Disclaimer: I do not own Marky, though he seems to have taken up residence with Roger in my head.

Notes: Was sitting bored in English class and Marky started talking to me. He's rather nice to talk to. This is what happened. Oh, also, I should mention that this is set in "Lesson Number One" universe - apparently roughly a year (or a little more) after the end of that story (or the end of "I'll Still Say Goodbye"... though it's the same thing). Anyway. So yeah. I think it should still make sense if you haven't read either of those...


It took me a year to realize how big a mistake I made, walking out that door. I think even then, I knew in my heart I wasn't doing him any good by leaving him like that, but I convinced myself otherwise, because I refused to watch him die. I didn't realize that I needed him as much as he needed me.

And he did need me. No amount of self-justification is going to change that. When he fell into his darker moods, I was the one to pull him out, if anyone could. I was the one to help him through the pains of withdrawal, to keep him from running out to buy one more hit just to make the pain stop for a little while. When Mimi was with Benny, or when the right chords just wouldn't come to him, if he spoke to anyone it would be me. I was the one to take care of him when he wouldn't take care of himself, to remind him to grab his coat before going outside without it in pouring rain, or to make sure he took his AZT.

"I need you." Roger's broken, desperate voice on the day I left. I didn't have my camera on, then, but I don't need film to remember his face, his voice at that moment, with picture perfect clarity even film could never capture. I tried not to believe him then, but it was the absolute truth. He needed me, and I left. I missed him before I even walked out the door.

I don't know what made me think I could put him out of my mind just like that, like flicking off a switch. Temporary insanity, maybe. Anger. Hurt. All three. Sheer stupidity, probably most of all. The others tried to tell me that almost as soon as I gave them the phone number for my new place, a tiny, run-down studio apartment as far from the loft as I could manage. Messages on the answering machine every few days, little guilt trips, intentional or not.

"Marky," Maureen would plead when she called, "Roger hasn't come out of the loft since you left. He's moping and driving us all crazy. Just come back and make him stop. Please?"

Or it would be Joanne. She never asked me to come back, but somehow her calls were worse than Maureen's entreaties. "He doesn't eat unless we make him, and he hardly speaks to anyone but Collins. I've never seen him this bad."

Somehow, Collins' calls always hurt the most. "You know he loves you. More than anything. He just wants you back. You're not doing him any good by staying away."

I ignored them, though, as best as I could. I didn't go running back to him, I stayed in my new apartment, alone and lonely, and gradually they stopped mentioning Roger when they called. Collins told me that Roger had left the loft too, a few months after me, and had dropped out of contact with all of them altogether. Maybe he found his way to Santa Fe and stayed there this time. Maybe he found another place in the city. Maybe he went back to his drugs and he's living on the street. Maybe he's dead.

And maybe I could have prevented it. Did he ever mean to keep those promises to me, or were they more lies? Should I have given him a third, a fourth chance, or would he have blown them off the way he did the second chance? Do the "maybes" and "what ifs" even matter? I shouldn't have left. My world still revolves around him… and I don't even have him around anymore.