Disclaimer: I don't own RENT. I'm not making any money out of this, so please don't sue me! :)
A/N: So I was thinking about the part in 'Goodbye, Love' when Roger accuses Mark of detaching from being alive, and this story just popped into my head. It's about the reasons Mark has for keeping his guard up all the time. Hope you all enjoy it!
Prologue
Shoot Without a Script
Close on that guy, over there, the one with the stripy scarf. I know him! Well, I used to. In fact, we haven't spoken in years. We studied film together at NYU, God, how many years ago now? Five? Six? I didn't finish my third year. Anyway, back to the camera-wielding scarf guy. Mark Cohen. He's hardly changed at all. I can't help wondering what he's gotten up to these past few years. What's he doing now?
Does he ever think of me?
It's Christmas Eve; everybody has somewhere to be. So I'd better get going. Not that I have offers queuing up left right and centre for me to go out tonight, but I'll think of something. Hey, maybe inspiration will hit me on the subway.
-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-
The young woman observes him with a filmmaker's typical open scrutiny, squinting her eyes automatically as though peering through a lens. Her chestnut coloured hair is shorter than it was back then, and there are fine lines bracketing her grey eyes. She wears a dark purple duffel coat and an olive green beret, and she sits alone at the little round table by the far window. Mark Cohen does not notice his watcher until she stands up to leave. Just as she's pushing open the door of the Life Cafe, he catches the coppery flash of her hair, the slightly dejected slope of her shoulders, and he's reminded of someone he used to know.
He remembers, all of a sudden, Roger's words to him earlier that year, before he left for Santa Fe. Mark hides in his work. What am I hiding from, exactly? He'd thought dismissively. He knows exactly what he's hiding from. So does Roger, better than anyone, though neither of them ever says anything about it. About her.
When he gets back to their dingy, sparsely furnished apartment that evening, Mark upends a box of old tapes on the dusty floor, scrabbling about among them for the one he needs. It doesn't take him that long to find it. He slides it into the machine and waits with mounting trepidation for the memories to scroll up before him on his slightly battered projector screen.
Her voice, crackling a little from the poor quality of the film, but still unmistakably hers, fills the empty apartment.
"Hi, Mark!" she calls out as the screen flickers into life. She's laughing, waving at the Mark Cohen of the past, the Mark Cohen standing opposite her in Central Park, brandishing his new filming equipment. "This is his first film, ok?" she narrates into the camera, "so be nice. No yelling or throwing things at the screen or anything."
In the fading light of evening, the Mark Cohen of the present stays stock still, his eyes fixed upon the girl on the projector screen. The girl he and Roger never talk about. The reason he always detaches from being alive.
Now he forgets to do that, forgets to create that distance between what he sees and what he feels. For once, he watches without guarding himself. He watches – and remembers.