Title: I Still See You
Author: Alison H.
Summary: A promise is never forgotten.
Rating: PG
A/N: I'm not really sure where this came from. Just a random idea I got in the car on the way home from practice. Originally it was going to be Roger's POV, but I decided to deal with how Mark would react to the situation instead. Let me know what you think. Reviews make the world go round. Or something like that. I might change the title later, but this works for now.
Disclaimer: I do not own Rent. Or any of the characters. Or anything worth possessing, for that matter, so suing is pointless.
- - - - -
I remember the day you told me you were leaving.
We were lounging in my backyard, like we always did on lazy Sunday afternoons. But there was, from the beginning, something different about this particular Sunday. The air was stale and heavy with anticipation. Instead of joking and laughing, we just stared at my mom's flower bed. Even the azaleas in all their usually vibrant reds, pinks, and purples seemed muted and wilting, as if they knew something I didn't and keeping the secret had drained all their energy.
There was no build-up, no fanfare to the big news. Just a simple sentence, slipped casually into the conversation. "I'm getting out of here." So quick I very nearly missed it.
You said that you felt trapped here, suffocated -- that you were afraid if you stayed one day longer the town might kill you.
I tried to convince you to stay, but you had already made up your mind. Sense and reason never worked on you anyway. Your heart always spoke too loud, drowning out your brain.
"Come with me," you pleaded. But I couldn't. I was scared. I loved you -- more than you probably knew -- but the idea of leaving home, and with it everything I had ever known, petrified me.
I didn't even say no. I tried, but my voice wouldn't cooperate. I think your lips forget the shape of a certain word, however simple it may be, when they know it's the one thing you wish you didn't have to say.
So I just shook my head. Your eyes filled with pain then, and I wanted so desperately to rid you of everything that ailed you, but I knew the cure you needed wasn't one I could dispense.
"When?" I asked, kicking halfheartedly at a patch of dirt with the toe of my sneaker. My voice was quiet, reserved.
"Tonight." You said you were sorry, but it had to be that way. You just couldn't take it any longer.
I tried to choke back my tears, but success was only minimal. I was younger then, still an innocent and sheltered seventeen years old. (You were seventeen, too, but I don't think you were ever young.) I hadn't yet mastered the art of hiding and letting my camera feel for me. I held your hand and you held me close, and we stayed like that until the sun dipped low in the horizon, splashing the sky with colors.
When we finally moved there was a small patch of wetness soaked through your shirt where I'd rested my head. I didn't even notice the stains you'd left on my sweater. I think I ran out of tears that day, because I can't remember crying since then.
I asked what you would do when you got to New York City. "I don't know," was your reply. "Work, maybe. Start a band. I'll be okay. Don't worry about me."
But you knew I would, anyway. And I did. I don't think I stopped once, even as days became weeks, weeks slipped into months, and I realized that you weren't going to call or come home. I kept caring, kept worrying, kept clinging to whatever dash of hope was left. I had to. There was nothing else for me. I had never liked Scarsdale, but you made it tolerable. Without you, I was alone.
Right before you left, I promised that one day, when the time was right -- when I was ready to grow up and face my fears -- I would leave everything else behind and come to the city. I would find you, and we would be best friends again. You nodded, smiled, held my hand just a little tighter. And then you promised too, promised there would always be a place for me where ever you were. Somehow you knew I needed that promise. I needed to know that our parting didn't have to be forever. Because I didn't think I could handle forever on my own.
I never broke a promise to you, Roger, and I don't intend to break this one either. I'm here now, in the city that never sleeps, which means wherever you are can't be too far from where I am. I wonder when I'll find you. Will it be today, tomorrow, next month, next year? I know it won't be as simple as a listing in the phone book -- that sort of thing made you feel tied down, and wasn't that exactly what you were escaping when you left home?
But I'll keep looking until I find you. And I will find you. Call me an idealist, but I know I will. Even if it means scouring the entire city. It can't be too hard, can it? I just have to figure out where to begin.
I've got a loft in the East Village now; it seems like your kind of place. You always hated how pretentious Scarsdale was, but the people here are so interesting and free and real. I'm already making friends, something that never happened when I was surrounded by snotty private school kids and later, terminally-serious Ivy League students.
But that's not why I'm here. You are.
You're the reason I'm standing in the middle of a garden on 7th Street, between B and C. They call it El Jardin de la Esperanza -- the Hope Garden. I watch the aging beatniks with their vegetable seeds and the punk kids with their exotic flower bulbs, kneeling side by side on the grass and chatting peacefully while they plant. Some of the teenagers remind me of you. Their hands are like yours, raking through the dirt with the same skill and technique I recognize from when you would play a new tune on your beloved guitar. Or when you would comb your fingers through my hair, comforting me after I'd had a bad day.
If I concentrate enough, I can almost pretend that you're there with them. You're singing to them, a song you used to say was mine alone. But I'm not angry, because it's just my imagination anyway.
"Mark?"
A voice -- one small word -- simple, really. I pause for a moment, thinking it's my imagination again. Then I turn around.
There you are.