To All Our Dearly Beloved Readers,

Firstly, we can never thank you all enough for your continued support of this series! This fic will be quite short and will be followed by another sequel (which will be far longer). This fic is just a bridge between "Walk Beside Me" and the next fic to be entitled "Divide Your Sorrows". Thank you again! Enjoy!

Chapter One

"You Were the Song All Along"

Roger

Time was fickle, and withdrawal inconsistent.

Night was creeping in, slipping around the corners of buildings and coating the windows. The street lights were clicking on one by one, making patches of the deep violet sky appear blue.

Roger leaned his head against the window. The bruise spreading across his eye and cheekbone matched the colors of the night perfectly.

It was so strange to see the world through different eyes: Mark's eyes. Years ago, he had been in Mark's place, lying in the other room, finally having collapsed out of utter exhaustion.

When he had gone through withdrawal, he remembered that he had no sense of time. But now, each moment was counted, he was keeping perfect track of how long it had been since Mark had last cried out in his dreams. He recalled how many minutes since Mark had screamed at him, and how much time had passed since Mark had fallen into his arms, crying.

Withdrawal was a two edged sword. One edge was stronger, more hardened, and the only side that was expected. The pain and the anger ripped the body apart from the inside, but the vulnerability and the desire for love, came as the second stroke.

Roger lifted his guitar. He trailed his fingers over the strings gently so the notes were soft and would not wake Mark.

Vulnerability, pain, anger, and love, these are the things he poured into the song and out of his heart.

--


Mark was shaking.

Roger pressed his hand to Mark's cheek. "Mark, stay with me."

His eyes were wide and unseeing, but his lips were moving gently and his voice cracked as he sang. "Consider this: the hint of the century. Consider this: the slip that brought me to my knees failed."

"Mark, can you hear me?" Roger asked.

Mark just kept singing. "What if all these fantasies come flailing around me? Now I've said too much."

Mark's voice was raw. Hours of screaming had taken his voice away and left him with the voice of a stranger.

Roger set the water glass down and was about to leave Mark to his delusions when the other man started screaming.

"Don't touch me! Don't touch me! Please! Stop! Stop! Roger! Roger! Roger! Help me! Don't touch me!"

Roger whirled and raced back to the bed. He pressed his hands on Mark's shoulders to keep the other man from hurting himself.

"STOP! DON'T!"

"Mark!" Roger shouted, trying to make his voice heard above Mark's screaming. "Mark! Listen to me!! I'm here! I'm here!"

Mark thrashed and he struck out blindly at the phantoms which swam in front of his eyes.

"It hurts! Please! Stop! No more! I'll tell you whatever you want. Just please stop hurting me!"

"Mark! You're in the loft. No one's hurting you. You're safe."

Mark's eyes fluttered and his eyes fixed on Roger's face. Pure terror split his face in two with a terrible cry

"I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!"

"Mark, it's Roger!" Mark was stronger than he thought and he was having trouble keeping him down.

"I HATE YOU!" He screamed and shoved Roger off of him.

Roger flew back, before he could catch hold of Mark's hands, Mark managed to slam his fist into Roger's eye. Roger bit his lip. He wasn't about to react in anger. He knew that Mark hadn't meant to hurt him. Roger was just part of the hallucination.

"I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!"

"It's Roger!" He screamed and grabbed Mark's wrist before he could punch him again.

Mark's fit stopped as suddenly as it had started.

"Mark?" Roger asked and gently released the pressure on Mark's arms. "Mark? Can you hear me?"

"Roger?" Mark asked, taking deep, rattling breaths.

"Yes. Yes. It's Roger." Roger took Mark's hand in his and squeezed it tightly.

"I can't do this." Mark whispered. "I can't do this. Please. Please. I need the heroin. Please."

Roger bit his lip.

For one whole second he actually considered it. If it would relieve Mark's pain….

Roger hushed him. "You don't need it, Mark. You'll be alright without it, I promise." Roger brushed the hair from Mark's forehead.

Mark reached up and clasped Roger's hand. "Promise?"

"Yes. I did it, right? And you've always been stronger than I was."

Roger sat beside him until Mark slid back into sleep. Mark never said anything more, except to sing another line of the song, "Now I've said too much", and then he was lost in dreams.

"I thought that I heard you laughing. I thought that I heard you sing. I think I thought I saw you try." Roger finished for him.

--


The city lights were glimmering softly when Roger opened his eyes. His right eye was completely swollen shut and it gave the world a soft, hazy appearance. He couldn't quite tell what had awoken him. He was so exhausted that he should've stayed asleep for several more hours.

"Roger?" Mark's voice sounded almost normal. "Roger? Are you awake?

"Yeah. What's up?"

"I can't find him." Mark said, and Roger wondered for a moment if Mark was a child looking for a lost stuffed animal.

"Can't find who?"

"Me." Silence stretches between them. "I don't know who I am anymore, Roger. I want to stop wanting it. I want to just stop hurting. I'm lost."

Roger stood up. He opened his arms and Mark fell into them and sobbed. "You're still in there Mark. You'll remember. Give it time." Roger rubs small circles across Mark's back as he whispers comforting words into his ear.

Time is fickle.

Roger knows that he's lying. Mark will have to spend months to truly remember what it's like to live life without heroin. Once you've been an addict, you can't go back to being a normal human being. You've tasted your own destruction and whenever things go wrong, you think how easy it would be if you could just have the drugs back.

But for right now, he knows that the lie is necessary. He can't tell Mark that he still thinks about heroin from time to time. Roger bites back the words that he can't say, and just continues keeping Mark safe here in his arms.

If he holds Mark for long enough, maybe all the lies will become true, and maybe all the pain will go away.

They stood like that near an hour until Mark fell asleep standing up and Roger had to help him back to bed.

It wasn't until Roger went to lift his guitar that he realized that he was clutching Mark's scarf in his hand. He didn't remember picking it up; Mark must have pressed it into his hands.

Roger wrapped the scarf around his neck and smiled softly. He picked up his guitar again and began to play. This time he hoped that the notes might slide into Mark's dreams and soothe him.

The song wasn't one that he'd never played before, and he made it up as he went along. The notes rippled in a way he could never have predicted, and he felt such an ache in the melody that tears started to slip from his eyes.

Roger stopped playing partway through a phrase. There was no resolution at the end of the line, but he didn't want finish it.

It was Mark's song, and the rest remained unwritten.

--

Oh, another note, the song lyrics in this chapter are from the song "Losing My Religion" R.E.M., we found it appropriate to include them as it was the song with which Anthony Rapp auditioned for RENT. So just to note, these lyrics are not our property and we lovely hand the credit back to R.E.M. for their brilliance.

Now. Review??