So it was late, very late, and I was trying to work on my other story, but instead this just kind of...poured out. Reviews are appreciated, and I may continue this. I know, I always say that. But for real this time. Possibly.

Disclaimer: I don't own RENT or the characters from it, foo.

Mark stared at the tiles. They were white. Well, not white exactly, but more of an off-white, pale, pale yellowish color. He narrowed his eyes, and the tiles all blurred into one, a giant, bland expanse of...blah. He couldn't come up with a better word than that. Blah. All things were blah to him now, and they probably always would be. It was easier to feel simple blah instead of all the emotions that were squirming around inside him, pushing for release, creating a ruckus in his head and causing his hands to shake, contained only by the thin covering of blah he somehow managed to maintain.

After Collins went, it had gotten easier. Well no, not easier, it would never get easier, but he was getting tougher. When Angel had gone, he had cried for days, they all had, but after Collins something inside him just snapped. When the machines stopped beeping and Collins' eyes stared off into nothingness, there was silence, silence enough that he was almost sure he'd heard something snap. It wasn't his emotions, he had still been sad of course, but something had broken, and an excess of blah had poured out, filling him with a gentle numbness that he had taken as a blessing. The others had been in the room, and they're screams and wails after the second of silence when the blah pipeline broke had faded away, if only for a moment. Maureen was hunched over in a chair, rocking back and forth, shaking with loud, dramatic howls as Joanne rubbed her back, barely able to withhold her own tears. Benny was standing in the doorway, but the second Mark had looked at him, he turned and walked away quickly. Benny was never one to cry in front of others. To his left, silent tears had rolled down Roger's face, as Mimi bawled into his chest, her sobs resonating through Mark's blessed blah, like a dark foreshadowing.

Mimi...

Mimi had been the worst. He remembered the moment, and the moments after, clearer than anything ever in his life. There were only four of them in the room that time, not counting her. Benny hadn't showed, although they'd left messages on his machine all week. Mark had never seen Roger pray, he had never been religious in the least, especially after April. But that final day, he kneeled by Mimi's bed, clutching her hand constantly, never even looking at anyone else. He spoke almost silently, but Mark had been able to make out one word. "Please...please, please...please..." Roger had repeated the word over and over, and Mark got the feeling he wasn't talking to Mimi. That last moment, the moment all the beeps and blips stopped, Mimi's chest stopped moving and her eyes stopped seeing, the moment Roger collapsed, completely helpless, only three words escaping his mouth, "Take me, please..." before his sobs overtook him, and it took Joanne, Maureen, and Mark to hold him up. That was it, the one second when Roger collapsed, when the blah all went away. Mark had felt everything then and it took all his energy not to pass out. All the pain, sadness, torture, the crushing weight of all the emotions had hit him in one jolt, nearly sending his own heart into overdrive. It had been terrifying, but to Mark's relief it went away as quickly as it came, and the blah returned.

Now, here he was. He wasn't sure if he was crying or not. He didn't want to know. He didn't want to feel anything, and it was taking all his energy not to. It had started one day, a week ago, maybe two. He didn't remember now. He'd just come home from a day of filming, happy and content with how his newest work was coming. He had planned to treat Roger, Maureen, and Joanne to a dinner at a reasonably nice restaurant, having just sold a decent piece of footage for two hundred dollars. But that had all disappeared when he entered the apartment and saw Roger, lying unmoving on the carpet, his chest barely rising up and down, his bottle of a AZT a few inches from his hand, pills strewn across the carpet like broken porcelain He had just taken his pill when it hit him, Roger told him when they got him hooked up at the hospital, but he had known it was pointless, but he also knew Mark would have worried if he had stopped taking.

Everything after that was a blur, up until now. He had just watched Roger die. His best friend. His brother. He'd stumbled out of the room and into a chair in the waiting room, and stared at the tiles.

The blah tiles.

"Mark?" Came a voice, sounding distant. Mark slowly raised his head. A concerned face hovered before him, a face all too familiar, although it took him a moment to place a name with it. Maureen. Perhaps the blah was affecting his memory. He would welcome it, he thought. There were things he would like to forget. Like the last seven years.

"Mark?" Maureen said again, a little louder, but still gentle. Mark hated that gentleness, the kind doctors always used when they tried to fix something long since broken that they couldn't possibly have taken classes about. Mark looked away.

"Joanne's...figuring things out. The...the funeral. You won't have to worry about anything," she said, moving into the chair next to him and placing a hand on his back. "You wanna go home?"

Mark could tell she was holding it together just for him. Someone had to be strong when no one else was, like he had been strong for Roger. Mark shook his head. Home wasn't home anymore without Roger hung over on the couch, plucking out notes on the guitar, or pacing around wildly, bursting into song occasionally as he tried to write something.

"You want something to eat?" Mark shook his head at this as well.

"You wanna stay here?" Mark shook his head more vigorously than the previous two times. The stupid tiles were beginning to close in on him, forming all sorts of odd patterns and making him dizzy.

"Mark, please..." Maureen whispered, leaning her forehead on his shoulder. He was being impossible, he knew that.

"Home," he finally said. And Maureen seemed to relax a bit. The click-click of high heeled black boots signaled the entrance of Joanne, and Maureen removed herself from Mark's side. He couldn't quite make out what they were saying, but he heard snippets: "The loft," "Stay the night," "Just to be sure," from Maureen, and he could tell from Joanne's tone that she wasn't thrilled with what Maureen was proposing, but she didn't dare protest. Neither did Mark. No matter the amount of blah in his system, the last thing he wanted was to be alone. Loneliness triggered thoughts.