Throughout It All

Epilogue ~ Here We Are

Ohhhh I am so not ready for this.

Yet I am also grinning thinking about writing this.

Enjoy! :)

-------------------------------------

The newsies all gather in the huge dining hall. All of them. Because wherever they are now, people can do things like that. Thousands of newsies can gather in one dining hall around one table. This is the afterlife after all. Reality is what they all want it to be.

And recently, what they've been wanting is for Christmas dinner to happen more often than just once a year.

But what is a year? Some of them have been in this strange, twisted version of reality longer than others, and yet they have no concept of time whatsoever. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia--all those terms have lost meaning. There's here and now, and what they want here and now; and possibly additionally what they want after this.

Right now, the pies are being served. Now that the pies can serve themselves by showing up for whoever wants one and there aren't any adults around, they shamelessly all eat their pies before turkey even appears on the table. Gleefully, they dig in.

In the real world, time has probably passed. They don't know how long. They just know that it's long enough that all the newsies of 1899 are no longer in the land of the living. They're here now, young again, just like they once were. Outside of this lodging house is ... nothing. They can make it whatever they want; and each person can see whatever they want. Maybe they want to walk around New York. Or visit some far off place. Some of them have relatives or friends from their adult lives that they want to see again; and they are free to go visit them as whatever age they want. And yet all are drawn back to the lodging house.

"I don't need any other food besides pie," Kid Blink declares. "This pumpkin pie is the best I've ever had!"

Mush looks at him lovingly. "I agree."

"I actually like the turkey," David throws in his opinion as he sets his plate of pie aside to eat turkey--he's one of the only ones with turkey in front of him.

"Yeah, well, not everyone likes the food that's healthy for them like you do," Jack teases him, nudging his shoulder.

"Y'know which food I like best?" Racetrack, sitting beside Kid Blink, contributes to the conversation.

"Yes, Race, I think we all know what you're about to say," Spot chuckles, right as Race says "Bread," which makes a plate of freshly baked bread appear right before him.

"Can we have some of that?" Jack asks him, reaching for some bread.

Race slaps his hand. "Get your own plate!"

"Come on, Race," Crutchy chides him. "I don't care if we can make food appear at our own will. That doesn't mean that we can't share food."

Race sighs. "Fine." Yet they discover as soon as someone takes a piece of bread off the plate, a new one takes its place, meaning that the plate will never empty of bread. That's one of Race's favorite tricks here.

Someone new enters the room, a little nervously, a little late to the feast.

Mush waves him over brightly. "Over here, Dave!"

Dave brightens when he sees them.

Jack smiles broadly when he sees him. "We saved you a spot!"

"Heh, a spot," Race snickers.