Title: The Room Inside My Heart

Fandom: RENT

Rating: PG-13/T

Summary: How long does it take to feel again? Mark/Roger slash.

Disclaimer: Obviously, I dont own RENT, just renting the characters for awhile.

A/N I fixed the formatting on this chapter, and changed it a little, nothing major.

Chapter 2: Not Yet Broken

(Roger's POV)

The door creaked open slightly, and light filtered in through the crack, cutting the darkness. ''Go away,'' I said to Mark. I could not even see him, but I knew he was there. I could sense that he was. Sure enough, there was a sigh from outside in the hall. And then-''Roger, can I just-''

''No'', I said. ''No, no, no, for the millionth time, no. Go away, I dont want to talk to you right now.''

There was another soft sigh, then the light disappeared with the closing of the door, and I was in darkness again.

I guess time passed, but I do not know how long, exactly. I felt horrible, all hollow and full of aches, but I climbed out of bed anyway. I looked at my miserable surroundings: the stale, bare walls, the closed blinds on the window. It occurred to me that I did not want to be in this room any longer. It gave me a sense of suffocation; as if the memory of all that had ever happened here was tightening its grim fingers around my throat.

I walked out, shutting the door behind me in a symbolic attempt to close off the memories, keep them at bay where they could not bleed out into the rest of the loft, and contaminate it. Then, I realized that every place that Mimi had ever been, every room where we were ever together, was tainted.

I wandered into the little kitchen, my feet feeling heavy, as if there were leaden weights bound to my legs. I moved with a sick sort of shuffle, like a reanimated corpse. My clothes hung over my body, the same clothes I had been wearing for days. I felt like I should burn them; they too, were stained with memory.

The lights in the loft were on, and the sky outside was dark and moonless. A small man sat at the table, his head in his hands. Mark. He looked up when he heard my footsteps on the floor, and I noticed that his face was tired, and his eyes red from crying.

''Oh'', he said, with a look of surprise, ''You're...out of bed.''

''Yeah'', I mumbled, pulling out a chair and sitting down at the table. There was silence for a few moments while Mark stared at me with what was possibly concern, or even pity. Then he gave me a lopsided sort of half-smile, which came across as utterly fake. I stared back blankly, not wanting to be smiled at.

I thought to myself that I probably should not have gotten out of bed at all today. I would rather have stayed in that evil little room with the choking aura of past, dead memory than emerge and be greeted with looks of pity and fake, meaningless smiles.

I stood up, leaving Mark sitting at the table, and walked into the bathroom. I flicked on the light switch, and there was a buzzing of electricity followed by illumination. The mirror above the filthy sink was cracked right down the middle. I wondered when that had happened. My reflection stared back at me, sliced in half by the cleavage of the glass. I did not recognize my face. My skin was pale as death, my cheekbones sharply visible. My hair was ridiculously long, unkempt and wild, which gave me a kind of mad Beethoven look. And those eyes. The eyes that stared back at me from the unknown face were haunted and empty and frightening. It was a face painted onto me by grief and fear and pain.

I heard footsteps behind me, and I whirled around. Mark was standing there quietly, observing me, and looking as if he were going to cry again.

''Don't you dare say anything'', I growled, my voice rusty from lack of use, ''And don't cry either. In fact, don't even look at me.''

I started to move past him, when he grabbed my arm. He held onto the sleeve of my shirt and stared right into my face; he looked deep into my foreign, phantom eyes.

''You're ok,'' Mark said. It was not a question. ''The mirror is broken, not you.''

I was not in the mood for anything cryptic, and I didnt even bother trying to deceipher the meaning of what he had said.

''I mean'', he added, ''it's going to be fine.''

''Like hell it is'', I mumbled bitterly, wrenching my arm away from him. I did not want to be touched; I had a heightened sensitivity, I suppose, because when he touched me, it felt as thought I had been burned.

I wanted to be alone, but not here. Not in this place. Even though the door to my room was closed, everything inside was seeping out from under it, and flooding the rest of the loft with its poison. Everything was becoming coated with the dust of memory. I needed to breathe free air.

I pushed past Mark, leaving him standing there, and did not look back. I grabbed my coat from where it hung in the closet, and walked out. Out into nothing, out into a city full of trapped and lonely people, out into darkness obscured by neon lights.

The cold air stung my skin like thousands of knives as I walked down the sidewalk. I shivered and swayed a little on my feet; I was weak from lack of food, but I kept moving anyway. Faces swam past me, paying no attention.

I paused, and breathed in. Chill air swept into my lungs, and seemed to freeze my insides. My breath made little puffs of smoke that made shapes like dragons in front of my face before disappearing. I gazed around, at the blank steel and concrete that was like a maze, and at the sidewalks that led to nowhere.

There was a man lying in the alley. His face looked like an old newspaper and his hair was dirty. He was wrapped in a battered coat, trying, I thought, to keep warm. Then I realized that he was dead.

A young woman walked by, with pretty blonde hair that curled at the ends, and pale blue eyes. She paused for a moment, and looked at the corpse. She shivered, made the sign of the cross, mumbled something in what sounded like Latin, and moved on.

I felt a strange, sick feeling wash over me like a wave. It moved through my veins and burned through my skin. It was a painful and grim realization. Death. It was all around me, and I could not escape it. I understood, then, as if a cruel and harsh light had been turned on inside me, that everyone was dying. It did not matter if they had a virus swimming through their blood, biding its time and waiting to strike like a serpent, it did not matter if cancer was consuming them from the inside, or if fate had made them healthy and strong; they were still dying.

Everyone, I thought, is born to break. We come into the world and our death warrants are already signed by some miserable deity. Immortality is not possible, we all fall back into the earth. But when? That was the question. Its impossible for us to know exactly how or when we die; but every day we live, it hangs over our heads, mocking us. The fates who will someday cut the strings that hold us to this world whisper in our ears, sending us memento moris and telling us that no, we are not forever. We will break, and we will die.

I turned around, not wanting to see any more. I turned and ran back the way I had come, willing myself to move faster though the fatigue was crushing me. Everything spun, and the every color of every street sign scalded me with its brightness. As I ran, I saw the young woman with the blonde hair, and knew that she would someday die. I passed a mother with a small child, and thought the same.

My brain was screaming with questions, questions that I had never thought of before. Deep and existential things were surfacing from the ocean of my soul, and I wanted to drown them again. People must have thought I was mad as I tore crazily down the sidewalk; my face ashen. I ran as if all Hell was pursuing me. But it was not Hell I was running from. Hell was an end, heaven was an end. When you are there, you are dead, its already happened. This was Purgatory, this was waiting and not knowing.

When I got back to the loft, I yanked open the door and fell inside, crashing to the floor, my lungs burning. My whole body shook violently, and I felt that it was going to crack apart. I had recognized mortality at last, which seemed bizarre, because I spent most of the previous days wanting to die. There was a strange paradox withing me. I had seen death. In many ways. I had watched the woman I loved die, but even then, it was different than this. This was not just seeing a body. This was seeing Death for what it was, a clawing, mocking demon that sat on the shoulders of every person on this planet. It was cold, and it was unfeeling.

Mark appeared then, rushing over to me. He appeared terrified, which made him seem even younger and smaller; he looked like an abandoned, frightened child.

''Where have you been?'' he asked, in some strange combination of a strangled whisper and a shout, ''You scared me to death.''

''Don't say that word'', I said, my voice tiny and choked.

''What word?'' Mark looked confused.

''Death'', I muttered, staring at my hands, ''Don't say it.''

I cried then, I could not help it. All my unshed tears had been stored in little glass vials in my soul that were now shattering.

Mark put his arms around me; this time, I let him, I was too weak to protest. I leaned against him; clinging to his body as if he could save me from this painful storm inside my soul.

''I hate this'', I said, wiping my eyes. ''I hate crying in front of you.''

I looked into his face, which was full of understanding and heartbreak. He nodded, and helped me to stand up. We walked together, past the bathroom with the cracked mirror, and into my room. I did not care anymore that it was full of memories, after everything I had seen and felt I wanted familiarity. I wanted memories, even the bad ones. Anything was better than the cold and painful honesty of death. I closed my eyes, and pictured Mimi. I remembered her pretty eyes, and her smile. I remembered the songs I sang to her, and I remembered love.

''I'm ok...I'm ok...I'm ok...'' I chanted this to myself like a mantra, recalling what Mark had said to me earlier. ''I'm not broken...I'm not broken...''

But I was. I felt myself breaking. Little pieces of my soul were flying apart, and in the darkness I saw them. Born to break.

Mark sat next to me on the bed and put his hand on my shoulder. I wanted to tell him to fuck off, but some part of me that had not yet shattered seemed to want him there. He sat up beside me all night, like a strange sentinel keeping watch.