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Anne wasn’t sure she loved him.
She wasn’t even sure she could love. Love was never something that was within her grasp - it was something for the likes of other, lighter skinned girls than herself. Love was for Mrs Barnum, and for her daughters, and that was fine. Anne would never begrudge those beautiful girls anything, Anne had never wanted it for herself anyway.
Love wasn’t something within Anne’s grasp, until she saw Phillip Carlyle’s upside down face from her trapeze, for one… two… three seconds before she was pulled away, by momentum, and - ironically - her brother. She heard Carlyle asking Barnum who she was, and she didn’t smile, because love wasn’t for the likes of her - not with boys like him, stinking of old money and entitlement. When Barnum said his name, Anne knew who he was - of course she did, she’d never been to the theatre, but her eyes had clung hungrily to every sign she’d ever passed, wishing that she could afford some taste of what she was never allowed. She knew his name, and his background, and knew that even if she wanted to - and she didn’t, she absolutely didn’t, Anne had no room for anything but her brother and her trapeze rig in the life that God gave her - she’d have no part in Carlyle’s future. Carlyle wouldn’t stick around, this circus was but a novelty for those who had another choice, and she was sure that Carlyle had an abundance of choices. She wanted to tell him to run quickly, before he became one of them, one of the clowns, the oddities, just another face in Barnum’s revolving door of freaks. But Anne had spent enough time being ordered around in her life to know that it was never taken easily to, so she asked him what made him a freak and went about her day when he didn’t answer, finger tracing the lid of the flask in his fancy trouser pocket.
She felt Phillip watching her. On the trapeze, in the circus, across the room. She was exotic, and beautiful, and she knew it. He couldn’t see the scars underneath her costume, behind her eyes, so she was perfect, and of course he saw her colour, but she reckoned that she was light enough for the more liberal folk to be fine around her. She reckoned that for him to hang around here so long without a sign or a torch or a laugh, he was probably one of the more liberal folk.
Anne didn’t look back at him, because she had no time for love. Because he was pretty, of course, and he was intelligent and charming and he knew the right things to say (to everyone else, it seemed, but deep down she found it even more charming that sometimes he tripped over that silver tongue when he looked at her). Anne didn’t let herself look, and her art had made her disciplined enough that it worked, that she could be snarky and not think about it - not think about him - until he offered to turn the Queen of England down for her, with such fervency that she felt it in her chest.
He never got too close, but had an air of making it seem like it was more about her virtue than his image, and she believed him, because why would a man who cared about his reputation be in such a hurry to sully his own good name and join the circus, make himself the butt of every joke in the very society that raised him? In England, he kissed her hand and helped her out of carriages, watched her across the room always, to make sure she was safe, happy, having a good time. He treated her more like a lady than any circus freak like her had any right to be treated. He was not perfect, his hand still lingered on bottle after glass after flask, and he still looked a little too ill sometimes when he stumbled into rehearsals in the morning, but he was beautiful, and he was kind, and he cared for her, that she was sure of. At least for now, he cared for her.
Maybe she cared about him, too.
And she didn’t let herself believe in him, per say, but maybe she could have. Alas, love was not for girls like Anne, and she had never been so sure of anything as she was of that when his slick palm let go of hers hurriedly while they listened to Jenny Lind bleed out her heart on stage. She stopped letting herself look at him again. Started rolling her eyes, instead, started sneering at him when he watched her dance from the balconies, looking for all the world as if someone had shredded the tissue of his heart as easily as one would shred tissue paper.
The day she went to the theatre was unseasonably warm. Her dress was stuffy, and the kiosk man’s palm looked sweaty enough that for once she was almost glad of his reluctance to touch her. When she voiced her confusion, and Phillip’s voice spoke softly behind her, she froze because this wasn’t happening, couldn't be happening. “I didn’t think you’d come if I asked.” He was right, she wouldn't have come. Still that gave him no right to trick her here, so she turns to walk away, and he stops her, offers her his arm, makes him feel like she’s in England again, like she’s so close to the epicentre of his world.
Then she sees two people who look vaguely like him but are much stuffier, who call her the help, she feels his arm tense beneath her hand, but he doesn’t say anything, for a second. She runs, and he calls her, doesn’t follow her for a minute - she doesn’t hang around to wait for him, flees. When she’s on show, she can condone being called names, being laughed at, because she’s there for that, because she’s the entertainment, and maybe sometimes she’s the little girl’s dream - and that makes all of it worth it. Here, though, where she should be laughing, she should be the one being entertained, here she shouldn't be called names.
She flees, and she hears a snarl from Phillip at his parents, hears him calling after her, but she runs, all the way across town to the trapeze rig. She’s in her underwear when he gets there and she feels him give pause, watch her for a second reverently before approaching. He tries to apologise and she doesn’t listen, preparing herself to soar above everything, like she did when she was a child, climbing the trees in the plantation in her own attempt to rise above it. Phillip follows her, and tells her he cares, and she doesn’t say that it doesn’t matter, that love, and care, and friendship, they don’t mean anything when they’ll be treated like that everywhere they go, where nobody understands why he’d look at her twice, the heir apparent to the house she should work at. The help. The New York folks are liberal - she’s not a slave to them, at least, but she’s not much higher on their ranking either. Cheap labour, not slave labour. And she’s supposed to be grateful.
Maybe Phillip isn’t like that - and she doesn’t think he is, she might be a freak, but she’s one with more self respect than to agree to be accompanied by a man who thought she belonged in the servants quarters - but his society is, the people he loved are. Phillip isn’t like that, but his life is. And Anne is not naive enough to think that she would be able to conquer that. He wishes that they could live in a different world.
She wishes that they didn’t have to.
He’s a writer, of course he thinks there’s a fate to rewrite. Of course he thinks there’s something more to the world than humans who lack humanity. But she doesn’t agree, so she dances, because that’s what’s she’s here for, and then she walks away from him, because she has kissed him, and she’s entirely terrified of staying too long now that she knows what he tastes like, of climbing inside his ribs and making a home in the warmth of his body, settling amongst his emaciated liver, and a stomach that’s never wanted for anything.
She avoids him, after that, until she walks out of the embers of a building, straight into W.D’s arms, and she finds everyone but him. She doesn’t realise she’s screaming until W.D. tucks her face into his collarbone and she feels the vibrations from her wails reverberate through his entire body. Barnum emerges with Phillip in his arms what feels like hours later, and she tries to run to them but falters, her knees giving way, her brother’s arms catching her, like always.
She lives on the edge of a hospital bed for days, feeling more likely to fall than she ever did when she was in the air. He doesn’t wake up, and she prays to God like her Mama taught her, even though she lost him for a long time. She sings, for herself and for Phillip, and she ignores the looks that the white folk give her. She’s had to let them drive her out of a lot of places, but she will not be driven out of here.
When Phillip opens his eyes, she feels the entire ward hold their breath, and she holds her own. And she kisses him. He kisses back. It’s not quite the happily ever after she’d never been allowed to expect, because their home was still a pile of rubble, and there were still gasps from around the room, and there was still a flask tucked into the torn fabric of Phillip’s suit. It wasn’t perfect, but neither were they, so it was okay.
It takes a while to build a new home, they all know that better than anyone. But they do it, with a small patch of land and a tent. It’s not permanent by any stretch of the imagination, but then no one ever expected it to be. They’re permanent, though, the lot of them. Anne supposes that bricks and mortar don’t make a home, just like blood doesn’t always make a family. They’re family now, and they’re all working to make this the success that the old one was. Barnum and Phillip are working all hours to sell themselves again, and Anne’s hands are bruised underneath her tape, enough that Phillip frowns and presses a kiss to the heel of her hand whenever he looks at them. When they open their first show though, all of it is worth it for the audience’s face. Anne has been performing for a while now, but she’s never felt like a performer until now, until Barnum runs off and Phillip runs on, grin as big as she’s ever seen, Barnum’s famous hat atop his head like it’s always belonged there.
It’s not perfect, and she’s not sure it’s love, but then Anne never asked for that, learned early to never expect to be entitled to anything. She’s happy, though, and that’s far more than she ever thought the good Lord would give her. She’s a freak, and she’s an oddity, and maybe she’ll never feel like she belongs in anything but a circus of humbugs, but she belongs somewhere with someone, and maybe that’s the most she can ask for.
(It isn’t, it truly isn’t, if she stands to learn one thing from Barnum and Carlyle it’s that if she keeps asking the world will always keep giving, and she should never settle for less than she deserves, but that’s something she’ll learn in time, with the right sort of folk surrounding her).