davey wants to talk to you."
I froze. "Oh okay."

"Well? Are you gonna talk to him or what?"
I looked at his hopeful face and now felt substantially guilty for disappointing the young child.

"Alright then." With that he wasted no time in dragging me over to his brother.

"Y/N? Les?"

Les promptly ran away

"Your brother said ya wanted ta talk," I started with a blank expression.
"I- I never told him that," he nervously replied.
"Okay see ya then," I said and began walking away from him.

"Wait!" he stopped me, grabbing my wrist, "I do still want to talk," he sighed, "Look, I'm sorry if I came on too strong. I do still have feelings for you but you've moved on and I respect that."

"I'm sorry I can't give ya what ya want."
"You don't have anything to be sorry about, Y/N. It's like you said, some things are just done and that's it."

"N/N, Davey, get a load'a this!" I heard a very distraught voice calling us.
I looked to where a bunch of newsies were crowded and then I saw it.

It felt as though the air had been knocked out of my lungs.
'New newsie price, 60c per hundred'

"I'm gonna throw up," I heard Jack saying under his breath.
He put on a brave face, reasoning this all as a farce as though he was convincing himself too.

He took out fifty and placed it on the counter asking for a hundred papers, a look on his face daring Wiesel to charge him ten more. But alas, "A hundred will cost you sixty."

No no no this can't be happening.

I looked at the Delancey brothers, silently asking them if they knew of this before. Ultimately it makes no difference, what Pulitzer wants he gets. It's his damn world.

They offered me a sympathetic look in consolation and I realised just how real this was. I was completely zoned out of the huddle just lost in trying to grasp what just happened.

It was when I heard everyone yell "Strike!" that I knew something big was beginning.

"You heard the voice of the membership. The Newsies of Lower Manhattan are now officially on strike. What next?"

Wow this is really happening.

Davey did not look all too convinced, understandably so having just begun his working career.

Even I wasn't so sure. What are the odds we do enough to get the big bads of The World to listen to a bunch of nobodies like us?

"Yeah? And who tells Pulitzer? Davey?" Jack was really insistent.
Davey eventually gave in with, "I guess you do, Mr. President."

So that's what we are now, a union. Ready to take on someone like Pulitzer. Despite any doubt, it was apparent that there was a different energy in the air.

Somehow with every odd stacked against us, I believed in us.

So when Davey shouted, "We've got a union!" I was right alongside my fellow newsies cheering on the war.

"Pulitzer and Hearst they think we're nothin', are we nothin'?" Jack called on us.
"No!" we shouted as one.
"They need to understand that we are not enslaved to them, we are free agents!" Davey added.

Something big was indeed beginning. It was felt to the tune of a hundred voices singing that The World will know.

As Jack replaced that message of the price raise with the word 'STRIKE', a statement was made, Pulitzer may own The World but he don't own us.