All The Stars
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Star Trek: Voyager
(Author's Note: Just to be clear, there is no equivalent to P.T. Barnum's wife and daughters in this story. As a fan fiction author, I'm going to twist the facts however they suit me – which is what the screenwriters did with the real Barnum's story anyway.)
/
"Take my hand.
Will you share this with me?
'Cause, darling, without you
All the shine of a thousand spotlights,
All the stars we steal from the night sky
Will never be enough … "
- "Never Enough", by Loren Allred (The Greatest Showman OST, 2017)
/
Perfection – that's what critics all over the world have been calling Annika Hansen. The loveliest, most talented singer the world has ever seen.
Standing in the wings of San Francisco's opera house, wearing several layers of white satin and makeup, she has never felt less deserving of the word.
She feels, in fact, like she's about to faint. Or be sick.
She's used to stage fright, but this is something else altogether. Her hands clench in the folds of her voluminous skirts.
"You all right, Miss Hansen?"
A gloved hand touches her shoulder and she whirls around.
Joseph Zimmerman is standing there, her agent, dressed in his red velvet tailcoat and top hat and carrying his gold-topped cane. If it were anyone else, she'd have said he looked ridiculous, a circus ringmaster invading this temple of serious culture. But he wears that outfit like it's the only proper thing to wear.
"Can I get you anything? Glass of water? Scotch on the rocks?"
He winks, and she smiles despite herself. Everyone knows she doesn't drink.
What they don't know is that when she was younger, even champagne made her head spin, and she's too afraid of losing control to ever drink it again.
But she told Mr. Zimmerman that, once, during one of the endless train rides between the stops of her tour. He nodded and said yes, that was the most important thing in this business. Keeping a clear head.
Did he mean show business, or something else?
"Nothing, thank you." Her world-famous voice is a strained whisper.
"Don't worry. You'll be magnificent - as always."
His eyes flicker up and down along the dress they chose together. She had been anxious about having to wear some flamboyant circus costume, but the white dress suits her. Simple and elegant, that's what we want, he'd said, sketching her outline in the air with his expressive hands, like Pygmalion designing Galatea.
So why is he looking at her tonight – at her farewell concert, no less - like he's never seen her before?
He takes both her hands and squeezes them between his, until the warmth radiates through both sets of gloves. "Break a leg. I'd spit over your shoulder too, but I know how much you hate that."
There is nothing she can say, so she only nods.
He breaks away and puts on his stage persona. She can see it happen, like the swirl of a cloak settling around his shoulders. He strides out onto the stage, twirling his cane, and takes an elaborate bow.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome! It's a tough job to introduce the woman who needs no introduction, but with your permission, I'll try!" Roars of laughter from the audience. "Here for just one more night on this fair continent, everybody put your hands together for the one … the only … Annika Hansen!"
People talk about her singing, but he's got the audience wrapped around his finger with just a few words.
As an experienced performer, she knows this is her body's cue to settle down. This is the moment when stage fright falls away, and the cool, detached confidence of doing what she was born to do takes over. But when Mr. Zimmerman sweeps his arm out to present her to the audience, when he gives her a tiny smile that the audience is too far away to see, she feels the very opposite of cool.
His smile goes to her head worse than champagne.
It's not a new feeling, either. It's been building up for months, all the way from the first concert in Boston. How could she not have noticed?
He whisks himself away and she's staring out at a shadowy sea of faces. It never feels any less surreal no matter how often she sees it. She throws her shoulders back, straightens her spine, and sings.
What happens to her performance that night is a mystery. The critics in the audience will be arguing about it for years to come.
If this perfect artist ever had a flaw, they all agreed, it was being too self-conscious. Too icy and glittering, like the winters of her native land. And she starts out like that, quiet and measured, precise as frost flowers blooming on a windowpane. But she builds to a crescendo, bit by bit, until the ice melts into a ferocious spring flood that leaves tears streaming down more than one listener's face.
The applause is deafening. Jewels and roses fly at her from every direction, more than she could carry back to Sweden if she wanted to. There are going to be fan letters the next morning, and crowds of people watching her board the steamer, and more money than one person could ever spend in her life.
But it will never be enough, she knows that now.
Not without him.
/
Zimmerman's only using her, you know, Joe overheard one wealthy lady murmur to the other behind her fan at one of the post-performance parties. Trying to pass himself off as a gentleman and a supporter of the arts. But we all know how he started, don't we? With a freak show in a tent.
If you ask me, it's Hansen who's using him, her friend whispered back. Look at her. She may have a voice, but she's dull as bricks, and it's going to take every ounce of that ringmaster's pizzazz to get anyone to sit through an entire concert.
Joe wanted to pop them both on the nose. He stepped out from behind a column instead and tipped his hat with killing politeness, letting them know he'd overheard. The beached-fish looks on their faces were priceless.
He doesn't know what makes him angrier, though: that they're mostly wrong, or partly right.
It's true that the first thought to cross his mind when he met Annika Hansen was: She's a lady. She has that grace, that confidence, he's been trying to achieve all his life and never quite managed. It's true that he invited her on an American tour in the hope that some of it would rub off on him. He knows how to entertain, how to fascinate, how to shock, but he wants to be respected.
As the son of a Jewish patent medicine salesman, who was kicked out of more than one town – sometimes literally – while growing up, respect is something he's dreamed of having all his life.
Not just for him, either, but for his performers. The "freak show in a tent" consists of the most remarkable people he's ever known: Tuvok the fire eater, Harry Kim the sword dancer, B'Elanna with her deformed face and superhuman strength, Chakotay whose tattooed body is a living work of art … he's fiercely proud of them and misses them every day, although he's left them in the care of his business partner, Mr. Paris, and their patroness, Miss Janeway.
Maybe it was selfish of him, leaving his friends behind to go chasing after some elusive ideal he'll never reach.
Joe lingers in the wings, listening to Miss Hansen sing. There's something different about her style this time – she's improvising, getting to the heart of the songs, instead of following the score note by note as she's been taught. He hadn't thought it was possible for her to reach a new height of artistry, but she's done it tonight.
Those gossips are wrong after all, he decides. It's not just her fame that drew him to her. He's got an ear for music, and he knows talent when he sees it. With a voice like hers, he'd have picked her up off the street, just like he picked B'Elanna when he saw her beating off five tavern bullies at once with a broken chair.
But it's more than Miss Hansen's voice that draws him now.
She's lonely. It sounds strange that someone so beloved could be lonely, but she is. Music is her native language, but ordinary human talk is foreign to her. She may not have the dark skin or forehead ridges or tattoos, but in some ways, she's as much of an outsider as his performers. Or himself.
He dreams of providing a refuge for her, a quiet place apart from the crowds where she can rest. Like the train car they've been travelling in (chaperoned, of course, by her maid Naomi), watching trees and mountains and prairies rush by, only talking when they felt like it and being perfectly silent if they didn't.
But that train ride is over now. Tomorrow she'll board the steamer back to Europe, and he'll wave goodbye and wish her a safe journey, and most likely never see her again. Oh, they'll write, of course, and no doubt the newspapers will keep them apprised of each other's careers. But they will never have this again.
He looks down at his red velvet ringmaster's coat, which he still wears in defiance of all narrow-minded gossips, and thinks of the life to which he will be returning. It's a good life, filled with success and friendship and just enough adversity to keep him on his toes.
So why does it feel like, without her, none of it will ever be enough?
/
After her last song, Miss Hansen holds out her white-gloved hand and beckons for Joe to join her.
It's a normal gesture for a performer to make, especially during a farewell concert, but she's never done anything like this before. She does not like being touched; he's seen her freeze in place when being hugged by an overenthusiastic admirer. The first time he dared to give her a hand up into the train and she let it happen, he felt like a million dollars.
He goes back onstage, for once forgetting to swagger.
She takes his hand – heat pulsing through the thin white silk - and swings it up in the air. The audience roars. It's as if she's just reversed their roles, doing for him what he's been doing for her during all their previous concerts. Everybody look at him, she seems to be saying. Everybody show him your respect. Put your hands together for the one and only Joseph Zimmerman.
It's one of the kindest things anyone has ever done for him.
They take their bow together, once, twice, three times. She comes up flushed and beaming, her makeup melting off under the gaslights, her eyes sparkling with post-concert euphoria. He could kiss her. If he weren't afraid she might recoil in disgust, he'd do it, audience and all.
But she's still holding tight to his hand, and for the first time, he dares to hope.
/
He invites her up to his hotel room, and they toast each other with alcohol-free cider.
"To music."
"To finding lost luggage. And last-minute costume mending. And insanely high ticket sales. And weeks on a train without killing each other."
"To always finding something to strive for."
"To friendship."
True to form, Mr. Zimmerman booked the best rooms available. They're sitting on a velvet sofa so plush, she could sleep right there if she weren't still buzzing with excitement. A summer breeze blows in from the open balcony, smelling of the ocean, making the crystals dance on the chandelier. The street lights of the city outside mirror the stars in the night sky above. Chilled cider fizzes on her tongue.
But the room could be a convent cell for all she cares, because it's Mr. Zimmerman who shines for her tonight. He talks about his circus, about the formidable Miss Janeway and her work with the suffragettes and abolitionists, about how Kes defies gravity on a tightrope and B'Elanna can fix anything on wheels, about how Tom Paris' admiral father disowned him for working with the circus, but the young ex-navy officer never showed an instant of regret.
Mr. Zimmerman paints pictures with the sweep of his hands and the power of his voice, larger than life as always, even for an audience of one. He could have been anything if given the chance: an actor, a politician, a singer like her. But the Zimmerman & Paris World of Wonders is where he belongs.
"I suppose you'll be glad to go back," says Annika.
"Oh, absolutely." He beams proudly at the memories of what he's created. "Although I'm sure it wouldn't be your cup of tea at all."
"Why not?"
"Well, the sawdust, for one thing. And the shared dressing room. We still get hecklers throwing peanut shells at us, although it's not as bad as it was, and journalists who swear I'm the greatest disaster to befall my country since the Civil War."
"How does any of that matter when you're doing the work you love?"
He pauses with his glass in mid-air, puts it down on the table, and gives her an intense look she can't read.
"Do you mean that, Miss Hansen? Really?"
"I always mean what I say." She swirls her own glass in both hands, too flustered to look into those eyes. "You should know that by now."
"Oh … well, in that case, listen. I've just had the most marvelous idea."
She's heard that more than once during their tour. His "marvelous ideas" were often bizarre, always inconvenient, and had an uncanny way of turning out successful even when everyone involved believed they would fail. He would sweep them all along on the wave of his enthusiasm whether they wanted it or not, and she waited on the edge of her seat for what he would come up with next.
"I think a classically trained singer would go perfectly with the music in some of our acts. Kes's tightrope act, for example – she could dance to the tune of a Mozart aria. Or when Tuvok and Kim do their swordfight, we could play some kind of warrior ballad. What do you think?"
She thinks it sounded like an exquisite form of torture. Watching him with his friends, but never belonging; working with him day after day, but never being his.
"Surely … " She clears her dry throat and takes another sip of cider. "Surely you will find someone in Boston."
"Annika ..."
He's never called her that before, not during all their traveling. She looks up.
Neither of them is in costume right now, gloves included. When he takes the glass away and clasps both her hands between his, the way he's always done to calm her nerves, their skin is bare.
"It's not 'someone' I want, it's you," he says, leaning closer, so close that she would normally start to panic – but it's not panic making her heart race. "I know there's not much chance of a lady like you throwing in her lot with riffraff like me - but as my father always said, if you never ask, the answer's always no. So – will you stay with me? … Please?"
"As your colleague or your mistress?"
Purity has always been a part of her public image, hence the white dresses. She doesn't care about that as such, she's not religious, but she does care that a scandal would ruin her career. Even if sharing this man's bed sounds like a better idea every minute.
"As my wife, of course, if you'll have me. I don't know what tales you've heard about immoral circus folk, but - "
She pulls her hands free of his hold, but only so she can throw her arms around him and bowl him over onto the velvet sofa.
"Yes, Joe," she says, with what little breath she can spare between kisses. "Yes, I will."
Her critics called her perfect, but they'd be horrified if they could see her now. And yet she's found perfection at last, ironically enough, in the arms of a human being as flawed as she is.
It's enough, and more than enough, for them both.