A/N: Wow, so sorry for this incredibly long gap between updates! Thanks for tuning in, I hope you enjoy this chapter. Fun fact!: The part of Jenny Lind was actually written with Anne Hathaway in mind! Which is crazy because, even though I love Anne Hathaway, I really can't imagine anyone but Rebecca Ferguson as Jenny Lind.

Aftermath (From Now On)

JENNY LIND QUITS!

Charity reread the headline on her laptop for the dozenth time that morning. FAMOUS OPERA DIVA LEAVES BARNUM'S PET PROJECT. She glanced at her husband, who had the same story pulled up on his phone, but was ignoring it in favor of lying on the floor with his arm across his eyes.

"This isn't so bad, Phin," she tried.

"Unnnnghhhhh.."

"You always like to tell me that there's no such thing as bad publicity."

"We should've hired Anne Hathaway." Charity paused, but it wasn't the time to agree. Looking at the headline again, she chuckled. Phineas raised his head to look at her in disbelief.

"Did you just laugh?"

"Look, life is imitating art before it's even art!" she replied, cheerfully pointing to the screen." He smiled weakly.

"Why are you so relaxed about this? What do you know what I don't?" his eyes narrowed. "Did you do something terrible to Jenny Lind?"

"No!" Charity protested. In a rare reversal of roles, her husband raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Not yet, anyway."

"Charity-"

"No, no, it's not what you think."

"Oh, really?" Unbidden, memories of Jenny and Charity's fights from back in the day rose to the forefront of his mind.

"Let's just say that telling the press she quit our project under bad working conditions, rather than that she was fired, is libel."

"Okaaaay…". When her husband didn't say anything else, she elaborated,

"Which means that Jenny is about to have a very unpleasant conversation with our legal team."

"We have a legal team?"

"Phineas!"

"Kidding! I'm kidding!"

Anne froze in the darkness as she heard someone moving around close by. She held her breath and tried to listen above her pounding heart. Her eyes fell on a supply closet where she could hide, but she wasn't that desperate...yet. And the door was locked, which meant that she didn't have to internally battle with herself. After a few minutes without noise, Anne concluded that whoever had been there had moved on - or, more likely, that she was simply on-edge.

Although, Lettie had warned her that there were occasionally patrols at night. And it would really be difficult to explain to the higher-ups why she was sneaking around in the closed part of the extensive building - forbidden to the public at night - instead of simply asking Barnum for the access code he and the crew used after-hours. That would've been much simpler, and less nerve-wracking, she admitted to herself while straining her ears for any unexpected noises. But this was an ambush, and it wouldn't do to risk her target finding out her plans ahead of time.

Anne reached the next door - normally electronically locked - and opened it as quietly as possible. She wondered, not for the first time, the story behind Lettie's competence in hacking. Then again, some things were better left unasked. At least she hadn't had to pay too much for this particular favor - agreeing that the current score in their prank war was even had sufficed.

It went unsaid though, that if she was caught, Lettie's name would be kept strictly out of it.

She let out a breath of relief as she entered 'safe' part of the building. Anyone who saw her now wouldn't question her presence. Now that there was less of a need for stealth, she quickly reached her destination: the trapeze practice ring. As she expected, there was only one other person there.

Anne swallowed down her nervousness as she watched her brother. It was true, what they had told Barnum, Lettie, and Phillip not two weeks ago: trapeze was their therapy.

And because W.D. had been avoiding her for an entire week, Anne was desperate. She wasn't sure that ambushing W.D. and forcing him to talk to her was the best course of action - but it was better than doing nothing, and this was the one time she knew for certain that he'd be alone. And couldn't run away as easily.

Her mind made up, Anne quietly scaled the scaffolding up to the rafters, taking care to stay out of sight. At the top, she uncoiled the ropes that she had placed there earlier, and analyzed her brother's flying form carefully. She was going to have to time this just right…

W.D. yelled in shock as his sister appeared out of nowhere and slammed into him, scaring him half to death. Before he knew it he was well and truly tangled in rope, as Anne had planned. Both of them knew from experience that certain mistakes could get you trapped, as it had happened with he and Phillip during rehearsal, and she had just used that against him.

"What the hell, Anne?" She held up her hands in a placating gesture.

"I just need a minute." W.D. raised an eyebrow but didn't try to escape, though he probably could have easily enough. That seemed like a good sign. Anne took a deep breath.

"I just wanted to say I'm sorry. No, wait," she added as W.D. opened his mouth to say something, "Let me finish. I'm sorry if I ever made you feel that you couldn't trust me with your secret. And I don't care what your sexuality is, if you're bi or gay, or even if you're straight is this is unique to Phillip. I love you, and I just want you to be happy." She held her breath, having no idea what W.D. might say in response to that, though she knew him better than anyone. Or at least, she had thought she did. W.D.'s voice was soft when he answered.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you. It's...it's hard because, even though I know in my heart that you wouldn't judge me in any way, there's still that tiny fear, not knowing what the people closest to you are going to think of this different part of you -" he was cut off abruptly as his sister through her arms around him. They stayed like that for a while, until -

"Anne?"

"Hmm?"

"Can I please get down now?"

Very early the next morning, Charity Barnum was humming as she went to get everything ready for the day's filming. Technically, she could let the opening crew do it, but this was often the only time she could count on a few moments of peace and quiet during the day.

It also allowed her to dismantle some of her husband's prank traps, the ones he thought she didn't know about.

Her set-up was business as usual until she reached the trapeze room. She raised an eyebrow at the Wheeler siblings stretched out together on a net...fast asleep. Charity smiled as she silently closed the door. They had both had a somewhat rough week, she knew, and could probably use the sleep. It had been hard not to notice the two normally close siblings avoiding each other, and she was glad to see that they had made up. She would tell the opening crew to let them be for a few more hours.

And she would tell the IT people that Lettie had hacked into their system, again.

AFTERMATH, TAKE ONE

"They caught the thugs who started the fire." James Gordon Bennett dusted off the stairs next to Barnum with his newspaper. "I thought you'd like to know." Barnum didn't say anything, staring at the wreckage of everything he'd built. "I never liked your show," Bennett continued, " But I always thought the people did." He raised his flask to his lips.

"They did. They -" Barnum was cut off by the man's sudden spit-take. "What -"

"What is this?!" Bennett exclaimed, coughing. P.T. raised an eyebrow.

"It's supposed to be water."

"That is not water." Barnum took the flask from Bennett and sniffed cautiously.

"Lettie! How much did you pay the set people to fill the flask with pastis?"

"I'm quite sure I don't know what you're talking about, Barnum."

"Suuure…"

TAKE TWO

"I mean, thank God for Jenny's tour. We can borrow off the profits; we'll be fine." Bennett stared at Barnum in surprise.

"You don't know."

"Hmm?" Bennett handed the newspaper he had been holding to Barnum. Both men blanched. Instead of the photograph of his kiss with Jenny, P.T. was looking at rather...interesting...photo of Jenny in their younger, wilder days. He wasn't sure whether he should be happy that his wife was finally getting into the pranking spirit, or fearful. This blackmail photo was years old, after all.

Then again, it was probably better for her to blow off some steam here, than to actually use it against Jenny.

"Anne?"

"Yes?"

"Why does Phillip look terrified of you lately?"

"..."

"Anne."

"Okay, so I may have had a 'friendly chat' with him."

"What?!"

"Hey, you were the one who always told me that it was your sibling duty to properly scare new boyfriends."

"That's different!"

FROM NOW ON, TAKE ONE

Phineas Taylor Barnum sat in the darkened bar, attempting to drown his sorrows in the amber liquid. He barely looked up when the entrance bell jingled and the door opened. He should have, though.

"RAAAAAAH!"

"Aaaauuugh!" CRASH. Barnum screamed as, instead of Tom climbing up onto the bartop before him like he expected, Lettie snuck up behind him and scared the ever-living daylights out of him. Lettie and her co-actors snickered as Barnum fell off the barstool.

"You scream like a girl!"

"Lettie!"

"Yeah, high-pitched just like that!"

TAKE TWO

"I drank champagne with kings and queens; the politicians praised my name!" Barnum stared nostalgically at the black-and-white photographs adorning the bar wall. "But those were someone else's dreams, the pitfalls of the man I be - Hey, wait a minute, who drew a mustache on my photo of the Queen and I?"

TAKE THREE

"From now on…" P.T. grabbed Lettie 'round the waist and swung her around, blinking in surprise when, instead of laughing, she let out an involuntary shriek. "Lettie are you...ticklish?" His eyes narrowed deviously.

"Don't you dare!"

TAKE FOUR

"From now onnnn!" the cast winced as Chang and Eng slid too far across the bartop and crashed to the floor.

TAKE FIVE

"And we will come back home, and we will come back home, hooome agaaaain!" Everyone watched, impressed, as Dog Boy did a flip.

"Now it's your turn, Barnum!" Lettie hollered as P.T. scowled and everyone else laughed.

TAKE EIGHT

"From now onnnnnnn..." Barnum pushed the doors open and sprinted down the street. "What's waited til tomorrow starts tonight. It starts tonight! Ouch!" His triumphant song was cut short as he tripped and crashed into the pavement.

"Smooth." That was Anne, once again in her "I-just-survived-a-deadly-fire outfit." Barnum scowled.

"Cut me some slack! It's hard to sing and run at the same time!"

TAKE NINE

"What's waited til tomorrow starts tonight. It starts tonight! Let this promise in me start, like an anthem in my heart - Aaaah!" Charity shook her head and winced as her husband fell off of the train car he had tried to climb on. Why did he write these sort of scenes for himself?

TAKE THIRTEEN

"...And we will come back home, home again…" Anne watched through misty eyes as Phillip finally woke up. Squeezing his hand firmly but gently, she sniffled and tried not to let any tears fall. Her look of tender affection was replaced by annoyance when Phillip burst out laughing.

"Come on, Phillip! I had a moment going!"

TAKE TWENTY SEVEN

P.T. sighed in exasperation as both Anne and Phillip were (once again) unable to hold back their giggles as they leaned in to kiss each other.

"Haven't you ever kissed a co-star for a film before?" he asked rhetorically, waving his clipboard. "Get it together!"

"Sorry," Anne said, trying and failing to look serious. Her brief composure broke as Phillip let out an involuntary snort, and then they were off again. P.T. looked at his wife like, Now what?

"Just let them get it out of their system, dear, it's a unique situation."

"Alright, gang! Nice job! Tomorrow we start working towards 'The Greatest Show'!"

"No." P.T. turned around in surprise to stare at his wife.

"No?"

"No," Charity confirmed. "Because, somebody thought it would be a good idea to combine fire and trampolines, and now we need new trampolines."

P.T. chuckled nervously.

"Erm, I can explain." Charity folded her arms across her chest.

"This should be good."

A/N: Well, that's all for this chapter, I hope you enjoyed it! I probably only have one more chapter left (The Greatest Show), unless I decide I want an epilogue; I haven't decided yet. Happy Belated Easter, for those who celebrate!