I Never Planned on This (A newsies fanfiction)

Chapter twenty-one

Jack remembered that night vividly.

He had been seven, already sleeping on the streets, when he heard the sirens. He looked down from the rooftop and saw a massive apartment on fire.

Curious, he climbed down from the rooftop, and began to run towards the building. He came upon the building to see several firemen running into the building, and still others trying to hook up the hose. Once they were able to hook the hose to the fire hydrant, they began to shower the fire. But the fire only grew. One of the firemens' faces fell.

"It's an oil fire!!!" He exclaimed, yanking on a mask. "Get everyone out!!!"

Several firemen ran into the building, and Jack ran up to one of the lampposts to see inside of the building. He climbed the post, which gave him the ability to see up to the fourth floor. He saw a small figure in one of the windows on the second floor. Climbing down from the lamppost, Jack picked up some stones and put them in his pocket, should he need to help someone by breaking a window.

He climbed to the second floor via the fire escape, and as he got closer, he realized that the figure was a small girl, about five years old. She was banging on the window, and looked at Jack, terrified. She pointed to the window lock, which was on the inside. It was halfway up the window, too high for the girl to reach. Looking behind her, he could see that a part of the roof had collapsed in front of the door, preventing escape.

He made a motion to tell the girl to move out of the way, and she nodded. She moved away from the window, and Jack hurled the stone at the window. It collided with the window, sailing through and sending glass everywhere.

Jack crawled through the window, seeing the girl still at the side of the window, cowering in fear and to avoid the smoke in the room. Jack put his hand on the girl's shoulder, and she looked up at him, fear clearly visible in her eyes.

"I'm gonna get ya out of here." Jack said. The girl nodded. "Are ya okay to follow me?" he asked, and she nodded again. "Okay." He said. "There's a fire escape outside of this window. You've gotta be careful to not cut yourself on the glass window debris over the floor and still in the frame. Got it?" she nodded again. "We're gonna go down the fire escape and onto the ground. From there, ya should be safe. We'll get ya to the firemen." She simply nodded again. He took her hand. "Let's go." He said.

"Okay." she agreed timidly, and followed Jack out the broken window and onto the fire escape. He helped her down the ladders as they continued down the levels of the fire escape, until they made it safely on the ground. He led her over to the firemen, now seeing in the light of the fire several burn marks along her arms and hands. Once the firemen noticed them standing there, Jack left the girl to them and ran back into the night. He could see her hazel eyes watching him even when he was sure he couldn't have been seen.

Three years later, after he met Crutchie and some others, he and Crutchie came upon a new girl selling papers. Jack couldn't recognize her at first, but she certainly recognized him. It then dawned on him: the same girl that he had saved from the fire three years prior. She was the one he and the others would know as Henri today.

Race was right. Henri had never told any of the Newsies how her parents died. But Jack didn't need her to tell him. He knew exactly what had happened. He knew that pain that she had experienced in that orphanage, many newsies had known that pain, before they reached eight and were thrown onto the streets. Before they finally found someone who would take them. Before they found their new family.

Before they became a Newsie.