One Piece: Oneshots

Request: Circus AU: Bartolomeo x Reader

The circus was coming again. Tents aplenty would be set up, their red and white striped canvases could be pinned into the ground of the local town and surrounding villages, and the people would come to marvel at the tricks of the performers and the collections of the Ringmaster.

What people saw as a bright charade of wonder was deeply, in fact, a living nightmare. All those that were a part of the attractions knew that these people didn't care for them nor their performances - they only cared about what they could pick on and shun.

One tent was reserved for a most wicked attraction, and the snot nosed Ringmaster knew this above all else, for the monsters he kept inside those walls were his pride and joy. Beasts and creatures, people with disfigurements and powers - anyone who he spotted being treated like an outsider, he captured them and sealed them away behind glass barriers. No one would touch them, only see them - marvel at their bedraggled or ferocious states.

You were not so keen of this tent. The carousel and walking fire breathers, and dancers were enough to capture your eye. But in theirs you saw reflected a pain, something that unsettled you. From being a child, having been taken to this parade of oddities and shows each year the circus arrived, you had been fascinated. Only marginally. This unsettling veil of wariness that cloaked you allowed nothing other than knocking knees and a shuddering heart to become of you.

The circus, all in all, terrified you.

Especially that tent. The tent named "Ringmaster's Collection of Depravities!"
The one colourful sign was greyed, and whatever colour you had remembered as a child had faded from the entire place.

Walking between the tents, mindful of the pegs that held them down, you meandered, searching. What for? You were searching for a certain someone.

You were a child the first you had seen the boy, his green hair dirty, body awfully thin. He had been trembling in the corner of his glass show box, unable to escape the sneers and snarls of those around him.
He would retaliate, you remembered, and as a small child huddling behind you father's leg, tiny hands holding on his trousers for dear life, you also recalled seeing desperation in his eyes.

At the bottom of the show box was a nicely engraved golden plaque. Upon it said "the Cannibal". At the time, you hadn't understood what that meant, but as you had grown into your teenage years, you understood more and more.

You understand how the circus that had frequented the area, year after year, bearing no shame for what it was allowing, was evil. The people parading it were evil, and those it had enslaved were victims.

But one flaw of the human race, among other races present in your world, too, was that they enjoyed to watch those other than themselves and those they cared about suffer. They could turn a blind eye to the poverty and the pain, as long as it simply didn't happen to them.

This circus. This...touring prison was one such place that allowed people to do what they ultimately enjoyed, even if they begged to be believed that they didn't.

You must be different. And as you recalled further, as a teen, this time, you were certain that you had a slither of humanity in you; the humanity that refused to sit back and watch people suffer. It hurt you as it hurt them.

But what could you do?

What have you ever been able to do?

"[Name], come on! The Circus in back in town! We said we'd go," your friend called, her hair pulled up into pigtails, as she pursed her lips, a heart painted on them in red. You were sixteen, too young to be completely independent, yet yearning for it more every day.