I do not own American Horror Story: Freak Show.

But this isn't about the freak show. This is a love story.

In the Absence of Light, Darkness Prevails

Darkness Prevails

My Dearest Elsa,

I am alive though it would be a lie to say that I am well.

I have been searching for you for these many months and years. Only now have found you, tucked away in a traveling carnival of sorts.

Fraulein Elsa's Cabinet of Curiosities, how very extraordinary. A previous version of myself would yearn to experience the show and behold you finally singing and performing before appreciative audiences as you always dreamt of doing. But alas, I dare not without consent from you. Perhaps you will understand why when you have completed your consideration of this letter.

I suppose that after all of my carefully laid plans and promises made so many years ago, I must explain my absence from you for so very long. Though you may hate me when my tale is concluded.

Your torturers, the men who stole your fleshly legs from you, are now dead and buried in the ground, Elsa. You shall fear them no more. I tracked them all down, one by one, and killed them. For their abuse and cruelty of you. It was not unbearably challenging, I must confess. They were all considered fine and upstanding men of political and societal stature and position, easy to track down and dispatch. And so they are now and forever gone from this mortal coil, never to return.

All save for one. The last man, who shall remain nameless lest you, my vengeful Elsa, seek to track him down yourself. As I stalked him, he caught me unawares and took my attempted murder of him as quite a personal slight. He shot me and held me captive for many months.

He was a Nazi doctor and an avid scientist, surely one of the cruelest of the Devil's own minions. I must confess I almost did not survive his torments of me. But he did not seek to end my life, no, only to extend it to further his experiments of the limits of human capacity for pain and suffering.

My only salvation from such a dark and dreadful misery and eventual death came in the form of an SS general who wished for me to build him bookshelves to contain his growing collection of stolen tomes. If not for my skills as a humble carpenter, I fear I would languish still in the windowless cells deep in the fetid, hidden recesses of my captor's laboratory.

My heart would sorrow to write of this to you, but I suspect that you may not wish to see or hear from me after my next revelation. And so I must reveal all to you lest you refuse contact with me hereafter. And I sorely wish to not lead you off in a fool's paradise of unachievable dreams and fruitless hopes. Of that I still have a semblance of human compassion.

My heart, once so full of life and love and belief has dried up and crumpled to ash in the face of my sufferings, Elsa. A sunny day which once held so much potential and promise for me now yields naught but absence of night. My mind, once so alight with hope and possibility for what we two could become, now feels empty and hollow of naught but survival and breath.

I can no longer love, Elsa. Nor hate. Nor grieve. Nor hope. Nor wonder. Nor find any joy at all in this life.

All my humanity, I believe, is gone, seared away by the horrors I endured under the doctor who held me captive and punished my body so mercilessly.

I do not know if or when I might be able to feel love again. Or any humanity at all, my once dearest Elsa. But it would be a grievous sin indeed, to pretend so otherwise until that time may come.

And so I now fear that I am no longer the man you desire and need. I fear a reunion between us would only bring you even more sorrow and pain. And whatever else I am, I am no monster to make you suffer so.

I wish you to continue to go out into the world without me, Elsa, and live your life in the sun and the warmth of possibility and hope. Do the good unto others that I myself can no longer fathom the strength to do.

However, if you wish to see me still, my face and hands are as of now unmarked and unchanged but for the passage of time. I enclose my address below so that you may consider and make your own determinations, as you have so willfully done in all the time I have been graced to know you.

If I still had the capacity for prayers and petitions up to the God who never saw fit to grant me reprieve from my pain and torment until it was too late to save my soul, I would pray that this grim missive finds you well and that you may live and love in the sun.

With all that is left of my ashen heart and soul, I remain

Massimo

Such a cruel and fatalistic ending to such a romantic tale, I know.

But we know what Massimo said when he was relaying his story to Jimmy.

And perhaps now we understand a little of why Elsa is so unhappy when we see her in Freak Show. And maybe we can understand why she cries that time after singing onstage? Maybe every time she performs, a secret part of her is hoping to finally see him in the crowd? And shatters apart when it ends and he is not there? Fifteen years of that would damage anyone's psyche.

Because as we have already established, in the absence of light, darkness prevails.

Tomorrow I will finish their FS story in a new, much shorter fic called 'Everything That Has a Beginning, Has an End'. Not exactly an original title (Matrix fans), but fitting nonetheless. And if you're too burned out, that's okay too. So am I. But I gotta give them all they've earned, yeah?

Many, many, many thanks to my gracious reviewers brigid1318, 8girls8boys, GG (thank you, sweetie), and jessicalangefan.

And also many sincere thanks to the silent readers of this story as well.

I hope you all lead happier and more fulfilled lives than our tragic pair here.

Thanks for reading and be well. :)