Disclaimer: The characters in this story are the property of Disney and are only used for fan related purposes.

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Home

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They say you can never go home again. No one knows that better than Mush Meyers.

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His memories don't stretch back so far; in fact, he doesn't really remember anything before he was five years old. He was still in the orphanage then, a smiling, happy boy with lightly colored skin, coarse dark curls and the simple name of Gabriel—like the angel, he was told once by the matron.

He didn't know how he came to be in the small, crowded but—to him, at least—seemingly cozy orphanage. It was as if one morning he woke up in the cramped room, another ward for the tired and overworked matron to tend to. Alone and unafraid, he accepted the orphanage as home, oblivious that any other had—or could have—existed. The Orphan Asylum for Abandoned Children just outside of the Mulberry Bend was a tiny place full of countless children just like him—even if most of them didn't look like him—and he remembered being happy there.

Mush was always too happy for his own good.

Mulberry Bend was located in the heart of the old Five Points, the orphanage positioned just outside of Bottle Alley. He knew precious little of the world outside at such a young age; indeed, he was barely aware that there was life apart from the orphanage. The matron and the Sisters who took care of the younger orphans kept them inside, kept them together. He had many friends, many playmates, but if there was one thing he always remembered, it was that none of them ever lasted. Death, disease, adoption… as the years went on and he was still living at the Orphan Asylum, all of his friends seemed to come and go.

He was always there.

There was something else he always remembered, too. When he was five years old, and even he didn't know how long he'd been at the orphanage, he overheard a conversation he could recall years later as a man. He remembered seeing a cop, a mustachioed copper carrying a bundle, being led into the matron's front office; it was a local beat cop, a man he knew from the bushy brown hair that covered his upper lip. He liked the cop, and he was innocently interested in the squirming bundle the cop had carried. Knowing he shouldn't but doing so regardless, he stood outside the matron's slightly ajar door and listened—

"Evening, ma'am."

"Good evening, Officer Muldoon."

"With all respects due, Mrs. Grace, I've brought you another one."

"Abandoned?"

"Aye. Bottle Alley, found just this morning."

"Let me see… oh, and such a young one, too. Ah… another mulatto from the same part of time, just like poor Gabriel."

"Gabriel, ma'am?"

"Another abandoned child, Officer, brought to us a few winters ago. His mother, a young sprig of a girl… she was having a hard time of it and couldn't care for her boy. She lived in Bottle Alley, if I remember right, not too far from here. A sweet boy but… he hasn't found a new home yet, if you understand."

"Aye and I do."

—and the poor boy though he did, too.

If he thought back hard enough, he could almost remember a petite, fair woman with hair the color of the sun, and then there was a great, big shadow of a man lurking in the back of his five year old memories. But it hurt if he thought back too far; he much preferred a cheeky grin and a game of marbles to the grief and worries that came with not knowing.

That didn't mean he forgot, though.

He didn't. Not once.

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He was still in the Orphan Asylum when he was twelve years old, still smiling, still seemingly happy, still haunted by the memory of a short conversation he heard when he was five. He couldn't help but remember that, just maybe, there was really a family for him out there somewhere for him, a real home even. He was just waiting for it to find him.

The elderly matron from his youth had died a couple years back only to be replaced by a middle-aged woman with little patience for the orphans and abandoned children in her care. In the time since she she'd come the number of wards had near tripled. Children were sleeping two to three to a bed, lice and disease had infiltrated his once happy home. For the first time in his short life, he really began to wonder if he'd find a home for him that wasn't the orphanage. He wasn't willing to wait forever any more—home was beckoning him now.

With so many children to watch over, the new matron found no reason to enforce the old rules where the older children were concerned. She began to turn some of the older ones out—some indefinitely, some not—off to work in the mills, the factories, somewhere to earn a skill and make a wage. Many found lodgings of their own, freeing up space in the overcrowded orphanage, most being adults before their time.

At twelve years old, it was Mush Meyers' turn.

The current matron sent him off to work in a factory where the hours were long, the labor was hard and the pay near to nothing. He was set before his machine before sun up, never allowed to leave his post until well after the sun had gone down every night. The work built his body up, making him strong and giving his normally lanky body some bulk, but the conditions made his spirit weak. He missed the sunlight; the tint of his skin meant nothing when sixteen hour days in a dark factory made him as pale as the next boy.

Then one day the machine he was using just broke—simply stopped working halfway through the day. Instead of blaming him for the malfunction—like he half expected—he supervisor sent him out to bring someone in to fix the contraption. It was the first time in a long time that he was able to go out in the daylight. He clutched an address to a place a few streets over in his hand, but his feet took him in another direction.

His feet took him to Bottle Alley.

The dead matron's words suddenly spinning around his head, he took his chance. It was something he secretly thought of doing since he was five and knew there was more—he went looking for his home.

In a way, he found it…

At the end of the mouth of Bottle Alley, the slums and high rise tenements and horrible odors greeting him, his attention was grabbed by a boy his age staking out one of the corners.

He was a blond-haired boy with a brown hat pulled down low. A matching brown patch covered his left eye, his right eye staring out at the passersby. He had a handful of newspapers clutched tightly in an ink-stained hand, another pile sitting at his feet. The boy's mouth opened wide and his yell loud enough to catch his attention, he was hawking the headline and selling his newspapers to the crowd around him.

He watched the boy, yelling out to the customers and collecting the pennies as they came. A few prospective buyers came by and he was surprised to see the blond boy earning more money in a few minutes than he earned in an hour! So he stared in awe, it never occurring to him that there was a second eye not covered up until—

"Hey, there. What you lookin' at?"

He knew he was caught and he stammered: "…nothing."

"Ya sure it's nothin', Mush, huh? Nothin'?"

"Mush?"

"Yeah, your face gots this grey, lumpy kinda color to it. Like mush, see? It's a nickname."

"…oh."

"Mine's Blink. Kid Blink."

"That's… that's, um, nice."

Blink laughed. "I like you. You new in town?"

"No."

"I ain't never see ya before. I only got the one eye, but it's a doozy. I woulda remembered. Factory kid?"

"Yeah."

"Wrong kinda work there, Mush. Now, bein' a newsie… that's a fine life, a real fine life carryin' the banner and all."

He paused, hesitating, and then… "Can I be a newsie?"

"Don't see why not. Here, heft up those papes and follow me."

—and that was how, simple as that, Mush Meyers became a newsie… and just how he got his name, too.

He never went back, not to the factory, or to the orphanage. No one really noticed when he was gone, but there were plenty of folks who were glad to receive him.

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Kid Blink brought him to a place not too far from where they met: the Newsboys Lodging House at no. 9 Duane Street. It was a place for boys like them, for orphans and runaways and, sometimes, for boys who were both. No doubt, he was happy the moment he shuffled through the lobby, met the friendly smile of the superintendent man and was offered a bunk.

For once, he actually felt as if he belonged.

He had his new pal to thank for that. From the get go, Kid Blink was there for him. He taught him how to buy his newspapers from the weasel of man down at the Distribution Center on Newspaper Row, two for a penny, and how to sucker the customers into buying papers with bum headlines.

They played craps and cards and marbles in the bunkroom, and drank a sarsaparilla or two down at Tibby's when the headlines—or their selling skills—were good. Blink would take Mush with him wherever they went, selling partners and fast friends. With his bad eye and Mush's angelic smile, they made a great team.

True to who he was—and who he still wanted to be—Mush insisted they journey to the corner off of Bottle Alley to sell their newspapers. Even when the customers got too used to seeing them there to fall for their act, he still went to that same spot.

Blink didn't argue, even if it meant he had to sell on his own on a corner two blocks over. They always met up for a drink or a show at Irving Hall or a game in the lodging house in the end. Fast friends became best friends, and there was always a little competition for who sold more.

Kid Blink usually won, but Mush was never in it for the pennies.

Try Bottle Alley or the Harbor…

Every newsie had their reason for staking out their selling spot. Mush was no different from the rest—even if his reasons had nothing to do with how much money he could earn.

He never really knew his mother. He never knew his father at all. He liked to imagine the two of them living together somewhere, Bottle Alley maybe. He pictured lots of little brothers and sisters with skin the color of his and thick curls that never came clean no matter how many times Blink pumped water over his head for him.

He dreamt of a home of his own, and a family to welcome him in…

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It's been four years now, and Mush Meyers is sixteen. He still lived in the Newsboys Lodging House on Duane, he still sells papers, he's still as happy as he's ever been—but sometimes there's that same nagging wonder about something more. Not for the first time in his life, he wonders if there's still a home for him out there somewhere.

And then he looks around him—

He sees Skittery, running after Racetrack, a towel in his hand and a face full of shaving cream, and Crutchy just managing to tuck his crutch out of their path. He sees Jack Kelly, old Cowboy himself, egging Skittery on, and Specs reaching out to grab the towel Skittery isn't stopping to use.

He sees Boots and Tumbler playing marbles next to the washtub, Snipeshooter smoking one of his smelly, secondhand cigars as he offers the other two advice on their game. He sees Dutchy telling Bumlets an exaggerated story, Pie Eater interrupting it with a crude laugh and a suggestive comment.

And there's Kid Blink, fiddling with his eye patch and smiling widely at his fiend, inviting him to sit on his bunk and maybe share a story or two of his own.

—and he knows… he knows he's already home.

Author's Note: Nothing like waiting until the last minute, eh? In my defense, I've had the worst cold ever for the past week but I was determined to write something for Mush Week this year. Since I dealt with Mush and Blink's friendship at the end last year, I thought: why not start with Mush's beginnings this year? He had to have come from somewhere, and this is my interpretation for his character. The way I see it, it may be a little schmaltzy, but Mush is the only character I could see really thinking and acting like this. I hope you guys liked it :)

-- stress, 12.13.09