A Matter Of Chance (Short Fanfic)

GizmoAkimbo

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Synopsis
A potential narrative of Fozzie leading up to the events of The Muppet Movie (1979).
Status: Completed

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He was utterly tired, but had managed to manipulate himself into thinking otherwise. The road ahead was cold and dark, with the only lights being street ones whipping past foggy windows as the car engine thrived. He hadn’t known how far he traveled, but it was likely nowhere close to home anymore.

“Ma, please.” The old woman practically groveled at the bear’s feet, gripping and yanking him from his attempts at jumping off the edge that lined reality and his own dreams. “You said nothing about leaving!?”

“I thought it was obvious!” The constant remarks about Fozzie being the best comedian out there, that the world needed flesh blood to flood the stages of those midnight shows. In order to attempt such a feat would have allowed the assumption that Fozzie would have to be leaving home as well; if he was going to be seen, he had to be seen.

“So you’re just leaving behind an old woman by her lonesome?”

“Oh, don’t make this harder than it has to be. You know that’s not what this is.” It wouldn’t matter what he would have said, it would never wipe the deadening chill that sparked in his mother’s eyes, it wouldn’t reverse the effects of aging in her features that grew longer and bitter with each passing second. To say that Fozzie’s potential departure would kill her was an immense understatement.

Her eyes never strayed from his, not that Fozzie returned the noble gesture. He held his face in a single hand, paintings of years flying faster than the street lights he would pass later that night. Being held after every nightmare, being ushered to school despite the cracking gazes his peers gave him, even being yanked by the ears whenever he stole a cookie that was still cooling from the oven—his mother had been his world from the beginning, yet here she was attempting to declare the ending.

“You know, that’s exactly what your father told me before he left. And you know what ha-”

“I’m not ditching you, Ma!” His chest lurched at such an idea, spiking a fire from the gasoline she decidedly laid down for him. “I couldn’t, not ever. But I can’t stay here, out of everybody, I thought you understood that.” Fozzie couldn’t bear the idea of bumming off his own mother’s expenses, along with the notion of drawing the curtains on his dreams at comedy, forever blinding him from what could have been. This was his chance, and he had to do this right. “Oh, please say you do.”

The engine died, along with the memory. Fozzie released the tension through a silent exhalation, glancing up at the building he parked before him. The only light in any working condition was a sign that had wavered in an undetermined existence, expressing “cafe” in its dying wake. It was at least a start.

The start to misery. Within the first few seconds of hitting that stage, eyes with the lust of alcohol and brutish attempt drilled Fozzie into the direct center of the spotlight. The bear felt the very pits of him strangle and quiver his heart, but it was too late now; he had to go on, he made it too far to lose to this now.

“I just need someone to give me a chance, and before you know it I’m hitting the big screens!” Fozzie charmed a smile, much to his mother’s discontent. Yet, it worked its flavor of hope, and those dark shadows in her eyes finally quieted. She pulled back her own lips to mimic the gesture, sliding her hand across her son’s proud shoulder. “Alright, hon. I’ll hold you to that.”

He couldn’t believe he could lie to his own mother, right to her face. What was he thinking, what sort of spirit cursed him to dedicate himself to such a waste? Nonetheless, at a drunken bar of all places.

“Do you know any dance routines?” Fozzie nearly yelped, the skin under his fur quivering as he whipped his attention to what he now gathered to be a frog with ambition sparking his features. “What?”

It had ended in utter ruins, but the failure in itself no longer mattered. If the frog hadn’t given him the chance he needed that night to sway the audience, if he hadn’t offered to travel with him to Hollywood, if he never gave Fozzie the option to be part of something so much bigger than either of them, Fozzie’s world would have truly crumbled back on that stage.

It was something that Fozzie would and will never assume for granted.
 
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