A/N: Disclaimer, I don't own these characters, just the plot that I put them in. Read and review. If you all seem to like it, I'll post more. Flames are welcome and encouraged. Hey, everyone has an opinion right?

It was wet. Little drops of rain clung to the blonde boys glasses as he stood quietly in the background of the collection of people, mostly clad in dark clothes and hidden under umbrellas. He didn't want an umbrella. He didn't want to be in this godforsaken suit. Not to mention this cemetery, town, state or country. He didn't want to be anywhere near any of these people. He just stood still, occasionally shifting the weight of his body from one foot to the other, his hands shoved in his pockets, his blue eyes searching the depths of the crowd.

I should be paying attention, I should be showing something to these people, something to remind them that I was his friend. No. No, he couldn't do that. Couldn't let anything make his glasses wet but the rain.

He felt around in his pocket and turned the guitar pic he found there over a few times. It calmed his already jittering, frazzled nerves and he let out a heavy sigh.

"Does anyone else have anything to add?"

I have everything to add.

Silence. The crowd dispersed, heading over towards the flower covered oak enclosure and left the boy and a few scarce others still standing. Separately. He watched as a thin, dark-skinned woman approached him, her usually wild curls tamed into a nice, respectable bun.

"Mark...hey..." her soft, but aggressive voice spoke up as she stepped forward, her caramel eyes wet with what had once been silent tears. "Haven't seen you in awhile. How are you holding up?"

He shrugged a little. "I'm holding up." His answer was calm, flat and without his usual faltering stutter or mumble. "How has it been treating you?"

Mark Cohen watched helplessly as the woman before him, beautiful and strong, attempted to squeeze out a small smile. She was trying to comfort him. Her smile faded and she brought her hands to her face as a wave of tears exploded from within her.

"Mimi..." He mumbled, opening his arms and wrapping them around her smaller frame as she sobbed into his shoulder. "Mimi, there was nothing we could do, he was sick. He was miserable, but it's over..." He could barely believe the words that were coming out of his mouth. It wasn't over, this endless strain of death would never be over. He had suffered a blow like this before, but for some reason he knew the ache wouldn't go away. The dent in him wouldn't reform.

Mimi Marquez regained her composure and stood on her own, Mark's careful arms releasing her and his hands burrowing back into his pockets. He studied her face and its smooth contours, his eyes almost breathing her in. So much had changed about her since last he saw her almost a year ago. Somehow the spunky flame she had was wavering, threatening to extinguish itself if she didn't regain something she had once had. Mark feared the only thing that kept her candle burning was lying in that oak casket covered with flowers.

"It's over..." She repeated his words, folding her arms across her chest and letting the rain hit her without swatting it away. She didn't care. The rain was just an afterthought to all of this. "I honestly didn't think it had much longer to last...did you?" Her searching brown eyes raised to meet his blue ones and something inside him twitched. Shifted. Wasn't the same.

"No..." he managed to spit out. Before he could continue, the rain pounded down in an appropriate thundering crescendo, and the two young pairs of eyes locked with each others again.

"Do you want to get out of here?" She asked, almost having to yell over the pouring rain. Mark nodded, looking to the coffin and then back to Mimi.

"We can come back...plant the flowers and..." he rambled as they walked, dripping wet to Mark's small black Mazda. He fumbled in his pockets for the keys and let Mimi in, holding her door for her and closing it as soon as she had gotten safely inside. He sat beside her and started the car. The small dinging noise that sounded before he buckled his seatbelt snapped him out of his confused, muddled mood and prepared him to drive. To focus on something other than this suffocating death.

His fingers wrapped around the wheel, he began to drive slowly out of the cemetery long after the procession had gone. They were headed back to the family's house. He was not. He couldn't face them, not his mother, not his sisters. He let out a sigh, water still dripping from his hair and down behind his glasses. They were taking the place of the tears that he knew should have been there.

"Are you hungry?" Mimi asked. " I don't think I want to go home right now..." Her voice was faded and low, tired and weak. He didn't know where he wanted to go, but he knew he didn't want to say no to Mimi. She was worse off than he was, she had more pain in her than he did. She had the right to be catered to and pampered.

She had the right to be loved. The only person who knew how to do that without flaw was dead. He made sure to remind himself of that as he drove onward.