Disclaimer: I do not own The Greatest Showman. No copyright infringement is intended.

MC4A Challenges (Retroactive): Romance Challenge
Representations: P. T. Barnum/Charity Barnum; Philip Carlise/Anne Wheeler
Word Count: 732

The longer she stared at the photograph, the more its black lines seemed to shimmer in front of her eyes. Was this, this wavering picture in black and white, the reality? What then were all of those nights, those wild, wonderful, beautiful nights, that sparkled in her memory in full color? Which was real?

Was either?

There were other memories, too, memories just as vivid. The shine in his eyes when as a boy he had told her the millions of dreams that filled his head, the smile of pride when he had shown off his museum, and then his show, and then his concert. She had claimed those memories for her own, for they were memories of his success, and his success was her success. Or so she had thought. Perhaps P. T. Barnum's success was merely P. T. Barnum's success, and she was as much an accessory to it as his collection of human oddities or his lovely new opera singer.

Phineas T. Barnum was an easy man to love. There were thousands and thousands who loved him, whose eyes had been dazzled and whose hearts had been warmed by this thing that he had created. But who did Phineas T. Barnum love, really? She stared at the newspaper again, blinking the tears away so that she could study the photograph of her husband kissing Jenny Lind. Was there love in that picture? It was impossible to tell. She dared not subject her own memories to the same scrutiny, for fear that they would yield a clearer answer.

For what if they should tell her that the only person Phineas T. Barnum loved was himself?

She looked down into his smoke-darkened face, tears welling up in her eyes as he lay there, unmoving. It was not fair. Not fair that the stars should forbid her to be with this man only to remind her how much she could not bear to lose him.

He lived in a fairyland where she was the fairy, able to change destiny with a wave of her wand. He was not born for a world where color and status could keep people apart. He had dashed in like a prince to save his princess from her burning tower, and now here he lay, in a real hospital bed with real burns, with a real black girl from the slums who worked in a freak show sitting beside him and wondering if this was how the stars punished those who tried to rewrite their fates.

Phillip Carlyle was an easy man to love. Thousands had loved him before he had joined this crazy circus, when he had been a rich playboy with an unremarkable career in theatre, and now, swept up in P. T. Barnum's fantastical success, he was loved by thousands more. Yet in all that adoring throng, he loved only her. Black, poor, insignificant, freakish her.

And she dared not love him back.

The thunderous roar of the train was a sound that flooded one's ears and rattled one's bones, and the coal smoke billowing back from the engine filled one's lungs until one choked on each breath. It seemed there were no decent trains that were willing to transport elephants and giraffes, even the elephants and giraffes of the renowned Phineas T. Barnum.

Yet in the midst of the noise of the engine and the foulness of the smoke, two women sat in perfect contentment. Somewhere farther down the train, their husbands were checking that the tents were loaded correctly and the animals were suitably accommodated, while the elder woman's two little girls ran riot through the quarters of the adoring performers. The younger woman was knitting quietly, hoping that the baby blanket she was making would not be too terribly blackened by the coal dust, while the elder woman had her nose buried in a book. Every so often, however, she would look up, and the younger woman would meet her gaze and smile.

They did not speak, and indeed, they had never spoken of that day when both of them, two women who were so different, had been in such anguish over their two men who were so alike. Yet from that day, a kinship had existed between them, the kind that only comes between two people who have shared one another's sufferings and lived to see them turned to joy.