~Dream Girl~

"… I fall asleep whispering "I am safer alone I am safer alone I am safer alone I am safer alone" forgive me, all you have to do is frown and I become a suitcase. Forgive me, I leave first and call that a choice." – James, Clementine Von Radics

Jack Kelly's life, like everyone's, began with a woman. In his case, Elizabeth Sullivan. A fine lady, his mother worked hard, kept a roof over his head, and food in his stomach. His parent's marriage was never based on love; his father was a drunken philanderer-often at Irving Hall-and the only moral thing the man ever did was make an honest woman out of Elizabeth. He taught Jack how to lie smoothly and how to not starve, but most importantly he taught Jack how to leave. James Sullivan, of course, didn't leave by choice. He got caught stealing, sent to the state penitentiary. But, when he was finally released, he stayed gone.

Jack's mother also taught him how to leave, the permanence of her death leaving a hole in his chest for many years as he used his street smarts to maneuver through the city, never quite grasping the concept of a family after only knowing the brokenness of his own. He didn't know what made a family, didn't understand why everyone wanted it or needed it, only knew that he didn't have it.

He tried to compensate, especially when he went to live at the Duane street Lodging House. The years spent with newsboys in similar situations gave him a taste of what a real family might be; the camaraderie and loyalty, the laughter and fighting. It was enough to get him through the tough, adolescent years. That, and the pamphlet in his pocket he'd found one day while walking home from selling. Santa Fe was a bright, hopeful beacon that he focused on when his stomach was empty and when the winter blew through his worn jacket. He thought of the warmth of Santa Fe, the green grass that stretched for miles, and the sky so big and blue.

But, then he met David.

David Jacobs was a character that was unlike anyone Jack had ever known and the exact opposite of who he was. Steady and level-headed, befriending him had never been the plan. His offer to sell with them had begun as a ploy to use Les to push more papes, but in the end, he ended up caring for the entire Jacobs' family more than he'd ever cared about himself. His focus, for a time, left Santa Fe.

And with David's friendship came the blossoming of his first real relationship with his sister Sarah. He was drawn to her because of her thick eyelashes, and her sweet nature. It helped, too, that he loved her family and adored being around them. The whole package, turning his life around as the strike drove their spirits high, the ensuing win only lifting Jack higher than he'd ever been.

He belonged somewhere. He fit. This was his family.

Except, it wasn't.

He knew it once the fall came, once the leaves fell and the holidays that everyone celebrated with family came around and he was suddenly worse off than he'd ever been. Instead of feeling included, he felt as though he was an outsider looking in. Yearning for what they had, but unable to grasp at it. Sarah was still sweet, but their summer romance began to die with the leaves and was soon buried in the cold snow of winter. Falling out of love with Sarah Jacobs happened so gradually, that Jack didn't even consciously know it was happening until too late. He wanted to see her less and less, avoided spending alone time with her, and it didn't help that David quit the newsboy business to finish school and start his apprenticeship at the Chelsea Hotel. He certainly didn't know how to tell her, how to watch her face as he broke things off and broke her heart.

He was losing his first love and his best friend in the matter of months, as well as a family that meant so much to him. It only brought home how temporary things were for Jack. He began to realize why his father left without ever a word. It was easier to disappear than confront them all and watch as he hurt them.

So, he took a page out of his father's book and went the coward's way out. But, before he could pull completely out of the family's life, he met Lily. The whirlwind of his feelings, the suddenness of their love, was a mere blink of an eye in the grand scheme of his life. He knew it was wrong of him to pursue another before breaking things off with Sarah, but Jack was young and selfish and only wanted to chase after things that made him feel alive. And when everything settled, the cheating, the fight, the rejection, Jack Kelly found himself watching New York shrink away from the window of a passenger train. Chicago was where his ticket would take him, but he was planning to go all the way to Santa Fe.

He had done his parents proud, leaving.

But, he wasn't his father. He didn't stay gone. Five years later, still in the Chicago because it reminded him too much of New York, and scared to head out West, Lily's mother sent him the letter with the truth-that he had a child that was soon to be an orphan in an unforgiving city, and Jack knew he had to get back. Knew it was time to grow up and do the right thing, because…because that was his family. The daughter he didn't know, that didn't know him, deserved more than to be another forgotten child in those cramped, dirty orphanages. She didn't deserve to be abandoned by all the people who loved her-by choice or by sickness.

Except he was in a bad place, unemployed, soon to be evicted, and broke.

It was his landlord's daughter who saved him. Sophie Thomas reached out to Racetrack to come collect Jack. It seemed his life would be defined by the women in it; his mother who died when he was young, Sarah his first love, Lily his first rejection, Sophie his savior, and Hazel…his family.

"Daddy?" Hazel's voice was soft in the dark apartment but it brought him out of his inner musings, and he shut the small journal in his hands and tucked it into his pocket along with the small pencil and turned to meet her steady gaze, her eyes the same ones he saw in the mirror. It was late, she had been put to bed an hour or so ago, but there she was awake and standing in the door of her bedroom in her nightgown.

"Yeah, Haz?" He had been contemplating the coat hooks on the wall, the dichotomy of his cowboy hat hanging next to her much smaller pink one, his large boots beside her tiny shoes below. This strange new life they had built together in the almost two years they lived here.

"I can't sleep." She crawled into his lap as she said the words, but yawned when she was settled and she snuggled against him like a housecat seeking attention.

He chuckled, wrapping his arms around her, "Is it cuz I'm not in there snoring?" When she looked up at him with that hero-worshiping gaze he'd only ever seen from Les, he felt like he was twenty feet tall and still leading the newsboys strike. A love for her stronger than anything he'd ever known cut through his entire being when he looked at her small face, the subtle similarities of his own features reflected at him paired pleasingly with Lily's. He liked the reminders of her, despite how things had ended between them.

When he left New York, he was sure that Lily was the closest to love he'd ever gotten. But, upon his return and through the stories of his friends as they each found their mates in life…he wasn't so sure anymore. Lily hadn't wanted to go with him, hadn't believed what they had was worth fighting for. How could that be love if you were unable to trust in your feelings for someone else? And a part of him was still resentful to her memory because she had never once written him to tell him about Hazel.

She had never planned to reveal his kid to him. If her and her mother's death hadn't forced Hazel to be brought into an orphanage, if her mother hadn't contacted Crutchy for his address and reached out to Jack, he would still be unaware that he had fathered a child.

Hazel's soft snores pulled him into reality once more and he squeezed her gently, thankful that things had worked out. If Lily had told him about her right after he left, or even a year after being in Chicago, he wasn't sure his younger self would have come back, anyway. It took years of making mistake after mistake in Chicago for him to grow up, the letter that reached him, that explained that everyone else had left Hazel for the afterlife, hit home. He, too, had been left by everyone.

What if…what if he stayed for someone?

The shift, the growth, the change of Jack Kelly didn't happen overnight. It happened with each second spent with Hazel, as her moods and personality intertwined with his own, their daily living situation becoming habit over the hours, days, months. Love was not one event that struck a chord and left you changed, it was becoming a habit of each other as everyday was shared and lived together. Hazel would never know her father as someone who left, someone whose presence was temporary.

There was no leaving here. Not anymore.

Slowly, he got up from the chair and carried her back into their room. He settled her into her bed and she made soft, unintelligible murmurs as she cuddled up to the brown teddy bear that was his first gift to her. He smiled down at her, his little girl, and was once again stunned by that overwhelming surge of love.

Yawning, he moved over to his cot and set about getting out of his work clothes and into his long johns. It was early October and already a slight draft chilled the streets of New York, winding through the apartment buildings. Last winter, he had gotten through thanks to Races' earnings, but this winter would be harder. It was already hard enough given that this apartment was nicer than a tenement house and Race easily afforded it with what he made at the Benjamin.

Jack, however, burned that bridge a long time ago. Now, he had to afford a nice apartment on whatever money he made at the factory and doing odd jobs for anyone who would pay him.

Or not pay him. He had agreed to help Racetrack, for free, with the incoming ballet troupe tomorrow morning and he really should have already been asleep. But, while he felt exhaustion from working long hours and six days a week, his brain just wouldn't shut off.

As much as he loved this new, happy life with Hazel, he felt a strange ache of something missing, just out of reach. He just didn't know what it was.

Hazel murmured in her sleep, something about a dog and 'bearbear', her name for the teddy bear. She rolled over and her soft snores filled the silence and he smiled at the familiarity. Vaguely, it reminded him of the bunkroom at the Lodging House, where all the boys shifted in their sleep and talked or snored through the night.

You were never alone there. He missed that when he was in Chicago.

But, he was back in the city that, much like Hazel, had snuck up on him. Taking comfort, he rolled over and felt his brain quiet down enough to let him fall asleep.

"I want to be remembered as the girl who always smiles even when her heart is broken, and the one that could always brighten your day even if she couldn't brighten her own."

― Bette Midler

October 13th, 1907

Natalia stepped off the ship, inhaling the stench of New York City, but instead of bitching about it, like Sergei was doing, she treasured it. She could feel the smile pull at her lips as she absorbed the fast, kinetic energy that pulsed from the city as though it were alive. She loved cities. Paris had been breathtaking, London as well.

But, New York felt different. More promising, more welcoming than any city she had ever stepped foot in. It was younger than the previous cities she had been in and she could feel it. Could feel its life force dance all around her and she wanted to dance with it. Nina had grown up in the countryside, but Natalia…she was raised in the center of Saint Petersburg, had been lulled to sleep from the cradle with the hollering and noises of people in compact spaces. The silence of the ocean and of the ship had not comforted her.

Not like living here would. She thrived on the energy of so many people living just moments from each other. She was so excited, in fact, that she was already pushing through the crowd to make it to one of the carriages lined up.

"Can I load your luggage, miss?" A voice to her right gave her pause and she stopped to look at the short, Italian man in the navy and white uniform. He held out his hand to take her luggage and she passed him a speculative look. "I work for the Benjamin Hotel." He clarified, holding his hands up as though surrendering under her scrutiny.

Biting her lip, she shrugged as she saw a few others wearing similar uniforms and loading luggage. She handed the trunk over and folded her arms as she watched him load it onto a carriage not far from where she stood. Once it was secure, she thanked him and watched as he ran off to speak to another worker but she was distracted by Nikolai as he stepped up beside her.

"Want to share a carriage?" He murmured to her in Russian, his eyes, one blue with a slight touch of brown, the other brown with a little touch of blue, casting back and forth with such mistrust she thought they were about to be attacked. That was just how Nikolai Kostova was, though. A very private, reclusive person who rarely talked to anyone in the company except for her.

Between him and Nina, she figured she just had the habit of attracting the lone wolfs of the ballet company. "Let me find Nina." She told him, ignoring his eye roll. Nina was not his favorite person, but she was Natalia's best friend and he had learned a long time ago that if he wanted to be her friend he had to at least tolerate Nina. Nikolai got into the carriage just as she spotted the brunette talking to the same man who had loaded her trunk.

"Nina! Over here!" She called and waved to her.

"Coming!" Nina called, leaving the man to head Natalia's way. When she reached the carriage, Natalia climbed in and then watched as her tall friend followed, albeit a lot more gracefully.

Although ballerinas of the short, compact variety were all the rage in Russia the last few decades, Nina had the height and litheness of the ballerinas from the romantic period. It made her stand out in the company, only Nikolai and Sergei were taller than her, and she grew up getting relentlessly teased by everyone but Natalia. Bullying was not something Natalia tolerated, so standing up for Nina had earned her the spot of best friend at a young age. But, Natalia would be lying if she said she never envied her friend, despite the fact that Nina did not often inspire loyalty in others.

Nina drew heads wherever she went, both men and women, and she wore her confidence like an armor. Not to mention she teased men and left them staring after her as though they'd just encountered a mythical creature; a siren calling men to their deaths. Nina controlled them like puppets and when they got to close, she cut their strings.

Natalia sighed as she watched Nina look out the window of the carriage, her blue eyes seemingly searching for someone. Turning to look out her own window, she caught a brief glimpse of a tall man, his pants five inches too short, loading a trunk on another carriage as a group of the younger ballerinas twittered nearby, pointing and whispering. He looked up as her carriage passed by and for the briefest moment, their eyes met. Natalia sighed wistfully as she took in his handsome face, the scar that cut down one cheek making him look thrilling and dangerous, but those brown eyes a warm contradiction.

It was a split second, their shared glance, but she felt a thrill of excitement. If this stranger was any indication of her time in New York City, she was already thrilled to dive in.

A/N: Credit for amazing summary goes to WordyAF. I guess we're just good at writing each other's summaries! Anyway, since Jack's story is happening at the same time as David's, I found myself writing their scenes and I couldn't wait to upload it. So, review and let me know what ya think!

Truly,

Joker is Poker with a J~