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Chapter Text

“I am afraid, Mr. Carlyle, it's just as we expected.” The short man behind the desk pushes his spectacles further up his nose.

As we expected. Of course. He should have expected nothing less. Things certainly weren't about to start going his way now.

“You may recall we had discussed some treatment options earlier...” The man tilts his head to look down at the papers in front of him, and the sunlight catching on his lenses is blinding for a moment.

“Don't be absurd, man. Denver? My grandfather helped build this city, as did my father, as did I. I was born here, I was raised here, and I'll damn well die here before I let those dirty miscreants they're letting in take it away.”

“I understand, Mr. Carlyle, but the latest research suggests the clean air and reduced atmospheric pressure out west may stymie the progression of – ”

“The latest research, eh? I haven't had much reason lately to place any faith in your research or your treatment plans, Doctor.”

“Yes, Mr. Carlyle, but I assure you Dr. Gilpin has had great success treating clients with your condition at his clinic. And you must appreciate that the situation with your son was entirely – ”

“I'm not certain if you would rather fashion yourself a physician of the body or a doctor of the mind, Turnbull. I certainly hope you stop claiming expertise in both, as your mental capacity doesn't seem to be adequate for the task of either.” He pushes up from the plush chair facing the desk, ignoring the tremble in his knees and the flutter in his lungs.

Turnbull sputters. “Now really, Mr. Carlyle, that's hardly necessary – ”

“What is hardly necessary, you impudent quack, is for me to stand here for another minute and listen to your inane babbling when you appear to be incapable of telling me anything I don't already – ” He would go on, berating the shocked man in front of him, but he has to yank a handkerchief out of his pocket, press it to his mouth as the coughing jag overtakes him.

When he's done, he doesn't bother looking at the cloth before he folds it over and shoves it back in its place. He clears his throat and looks up at Turnbull. The pensive expression on the doctor's paunchy face makes something else burn in his chest.

“At least Gilpin had the good sense to depart for greener pastures after that debacle the two of you were responsible for. God knows I only let you stay in the city because you suggested you might have options for my condition and you promised to keep this particular matter discreet. You've failed the first aspect of that arrangement, Turnbull. See to it that you don't disregard the second, or you'll be fortunate if you can still get a job slicing up pigs in a Bowery slaughterhouse.”

He pivots before the doctor can respond, barks at the simpering idiot behind the reception desk to cancel the rest of his appointments, and storms out to the street.

Edwin Carlyle scowls at the bright sunshine of a busy New York afternoon. The chittering crowds – unwashed, obnoxious dullards – set his teeth on edge. He stalks through them, cursing at a lumbering oaf who brushes against his imported wool overcoat – must have one of the girls pick it over for lice now – and narrowly avoids treading in a pile of horse dung. His father would be spinning in his grave, if he could see the level to which his beloved city has descended.

Know how much you can read a man, a place, from appearance alone, Edwin. Experience has proved that an unkempt creature thinks little of others and less even of himself. Take care you don't debase yourself and your family by eschewing propriety for convenience, or, God forbid, sentiment.

And who will fight to keep the city clean now, make sure power and influence stays with those who have earned it, those who are well-bred, and intelligent, and proper?

Certainly not that degenerate excuse of a man he called his son, once upon a time. That insipid, spineless milksop rarely had the wherewithal to properly discipline his own footman, let alone display the kind of fortitude that's needed in these blighted latter days to return the city to its former glory.

He will admit, a small part of him may have been impressed upon hearing the stricken tone in Gilpin's typically assured voice when the doctor and his lumbering henchmen had discovered the empty room on the top floor of the Carlyle estate. Edwin himself had gone up there after, stepped to the open window and looked out at the ground far below. Maybe the brat had the most minute trace of that Carlyle mettle, after all.

He prowls down the sidewalk, scowling at a roustabout with a cheap cigarette clenched between fat lips who dares to meet his gaze, and is almost to his carriage – didn't he tell that incompetent driver of his to park it right outside the door, not half a bloody block away – when some wretched imp has the gall to shove a handbill right under his nose.

He has enough time to make out the image – crimson and gold stripes, garishly adorned aberrations, the profile of a man whose face makes his teeth clench and his blood boil – before he smacks the whelp's wrist down with his cane. The little whoreson snarls some invective he is too cultured to grace with a response at his back.

How far have they all fallen, truly, when an insolent garlic eater has the audacity to talk back to his better, rather than grovel and apologize as anyone in his place ought to know he should? And what harsh words would his own father have for him, given his inability to keep the streets clean of this filth, to keep those bastards of Tammany under thumb, to keep his own house in order?

He later blames that interaction for his inattention when he finally makes it to his carriage, decides it is why he merely snarls a reprimand at his driver rather than giving the inept sod the tongue-lashing he deserves.

That must be why he doesn't look up when he takes a seat in his spacious carriage. Why he barely notices when the carriage jolts forward. Why he doesn't register the figure seated at the far end of the cab until a soft greeting grates across his ears.

“Mr. Carlyle.”

Edwin blinks. “You.”

“How are you, this fine day?” The jackal across from him bares all his teeth.

“Get out,” Edwin snarls.

“I'm quite well, Mr. Carlyle, thank you for asking.”

Edwin bangs against the side of the cab. “Mendelssohn! Stop the carriage and alert the authorities this instant!”

The carriage doesn't slow. PT Barnum's grin doesn't abate.

“I'll have your head for this, louse,” Edwin growls.

The huckster in the other seat is the picture of innocence. “For what, exactly? For offering you a ride when your own driver unfortunately had to depart early?”

“A ride...” Edwin looks around him, and it all finally registers. Instead of tasteful black, the seats are garish red. The curtains have loud stripes, the wood panels are a vulgar shade of gold. “But...” He stops. Sneers. “You wouldn't dare.”

“I have generally found that to be a wildly inaccurate assessment. But perhaps you'd care to be a bit more specific?”

“What is it you're planning, exactly? To leave me in a dirty alley somewhere, with a knife between my ribs?”

Barnum leans back, eyes large, and Edwin relishes the look of shock on the charlatan's face. “No, Mr. Carlyle. I have found it generally counterproductive to resort to violence to address my concerns.” The man's eyes gleam, and Edwin shifts in his seat. Not shock, after all, but the wide gaze of a hawk before it dives.“If only you were also so inclined.”

“I hardly – ”

“Of course, you never resort to violence or force, as I understand it. There's no need, truly, when you can simply call on someone else to do your dirty work for you.”

Edwin scoffs. What can this ruffian possibly know about the lengths to which he has gone in order to preserve what is left of his family's status? Can the clod imagine the rumors whispered behind expensive gloves at every exclusive gala in the city, the faint tittering laughter that follows Edwin throughout City Hall? Can he fathom how many of the lucrative deals between the Carlyle enterprise and others throughout the city have dried up, how many of his former business partners refuse to respond to his missives?

This addle-brained fop certainly doesn't know the look that was on Nora's face when she'd first proposed a different solution for the issue he refused to acknowledge. Why he had let her speak her piece, rather than getting up from the table and telling her the issue was closed, again.

The garish peacock in front of him didn't hear the hopeful note in her voice, when she told him dear Agatha, and you know how she's always had her difficulties, so faint of heart that one, but she swears to me that the sessions with this doctor of hers are doing her a world of good, and she does seem much more calm now, she hasn't had an episode in months. And I'm sure you've noticed how relieved Mr. Sells is these days...

It was the first time his wife had sounded optimistic in years, even if he refuses to acknowledge that dimension of her personality departed long before the word circus had ever reverberated through the halls of the Carlyle estate.

(If he had been honest with himself once, he might have acknowledged how the prickling in his lungs, the knowledge deep in his bones of the encroaching night, forced him into an utterly unfamiliar amenability.)

Then the meeting with that quack, how easily he'd been suckered by the man's knowing demeanor. How readily he had agreed to the doctor's plan, to first approach his son in a place he felt comfortable.

(And if he had been honest with himself twice, he would have admitted the dining room in his estate was not a place any man in the Carlyle family had ever regarded as welcoming, not with the disapproving specter of its earlier inhabitants looming over them all.)

He'd swallowed the tripe the doctor fed him and Nora after each of the man's “sessions” in that room. Maybe he'd even let himself feel the slightest bit of hope when Gilpin told them he believed his patient was starting to recognize the deleterious consequences of cavorting around with those creatures. But if there is one thing he and his son have in common, apparently, it is an eagerness to be conned by frauds and cheats.

Such as the one in front of him. And how can the rattlecap he's somehow found himself sharing a carriage with possibly understand what it is to see your life's work hanging in the balance, to know that the slightest spark could set it all alight?

“I wouldn't presume to lecture you on dirty work. You are clearly far better versed in that than I. But I certainly don't need – ” Again Edwin can't finish his correction before he feels that all-too-familiar tickle, that tearing sensation at the back of his throat. He whips his handkerchief out to cover his cough. There's a moment when he debates dropping the cloth, and all sense of propriety as the man in front of him clearly has, instead hacking all over Barnum's absurd shoes and the floor of his preposterous carriage, seeing how this peddler of the perverse and depraved might respond, but the fit is over before he can act.

And whatever else he might say about Barnum – he has so many things to say – the man is at least an astute observer, as every good conman must be. He feels the bounder's eyes on his trembling hands, on his stained handkerchief as he carefully refolds it again before shoving it back in a pocket.

“What,” he snarls, “do you want?”

Barnum leans back a bit, gaze discerning. If he's thrown by Edwin's infirmity, if he might feel the slightest bit of concern as Edwin knows his louche progeny would were he here, the scoundrel doesn't show it. “I am trying to understand, Mr. Carlyle, what on God's green earth could possess a man to do to his child what you've done to yours.”

Edwin would laugh, were he not worried doing so would bring on another fit. “To do what I've done? To try to uplift him to the barest level of decency? To ensure he doesn't throw away everything I have worked my entire life to safeguard for him?” Edwin shakes his head, appalled, recalls the biting bark of Selas Forepaugh's laughter when his oldest business partner had seen the sketch of this blighter and Miss Lind on the Herald's front page.

Sordid business your son has fallen into here, Edwin. The heavyset man had chuckled and blown a perfect ring of cigar smoke in Edwin's direction. I suppose you're counting your blessings it's not your boy the blackguard laid lips on in front of a sea of cameras! Edwin's cigar had fallen from his own lips in response, and he'd cursed, snuffing out the hot cinders on his trousers with a sleeve while Selas rocked back, boisterous guffaws nearly sending his chair pitching over.

Edwin feels those burning embers again, in his throat, in his chest, down to his fingertips. “How could you possibly understand what it is to want to leave a legacy behind, when the only legacy you are able to impart is that of ashes and the ruin of everyone who comes close to you?” He snarls.

The hand on the seat next to Barnum, the one that's been tapping an ingratiating pattern for this entire conversation, stills. Edwin smirks. “Too close to the bone there, Barnum?”

His smile drops though, when Barnum clasps his hands in front of him, leans over with his elbows on his knees. “You have a legacy right at your feet, Mr. Carlyle. It could be a damn fine one, too, if only you would choose to acknowledge it.”

Edwin does bark out a laugh at that. “What is it I should acknowledge, Barnum? My son's years of drunken debauchery, humiliating himself and those around him at every venture? His appalling lack of decorum and self-respect? His moral turpitude? Or how he flaunts his relationships with those who are beneath him?”

He pauses, considering. “Of course, I suspect you find no failing in any of that behavior. You would encourage it, after all. More reason for you to put him on display along with the rest of those freaks.”

That finally breaks Barnum's composure, and Edwin watches the man's lips drawn into a hard, thin line. Much to his surprise, however, the man's voice stays as level as ever. “I should have known it would be a waste of my time to try to have a reasonable conversation with you, Mr. Carlyle.”

“You should have known better than to think you were capable of having a conversation with me, Barnum.” The knave sighs and glances out the window, but Edwin does not get the rolled eyes he was expecting.

They sit in silence, swaying with the carriage, for a few moments before Barnum speaks again. “Why?”

Edwin's eyebrows raise, a more condescending shade of a gesture his son has employed on the man across from him innumerable times. “What?”

“Why do you choose to live like this? Why do you choose to make your world smaller, and darker, and colder?”

Because those who dare to touch the fire only end up burned. “Because I don't have the luxury of living in a fantasy land as you do, Barnum. Some of us are actually charged with keeping this world running, no matter how dark and cold you may believe it to be.”

“Run it right into the ground,” Barnum mutters under his breath, and Edwin is pleased to have chipped a shard away from the man's infuriatingly calm visage. “This world is changing, Mr. Carlyle. Why not change a little with it?”

Edwin sucks in a breath, forces his shuddering lungs still. “Changing indeed. And not for the better.” He twists his hands around his cane. “I understand why you would seek to change it, knowing where your place ought be. What I don't understand is why you insist on dragging my son along in your harebrained crusade.”

Barnum smiles softly, and Edwin knows he's miscalculated something important. “I am not dragging Phillip along at all, Mr. Carlyle. He is more than capable of forging his own path.”

“Then tell me why he only deviated from the path meant for him when he met you.”

Barnum shakes his head, and Edwin can't pinpoint when this conversation got this out of hand. Why he's even bothering to believe this man may have any answers for him. “All he needed was someone to show him there was a better way. A lesson you weren't capable of teaching, apparently.”

Edwin feels a pressure building behind his eyes, to match the relentless force that has been weighing down his lungs for months, and the thin thread of composure he's clinging to starts to fray. “Did my son send you here, to deliver that message for him? Is the boy still too craven to fight his own battles?”

“I can think of any number of words to describe Phillip, Mr. Carlyle. 'Craven' is most certainly not one of them.”

But Barnum hasn't answered his question. “Does the brat even know you're here?” Barnum stares hard at him. Edwin laughs. “And you think to lecture me on what I've done for his sake?” He shakes his head again. “My son – ”

“He has a name,” Barnum interrupts. “Can you even say it?”

“Of course he does,” Edwin snarls. “I am the one who gave it to him!” And damn that scratching in his chest, because he has to take his handkerchief out again, press it to his lips as the hacks shudder through him.

It gives him time to think. Phillip. He had taken the name from his father, actually, he of the stern countenance and sterner hand. Phillip couldn't be more different from his namesake if he tried, though the senior had been in the ground for nearly a decade before the junior arrived. Pity he hadn't been around to give Edwin's son some of the discipline and propriety he clearly lacks. God knows Edwin had a lighter touch with the boy than his father ever had with him. And look where it's gotten the both of them.

Barnum tilts his head as Edwin drops the cloth to his lap, too drawn to fumble it back into his pocket. He speaks, voice hoarse, to forestall any insight Barnum might presume to offer. “What is it you really want?”

“I came to ensure that you would never try to do that to Phillip again.”

“And how are you going to do that? Drop my body in the Hudson? Have one of your degenerates wait for me on a darkened street corner after I leave another one of those deplorable plays?” Edwin peers through the curtains, sees glimpses of the city outside – stately buildings he recognizes from his youth next to ramshackle slums he's never bothered to look at too closely – flashing by. “Perhaps you simply do have a fool's luck. Whatever God is still left here will soon be taking care of this issue for you.”

Edwin might mistake that look for sympathy, were it coming from any other man. From the one in front of him, he is more than certain he will get none.

“All the more reason then, Mr. Carlyle, to do the right thing while you have the chance.”

What might this infernal skunk know about the right thing? Edwin has dealt with more men like him – grasping, whining, utterly incognizant of the natural order of things – than he can recall. The only thing right to that abyssal caliber of man is that which will line his pockets.

That must be this miscreant's motivation, and he perhaps he's more rattled than he thought by Turnbull's diagnosis if it's taken him this long to see it. “If you're hoping to get a cut of Phillip's inheritance, let me assure you he will never see a nickel or a dime.”

Barnum smiles, just the faintest tilt to his lips, the kind of smile Edwin is growing accustomed to seeing at benefit events these days, when he knows there's a joke he hasn't been let in on. “Let me assure you I don't care one whit about your money. Phillip already has wealth beyond anything you can measure, Mr. Carlyle.”

Edwin wants to laugh in the showman's face, but he lacks the breath or the strength. “How trite, Barnum. I would have expected a more novel sentiment from you, of all people.” His raspy words don't appear to be worth what they've cost his body, judging from Barnum's impassive expression.

“Trite it may be, but true nonetheless.” Barnum's turn to look out the window, and Edwin realizes that the gently swaying of the carriage has ceased. “I won't mince my words, Mr. Carlyle. Neither of us has the luxury of time. If you still have a shred of decency, you'll use the days you have left to set things to rights with your son. I hope you do, though you've given me little reason for optimism on that account.”

Edwin opens his mouth to respond, but Barnum rolls over him, the least courteous he's been throughout this entire affair. “If you choose not to, if you want to go into the dark with your black sin weighing you down, that is your prerogative.”

Barnum leans forward, and Edwin for the first time marks the difference in their height, and age, and vigor, takes in the cut of Barnum's broad shoulders through his coat, the strength in his large hands, the steel in his narrowed eyes. There's a flutter in his chest that has nothing to do with his damned illness.

“But if you hurt Phillip again, if you choose to depart this world with the stench of retribution preceding you into the void, whatever is waiting for you on the other side will be the least of your worries.”

Barnum sits back, looks out the window again, and it's a clear dismissal that makes Edwin's throat burn. He'll attribute his inability to respond to his fatigue and lassitude, later. Nothing more.

Barnum waves a hand toward the carriage door. “You'll find your driver waiting for you down the street, Mr. Carlyle.”

Edwin is half-way out the door before he finally finds the wherewithal to speak again. “All I wanted was for Phillip to be worthy of the legacy he inherited. The legacy I inherited.” He'll never know what to blame for his sudden candor.

Barnum gazes at him again, holds his eyes for a long moment. “Legacy is what we bequeath to those who come after us, Mr. Carlyle, not what we inherit from those who came before.”

Edwin shuts the door behind him, watches Barnum's carriage trundle down the sun-soaked street before it disappears from view around the corner.

He will inherit nothing. I have nothing left to bequeath. And the hour is far too late to change any of that.

Chapter Text

PT is waiting for him in their office, one morning, hunched on the new sofa. Much as Barnum had loved the old divan in the corner, Phillip finally convinced him to replace it after Fedor's pet raccoon had crawled through the open window one night and pulled out most of the stuffing in the cushions to make a den. PT insisted it wasn't rent beyond repair, and knowing the older man's skill at stitching ornate costumes from the most disparate of cloths, Phillip might have been inclined to agree. But then they'd found what the raccoon had been replacing the stuffing with, and to the animal enclosure the trusty piece of furniture had gone.

Morose as Barnum had been at the sight of his beloved divan being carted out of the office then, however, that doesn't explain that look on his face now, and the questions on the tip of Phillip's tongue – how was your evening, did the man from the bank drop off that form, what do you think of that new act Anne and I are working on – twist and wither in his throat.

Phillip pauses in the doorway, coat draped over one elbow and hand resting on the knob. “Did you...” he wonders.

Barnum meets his eyes, mouth set in a thin line.“Yes,” he responds.

“Oh,” Phillip says. “I should sit down.”

“Yes,” Barnum replies again, and pats the cushion next to him.

Phillip dumps his coat on the arm of the sofa and sinks into the plush fabric. He stares blankly ahead, mind too full of queries to choose one. What did he say to you, he thinks first, then what did he tell you about me, but the question he isn't brave enough to ask is did you believe any of it?

“Is everyone still intact?” He jests feebly. Perhaps he really has been spending too much time with PT if he finds a splash of humor far more comfortable than a dose of sincerity. But Barnum's stony expression doesn't waver.

“Yes.” The unusually laconic and repetitive response snaps shut a steel trap around Phillip's lungs. God. What mortifying anecdote could he have told you that I haven't already shared? You've already seen me at my worst, what could possibly surprise you now?

“Then why are you looking at me like that?” Phillip's voice pitches high, and PT's face softens.

“For about a hundred reasons, Phillip.” A corner of Barnum's mouth tilts upward. “But which one would you like to hear first?”

“Why don't you give me the most salacious one, to start? As you always do.” The vice around Phillip's chest eases open when Barnum graces him with a full smile.

“I simply cannot fathom how someone like you came out of a household like that.” Barnum says.

“Ah, something you and my father have in common, then.” Barnum winces, and Phillip's grin drops too. “The only thing, PT.”

Barnum doesn't reply to that, pull on another thread instead. “Was it alright? That I went to see him?”

“I told you it was, PT.”

“I know, but after everything...” Everything. A world of meaning there for Phillip, and hurt, and disappointment, though that's been tempered now by months of frank conversations, and honest reflections on his own shortcomings, and how hard he knows PT has been working to walk that fine line between guidance and coercion.

“After what happened with Gilpin...” Barnum continues, and the part of Phillip that he's not proud of, the part that might take cruel pleasure in how much PT regrets that day splinters away when he sees the torn expression on his partner's face. How long will the specter of that man hang over them? As long as you let it, Phillip decides.

“I know, PT.” His right hand creeps to his left arm, thumb digging into the junction of his elbow.

“I would never do a thing like that again without asking you, Phillip.” And Phillip hopes he would never walk out on PT again, never allow himself to fall into that black spiral of self-destruction, either.

“I know.” He presses into the skin harder, blunt edge of his fingernail nothing like that sharp metallic prick he still dreams about, sometimes.

“Yes, but saying and feeling a thing...” Barnum trails off, stares down at the floor, and Phillip's stomach sinks.

“It's...it's fine. I don't think I could have gone to see him, to ask him, after...everything.” He can feel the tendons, the veins, under his thumb. His arm had ached for weeks afterward, and even if it was nothing next to the other things he felt back then it had at least been proof that something had happened to him, was something he could look at and scratch at and turn in the light to say here, see, this is what they did to me, and it hurt, and it still hurts, and –

“Phillip,” Barnum calls as his hand covers Phillip's, fingers pressing into the pulse point. He lifts Phillip's hand from the younger man's arm, gives it a quick squeeze. “You don't have to see him, ever again.” There's that look in PT's face again, fierce and worried, and Phillip has to blink away the burning in his eyes.

“Did you learn anything interesting?” He asks, forcing lightness into his voice. Barnum clearly doesn't buy it for a second, but he releases his grip.

“I don't believe interesting is the word I would use. Appalling, maybe.”

Phillip grimaces. “Well, nothing new under heaven, then.”

Barnum frowns back. “I'm sorry it's come to this, Phillip.”

Phillip waves around him, to their bright office, the piles of paperwork on their desks, the shadow of the big top outside the window. “I'm not.”

Barnum gives him with the smallest of smiles. “Yes. Though I do wish it didn't take so much to get here. To get both of us here.” And imprinted in PT's eyes, Phillip sees that old wondering fear, do you regret walking out of the bar with me, that night, for the fire and then the flood that followed because you did?

“But perhaps we value it more, knowing what it cost.” Phillip counters, hoping Barnum understands his response will always be not for a heartbeat.

Barnum regards him again. “Truly, though, Phillip. I've heard plenty about your mother, and now I've met your father. Tell me the midwives switched you at birth.”

A short laugh bubbles out of Phillip's chest. “Would it surprise you to learn for a long time I wished they had?” He'd returned to the idea, once in a while. But every time, all it took to shatter the illusion was looking in a mirror and seeing his father's keen eyes, his mother's sad smile, staring back at him.

“No,” Barnum answers instantly. He leans back, throws an arm over the top of the sofa. “You know, when I was younger, I dreamed of so many other lives for myself. Long-lost son of a far-off sultan, maybe, or the abandoned offspring of a flighty opera diva.” He gazes out the window. “But every time I opened my eyes I was in the same squalid tenement, or with my father running from one job to another, never enough to go around, and whatever fantasy I had constructed would evaporate in the sun.”

Phillip bumps his knee into Barnum's. “But you took those dreams, brought them into the waking world. Taught a few people how to dream along the way, too.”

Barnum grins at him, not the toothsome beam he reserves for an unsuspecting mark, or a hesitant investor, or a certain snobbish critic whom he will never admit to holding in fairly high esteem, instead the one that curls his lips up at the corners, crinkles the edges of his eyes, warms his gaze.

Phillip remembers that soft smile, a lodestar in his darkest days, when he had doubted if he would ever be happy again, if he would ever recall what it felt like to smile, to laugh. You will, PT had told him. PT's right about some things. PT's right about a lot of things.

“I didn't teach you anything you didn't already know. Just gave you a little encouragement, maybe.”

“Hard though it may be to believe,” Phillip says, “I think sometimes you don't give yourself enough credit.” PT grins wider, joke on his lips, but Phillip needs sincerity for a moment longer. “You pulled us all here, out of the shadows. And then, after everything that happened, when I was...you pulled me out of the darkness,” Phillip rasps out around a full heart and a dry throat. “I don't know how I would have made it through without you, PT. I don't think I would have.”

Phillip sees Barnum swallows a few times before he finally answers. “And it appears neither of us thinks the other gives himself enough credit.”

“Something you and I have in common, then.”

“Now that is a comparison I find far more pleasing, Phillip.” They sit in silence for a minute, listening to the far-off sounds of Jumbo trumpeting for his breakfast, Charles doing the same for another cup of coffee, Lettie bellowing back for him to go get it himself.

“So no surprises with my father?” Phillip finally asks. “The usual 'not worthy of the family name, it should have been your brother who survived,' et cetera?”

Phillip's tone is bright, but Barnum's face clouds over. “You know not to believe anything that man says about you, yes?”

“Yes. And you know not to believe anything that man says about you, yes?”

The side of Barnum's mouth quirks up for a moment. “Well, it still bears repeating.” He shifts in his seat, faces Phillip head on, and Phillip feels that pressure sink into his chest again.

“What is it? What did he say?” And finally that question he's been dancing around. “Is it true?” For all that Phillip has fallen out of favor, has earned looks of scorn from the families whose dining rooms and parlours he once graced with elegant witticisms and eloquent conversation, he hasn't been completely exiled from some of the more insightful chains of gossip.

Barnum holds Phillip's eyes for a long moment. “Yes. Your father is ill, Phillip.”

Ill. Phillip knows now how many meanings that word can come cloaked in. He knows none of them are good. He knows from the look on PT's face that this one is very bad.

“He told you this?” Phillip can't scrape together enough thought to ask Barnum the questions he really wants to. Needs to.

“Not exactly. But he was coming out of that doctor's office. And I could tell.” There's a darkness in Barnum's eyes. “I've heard that cough before.” Phillip wonders if PT sees that same darkness reflected back at him.

“Oh. Did he...did you...how much time does he have left?”

“Not much, I'd wager.”

“Oh,” Phillip repeats, and leans back against the cushions, flailing. A warm arm comes around his shoulders, pulls him above the water.

“I'm sorry, Phillip.”

Phillip says nothing, sinks into the sofa and the solid weight of PT's arm. He watches dust motes spiral upward in a slant of light from the large window overlooking the big top. Maybe this solves some of his problems, he thinks for a moment.

(It solves none of them, at least not in the way he would want, just shoves a host of others into his unsuspecting arms.)

“What do you think you're going to do?” PT asks him after several minutes.

“I have no idea,” Phillip responds. “I think I wish you hadn't told me, to be honest.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It's not your fault. You shouldn't keep something like this from me. You wouldn't, either.” Not when I asked you to step into the lion's mouth for me. I was too afraid to brave those fangs myself.

“No, I wouldn't,” Barnum replies. After a few more minutes, he asks, “You want to tell me about that new number you're working on with Anne?”

“No. I'd rather sit here for a bit.”

“Mind if I sit with you?”

Phillip lets a shaky breath out of his mouth. “Please do.”

Phillip isn't sure what to do, right away. He doesn't decided for a while. But the passage of weeks, the night that creeps across the city a little earlier every day, force him into action.

He takes out a sheaf of paper in the morning, lays it on his desk. He gets the salutation down, and sits with his pen tip hovering over the page for minutes, not noticing the ink dripping down. He crushes that paper with one hand and throws it in the direction of the waste basin, starts over.

He writes the greeting again, part of a first sentence before his fingers stall and his mind freezes. He sits, staring at the page, for nearly half an hour before he tosses the pen down and strides out of the office to see how Charles is getting along with that stallion Barnum had shipped over from Leipzig.

He's back an hour later, with mud under his fingernails and his left shoe damaged beyond repair. He kicks off both shoes, picks up the paltry letter, and prowls the office in his stockinged feet. He stalks over to the desk, writes another sentence before pausing.

His gaze wanders from the page to the bright surface of his desk. He traces the ornate designs scrolling along the edges with one finger, admiring Constantine's finely-drawn lines depicting an elephant over there, a dancing bear here, a quill and ink fountain in the bottom right-hand corner, a top hat and cane in the upper left.

His mother would tut and call it a bit garish. His father would scowl and name it appalling. The first time Phillip saw it he looked up at Barnum with an open-mouthed smile and said it was spectacular.

That thought jars him from his contemplation, and he pushes away from the desk to pace to the window. He circles back to the page eventually, manages a sentence or two before it's time for lunch with Anne, and he leaves off in the middle of a word, pulling a spare set of shoes from the wardrobe.

He returns in the early afternoon, tears the sheet on his desk up into a dozen pieces. He starts over, crumples that page up after a few minutes. Another try that ends up near the waste basin. And another, and another, that he doesn't even bother trying to throw away, just shoves to the side.

He sighs and hunches over until his forehead is pressed against the pages. It's a position he's seen Barnum in a hundred times when the figures in the ledger or the empty lines on a form have driven the showman to despair.

The door creaks open, and Phillip doesn't bother to look up.

“Going well, I take it?” Barnum's warm voice lifts the cold silence that's sunk into the office.

Phillip moans into his desk in response. “You know,” he says, voice muffled by turquoise-painted oak, “I used to write for a living. I was halfway decent at it, too.”

“Were you?” Barnum asks, shuffling around the office. “I never bothered to go to one of your shows.”

“That's because you would have been bored to tears. Or drink.” Phillip certainly had been, though now he can admit it was more than disinterest that drove him to the closest bottle every time. “They were all dreadfully stodgy.”

“And yet you said you were quite the writer.” The floor boards creak as Barnum approaches the desk.

“I've always found it easy to write what other people want to hear. It appears writing what I want to say is a far more arduous task.” And for all that he was once a playwright, words have never been his first language. Not when there were so many other ways – slamming back a flute of champagne while his father was watching from across a crowded hall, asking Barnum to covertly put aside two tickets to the latest show, fronting every penny he had (and some he didn't) to keep the animals fed and the performers warm during those months before the big top went up – to say what he really meant.

“Come now, you've put plenty of words in others' mouths. How hard can it be to find your own?”

“Impossible, apparently.” The tightness in his own voice surprises him. Barnum's hand coming to rest on his back doesn't.

“I think you'll do better when you're not speaking into a plank of wood. Eyes front, now.”

Phillip turns his head to the side to regard Barnum, towering over his hunched form. “Maybe this is a mistake.”

Barnum says nothing, drops his other hand on Phillip's shoulder to pull him upright in the chair. He leans down a bit, pull a handkerchief from his pocket and dabs at a smear of ink on Phillip's cheek. “You don't have to do this. You don't owe him anything.”

“But even after everything...I owe him something, PT. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for him.” He chuckles mirthlessly. “If nothing else, he gave me an example to avoid at all costs.”

“Have you tried leading with that?” Barnum asks, moving to wipe at a smudge on Phillip's temple.

“Not quite the message I'm trying to send.”

Barnum's eyebrows furrow. “What is the message you're trying to send?”

“That I...it's not that all is forgiven, or that I think he was right about anything. I disagree with him on everything of importance, but I still...” He looks out the window, breathes into Barnum's hand on his back.

“It wasn't all bad, you know. Not all the time. I don't think he much liked me, or approved of most that I did, but every once in a while...I would do something that caught the Winthrops' attention, say something clever that ended up in the papers, and for an instant I got the impression that he might have been the slightest bit proud of me.” Barnum's hand rises from Phillip's back to the nape of his neck.

“And sometimes, I'll say something, or do something, and I can hear his voice coming out of my mouth, see his shadow in my own gestures.” He looks down at the half-written letters scattered about his desk, the partially-formed thoughts and abandoned phrases.

“I wasn't what he wanted in a son, PT. He wasn't what I needed in a father, either. But none of that changes the fact that I am his son. And he's still my father. At least for a little while longer.”

They sit in silence another minute, and when nothing else comes Barnum breaks the monologue. “Why don't you lead with that, then?”

Phillip nods, pulls a blank paper towards him and picks up his pen as Barnum's hand drops away. “Would you like me to stay?” Barnum asks.

“No, thank you, but...I think I know where to start, now. And I need to do this part on my own.” Barnum looks at him for a long moment before returning the nod, walking over to collect his hat and coat.

“I'll see you in the morning, Phillip. Have a good night.”

“You too. Thank you.” Barnum pauses with his hand on the doorknob, turns back to regard Phillip a moment longer. “Thank you, PT,” Phillip repeats. For this, and the thousand and one things I'll never be able to thank you for.

“You're welcome,” Barnum replies. For this, and the thousand and one things you'll never need to thank me for.

Phillip posts the letter a few days later.

He scans every batch of mail with a tightness in his chest for the next week, looking for his father's strong, slanted handwriting. He's not sure if the sigh he lets out every time the search turns up empty is one of disappointment or relief. He is sure that Barnum wants to ask, but the other man lets it be.

He waits another week, and still nothing.

When the weeks become a month, then two, and the last of the leaves have drifted from every tree, and the southerly sun barely manages to peek through gray clouds, and frosty drizzle rolls in again, he knows to stop looking.

He writes another letter then, far longer than the first, doesn't bother to choose his words before he spills them onto the page, cramped writing nearly illegible. He doesn't stop after the first page, why didn't you have the heart to reply, or the second, why wasn't I enough for you, or the third, why did you try to change me, makes it through the forth, why did you make me think I needed to be changed to be loved, then on to the fifth, why won't you let us be family, just once, at the end, before he finally signs his name – only his given one, the p's ornate and looping, the l's tall and strong.

Phillip is standing in front of the open hatch of the pot-bellied stove that evening when Barnum comes into the office, watching orange flicker up the dry pages, flare around the curling edges, burn his words from memory, flames whipping in the wind.

PT closes the door softly, sending hot cinders swirling up the flue. He comes over to stand next to Phillip, doesn't say a word. They watch the paper fold in on itself, wither into ash and blooms of smoke. Phillip turns into Barnum, drops his head to the other man's shoulder.

He thinks maybe this is the last lesson his father will ever teach him, even if it wasn't the elder Carlyle's intent. Phillip's finally learned the value of letting go, scraping what he's feeling out of that hollow in his heart, making room for something better.

He feels Barnum's arms come around him, long fingers carding through his hair, and lets PT help bear his weight for a little while. When the flames have gone cold, when the glow of a few smoldering embers is the only evidence of Phillip's effort, and hope, and disappointment, PT closes the stove door, latches it firmly. He wraps Phillip's coat around the younger man, drops a hat onto his head, slings an arm across his back and pulls him away from the torched remnants of his old life, to a warm hearth and loud kitchen, where Charity and the girls are waiting, always ready to set another place at the table.

Chapter Text

Barnum finds Phillip in the office on a grim January day.

It's exactly where he would have guessed his partner would be, but he knows Phillip well enough by now that he doesn't even have to guess.

Phillip isn't at his desk completing forms, though, isn't even at Barnum's desk correcting – just looking it over, PT – any other paperwork. He's not idly watching the goings-on outside the window, or inspecting the outfits in their shared wardrobe for loose threads, or dozing – thinking, PT – on the sofa in the corner. Instead, he's found the only unadorned, uncluttered patch of wall to sit against, legs splayed out in front of him.

There was a time, once before this, when Barnum found him in a similar position in his apartment after another last encounter with a man who had blazed a trail of destruction through his psyche. But Gilpin is long gone now, having fled the city to set up a small, undoubtedly lucrative, practice somewhere in the western states, and Phillip looks a hell of a lot better than he did that night, at least from where Barnum's standing.

Barnum doesn't want to be standing when Phillip can't, though. He sits, sliding down the wall until his arm is flush with Phillip's.

“It's done, then?”

Phillip chuckles. “Yes. I suppose it is.”

“How was it?” Barnum asks, staring at Phillip's shoes, black on black.

He feels Phillip shrug against his shoulder. “It was...about what I expected.”

“You expect so little of those people.”

“And I'm so rarely disappointed.”

Barnum shakes his head. “No, they always disappoint you. Which is saying something. But it's not your fault.”

Phillip leans into him a little harder. “Funny. I'm not certain my distant relations share your assessment of the situation.”

Barnum leans in too. “How distant are these relations, exactly? Have you read any of Mr. Darwin's work? Because if he's correct, that could explain quite a lot about your family.”

Phillip taps Barnum's crimson shoe with his own. “PT, I hardly think that's fair to Isobell or Clarence. Those two chimps are far more civilized than most of my family.”

Barnum knocks his knee into Phillip's. “And I'd wager they're much better conversationalists, too.”

Phillip laughs. “That they are.”

“But really, I hope it wasn't too terrible.”

“The service was fine. Hard for them to deliver those stinging rebukes while the priest was still speaking, you know.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Barnum says breezily. “I've always thought most of you swells had a particular skill at communicating disapproval without needing to say a word.”

Phillip turns to him, eyebrows raised. Barnum points. “Yes, see, that! Exactly.”

But most swells would never favor him with the half-smile Phillip gives in return. “I'm not certain anymore, PT. I think I've fallen out of practice.”

“Well,” Barnum says, “that is one loss I won't mourn.” Phillip's smile drops, and Barnum winces as he realizes what he's said. “Sorry.”

“Don't be. I doubt most of the people at the service were mourning, anyway.”

“But you were,” Barnum notes.

“Yes, but I don't...I'm not sure...yes. I suppose I was. I don't know why. Not much for me to mourn, at the end.” Phillip dips his head.

“You can mourn what might have been, had your father come to his senses.” Barnum tells him, smooth and soft. If he been a better man, when he still had the chance, Barnum thinks, though he knows Phillip is thinking if I could have gotten through to him, when I still had the chance.

“My mother suggested something similar,” Phillip comments, “though it was not my father who had taken leave of his senses, in her view.” He tips farther into Barnum's shoulder when the older man stiffens.

“What else did she say?” Barnum asks, tone clipped and sharp this time.

“Nothing I hadn't heard before,” Phillip replies.

“That doesn't make it easier to hear. And it certainly doesn't make it right, Phillip.”

“I know,” Phillip says. I know, Phillip said when Barnum told him that everything that happened during those wretched days at his parents' home wasn't his fault. I know, Phillip said when Barnum told him that not wanting to get out of bed in the months after was not a moral failing. I know, Phillip said when Barnum told him that he was proud of everything the younger man had accomplished, that the measure of a man wasn't where he was but what he had overcome to get there, though that had taken Phillip much longer to accept than the other things.

But when he hears it from Phillip this time he believes it. “Good.” He pauses, gives Phillip a chance to regain his bearings. “And after the service...?”

Phillip nods. “Also as expected. The remaining elements of the family enterprise are to be auctioned off. My father arranged for a stipend from the proceeds to go to my mother. More than enough to keep her comfortable for the rest of her days. The rest will go to...charitable endeavors.”

Barnum scoffs. “More funds for the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice?”

Phillip chuffs out a cold laugh. “Nothing so overt, of course. Organizations with goals just as insidious, though their methods are subtle as sin.”

Barnum sighs. “Those people make me wonder if we ought just leave the city to them, if that's what they want so badly. See how much they still like it when all the industrious immigrants and colorful characters that make this place live and breathe have fled.”

“I suppose,” Phillip mutters. “Though if we keep looking for somewhere better instead of making what we already have better, we're going to be looking for a very long time.”

Barnum can only grin. “Phillip Carlyle. The last true idealist.”

Phillip chortles. “Not hardly. But my humbug must be improving.” Barnum snorts. “I did learn from the best, after all.” Barnum rolls his eyes and digs an elbow into Phillip's side. Phillip jostles against him for a moment before stilling with a deep breath.

“There was one thing, though...” Phillip murmurs.

“What was it, Phillip?” Barnum asks, a shade above a whisper.

“He did leave me something. As it so happens, one of the remaining elements of the Carlyle enterprise is a controlling interest in a railway company.”

“Railway?” Barnum's brows arch.

Phillip hums. “Not a large one, mind you. Focused on manufacturing railcars these days. Special orders, mostly. Large shipments, luxury carriages, things like that.”

“But a controlling stake?”

“Yes. I'd wager I could have them build a car in your favorite colors, or....what's that look on your face, PT?”

Barnum shakes his head to clear it. “Just...considering the possibilities.” He smiles at Phillip. “But that's a thought for another day.” They sit in silence, cold from the floor and the thin wooden wall seeping into Barnum's skin. “Why would he leave you that, though, of all things?”

“I'm not certain. A last message that I should clear out of the city?”

Barnum scowls at the thought. “This city isn't for him and his lot, not any longer. It's for the rest of us, who spend our days looking forward, not back. It's for you, Phillip.” He thumps the wooden floor beside him with a palm. “You belong here.”

Phillip smiles at him. Not the vapid, bemused look he'd perfected at dull benefits and interminable galas. Instead the soft smile he had taking in the image of the big top for the first time, the grin he has when sliding into a chair at the Barnums' dinner table like he's always been there, the upturn of his lips when he sees one of the oddities pull off a trick she's been working on for weeks.

“I remember, once,” he begins, “going with my father and older brother down to the station. My father took us to the great hall and told us the whole place might belong to us one day, if we worked hard, if we earned it.” His smile wavers. “We never went back, though, after my brother died. We didn't do much of anything together, after that.”

“It was his loss, Phillip,” Barnum says.

“Yes,” Phillip agrees. “But it was mine, too.”

Barnum sits, feels Phillip's shoulders shift in time with his breathing. “How are you, though, Phillip? Really?” He finally asks.

“I...” Phillip looks up to the ceiling, considering. “I'm not certain. But you know, what I kept thinking about, during the service, was how this means that whole part of my life, being his son, is over, and even though I want it to be, I...” Barnum waits, watching Phillip's hands fist in the cloth of his trousers.

“And it's...PT...I can't even imagine...losing both your parents, when you were so young. I didn't even like my father, and now he's gone and...”

Trust Phillip to still wonder about others, to still worry about someone else, even in his darker days.

“Yes, but that was a long time ago, Phillip.”

“Didn't make it easier then. Doesn't make it right now.” And also trust Phillip to catalog every comment with a writer's acumen, to hold a mirror up to Barnum when he needs it most.

“No, it doesn't,” Barnum concedes. “But my father...” Where to even begin, there. How the man had looked out for his son as best he was able, did what he could to provide shelter and a warm meal each night, even when what he could do wasn't nearly enough. How he had taught Barnum the value of hard work, endless work, had taught him nearly everything he knew, except for that one lesson Barnum could never, would never learn.

That expression on his father's face when Barnum had looked at him, cheek stinging from Stanley Hallett's open palm. The blow had said know you place, and his father's bowed head, his timid eyes, had said we do.

I know my place, Barnum thinks here and now. And it isn't groveling down to someone who thinks he's my better, by virtue of his birth and wealth. It's sitting next to someone who knows he's my equal, by virtue of his courage and devotion.

“My father was a lot of things, Phillip. He wasn't always what I wanted, or even what I needed, but he was there for me, for as long as he could be.”

“PT,” Phillip stammers, “I wasn't trying to suggest that your father was anything like – ”

“He was there, Phillip. He cared about me. He was good. Whatever his failings were, that's why I still miss him, why I still mourn him. But if you mourn your father, that's a measure of your goodness, not his.”

Phillip doesn't say anything at first, and Barnum can hear his breath grow short and choppy. “I...I do, PT. I don't even think I want to mourn him. But I'm still...I do.”

Phillip's voice cuts out there, and Barnum shifts to wrap an arm around him. “Yeah, kid,” he says as Phillip head drops to his shoulder. “I know.”

And it's nothing but unfortunate, Barnum thinks, that Edwin Carlyle won't be there to see Phillip succeed at his chosen profession beyond his wildest dreams, to find love greater than his most ambitious hopes, to grow older and mellower and happier, to spread cheer and wonder to every corner of this city, this state, this new, growing, glorious, messy country. It's nothing but a sorrow that Edwin Carlyle won't be there to be consoled by Phillip through his greatest losses, to console Phillip through all his losses except one.

And it's nothing but a tragedy that Edwin Carlyle didn't have Phillip sitting by his bedside and squeezing his hand one last time as he slipped into that endless night.

But PT Barnum will, one day. And he'll feel nothing but joy.