I was watching my DVD of RENT - with the commentary - and during Your Eyes, they say Mimi probably actually dies in about ten days. And that gave me the idea to write that scene, so this takes place around ten days after Mimi returns to life. It's really very short, but it's only two or three scenes.

Disclaimer: I do not own RENT or any of its characters.

Ten days ago, we finally found Mimi. Ten days ago, we nearly lost her again. About an hour after her fever broke, the EMC arrived to help. Ha. What a load of help it would have been then. But, they told us they needed to take Mimi back to the hospital. Make sure she was alright, take her in for observation. Just to be sure she would be okay.

The next morning, they came into the room and told us she probably wouldn't see the New Year.

January 5, 1990, 8 pm Eastern Standard Time.

"Mark?" I woke a little – I must have dozed off, sitting here in Mimi's room.

"Yeah, Roger?" He hadn't left her side this entire time. I knew it killed him to see all those tubes hooked up to her, to see the pale sheen of sweat coating her body in the cool room. And it killed everyone to know she would die in this gleaming white hell. It wasn't like Mimi. She'd go out with a bang, and we all knew it.

"Something's wrong." His voice was chilled, full of fear. Oh, God, was this it? I stood up quickly, pushing the frames of my glasses up as I glanced at the electronic screens that were supposed to monitoring Mimi. He was right, the spikes were more rapid, the beeps the machines emitted coming faster and faster.

"R…oger…" The thin, weak voice floated from the girl lying on the barred bed. It was more a cage.

"Sh, sh," he said, taking her hand in one of his own, placing his other on her forehead. "You'll be okay, you're going to pull through this. I know it."

"No. I won't." She coughed again.

Here I was again. The bystander, the one who saw it all, from the beginning to the end. It was happening again. Soon we would be visiting that church once again, and Mimi would not be saying her piece for the dearly departed.

"We have doctors here, they can save you, they can—" The words stuck in his throat, I could see it. He knew that the doctors could do nothing. Why wasn't anyone coming to help her? They could at least fucking try!

I reached out and pursed the call button as quickly as I could. Someone could do something. They had to. We couldn't lose Mimi, not now, not here, not like this.

"I love you, Roger," she told him, smiling weakly before closing her eyes. And she was gone the moment before a team of nurses came rushing into the room.

"Mimi was so adventurous. She took everything in stride, she would never let anything get her down. There was nothing she wouldn't do," I said, standing in front of the smooth wooden box that held her small frame. Behind me, seven votive candles were lit around a picture of her from before. From not long after last New Year's. "She lived for the moment, for the day, and she knew that even if she didn't survive, she'd go out kicking and screaming." I smiled a little. "Even when we thought that she'd died the first time around, she wouldn't let life go."

When Roger stepped up to speak... he found no words.

The friends in the pews sang No Day but Today.

And finally, Roger found his muse, he found the words he needed to say. And rising above the familiar chords we sang out, the melody he had finally finished for Mimi rang out.

There wasn't a dry eye in the whole damn church.