The Harbor -- Shops

[benjamin]

"They're not going to understand if something happens, Dave!" Benjamin exclaimed. A strike was standing up for something you believed in. A strike meant holding on when things got rough and hope seemed lost. Benjamin knew this even though he'd lost hope completely as soon as he saw Jack had given up. Parents could be proud of a boy who stuck with a strike. What could be said for this? "In the strike," Benji said carefully, "you couldn't die. If you go tonight...there's not much of a chance you're gonan live. I don't know, I just--I feel like everyone who's going is--we're gonna get massacred, Dave, I just know it!" Benjamin bit his lip. "And I know Les isn't going. But imagine his face when someone needs to tell him that his big brother was shot."

[David Jacobs]

David considered Benjamin's words carefully, felt anger rising and bit it back because David knew enough to know that someone like Benjamin might never understand why David's place was beside Jack. "I'd like to think that Les would remember that I was doing everything I could for our friends." David sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, feeling as though he needed to make Benjamin try to see, at least a little bit where he was coming from. "Sometimes standing up for an injustice isn't an easy thing, Benny, sometimes...well sometimes you can even get hurt by standing up for what you believe. But that doesn't make it any less right to do it. If something happens tonight, well..." David gulped at the thought because he wasn't ready to leave his family, to leave Les and Sarah behind, but he would if that's what it came too.

"If something happens tonight at least I know I went fighting for my friends, my second family and what I believe in."

[benjamin]

Benjamin was silenced by David's words. David was ready to die for--who? For people who in three years he might never see again? For people who he didn't even know? Try as he might, Benjamin couldn't grasp it. He couldn't think of anyone he would be willing to die for, outside of his parents and maybe his sisters, if it came right down to it. David...he wasn't dying for his brother and sister. He was dying in spite of them. "I know how you feel," he said at last. "I can't say I feel it, too. But I think I get it. And...David, I think you're out of your mind. You say you're fighting for what you believe in, but what do you believe in, exactly? Taking stupid risks? Putting friends before family? Our friends can grow and move away and change, Dave, but our families..." Benji stopped, and his shoulders slumped. "Do you have any idea what you would do to your family, David? Even if they knew what you were fighting for...David, it'd break their hearts..."

[David Jacobs]

"I believe in kids being able to walk the streets selling their papes with out being afraid of being snatched, I believe in kids being able to live and not be afraid. If my being there tonight helps to make that happen then I'm there. And no, they might not be my family by blood, but they are my family by experience and they are Jack's family." David paused to take a deep breath, not realizing how deeply and passionately he felt about this before questioned by Benjamin. "And they are Jack's family, and his family is my family. Maybe we will grow apart and leave some day, but right now, in this moment, Jack is my best friend and I will fight for those kids. Because Benji, it could have been Les that was taken, or one of your sisters or Sarah or anyone. All those kids, they are important to someone, they are someone's family and for me not to go simply because they aren't is selfish."

"I don't want to die and leave my family, Benji, I love them. But I love the Newsies too. And the Newsies need me now."

[benjamin]

Benjamin gaped. "Are you calling me..." Did David think that the reason he wasn't going was because he didn't know the kids who had been taken? "Do you even..." The beginnings of anger began to settle in Benjamin's heart. "Don't bring my sisters into this," he snapped. "You know they're going to kill you, right? For gosh sake, I just don't want to come down tomorrow and hear about which of my friends died. I--I'm not as brave as you, David. As soon as I heard a gunshot I would probably...I'd piss myself and run. I really would. Does that make me selfish? Does not wanting my friends to die make me selfish? You say you're watching out for your friends. Is leading them to their deaths watching out? Would you rather kill forty or accept what happened to six?"

[David Jacobs]

"Have a little faith," David said quietly, his eyes flashing with the passion he felt for this cause. There was danger to be sure, but they'd gone up against large odds before and prevailed, of course the risk hadn't been as high, but still. "There is always the hope that we will succeed, there is always the chance and as long as there is that, then we got to try."

He sighed, feeling bad for making Benjamin think he was calling him selfish, it wasn't fair and not David's intent when he had started this. "I'm sorry Benji, I didn't mean to bring your family into this, I was only trying to make a point. I think it's important that you know your role, that you know what you're capable of. We'll need people here once we come back."

[benjamin]

All right, Benjamin thought bitterly, so there was a chance. But what was that chance? A million to one? Would anyone with sense make a wager with odds like that? Benjamin wanted to be like the other newsies, to have faith in this cause and to want to fight for it and the kids who had been taken. But whenever he thought about it, whenever he thought about even saying to David, Yes, you're right, I'm coming with you to fight...he wanted to be sick. He was just a coward, and a coward shouldn't fight, because there was always the chance he would do something stupid.

"Don't try to tell my my place," Benjamin said, not without submission. "I know where I belong. I'm not a newsie like Jack and the others are. I'm just...some kid. And Dave...you're a kid and a newsie all at once. You have two places to be, huh? Just--choose right. I dunno what you consider right. But friends come and go. Family's forever."

[David Jacobs]

Daivd sighed, he had a feeling that he and Benji were just eventually going to have to agree to disagree but for some reason David just couldn't let it go, not yet. He thought about Jack, who was like a brother to him, just as much as Les and all the others who made up the content of his days as a Newie and a kid. Perhaps Benjamin was right, perhaps David did ride the line of being both, but that didn't mean he had to choose.

"And what of those who have no family? What about Jack? He's my family Benji, just because he isn't of my blood doesn't make it less true. And Sweets? And all the kids from Queens and the Bronx and even Brooklyn. They don't have family," David sighed, knowing that he was saying this more for his own benefit than Benjamin's, but it's what he believed. "All they have is each other and the Newsies."