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“What’re you starin’ at, ain't you see a toff before?”
Twice Jack had said that, now.
Each time there had been someone lingering on the streets in despair. Each time, he'd deliberately made a sound to catch their attention.
The first time he said that to someone, reached out a hand to an orphan out of the kindness of his heart, it had damned his entire gang, had nearly gotten Fagin hanged.
(As much as they liked to joke about it, hide behind jeers and threats of getting hanged, there was a very real fear of the noose tightening around their neck.
Jack had witnessed it once– a hanging– and the cove had not looked good going out that way, no matter what they said on the streets).
And as much as Jack wanted to place the blame on Oliver for peaching on them, for causing the whole chain of events that set off Bill Sykes, whatever conscience he still had in him could not deny the fact that he had a hand in it.
Dodger was the one who brought Oliver to Fagin, which meant that he was the one who started the whole bloody business.
“What should I do?” He'd asked in a hurry, blood thrumming at the sheer chaos raging around them.
This was what he thrived in– mayhem, high strung crowds and confusion written all over everyone's faces. It was in chaos that no one noticed a pocket kerchief or wallet going missing, much less the boy in the ill-fitting waistcoat and ratty hat slipping by them as naturally as a fish in water, picking their pockets as he went.
However, it felt different this time.
The chaos this time had a bitter sort of tang to it, with their anxiety woven into it as Jack’s gang– Fagin’s boys– ran wild, not knowing where to go without Fagin or Jack to give them direction.
”You– live up to your name, dodge about!” Fagin had left him with, before blending into the shadows, the crowd, quicker than Jack had ever seen the Jew move.
Jack shrugs, shoving down the dread that rose at the possibility of never seeing any of them again before he turns, neatly sidestepping a mad grab at his waistcoat as he breaks into a run.
He'd be damned if he let a beak throw him into the gallows.
—
The next time he'd muttered the same line, he was hiding up his lookout, counting down the hours before he gave up on waiting for any signs of Fagin’s survival– four hours, was how much more time he could spare– given a beak doesn't notice him.
They rarely came around these quarters, and given the mess that Oliver had stirred up lately (it was easier, to blame everything on the boy), it less likely he would be discovered.
It was cold, the cold making itself felt as it crept under his layers, numbing his nose, his hands. Not a night anyone would want to linger in, when they had a perfectly warm stove to sit by in their houses. Less chance of a stray beak roaming about, too.
Sure enough, at a quarter past the third hour, he spots a familiar skittish gait, the slight lean of their figure as they stumble onto the streets, catching themselves against the lamppost for support.
So Jack scuffs his feet, catching the Jew’s attention as he leaned slightly forward, over the top of the railing. “What’re you starin’ at, ain't you see a toff before?”
(And he had been scared, thoughts that he’d not given voice to resurfacing as he waited for Fagin– wondering if he would blame Jack for bringing Oliver to their hideout– perhaps he would be the one to send Jack to his death, or refuse to acknowledge him any longer.
Who else could Jack turn to, in that case?)
But the dumbfounded look on Fagin’s face as he stared Jack up and down had been enough to lay his worries to rest. Fagin was not mad. Fagin wasn’t going to turn him away.
Where’s the rest? He swallowed the question back down.
It wasn’t too strange that the rest weren’t here yet, Jack reasoned with himself. He and Fagin had always been the quickest of their lot.
The rest would catch up, eventually.
The sun was rising– they had all the time in the world to recoup their losses, to make their fortune in London again.