The Greatest Showman: March One-Shots

29. Bullies

hey everybody! it's been a longgg time, hasn't it?? for those of you who didn't know, i was just in a show at my school and, whenever i wasn't at rehearsals, i was stuck doing homework. :( plus, there's less than twenty days left of school, and my teachers have decided that now is the prime time to pile on the work. 🙃

sorry for taking such a long time to finish this *march* one-shots book, omg! 🙈 thank you guys for staying patient, though! :)

this chapter was, in part, requested by @HannahlysisSenpai. hope you enjoy!! ☺️❣️

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Lettie sits on the floor, knees pulled up to her chest and back pressed against the wall. She stares off into the circus ring, her eyes empty and fixed on nothing in particular. There's a crater in her chest, a wide sinkhole that has formed following the events of the last few days.

She wishes it wasn't there, but sometimes words hurt. Like daggers, piercing your skin just enough so that you notice it and recognize the pain, but not enough to do too much damage. Not enough evidence of the crime scene. Because words aren't like fingerprints, dusted with a powder by Jane Doe and picked up with some tape. Words aren't like blood splatters, sampled and thrown underneath a microscope to determine the DNA. Words aren't like dental remains, or finger nails, or dead skin cells.

There's no evidence unless they've been recorded somewhere, either through the lens' of a camera or through a pen and a piece of paper.

Otherwise, it's your word against the world's.

Lettie knows that this whole ordeal shouldn't be bothering her as much as it is, but she can't help it. The words of the protesters, the critics, bounce around in her head, interrupting and paraphrasing each other until they're all just a jumbled, nearly incomprehensible, mess, but one thing is clear: they're vicious. They're words of anger and hatred and fear, all mixed together to form a vicious recipe of poison, both figuratively and literally.

The door whines as it opens, and Lettie can faintly see the shadow of Barnum as he stands in  front of the light. He's just as somber as she is, as everyone else here is. Tonight's show has been cancelled, and tomorrow's fate is uncertain. The words have penetrated the folds of everyone's minds, of everyone's souls, leaving them in a mess of anguish and fear and sadness, their insides twisting with uncertainty and confusion.

The world had seemed so big before now, the possibilities endless, but suddenly the brick wall of reality decided to erect itself overnight, unbeknownst to the oddities. And, in the morning, they ran right into it. And they woke up.

As the door clicks back into place, Barnum silently makes his way over to the Bearded Lady, and pauses a moment before sinking down onto the floor beside her, not looking at her, but rather straight ahead into the empty and pretty dirty circus ring.

He sighs before confessing, "I could try and come up with some elaborate and inspirational thing to say right now, but, the truth is,.... I really just don't know what to say."

Lettie sniffles, not even realizing that she had been on the verge of crying. She had thought she was rendered too numb to shed any tears.

"You don't have to say anything," she manages to get out, her voice strained and broken.

"I know, but..." Barnum sighs. "I feel like I should, you know? Because I'm the reason you're all facing this crap."

Lettie turns to face him. "Barnum, you may be the reason we're facing all this crap, but... you're also the reason why we're even here in the first place. Without you, our lives would still be terrible. But you pulled us out of the dumps. You gave us a real family. And, yeah, we may be facing the critics and all this hate right now, but—"

"Hey, this was supposed to be me comforting you," Barnum interrupts with a gentle smile, and Lettie can't help but return it.

After a moment, though, she sighs in resignation. "I just... I shouldn't be feeling this way, you know? I'm letting people's words bring me down; that's the opposite of what I should be doing."

Barnum only shrugs. "It happens, though. Just don't let their words change you and who you are, that's all. Because they don't matter, as I'm sure you're aware." He playfully nudges Lettie's shoulder, a small smile on his face.

"Yeah," she sighs, looking down at her chewed-up fingernails. Lines from her song "This Is Me" begin playing through her head, jumbling with the words of the protesters and critics. She tries to block them out—or, rather, "drown" them out—but her mind isn't letting her. It's like she's committed them to memory, just as much as all the choreo and lyrics and lines.

Has she really seen those hateful, vile words so many times?

Her next breath shakes in the exhale, and, though quiet, it's enough for someone like Barnum to notice and take concern to. He glances over at Lettie, frowning. He wishes there was a way to make all of this hate and trouble go away. Make it just disappear from everyone's minds. Maybe next he'll create an invisibility veil to drape over the circus building and all its activities. An invisibility veil and a memory-eraser.

He wishes he had a magic wand to wave and make all of this pain go away—his poor oddities' pain, and the pain in his heart from the somber sights. Why must people be so cruel? Why couldn't they just accept the fact that these oddities had been walking along the edge of the world when suddenly Barnum swooped down in a cape and gave them a real life? Why does everyone always have to give their negative two cents on something as lively and rejuvenating as a circus?

"People are always gonna try and bring you down. Unfortunately, that's just a fact of life," Barnum says at last, his voice low. Lettie sniffles. He pauses for a moment, then, as if considering, or reconsidering, his next words.

"But no one ever made a difference by being like everyone else."

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i'm sorry this was lowkey pretty bad. desperately trying to get back into, and finally finish this story!! just wanted to put something out there to see how many people are actually still here LOL 😜🌼💛