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loving-jack-kelly · 1 year

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superhero au where Davey has been a hero his entire life, recruited as a child, is looked up to and honored and admired by so many people, a shining example of what it means to be a good metahuman, somebody who uses their powers to help and uphold the morals and standards that everyone knows are best. he's been doing this for so long, his whole life, and everyone expects him to be perfect. he's merciful when he needs to be but knows that justice comes with a price. he's well-spoken and respectful, he knows how to talk to a crowd, he's the kind of hero that kids have posters of and people swoon over. he sits up straight for interviews and talks about the moral obligation those with powers have to protect those without, how choosing to do anything else with those powers is a waste of positive potential and only contributes to the problems that he's working so diligently to face.

and maybe he believes it for a time. for a long time. he believes it because it's all he's ever known, all he's ever been allowed to know. he's a role model, a hero, somebody for people like his kid brother to look up to. all of those things are good, aren't they?

but he knows there's more out there. and maybe he wants to give that more a try. maybe, after a long month of neverending fights, when he's bruised and sore and still nothing is fixed, nothing is better, maybe he has a moment of rebellion that he never allowed himself to have as a kid. maybe he puts on a new disguise, one that nobody will recognize, and he slips away into the city to live his own life, just for a night, not the life that somebody else decided he should have when he was a kid.

and the thing is. there's a whole world out here that nobody has ever thought to tell him about. a world of people who are rich and colorful and bright and full, who have lives on the streets of the city so unlike the sanitary, solitary existence he's believed in for himself for so long. he slips into the city and before he knows it, somebody who melts into the shadows like he's one of them and leaves streaks of light across building faces as easily as spray paint is grabbing his hand and telling him to, run, goddamnit, you led them right to me!

and this boy, this shining boy who's barely older than davey but knows the ins and outs of this city better than anybody davey has ever met, is laughing. davey is learning that he knows nothing about being on his own, nothing about how to sneak away, nothing about any of this, even the things he's supposed to be good at. he was followed from home by people who want to make sure he's never anything less than perfect, but this boy pulls him by the hand into an alley and surrounds them in shadow so dense davey hears rather than sees their pursuers run past, and then he's laughing.

and this boy, this shadowy, shining boy, pulls sparks from the air to leave his mark on every street corner they pass. he presses light into crevices in the sidewalk, gives warmth to the people they pass who have no home to return to, flashes a smile so bright that a shopkeeper doesn't notice when a little kid with holes in his shoes steals something to eat right in front of them. he's everything davey is supposed to warn against, somebody powerful, somebody strong, who doesn't use their powers for good the way davey has been taught is the only way to be good. but this boy, who names himself jack, is doing more good in one night than davey feels that he's done in the last year. these people recognize jack, they thank him for something he did yesterday and he laughs it off as nothing, nothing, just doing what needs to be done. he pulls a blanket made out of shadow from thin air and wraps it around the shoulders of a woman shivering in the night's breeze. from a block away, he throws up a wall of shadow that lets a woman disappear around a corner without the man following a few paces behind to see where she went.

and davey is in awe. and davey is realizing for the first time in his life that there is so much more to life and so much more to being a hero than he thought there was.

and jack, who's smarter than he tries to seem, has noticed right away how davey moves faster than he should and reacts before he should have noticed, has noticed the hidden strength that doesn't seem possible with the way his body is built, and he says, you don't have to hide it, you know, you should meet my friends.

and for the first time, davey meets people like him who are allowed to just be people. people with powers who use them for fun, a boy who can fly using it to steal his brother's hat and stick himself to the ceiling so he can't get it back, a boy who can read minds playing cards and pretending not to cheat, a boy who can see through walls teasing his friends by shouting out what embarrassing thing they have hidden under their pillow. not heroes, these kids, at least not according to what davey has been taught a hero should be. they're not neat and coiffed and carefully maintained, not scripted and stiff and poised. and he loves it. and he wishes that he'd been allowed to have this. and he wishes he could be a part of this.

and when jack starts talking and they start listening, davey hears a whole different kind of hero. the kind that jack is, the shining boy who doesn't care about the grand, posturing battles taking place miles above the city but cares so much about a kid going hungry that he can bring himself to tears. the kind of hero who isn't a role model because he never curses and is never anything but polite and never questions let alone breaks the rules, but is a role model because he isn't scared to get dirty, isn't scared to throw a punch against somebody dressed up and nice and neat and respectable and kind when he sees through that show, isn't scared to be seen as a bad guy by some people when he knows he's doing the right thing. and all of these kids are like that, davey notices.

when he leaves that night, with a shard of crystalized light he has to wrap in three pairs of socks to hide in his dresser drawer, he starts paying attention. starts noticing the way that the fights he gets thrown into don't change anything because that's the point, they're not supposed to. he's a hero because the status quo says the good guys are the ones who listen to the rules, even when the rules are hurting more people than they're helping. he's a hero because when he was little and not in control of his powers, promising to be good and sit still and not show off was the way to get people to leave him alone, he's a hero because somebody saw that he was so eager to please and so eager to be good that he could force himself to never think about anything as long as he was making people happy and keeping his family safe. and that tiny seed of rebellion that made him steal a night in the city grows bigger and bigger and bigger until it's driving him crazy, making him restless and reckless and stupid. until he's asking his sister, what if things were different and I didn't need to be this way? what if things were different and everyone understood that there's nothing special about me? and he's noticing the way she catches her breath and the way she's lying when she says, but this is the way it has to be, this is the way we need it to be, this is the way that it's safe. and it breaks his heart to realize that, however heroic everyone else seems to think he is, his family doesn't trust him, not really. because he never breaks the rules, and if he never breaks the rules, that means he won't tolerate them breaking the rules, either.

when he's on duty at night, he watches the streaks of light that appear from the shadows, burning messages that nobody but the person who created them can erase into the face of the city. he starts to notice how many people have gifts from shadowy, shining jack, and he starts to notice what the other kids he met are up to, too, the people they help and the difference they make. and that seed of rebellion grows and grows and grows until even the people who think he's a perfect, controlled, impenetrable example of their goodness start to notice. until sarah confesses to him, late at night and whispering so low he almost can't hear her, that she's been sneaking into the city at night, that les has been sneaking into the city at night, that they both thought davey would hate them for it. and when davey pulls that shining shard of light out of his sock drawer, sarah laughs just as quietly and says, it's like cinderella in reverse.

and on the day that perfect and poised, stiff and scripted, excellent example of heroism davey jacobs finally lets that seed of rebellion burst into something more, for the first time, he actually feels like a hero. not like an actor playing a part. and when shining jack kelly takes his hand this time and draws him into a shadow so deep he can almost taste it while letting dangerous pursuit run past, this time he doesn't say, run, you led them right to me. he says, I knew there was something weird about you. he says, do you want to help me change the world?

and for the first time since he was very young and very naive, davey actually believes it when he says, yes, I'm here to change the world.

#now if i could get the inspiration flowing for my thesis the way I just wrote this in forty minutes. that would rule #lol #newsies #jack kelly #davey jacobs #sarah jacobs #i really love superhero aus where the heroes have a system and the system is flawed. btw.#if you couldn't tell <3 #also i love giving jack light-based powers bc I love light based powers and I love jack <3 #javid #javey #anyway. if i am online again tonight and cannot truthfully say #i have written at least three more pages of my thesis #shoot me. cut me off. kill the internet

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