Ohhhh I am so not ready for this.

Yet I am also grinning thinking about writing this.

Enjoy! :)

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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.

"Shuddup," Spot tells him good naturedly. 

"No."

Dave sits in between Jack and Mush.

"How are Sardinia and Kid Griffo and Chick Tucker and Big Jack O'Brien?" Mush asks, everyone in their little circle listening intently.

Dave smiles. "They're good. Real good."

"We should visit them some time," Mush says thoughtfully. "All of us."

"Sounds great," Kid Blink agrees. They were once all his friends too.

"I haven't met 'em, but you've told me about 'em so many times, it's like I already know them," Crutchy adds.

"We can invite them to one of Medda's shows," David suggests.

"And maybe we can visit Antonio too!" Race perks up.

He smiles sadly at the thought of Antonio being here, for it really is bitter sweet. Just like it is for all of them thinking about how all of them ended up here.

"Oh, and I can visit Ermal," Race adds. "Actually, I have no clue if they're here." The thing is, they might still be on Earth. 

He only knows Antonio is here because he and Antonio see each other often.

"It would be great to see how Bruno and Noemi are," Jack remarks thoughtfully.

"That would be fun, wouldn't it?" David agrees.

"It sounds like we need to take an outing together," Mush notes. "All of us. See what else is out there. Who all is out there."

"What's stopping us?" Kid Blink asks. "Nothing really. We can do whatever we want." Then more quietly, "That's what makes this place so much better than reality."

Mush hears what Kid Blink says. He always does. He grabs his hand. "In reality, what we did meant something."

"So what about now?"

"This still has meaning, yes, but ... we impact nothing."

"Well, maybe that's a blessing and a curse," Race suggests thoughtfully. "We can do whatever we want without consequence, and yet no way to make an impact when we want to."

"How did you get so wise?" Mush smiles.

Race smirks. "Gambling."

They all chuckle.

"And it ain't fair now that the fourth can win whenever Race wants!" Spot exclaims.

Race shrugs, in a what can I say? kind of way. He loves gambling at Sheepshead Races here.

"When was the last time any of us actually sold a newspaper?" he asks suddenly.

They all think about it.

"Well, truth be told, without any people to sell to..." Crutchy starts, thinking on it. He shrugs. "I guess there's no point no more."

"And we ain't got anyone to print a paper neither," Jack says.

"Or write it," David points out.

"We really are in a strange world," Dave remarks.

"We are," Spot agrees.

"One where we can eat as much pie was we want!" Boots--who had been engrossed talking to Tumbler this whole time--adds gleefully from Spot's left.

"And no burdens of reality," Kid Blink says.

They look around the table.

They see Jack Sullivan and Morris Cohen and Henry Butler talking about how they need to reform a newsies' union. Itey, Snoddy, Bumlets, Specs, and Skittery playing guessing games. Boots and Tumbler and Snipeshooter talking about how much better it is to be a kid. And so, so many more people, so many more conversations. Too many to count. So, so many stories.

And then there's them. Jack Kelly, David Jacobs, Kid Blink, Mush Meyers, Racetrack Higgins, Spot Conlon, Crutchy Morris, and Dave Simmons. What an odd group. They've been separated through time and loss and diverging paths, yet somehow they've found each other again.

Maybe it would have been nice if they could have reunited in the land of the living. But here? Here is home to them, just as any other place. Here, they are free from their haunted pasts. They are free. And they are together.

Just as they have always been, and just as they always will be, throughout it all.

FINIS

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Oh my gosh that was it that was the end-

Just ... just give me a moment ...

I knew that this is what the epilogue had to be. It had to be a full circle. It circles back to the beginning. It mentions all that has happened from where they started and where they ended.

And here they all are, in the afterlife, eating their pies before their turkey, in one huge lodging house of their making, as they once were in 1899, and having the best time they could possibly ask for. Now that. That is an ending.

I'm still not okay-

What do you all think??

I think that my author's notes are getting shorter than they once were haha. I guess I'm finding less that I need to go on and on and on about. 

But. After this epilogue, there is one last part: the closing author's note.

I am so not ready to write it. And yet I'm going to anyway.

Here we go.

Please, no homophobia, profanities, hate etc in the comment section at all times.

Best,

~Your Beloved Author (who hopes that they did everyone justice one last time)