Disclaimer: I do not own "Newsies" or any of the genius associated to them. Disney owns them, no infringement intended. I am not making money from this in any way, I claim no rights to the characters mentioned from the movie, but I do claim the plot and the ideas surrounding this story. Don't steal, don't sue, and I'm sure we will all be grand friends. Text in italics belong to W.B Yeats or to James Barrie.

A/N: So I thought that I had posted this many moons ago, but apparently I hadn't. Whoops. My bad. So about a year or so later - here is the last chapter. Talk about embarrassing.

Warning: PG (Angst)

xv.)
their lives were like the shoes on their feet
(sketchers v. doc martins)
over used&under appreciated
(worn thin/out)
& they never could get them quite far enough
(it wasn't in their sole)

It's raining and the world is mud and ash beneath them (the weather reflected his mood). The road they travel is long (however not nearly as long as it was getting there). They don't have time to play on the way back (this puts him in a foul mood indeed) and clouds follow them the whole way. The slap of the wipers across the windshield keep time (the car clock never has worked) and she counts every beat (the changing tempo makes it anything but accurate but it keeps her occupied).

"Boy, why are you crying?"

"I'm not crying."

He is (but part of his charm is his ability to completely ignore any sort of truth or reality). She blocks out his emotion with an attempt at imagination of a brighter future but is defeated by a frightening premonition (how can she possibly find her way home when she doesn't remember where home is?). Boy Vagabond is a good boy who keeps his promises (but only if he remembers them) and she expects him to keep this one.

She still doesn't know where they are, where they have been, or which of her experiences with this boy were real and which ones were his smoke filled words clouding her mind.

All she knows is that she feels older.

Stars twinkle brightly in the sky above them but the clouds keep her from being able to see them (she wonders if he will be able to find their way back to the beginning if he can't see the stars that got them there in the first place).

"What know the pilots of the stars of tears?" she whispers to herself and is shocked by those words for they aren't hers (his infection oozes from her like puss from a wound). Oh she has forgotten what it is to fly.

There are no dark mysterious beauties with lillies in their hair and no men who look like pirates to chase after them anymore. There are no stops at mysterious ports or chasing after mermaids in dark lagoons. There is just a lost boy and his mother (she has grown too old to take care of him but she'll never be too old to care for him). Oh how she longs for another game of make-believe but she can't remember how.

It is almost daybreak when something that should be familiar peers over the horizon (but it isn't). The city-scape rises and seems to grow with every passing moment and her heart shrinks with fear with every inch it grows (somehow she knows this is the end). By the time they make it to their destination the sun is just beginning to creep up on them - casting strange shadows and showing the world as it truly was. It has been months since she has last seen exactly how clear things can be when put in the light (it will be life times before she forgets what is was to live with him in the night).

They pull into a street that should be familiar but it isn't (talk about starting over). The city-that-never-sleeps is quiet for now though it won't be for much longer. He double parks and gets out of the car (she still doesn't know how he came to own it and probably never will) she follows suit. When he approaches her it is as though it is for the first time (there is a flicker of something familiar in the plans that hide behind his eyes). There was a cockiness in his swagger and a smirk in his grin that frustrates and endears to no end (it was almost as if just by being back to the beginning he expects her to start this whole charade over again). Oh and how she wants to fly away with him (who wants to grow up anyway?).

"What is my name?" it is all she knows to ask.

"I saw her glitter and gleam,
And stood in my sorrow apart,
And said: 'she has fooled me enough,'
And thought she had no heart." She never understood him better than when he spoke in someone else's words but still was no wiser for his reply.

"What is my name?" She asks once more.

"Why should the heart take fright?
What sets it beating so?
The bitter sweetness of the night
Has made it but a lonely thing." Once again he replies in a verse which gives her everything but the answer she craves.

"What is my name?" At one point she would have been afraid to ask again, but not here, not now.

"Sarah." It is soft and simple (and you can hear the disgust and defeat in his tone). Oh how he hates that name.

There is no great revelation with his admittance (she had rather hoped there would be). Instead she simply repeats the name that feels so foreign to her lips (and now she knows there is no going back. Now she is just a grown up with a name).

"You won't forget me, will you?" she asks as he turns to walk away.

"Heart-smitten with emotion I sink down,
My heart recovering with covered eyes;
Wherever I had looked I had looked upon
My permanent or impermanent images."

These were his last words to her though they were not his last words (nor was she the last to try to break him of his nasty habits). He hadn't made it half a day away from her before he'd forgotten everything he ever knew about her (he'd never bothered to write about her in his journals). Boy Vagabond was free (though he never could know the pleasure of continued affection or stability) and would fill who ever would listen with his verbal infringement (he is Now she was Then).

She never forgot him.

And so it will go one, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.

A/N: The End. Mucho love to all my readers.